answer once again.
Something inside her, something that had been clenched tight and hard for years, unfurled. And Ben Oliver stepped back into the cool darkness of the boathouse, pulling her with him and repeated his answer over and over again with his lips on hers.
Louise woke up with a gasp, her eyes wide. The fire was little more than burnished embers and a talk show host was skilfully plying a reluctant guest with questions on the television.
She pressed a hand to her pounding chest. Just a dream. It had only been a dream. Calm down, you daft woman. Is this how pathetic you’ve become? A man shows you just a little bit of concern and neighbourly decency and your subconscious decides he’s the love of your life? Just how starved of affection have you been?
Well, her subconscious could just think again. Starving or not, this was one meal she was going to refuse. All her brain had done was jumble up the events and people of her day with the events and characters of the late-night film. A simple crossing of wires, that was all. In the morning, when she was coherent again, she’d make sure everything was rerouted back the right way.
She straightened the stiff arm she’d been lying on and was rewarded with a click. Serves you right for falling asleep in front of the telly, she told herself. Although love
At three-thirty the following afternoon, Louise still wasn’t sure if she’d won the battle with her subconscious. She pressed the doorbell on the Olivers’ cottage door and tried to work out where all the butterflies in her stomach had migrated from. Wherever they had come from, it seemed they were making themselves at home.
There was a click and the door started to open. Louise stopped breathing.
The blonde-haired woman who answered frowned slightly. ‘Yes?’
Louise swallowed. ‘I’m…er…here to help Jasmine. Mr Oliver is expecting me.’
The woman nodded, opened the door wide and Louise stepped inside and followed her into a funky modern kitchen with glossy red cabinets and black granite work surfaces. Not exactly what she’d pictured Ben Oliver would have chosen but, then again, maybe he hadn’t chosen it. Maybe Mrs Oliver had had something to do with it.
Right there was a good reason to stamp on all the butterflies waltzing inside her. Both she and Ben had too much history, too much baggage.
‘Hey!’ Jasmine was sitting on a cushioned stool next to a breakfast bar with a glass counter. She jumped off and walked towards Louise, her hands in her pockets. A blush stained her cheeks and she looked at the floor as she came closer.
Louise smiled. It didn’t seem that long ago that she’d been all awkward gestures and blushes herself. ‘Hey, yourself. Ready to bake?’
Jas nodded. ‘Is Jack with you?’
Louise shook her head. ‘He’s gone to football and then to a friend’s for tea.’
‘More cake for me, then!’ Jas giggled.
‘Is…um…’ Louise glanced at the anonymous woman, who was standing in the doorway, staring at her with undisguised curiosity. ‘Is
‘Oh, no.’ Jas shook her head. ‘Just you and me.’ She scowled at the woman, who took the hint and sloped away. ‘Don’t mind Julie. First of all, her nose is out of joint that she can’t stay and snoop on a famous person, but most of all she’s probably worried she won’t get as much child-minding money if you’re looking after me.’
‘Your dad’s not here?’
‘Nah. He doesn’t finish work until five o’clock and probably won’t be home until six. She looks after me until then most days.’
Louise wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. Relieved, she told herself quickly. It was much better to be relieved. Still, that didn’t explain the black hole that had opened up inside her tummy that the butterflies were now being sucked into.
Even before Ben’s key had turned in the lock the most amazing smells hit his nostrils: warm butter and cinnamon, sugar and vanilla. He’d been on a site visit most of the day and lunch had merely been a fleeting fantasy as he’d tried to explain to his client, in the most polite way possible, that his ideas for a visionary garden were actually going to be a blot on the landscape. His stomach rumbled, and he ordered it to get a grip.
He didn’t want any cake. He didn’t want to be hungry for anything at all.
He found Julie sulking in the sitting room reading a magazine. She really wasn’t the greatest substitute for the regular child-minder, but at least she’d been amenable to relocating to the cottage today so Jas could cook. With Louise.
His stomach gave up growling and did something more akin to a backflip.
Get a grip, Ben.
It meant nothing. It would always mean nothing. He’d just not been on a date for a while, that was all. He nodded to himself as he made his way to the kitchen. That was it, he was sure. Lack of female company had left him a little hypersensitive to having a woman around. Especially a woman as beautiful as Louise Thornton. It was just his testosterone talking.
But did it have to yell quite so loudly?
His hand was almost on the kitchen door, but he snatched it back and veered off in the direction of his study. He closed the door firmly behind him and let out a long breath. Work would distract him. And he needed to update his files on today’s project and come up with something that fulfilled his client’s brief to be ‘ground-breaking’ and ‘organic’ without being hideously ugly.
Instead of turning his computer on, he reached for a large sketch-pad and a soft pencil. All his best ideas came when he did the designing the old-fashioned way. Somehow, just holding a pencil and having a creamy sheet of cartridge paper beneath it made him want to fill it with shapes and shading and curves, to change the blankness of the bare paper into something that came alive.
He threw the pencil and pad down on his desk, took off his jacket and hung it over the back of his chair, then sat down and set to work, his empty tummy momentarily forgotten.
Half an hour later, he stood back and surveyed his handiwork.
Great, just great. Best ideas? What a laugh.
He squinted at the drawing and then turned the pad ninety degrees. A long, low groan escaped from his mouth and he ran his hands over his face. From this angle, the aerial view of the garden looked like a giant cupcake with a cherry on top. Why, when he’d been thinking of paths and borders, had he come up with this?
Best thing to do was admit defeat. He should just go into the kitchen, say hello and then leave again, proving to himself that he was just working himself up about nothing. And maybe this evening he would call his pal Luke and get him to set him up with one of his wife’s friends. Gaby had been trying to matchmake for more than a year now. Perhaps he should just put her out of her misery?
Ben grinned, but it turned into a grimace. The truth was, he didn’t really want to go out on a date with anyone. No one he’d met in the last couple of years had been anything more than pleasant company for an evening. No one had been the sort of woman he could envisage fitting into his and Jas’s lives. Even Camilla.
Camilla had been stylish and intelligent and funny, but there’d just been no spark-even though he’d done his utmost to get something to ignite. For a while now, he’d just thought it would be better to wait until Jas was older. She deserved love and stability after all she’d been subjected to because of his and Megan’s mistakes, not a string of unsuitable girlfriends being tramped through the house. Not that he’d actually brought any of them home, anyway.
Unsuitable. That was a good word.
Louise Thornton was totally unsuitable, no matter how mouth-watering her cakes might be. Okay, she wasn’t the airhead the tabloids made her out to be, but her life was full of turmoil, and that was the last thing he and Jas needed at the moment. He’d do well to remember that.
He pushed open the kitchen door and found exactly what he’d feared-turmoil. He blinked at the two females giggling on the other side of the room as a puff of icing sugar billowed up from a glass bowl and settled on them like microscopic snow. ‘Not that way…’ Louise was saying. ‘Gently!’
