Although really anything like that should send him running for the hills. Owen didn’t get involved with people who needed fixing, because heaven knew he couldn’t help them. He reached for the papers that remained on the bar and tossed them next to the till. He’d thought enough about Emily David for one day.
*
As the door closed behind her, Emily released a pent-up breath of agitation. That had not gone as she’d hoped. She’d been aiming for an orderly, efficient business meeting—a relaying of information, an enthusiastic agreement. Hadn’t Alice and Henry assured her that people in this blasted village were friendly?
That man—Owen Jones, according to Henry’s helpful list—hadn’t been friendly. He hadn’t been unfriendly, either. He’d been…well, Emily didn’t know what he’d been. Aggravating. Disconcerting. Impossible.
On the surface he’d seemed friendly enough, giving wide smiles and unsettlingly loud laughs, as if everything, her included, amused him. And yet underneath, Emily had sensed something else, something dark and resentful, and it had unnerved her.
Although this whole process unnerved her—trawling along the high street, introducing herself, being friendly. She would have so much rather just sent an email. A phone call, even. But Henry had been insistent. “Face-to-face contact, Emily!” he’d reminded her again this morning. “That’s what’s needed here.”
He’d given her a kindly smile, as if he knew exactly how difficult this would be for her, and that was at least in part why he was asking. Having Henry Trent interested and involved in her life was not something Emily wanted or needed. And yet here she was.
She’d chosen to walk into The Drowned Sailor first because it was at the end of the lane from Willoughby Manor as she’d walked into the village. She’d surveyed the village green with its play area and pagoda, and the high street meandering steeply up a hill with an assortment of businesses on either side, and she’d decided to start here. Now she wished she hadn’t.
Surely she could have found someone a bit friendlier, some little old lady running a craft shop who would be delighted to take part, or even better, someone who was busy and efficient and simply took the paperwork with a nod and a smile?
Instead she’d got Owen Jones with his laughing looks and strange undercurrent of animosity, and it had been a forceful and rather unpleasant reminder that she didn’t do this sort of thing, and she certainly wasn’t good at it.
When he’d called her Miss Prim she’d thought, for an instant, that he’d simply got her name wrong. He must think her a complete idiot, among other things. Not that she cared, although the churning in her stomach said otherwise.
A chill wind blew down the street, making her shiver. Even though it was almost April, it didn’t feel like spring this morning. The fragile blue skies of a few days ago had turned to pewter, and the syrupy sunlight was nowhere to be seen. Violet storm clouds blanketed the horizons, and the clusters of daffodils lining the village green looked as if they were huddling together for warmth.
Emily hitched her bag higher on her shoulder and belted her coat before she started up the high street. She could do this. She had to. And surely no one would be as unsettling and difficult as the man she’d just met.
The last two days, working at Willoughby Manor, had actually been quite enjoyable. Emily had finished organising the office, so it was clean and spare and just how she’d liked it. With Henry’s approval, she’d ordered some office furniture—a desk and chair, a conference table and set of chairs. With the filing cabinets he’d already ordered, the room would be complete.
It had been fun to organise the office the way she wanted to, keeping everything clean and neat, and her daily eleven o’clock break with Alice, while still a bit awkward and uncomfortable at times, was also pleasant. Andromeda insisted on staying in Emily’s lap, and thanks to a container of hand sanitiser and a lint brush, she didn’t mind quite so much. In fact, she enjoyed it. Mostly, as long as she didn’t think about the germs.
Henry was out and about most days, meeting donors, and so Emily had the office to herself, which she also liked. She’d spent half a day filing—bliss—and then another afternoon organising Henry’s calendar with different-coloured fonts. Also bliss. Everything organised and tidy and in its place, just as she liked and needed it.
She’d also rung hoping to talk to her mum again, but there had been no answer. And although the anxiety about that could take over if she let it, like a mist creeping over her mind, Emily did her best to keep it at bay. There was nothing she could do about her mum. She knew that, she’d understood it for a long time, and yet it was so hard not to try, just as she’d been doing since she was seven. Better, she knew, to focus her energies on colour coding the foundation’s files.
Lunch both days had been a sandwich at her desk while gazing out at the beautiful gardens, enjoying the quiet that had alarmed her at the start, as well as the neatly pruned efficiency of the topiary garden—all perfect angles and trimmed edges. Now that was a garden concept she could get behind.
All in all, not a bad start, until she’d met Owen Jones. Now she felt completely off-kilter, and half of her—all right, more than half—wanted to scuttle back to Willoughby Close and panic clean—her usual way of dealing with anxiety—even as she acknowledged she needed to keep going. Better to get it all over with in one go, even if it made her grit her teeth.
The wind continued to blow as Emily made her way up the street, past several postcard-perfect cottages of golden Cotswold stone, the trim done in the grey green that seemed de rigueur in this part of the country. Interspersed with the cottages were the
