“So you don’t think he’s a snob?”
Emily hesitated. In her four years at Ellis Investments, Henry definitely had been a snob. He’d insisted on only the best of everything—whether it was his Montblanc fountain pen or the Veuve Clicquot she’d order for a celebratory meeting with a client. His suits were straight from Savile Row, and cost in the thousands. And then there was the Jag…
But he was a rich man, and he’d moved in exalted circles, and the guest list for some of the firm’s events would have made many a jaw drop. Did it make him a snob? Was he one still? Maybe.
Emily had never minded, because she liked nice things and anyway, her preferred place was on the outside looking in. But that didn’t mean it was for Owen.
“I think he’s changing,” she answered. “I think Alice is changing him.”
“The love of a good woman,” Owen quipped wryly. “And I know she’s had some hard times of her own—she was a former foster kid, herself, or so I heard.”
“Yes, she was.”
“Henry keeps it quiet, though, doesn’t he? The village crack was that he didn’t think her suitable at first.”
“I’m not sure…” Emily could see how he wouldn’t, but it seemed unkind to be talking like that about Alice now.
Owen shrugged. “She seems like a good sort to me.”
“She is,” Emily said firmly.
“What about you?” Owen asked. “Where did you grow up?”
Such a loaded question, although it didn’t have to be. “Reading,” Emily said, because it was what she always said and it was where she’d been born. She had lived there for six years, after all.
“Brothers? Sisters?” Owen raised his eyebrows, giving her a faint smile that seemed to say, a conversation takes two, you know. Emily reached for her wine.
“No, just me. What about you?” There, she could bat it back at him.
“A whole passel of sisters. Five, actually.”
“Goodness. And that was in…?”
“Cwmparc, in the Rhondda Valley, in Wales. Couldn’t you tell?” He grinned at her, his eyes twinkling, making her want to look away.
“I figured Wales,” she admitted. “The accent is a bit of a giveaway.”
“True enough.”
“How did you end up in the Cotswolds?”
“Well, I wanted to get out of Cwmparc as soon as I could. There’s not much there anymore, to be honest. The mines shut down for good in the eighties, when I was a kid. Put my dad out of work along with just about every other poor bloke in the place.” His face set in grim lines for a second, before it relaxed into an easy smile. “So I took the bus east and my ticket went as far as Cheltenham. From there I worked in pubs here and there until I had enough money to buy The Drowned Sailor. Bought it when it was a right dump and got it for a song.”
“And the rest of your family?” Emily asked, curious. Two parents, five sisters. She couldn’t imagine having so many people in her life.
Owen’s face set again and then once more he deliberately relaxed. “They’re still all back in Cwmparc, except my father.” He paused. “He died a few years ago now.”
*
He didn’t usually talk about his family—the bevy of sisters with their whiny kids and their tired faces, the reproach in their eyes that he’d got out, he’d made it, at least more than they had. He certainly didn’t talk about his father, or the fact that he’d died a drunk, beaten to death in a pub fight in Merthyr Tydfil, alienated from his family, only forty-seven years old. Owen had been seventeen.
And he never talked about his mother, or the fact that she blamed him for his father’s death, even though by that point he hadn’t seen his father for over a year. Owen stabbed a forkful of lasagne, willing the memories away. It was time to ask Emily some questions, and stop thinking about his own past.
“So, Reading,” he said. “Only child.” He gave her a slanted, speculative look. He could picture it already—the pink, frilly bedroom, the private school, the hockey sticks and horse riding and trips to Switzerland for skiing. She was definitely that sort of girl—part of the manor set he’d already said he despised. He could tell from her carefully styled face and hair, the designer jumper she was wearing that looked like cashmere, the expensive leather boots. Everything about her reeked of money and privilege. “What was that like?”
Emily looked startled, a little trapped by the innocuous question. “Oh, you know…” she said vaguely, and left it at that.
“Actually,” Owen answered mildly. “I don’t know.” He’d grown up in a two-up two-down colliery house on a steep little street overshadowed by a hulking mine shaft. He could remember when the toilet had been at the bottom of the garden, and they hadn’t had enough fifty-pence pieces for the gas meter. “Tell me about it,” he invited.
Emily stared at him for a moment, a distant look on her face. Was he boring her? Why did he care?
For some unfathomable reason, he continued to let this woman get under his skin. From the first moment she’d looked down her pert little nose at him, to that strangled “Don’t” in the courtyard, she’d affected him far too much. Made him want to know her, protect her, even. Both notions were laughable. She thought she was above him. Plenty of people had before, and it usually didn’t bother him. He didn’t let it. So why couldn’t he let it slide this time?
“What do you think it was like?” she asked after a moment, sounding cautiously curious.
“Nice enough, I suppose?” He suddenly felt petty and a little bit ashamed. What did it matter, if Emily David had had a nice
