She gave him ten minutes to get himself into bed, and then boiled water for the hot-water bottle she’d found in a drawer next to the sink. She made him another cup of tea, and then on impulse opened the fridge. As luck would have it, there were some lemons there. Good, when she came down she’d make him some proper lemonade, the kind her mother used to make and which he had always loved.
He was using the house’s main bedroom, which had obviously been furnished and designed for a couple. The curtains hadn’t been closed and, as she pulled them across the window, she noticed that the sky was clearing. Outside she heard the terrified screech of some small creature, followed by the triumphant hoot of an owl, and she shivered as she shut out the bright light of the silvered moon.
‘You always were too sensitive for your own good,’ Kyle said drowsily from the bed. ‘Hunter…hunted…there’s something of both in all of us, Heather, and you can’t shut it out for ever.’
‘I’ve brought you some more tea. Is there anything else you want? Aspirin…ought I to ring your doctor?’
Immediately he shook his head.
‘It looks worse than it is, and adding a massive dose of jet lag to it doesn’t help. I’ll be all right in the morning.’ He shivered again, and she moved instinctively towards the bed, to give him the hot-water bottle.
‘You’re going to make someone a wonderful mother,’ he taunted drowsily as he took it from her. ‘Why aren’t you married already, Heather? Or have you been waiting for some wealthy young bucolic type like David Hartley to come along and sweep you off your feet? Be careful, he’s no Prince Charming, and you’ll have to get past his mother.’
Immediately, her sympathy for him vanished, and she glared furiously at him as she put his tea down.
‘I’m not ready to get married yet, Kyle,’ she told him acidly. ‘I’ve still got far too many things I want to do. Besides, you’re the one who should crave the cosiness of family life,’ she gibed unkindly.
If he heard her he gave no sign of it, simply turning on his side and pulling the bedclothes up round his head.
Sighing faintly, Heather left. Why was it, whenever they seemed on the verge of actually making contact with one another, that something happened to drive them apart again? Did it just happen, she wondered soberly as she went downstairs to let Meg out for a final run, or was it manufactured? But if so, why, and by whom? Sometimes she knew that she was the one at fault, her defence system springing into action to protect her against the old remembered wounds Kyle had once inflicted, but sometimes he was the one at fault, and surely he had nothing to fear from her?
She opened the kitchen door, and Meg dashed out without waiting for her to pull her boots on.
It was freezing now, the cold turning the snow-shrouded trees into fantasy spectres straight out of a fairy-tale. While Meg investigated the magical white stuff that covered the ground, Heather watched a cautious squirrel. It froze the moment it saw them, tiny beady eyes holding Heather’s, as though willing her not to attack.
Meg came bustling through the snow-covered undergrowth, crackling and panting, and the tiny creature disappeared. Meg’s nose was covered in snow and she grinned happily up at Heather, her plumy tail waving.
‘Come on…time to go in.’
She had loved the house when she had it to herself, but now, with Kyle sleeping upstairs, she felt somehow as though it was even more of a home. Perhaps because of what Kyle had said to her, perhaps not, she didn’t know, but as she tidied up the kitchen and settled Meg and the cats for the night, she couldn’t help peopling the room with small faces and excited little voices: children who would love this house, who would be privileged to grow up here in its freedom.
Sighing faintly, she banished the mental images, uncomfortably aware that she had furnished them with Kyle’s dark hair and eyes.
She switched off the lights and went upstairs. Outside Kyle’s room, she paused. Her hand touched the doorhandle and then fell away. If he needed her he would call, and yet it had been hard to suppress her instinctive urge to go in and check that he was all right.
Because that was the way she had been brought up, she told herself drily. That was all, there was nothing more personal in her desire to check up on him; it had no bearing at all on that odd frisson of sensation that had rac
ed through her when she had accidently touched his skin.
She slept heavily and late, and was woken by the ring of her alarm. She sat up, switching it off, swinging her feet to the floor and looking sleepily for her robe.
She was just about to walk into her bathroom when she heard the telephone ringing downstairs.
Immediately, the thought of her father and the possibility of a relapse sent her flying downstairs, but when she eventually picked up the receiver it was only to discover that it was a wrong number.
The day was clear and crisp, with a blue winter sky and a pale yellow sun. Letting Meg out, Heather set off back upstairs to shower and dress.
She was just passing Kyle’s door when he called out to her. She opened it and went in.
He was still standing beside his bed, and she automatically averted her glance from the hair-roughened nudity of his torso.
She had surely seen him like this before at some time or another, clad only in a brief pair of briefs, because somehow part of her mind registered the sight of him as a familiar one. But in those days he could scarcely have been so…so male, she thought weakly, wishing that she had the savoir-faire to coolly shrug off her awareness of him.
‘I heard the phone, was it the hospital?’
‘No…just a wrong number. How are you feeling this morning?’
‘Weak as a cat.’ He grimaced and, as though to prove it, as he started to move, he seemed to lose his balance.