‘Okay. I would like to unman you in front of policemen.’
‘Bugger the policemen,’ he says quite fiercely. ‘I almost fucking lost you.’ He grips me then as though he could stop my quaking by the sheer force of his will.
‘How did you know?’ I ask, pulling my head from his chest to look at him.
‘Mrs H said there was someone near your car this morning. She thought it was you, but when she waved, you took off. She also told me she’d thought you’d come back from work one day last week early. She saw you walk up the driveway and disappear into the house.’
‘She’s been in the house?’ Dread skitters down my spine.
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘Do you think—No. She was, she was going to kill me, Ben.’
‘I know, sweetheart. But you’re okay. I won’t let anyone ever hurt you.’
His fingers clutch my shoulders, my back, my thighs, gripping me tightly as though taking an inventory of my solidity. He bands his arms around me as he pulls my body flush against him. It’s then I discover I’m not the only one shaking.
Chapter 25
BEN
I’m. .. moonlighting. Taking a sabbatical?
We’re in Scotland, staying in the grounds of Lord Travers’ estate, who we know as Will. He’s loaned us the gamekeeper’s cottage while we’re here. It’s a beautiful spot but even with Spring on the horizon, it’s still cold enough to freeze my balls off.
The cottage has stone walls half a metre deep and tiny windows and a ceiling so low that, in places, I have to stoop.
‘It’s a house made for bloody pixies,’ I grumble, bumping my head on a low doorframe again.
‘Do you think people were just smaller back in the seventeenth century?’
‘I think it was probably the weight of the many coats they had to wear.’
‘You’re soft,’ Nell retorts, giggling. ‘Even Will said so. A soft southern bast—’
‘Stop right there. I don’t want to know where that ends. The man made me a very generous off yesterday. I want to make my decision without hearing his opinion of me.’
‘Yep,’ she agrees. ‘It doesn’t do to bite the hand that feeds you.’
‘I feed you,’ I reply smoothly. ‘And you bit more than my hand last night.’
‘Only because you like it a little rough.’ Truthfully, I like it any way Nell serves it. But she’s not wrong. ‘Are you going to look at the grounds with Will and Keir later?’ she asks, snuggling deeper into the fluffy goose down quilts.
‘Yep, we’re checking out the suitability of the terrain.’
Keir is Will’s friend and business partner. A man of few words and astute observations. They’re both good blokes. The idea is to set up a Military style camp for corporate team building exercises. A gruelling experience for which companies will pay highly and their management teams will be bullied and broken before being built back up. A bit like joining the Special Forces, without the 90% dropout rate and the threat of death.
They want me to run it, set up the company as a partnership. It’s a tempting offer.
We haven’t decided yet. And that’sweas in Nell and me. We’re a team. We make these decisions together. And I know how much she worries about me. She’s begun to have nightmares, and though she refuses to speak about them, I know they feature guns and death. I don’t need to know anything else. I’ve been there myself.
‘I love it when you talk dirty soldier to me, Captain Monroe.’
God, this woman. Will I ever get my fill?
‘You love theyoung and thrustingin me, don’t you, half-pint.’
‘I can’t believe that’s an actual phrase Army phrase.’ It is. Ambitious and on the fast-track to promotion. In fact, it was me until recently. My mates laugh, they reckon Nell has taken possession of my balls, but that’s not it. I could’ve lost her, and I can barely process that. How could I have gone on without her? Without my half-pint?
