‘Of course. It’s expected. A party for the local children, with Santa in attendance with presents for everyone. The tenant farmers in for drinks on Christmas Eve and then, on Christmas Day, my grandfather and I sit in state in the dining room for lunch before exchanging perfectly wrapped gifts. The only thing that’s missing is conversation because, rather than say the wrong thing, we say nothing at all.’
‘I find it hard to imagine you tiptoeing around anyone’s feelings. You certainly don’t tiptoe around mine.’
‘I know.’ She smiled at him. ‘You can’t imagine how relaxing that is.’
‘So why do you put up with it year after year?’ he demanded, suddenly angry, not with her grandfather but with her for enduring it rather than changing it.
‘Duty?’ she said. ‘And my grandfather is all the family I have.’ Then, in a clear attempt to change the subject, ‘What about you, George? Are you really going to stay on?’
‘You suspect I might be pining for my beach bum existence?’
‘That would be George Saxon, the beach bum who designed a series of computer programs that helps to reduce wear and tear on combustion engines?’ He waited, knowing that she had something on her mind. ‘Who’s since designed a dozen applications that have made him so much money he never has to work again?’
‘Does Rupert Devenish work for a living?’ he asked.
‘Rupert runs his estates. Holds directorships in numerous companies. Works for charity. He’s not idle.’
‘It’s no wonder the press are so excited,’ he said, wishing he hadn’t started this. ‘You sound like the perfect match.’
The colour drained from her face but, without missing a beat, she said, ‘Don’t we?’ Then, briskly, ‘Okay. The lights are done and we’ve just got time for that motorcycle lesson you promised me before your father gets home from the hospital.’
‘For that we’d need a motorcycle,’ he pointed out thankfully. ‘I thought perhaps, this year, I might break with tradition and, instead of a bank transfer, I’d let Xandra choose her own present. No prizes for guessing what she’ll choose.’
It was meant to distract her and it did.
‘It’ll be a cheap Christmas, then. The only bike she wants is yours.’
‘Mine?’
‘The one in the barn?’
George glanced at the stone long-barn, all that remained of the original farm buildings. Over the years it had served as a stable, a depository for tack, garden tools and every item of transportation he’d ever owned since his first trike, then crossed to the door and pushed it open.
‘What is it?’ she asked as he stared at a familiar tarpaulin.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘History. A heap of rust.’ But, unable to help himself, he pulled back the tarpaulin to reveal the motorbike he’d bought on his sixteenth birthday.
It wasn’t a classic. Nothing like the high-powered one he rode in California, but he’d saved every last penny of money he’d earned or been given for birthdays, Christmas, to buy it and it had represented freedom, independence. He’d ridden it home from Cambridge that first Christmas, high on his new life, full of everything he’d done and seen.
Four weeks later, when it was time to return to his studies, Penny had refused to ride on the back because of the baby and they’d taken the train.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘I DON’T see any rust,’ Annie said.
‘No.’
The bike had been sitting in the barn for fifteen years and for fifteen years someone had lavished care on it, keeping it polished, oiled, ready to kick-start and go.
There was only one someone who could have done that-his father-and he slammed his fist against the leather saddle, understanding exactly how angry, how
He wanted to smash something. Roar at the waste of it, the stupidity.
‘Why didn’t he say? Why didn’t he tell me?’
‘That he loved you? Missed you?’
Annie reached out for him and, wrapping her arms around him, she held him as he’d held her. And he clung to her because she understood as no one else could. Clung to her, wanting never to let her go.
In the end it was Annie who made the move, leaning back a little, laying warm lips against his cold cheek for just a moment, before turning to the bike.
‘Will it start?’ she asked.
He didn’t care about the damn bike. He only cared about her but, just as he’d kept his distance in the last few days, protecting himself as much as her, now she was the one wearing an aura of untouchability.
Standing a little straighter, a little taller, even wearing a woolly hat and gloves, he had no doubt he was looking not at Annie Rowland, but Lady Rose.
And still he wanted to crush her to him, kiss her, do what she’d asked of him and make her so entirely his that she could never go back.
And that, he discovered, was the difference between lust and love.
When you loved someone your heart overrode desire.
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ he said, unhooking a helmet from the wall. He wiped off a layer of dust with his sleeve and handed it to her, unhooked a second one for himself, then pulled the bike off its stand and wheeled it out into the yard.
It felt smaller than he remembered as he slung a leg over the saddle, kicked it into life, but his hands fitted the worn places on the handlebars and the familiar throb of the engine as he sat astride the bike seemed to jump-start something inside him.
Or maybe it was Annie, grinning at him in pure delight. Somehow the two seemed inextricably connected. Part of each other, part of him. Pulling on the helmet, he grinned back and said, ‘Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go for a ride.’
She didn’t need a second invitation, but climbed on behind him.
‘Hold tight,’ he warned and, as he took off, she hung on for dear life, her arms around his waist, her body glued to his.
It was beyond exhilarating. The nearness to everything, the road racing beneath them, the closeness, the trust, their two bodies working as one as they leaned into the bends of the winding country roads. It was as if they were one and when, far too soon, they raced back into the garage forecourt, he seemed to know instinctively the exact moment to ease back, turn, put out his foot as they came to a halt in front of the barn door.
Coming home, exactly as he had done countless times in the past.
For a moment the engine continued to throb, then everything went quiet. It was only then, when she tried to move, dismount, that Annie realised that she was not just breathless, light-headed but apparently boneless.
‘Oh,’ she said stupidly, clinging to George as he helped her off the bike and her legs buckled beneath her. He removed her helmet as if she were a child. ‘Oh, good grief, that was-’
George didn’t wait to hear what she thought-he knew. Despite the fact that she was so far out of his reach that she might as well be on Mars, that in a few days she would walk away, taking his heart with her, and he would have to smile and pretend he didn’t care. Knowing that each touch, each kiss, would intensify the pain of losing her, he kissed her anyway.
He kissed her not to test her probity, not as a prelude to the kind of intimacy that had overtaken them in the kitchen.
It was a kiss without an agenda, one that would endure in his memory and maybe, on the days when Annie felt alone, in hers. A kiss given with a whole heart.
And that was as new for him as it was for her.
That she responded with all the passion of a woman who knew it would be their last made it all the more
