waited. It was difficult to tell with Sean if he suspected there was something out there, or if he was just obeying long-ingrained habits.
When he walked back in I held up the mug, self-conscious. “Hi,” I said. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, giving me a slow smile that could have meant he’d done just about anything while he’d been in my room. Damn, the man made me nervous.
He was wearing black jeans and a ribbed T-shirt today and his hair was still damp from his own shower. So were the legs of his jeans where he’d walked through the dewed grass. He looked, not relaxed exactly, but a hell of a lot more composed than I felt. The dark smudge under his left eye was the only indication of what had happened between us last night.
He was carrying a white plastic bag, which he turned upside down next to the sink, emptying the contents onto the worktop.
“Mushrooms?” I said in surprise.
He flashed a quick smile. “Why not?” he said. “The field at the back there’s full of them. Be just the thing with a bit of bacon.”
I didn’t bother to ask him if they were safe to eat. Sean had been taught to survive on what he could pick, dig out, catch or steal by the best in the business.
“So,” he said as he began sorting through his harvest and wiping dirt from the stalks. “Where do we go from here?”
For a moment I couldn’t speak. I just stared at him, floundering.
“I meant,” he said gently, “about the situation with Jacob and Clare.”
“Oh. Right,” I managed, trying and failing not to let the relief show. I hauled my brain back on track, forced it to concentrate. “Well—”
That was as far as I got. The drive alarm squawked at that moment and the dogs, who’d slumped onto their blankets trying to pretend Sean had run them to the point of exhaustion, suddenly leapt up and started shouting.
“Oh, for God’s sake, you two,” Sean muttered. “All right, all right. We heard it.”
In fact, you couldn’t fail to catch the heavy rattle of the diesel engine that arrived on the forecourt a minute or so later. We moved to the window and watched as a Citroen Relay van covered with local hire company stickers pulled up outside.
“It must be Jacob,” I said in surprise. “I didn’t expect him this early.”
“Neither did I,” Sean said. “He must have driven through the night and caught an earlier boat.” There was a trace of suspicion in his voice, as though hurrying home faster than expected was a sign of guilt rather than devotion.
Outside, Jacob was climbing stiffly out of the cab. His long peppered dark hair was scraped back into a ponytail and the back of his shirt was soaked through with sweat. He looked utterly exhausted, stressed out, and every one of his fifty-two years. My heart went out to him.
“So,” Sean murmured, “how much do you want to tell him?”
“All of it,” I said, on impulse, then caught his disbelieving glance and amended quickly, “Most of it, anyway.”
When Jacob caught sight of us coming out to greet him his face creased into a desperately relieved smile. The desire to pour out everything to him was a strong and insistent one.
“Charlie!” he said, coming forward to give me a quick fierce hug. His wiry arms enfolded me so tight they dug in and actually hurt, but I held on just as hard. “Sean! It’s good to see you again, boy.”
“You too,” Sean said, shaking Jacob’s hand once he’d released me. “I’m just sorry it’s in these circumstances.”
A shadow passed across the older man’s face, carving a deep vee between his eyebrows. He had rich dark velvet eyes you could almost drown in.
“Well, you can say that again. I rang the hospital when I got off the motorway but they told me she’s still sleeping so I thought I’d nip home and clean up before I go in.” He pulled a rueful face and scratched at the day’s worth of greying stubble on his chin. “I don’t think it’d do the poor girl much good seeing me like this, do you?”
I thought of Clare’s pallor. Anybody putting the two of them together at this moment would almost think that Jacob was her father. Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Jamie should seem so attractive . . .
I forced a smile. “I think she’d be glad to see you any time.”
He smiled back at me and dragged a small overnight bag out of the passenger side of the van and slammed the door. Sean took it from him to carry inside. Hard to believe, watching them, that Sean had been the one so sceptical of Jacob’s motives only a few moments before.
It was a sign of Jacob’s fatigue that he was limping more heavily than usual, a harsh reminder that he knew exactly what Clare was going through because he’d been there himself. Too many times. Some of the tales he tells about the bike crashes he’d been through, both on road and racetrack, make my bones itch in sympathy. The cobble-together he’s walking around on now is the best the surgeons at the time could do with the bits he had left.
“Did you speak to any of Clare’s doctors?” I asked as we passed along the hallway. “Have they given you any idea how she’s getting on?”
“I talked briefly to your father,” he said over his shoulder. “He tells me she’s making progress but the nerves grow back very slowly – barely a millimetre a day – so it’ll be a while before we really know how much she’s going to get back in her legs. I want to try and speak to him further when I go in today. He’s going home this afternoon.”
“Is he?” That was news to me. Affront that he was leaving without telling me warred with a sense of relief.
