I tracked him even after he’d turned his back on me and returned to the house. And I saw his face later that night when I closed my own eyes and tried fruitlessly to sleep.
Chapter Three
Joe
The farm was never entirely quiet. At night, the horses called to each other, and the foxes screamed in the fields. Sometimes, I blocked it out and slept like a baby. Others, I lay awake all night, staring at the living room ceiling, but tonight turned out to be one of the nights when I didn’t even make it to my makeshift bed on the couch.
Instead I walked our newest arrival around the yard, watching like a hawk for any signs of colic.
“Why?” Harry asked me from his perch on the doorstep—apparently he didn’t sleep much either. “Stress?”
“Nah. Some tourists on the beach gave him their posh picnic—as in, all of it. Greedy fella’s necked half of Waitrose.”
“How did he end up on the beach in the first place?”
Now that was something I didn’t know. The young male was in good nick—healthy and clean. Well fed. How he’d wound up galloping around Crantock Beach was a mystery, so I didn’t answer Harry’s question. His gaze on me as I looped the yard was unnerving, and I wished he’d fuck off already. I wastiredand had less patience than usual for nosy questions.
The front door opened and closed, signalling that perhaps Harry had taken the hint. I sighed and knocked my head lightly on the gelding’s rump. He snorted cheerfully, like he had done since we’d caught him, and I scowled at him. “What are you laughing at, eh? We’re gonna be up all night hiking round this shithole. Couldn’t leave the sausage rolls alone, could ya?”
My grumbling earned me another good-natured grunt, and we set off round the yard again. Half my mind was on the dinner I’d abandoned in favour of ranting at the cats about broken tack, but the other treacherous half drifted to the stranger sleeping in my grandfather’s bed. Despite poking around his blog, the dude who’d rocked up was nothing like I’d thought he’d be. For starters, I’d expected him to drive a wankmobile—a white Range Rover or a scraping-the-ground-lowered Subaru. Not a navy-blue Ford Focus. And his face didn’t fit my assumptions either. His cut body had prompted me to picture some slick twat with aPeaky Blindershairdo, not the rugged—he even had abeard—dark-eyed bear who apparently didn’t like my mum’s cooking.
And I wasn’t sure how I felt aboutthat.
The gelding and I had done another three laps of the yard when the front door opened again. I’d successfully ignored Harry when he’d first appeared around midnight, but as luck would have it—or not—this time, I was passing the steps as he was descending.
He was clutching a plate with a sandwich on and a chipped mug—mychipped mug—of coffee. “To keep you going,” he said. “You seem like you’re in for the long haul, and you didn’t finish your dinner.”
“Neither did you.”
Shadows flickered in Harry’s warm brown eyes, but he blinked them away so fast I wondered if I’d imagined them. Then I wondered why it mattered. Orifit mattered.
For some reason it did. “Sorry,” I said. “I mean... thank you. I’ll eat in a bit. Just got to get this idiot settled.”
Harry nodded, his small smile as open as the rest of his features. “Are you going to be okay?”
Are you?“Of course. This ain’t the first horse to do the overnight yard marathon, and sure as fuck won’t be the last. Go to bed, mate. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Harry disappeared inside without another word, and I continued on my way with the gelding. My imagination tracked Harry’s footsteps up the rickety stairs even as I turned my back on the front door and slipped back into the soothing pulse of hooves on the cobbled ground. I’d been alone in the house for so long it was hard not to see him as an intruder, but the arrival of his rent in the farm’s bank account had swallowed most of my resentment.
His shy smile had swallowed the rest.
* * *
Harry wasn’t in the kitchen when I wandered in from the fields the next morning, looking for breakfast and a couple of hours kip before morning muck outs began. His car was gone too.
Emma glared at me from the stove. “Scared him off already?”
“Would it matter? Got his money, haven’t we?” I opened the fridge and retrieved the milk. “Where’s Mum?”
“At the market, probably. It’s Monday.”
I frowned. “She didn’t take the van.”
“Maybe she walked.”
It was possible, but Sal’s favourite market was four miles away, and the skies had darkened overnight, eclipsing the sunshine we’d had the day before.
I poured myself a bowl of cereal and thumbed my phone to life. I’d tapped out half a text when a car pulled up in the yard.
