He wouldn’t let her go with him to the car, saying that it was too cold outside. He brushed his lips fleetingly against her forehead before firmly stepping back from her.
‘Nine o’clock tomorrow?’ he suggested.
Jessica nodded, and then offered almost shyly, ‘If you want to make it a bit earlier, we could have breakfast together.’
‘I’d like that, Jess.’ He seemed about to say something else, but then stopped and opened the door.
The house felt empty without him, and yet, after all, she had only known him a couple of days.
Tiredly she went upstairs, wishing she had had the courage to ask him to stay, and yet admitting ruefully later, when she studied herself in the full-length mirror in her bathroom, that her bruised arm and shoulder, all swollen and now vividly coloured, purple and blue, were hardly appealing.
* * *
Morning brought an end to the brief interlude of blue skies and bright autumn sunshine. The wind had picked up during the night, blowing in pewter rainclouds and turning the whole landscape a dull, leaden grey.
Lethargically Jessica surveyed the contents of her cupboard and wondered what on earth she was going to give Daniel for breakfast. A trip to the local market town to stock up at the supermarket there was plainly called for, but she couldn’t summon any enthusiasm for such an undertaking. She hated supermarket shopping at the best of times, and could never visit one without wondering how on earth mothers with under-school-age children managed. The old-fashioned corner-type shops might not have sold the wide range of goods supplied by supermarkets, but they had a friendliness, a warmth that was lacking from these huge soulless buildings. The worst time for shopping in them, as far as she was concerned, was early in the evenings or at weekends, when all the other shoppers seemed to be in family groups and she felt as though she was the only person there who was on her own.
She wondered curiously how Daniel lived, where he did his shopping. As a successful businessman no doubt he ate out a lot. Daniel…Was every path her thoughts took these days destined to lead her back to him? Was she already so dangerously involved with him that she couldn’t, didn’t want to focus on anything or anyone else?
As she closed the fridge door she glanced upwards towards the window, sighing as she saw the rain spattering against the glass, and then she remembered that tucked away in one of her top cupboards was an unopened packet of porridge bought on impulse one bitterly cold spring day and left unopened all summer.
She wasn’t tall enough to reach the top cupboards in the kitchen without standing on a stool, but she had forgotten the weakness in her arm, and as she stood on the stool and lifted her arm to open the cupboard her bruised muscles protested, and the pain in them made her cry out in surprise and almost lose her balance.
‘Jessica! What the devil…?’
The sight of Daniel standing in her kitchen, glowering at her while he set down the paper bags he was carrying and came quickly towards her, made her tremble so much that the stool wobbled even more. The floor was uneven and the stool not the safest thing to stand on, she knew, but her situation was surely hardly perilous enough to warrant either the grim look Daniel was giving her or the stifled curse he muttered under his breath as he crossed the kitchen and unceremoniously lifted her off the stool.
Once her feet were touching the floor, though, he didn’t let her go.
She could feel the heavy thud of his heart through her thin sweater.
The heat from his body lapped her in a warmth which was rapidly making her own flesh burn. It was hard to keep her voice calm and steady as she asked, ‘What did you do that for? I was perfectly safe.’
‘Safe? Your front door was unlocked and open when I heard you cry out.’
The grimness was beginning to leave his mouth, and guiltily Jessica remembered that she hadn’t checked that the door was closed and locked after she took the milk in.
‘I forgot about my arm,’ she told him breathlessly. ‘That was why I cried out.’
‘Idiot!’ Daniel told her roughly. ‘Don’t you know that the majority of patients in Britain’s out-patients’ hospital departments go there through accidents caused in the home? What was it you wanted, anyway? I’ll get it for you.’
She told him, and then explained about her near-empty fridge and her concern over what she was going to give him to eat.
‘I’ve brought our breakfast with me,’ he told her wryly, watching her nose twitch appreciatively as she focused on the carrier bags he had put down on the table. The unmistakable smell of freshly baked bread reached her, making her mouth water.
‘You’ve been into Long Eaton,’ she accused him. ‘You must have been. That’s the only place around here where they have a bakery.’
‘I was awake early,’ he told her. ‘Mrs G had mentioned the bakery, and so I thought I’d drive over and see what they had to offer.’
‘They make the most wonderful croissants,’ Jessica began with regret. ‘They use French flour and a special recipe…’ Her voice trailed away, her eyes rounding with pleasure as Daniel delved into one of the carrier bags and told her,
‘I bought some, and some of Mrs Neville’s cousin Ann’s very special blackcurrant conserve,’ he added virtuously.
Jessica started to laugh, happiness rising inside her like effervescent bubbles, intoxicating her. She wanted to fling her arms around him and tell him how wonderful he was, but because by nature she was cautious and unused to expressing her feelings, she said mock severely instead, ‘That conserve is wickedly expensive, and loaded down with calories.’
‘Mrs Neville told me it’s your favourite.’
It was the way he was looking at her, and not the words, that silenced her—the knowledge that he cared.
She reached out to touch him, her hand trembling a little as her fingertips found the hard line of his jaw.
‘It is,’ she said huskily.
And then she was in his arms and he was holding her, touching her, kissing her as she had ached for him to do every time she woke up during the night and discovered that he wasn’t there.
‘Much more of this and I’m going to start forgetting that I promised not to rush you,’ Daniel whispered thickly against her ear, stroking the soft skin of her throat with fingers that trembled betrayingly. ‘And I still haven’t…’
She ached to tell him that she had changed her mind, that there was nothing she wanted more than to commit herself to him completely, but instead said softly, ‘Haven’t what?’
‘Jess, about your parents…’
‘No, please, I don’t want to talk about them. I know you mean well, Daniel, but it’s just that I can’t trust them. We’ll be late for the builder,’ she reminded him jerkily.
She saw him look at her, an odd expression in his eyes, composed of wryness and something that was almost pain.
‘Posting No Trespassing signs, Jess?’ he said drily.
The builder arrived at Daniel’s house just as they were getting out of Daniel’s car. He showed no surprise at seeing Jessica with Daniel, and toget
her the three of them set off on a tour of inspection.
It took them almost three hours, with Alan Pierce making copious notes.
He listened while Daniel explained exactly what he wanted to achieve, firmly agreeing with him when Daniel said that he wanted to use salvaged materials of the right period as much as possible, resorting to new only when there was no alternative available.
The builder, as Jessica already knew, had been apprenticed as a teenager to a small family firm of craftsmen working in and around Bath, so that unlike many modern builders he was fully conversant with many of the traditional forms of building, but, listening to him discussing the work with Daniel, what surprised her was Daniel’s own expertise.
When she commented on it later when the builder had gone, he told her ruefully, ‘It’s only information culled second-hand from books and magazine articles, I’m afraid. Unfortunately I have no practical expertise. I’ve always been interested in architecture and old buildings. In fact, as a teenager I had dreams of qualifying as an architect.’
Jessica looked at him in surprise.
‘Did you? What made you turn to the City instead?’
He gave a brief shrug. It was cold outside in the overgrown gardens, but he was standing so that he sheltered her from the worst of the wind. There was something intensely pleasurable about standing here with him, Jessica thought as she looked up into his face, waiting for his reply.
This morning he was dressed casually in a pair of faded jeans, a woollen shirt and a rather battered and very soft leather blouson jacket, and, watching him as he had enthusiastically and knowledgeably inspected rotting pieces of wood, crumbling stonework and plaster, as comfortably at home among the dirt and mess of the old house as the builder, she hadn’t been able to help contrasting him with the other men she had occasionally dated—men introduced to her via her parents, men who dressed in expensive suits and who would never in this world have dreamed of crouching down on rotting floorboards to admire the workmanship in a piece of wainscoting.