He held out a hand. ‘You’re doing really well.’
‘Am I?’ She laughed. ‘I think you’re flattering me, Robbie Keel.’ She jumped again, this time judging the distance better and landing neatly in front of him.
‘Well, maybe I was a bit,’ he said, turning to jump again. ‘But I’m eating my words, now. Let’s go.’
Like a proverbial mountain goat, he hopped across a series of three rocks and stopped again on a larger boulder, almost halfway across the stretch of water. She followed, almost slipping on a particularly slick stone, but recovering without incident.
He paused in the centre of the river, staring downstream. ‘This is possibly my favourite spot on the whole estate.’
‘Really?’ Dee was genuinely surprised. It wasn’t as though it was somewhere to linger for too long. If she’d had to guess, she would have assumed he would have preferred the view from the top of the hill, or the waterfall, or maybe a particularly beautiful spot in the village. The village was very picturesque, after all.
‘Yes. I can’t get here most of the time because I have the dogs with me. And it’s not accessible all year round – these rocks are all submerged when the river runs to capacity later in the winter. Making the effort to get here makes it special. There’s a chance that, in trying to get here, it could go wrong. There’s always the risk I could end up in the water.’
‘Now you tell me,’ Dee said, with a laugh.
‘Sometimes the best things are the ones which seem totally out of reach,’ Robbie said, his gaze resting on her a moment before he said, ‘But I don’t believe in giving up on what you really want, you know?’
Dee wasn’t sure she fully understood what he was getting at, didn’t know how to respond to Robbie’s words. They continued across, and the further she went, the more confident she felt about reaching the far side of the river. In fact, by the time she had to make her final leap, out onto the far bank, Dee was already feeling disappointment that it was over.
Then her foot slipped, and her disappointment evaporated, replaced instead by a burgeoning feeling of confusion as her forward momentum turned into sideways and downwards. Strong fingers clasped their way around her arm, jinking her away from the water and towards the safety of the riverbank. Robbie added his other hand, unceremoniously grabbing her waist as he hauled her out of the potential clutches of the icy water. He pulled them both backwards up the riverbank and stood, puffing with effort – or perhaps it was the shock, as Dee was also out of breath. His hand still encircled her wrist, his arm around her waist.
She waited for him to let her go, to step back to a more appropriate distance, but he didn’t. If anything, he did the opposite, pulling her more firmly against his body, squashing out what little breath she’d retained. And, instead of recoiling from his grasp, Dee found herself leaning into him – her body disclosing its true feelings on the matter, even as the logical side of her mind demanded she move away from him.
Dee stared up at him, at the weather-worn lines of his face, the concentrated expression and the way a muscle twitched in his jaw. She noticed that the salty grey in his hair was more concentrated where his hair was beginning to recede to the sides of his widow’s peak, that his eyes were a swirl of blue-green and that there was a small scar on his chin, almost invisible under a thin layer of stubble.
All she had to do was push open the cage …
She so nearly reached up, desperate to trace a path along his jaw-line with the very tips of her fingers, unable to ignore the shiver which passed through her at the thought. Then, as though the trance was broken, she pulled away.
‘What am I doing? I shouldn’t be having fun,’ she said, her voice small and uncertain. ‘I should be mourning my dead husband.’
‘Maybe,’ Robbie said, his voice soft and low, edged with gruffness as he added, ‘But I saw what he was like. I know how he was.’ He frowned, then added, almost too quietly for her to hear, ‘I understand why you did it, Dee.’
‘Did what?’
‘You know what. And while I know it was the only option open to you, I’ve missed your friendship. I’ve missed you, Dee. You know I have.’
‘Yes, well.’ Dee shook her head, extracting herself from the warmth of his words, unsure she was ready to forgive herself as easily as it seemed he was. A swirl of damp, cold air filled the space between them, and it began to drizzle with rain. ‘I can’t …’
‘I know. I’m sorry, I should never have … It’s just that I’ve wanted …’ Robbie drew in a sharp breath and looked away.
Wanted what? A large part of Dee was desperate for him to complete his sentence, but she wasn’t going to force him to say it. She had a feeling it might change everything.
A beat of time passed, an incredibly long beat in which Dee wanted to ignore propriety, to shake off a lifetime spent within a straitjacket and chase something which would be just for herself. She should say as much, right here, right now. Tell Robbie there was nothing she wanted more than to get back to where they’d been before Henry had pulled the rug out from underneath them both. And while Dee wasn’t naive enough to believe they would ever be more than friends, regardless of how attractive she might find Robbie, to rekindle the friendship ruined by Henry’s potent and dangerous jealousy would be something special. It would be enough.
She did her best to compose herself.
‘I should get back.’ she said.
‘There’s a wee bridge a bit further down. I’ll show you the way.’
‘You always have,’ she said, her words little more than a whisper.
Chapter 11
A couple of days later and, despite her misgivings, preparing for Sebastian’s welcome-home party was proving more fun than Jess had expected. Almost everything was in place, and Jess had managed to keep shtum, hadn’t given the game away to Sebastian. The only downside had been a lack of time to go and visit Robbie. He hadn’t been in when she’d returned his clothes, and Jess had been forced to leave them in his porch.
On the plus side, she’d managed to rope Mrs Keel in to lend a hand – in a sort of quid pro quo arrangement for singing in the village choir – and although the older woman had reservations about holding a party so soon after a funeral, with some associated mutterings about mourning times not being correctly observed, she’d become a willing confidant.
