have a vacant cottage. It’s small, but it’s a pretty little place and quite enough space for one.” His bushy gray brows drew together. “I take it there is only one?”
Cass laughed. “Oh, yes, just me, I’m afraid. I have enough trouble trying to sort myself out.”
“So what do you say? I was about to put it in the hands of a rental agency, but if you need somewhere...”
“Well, I do, but what about your son? He and I didn’t get off to the best start. I don’t think he would appreciate me living nearby.”
“Jake?” snorted Bill. “It has nothing to do with him. The cottages are how I make my income, and I’ll rent them to whoever I like. Anyway...” His face creased in a smile. “It’s not as if it’s right on the doorstep of Sky View. More like just around the corner.”
Cass felt happiness bubbling up inside. She belonged somewhere at last. “Well, then, I would love to come and see it,” she said. “After work today, perhaps? I don’t have a shift tonight, and for once I’m not even on call.”
“Any time is okay by me,” Bill said. “Say around seven?”
“See you at seven,” she agreed. “Just tell me where to go.”
* * *
IT WAS A BRIGHT, sunlit evening, the kind where the whole world seems abuzz with joy. Cass felt some of that joy as she drove toward Sky View. She had a good job, a job she could really come to love, and now she might even have a new home. Not a shared flat, but her very own place, here in some of the most beautiful countryside she’d ever seen.
The wind blew in through her open window and she breathed in the country scents as she left the village, humming softly to the strains of a modern love song. Love! It was totally overrated as far as she was concerned. Her fellow students had been constantly falling in and out of love, one minute wandering around with their heads in a euphoric cloud and in the next, totally inconsolable.
Sometimes Cass worried that there was something wrong with her because she’d never really fallen for anyone. There had been boyfriends, of course, but they’d been kind of lukewarm relationships, more friendships than love affairs. Her mind wandered back to the day Jamie had told her it was over. She had been seeing him for almost six months, but when he finally plucked up the courage to tell her he had met someone else, all she’d felt was a sense of relief.
Her only real passion had been the same since she was twelve years old—the passion to become a vet that had arisen on the day Bud died in her arms. Everything else had taken second place since that day, as if she’d been driven by the desire to make amends for her lack of knowledge.... And now that she’d fulfilled her goal, now that she had the opportunity to stop and reflect, love and romance still didn’t figure in her scheme of things.
Her parents had lived to work, with little time to spare for their child. Cass felt she had inherited that drive from them, as if her ambition overrode everything else. She couldn’t picture herself having the time to give a husband and children the attention they needed. She’d once thought that when she was finally qualified as a vet, she’d be able to slow down and start a family. But now that she’d finished school and begun her career, she wanted to push herself further. Beyond honing her skills, she wanted to specialize in equestrian medicine and become highly respected for her expertise. Did that make her selfish? she wondered. Surely it would be worse to have a family and neglect them.
As she carefully negotiated the narrow lane that ran across the steep Lakeland fell side on a wonderful summer’s evening, those early years at college seemed so very long ago. All the nights spent in a tiny, basically furnished room, poring over books and files and forgetting to eat while her flatmates went out partying. They told her she was crazy, but she didn’t care. In fact, if it hadn’t been for her mother packing up a huge box of groceries for her on the rare occasions when she went home to visit, Cass reckoned she might just have wasted away.
Turning away from the past, Cass peered over the steering wheel, looking for the sign to Sky View. Bill Munro had told her to take a sharp right down a narrow grassy track once she’d gone through the gate. She nosed her car along the path, then rounded a corner to see a pretty little stone cottage. Her heart raced. Could this really be it?
Bill appeared just as she switched off the engine. He raised one hand in welcome while fumbling in his pocket with the other, withdrawing a set of keys.
“Hi,” she called, falling into step beside him, trying to look calm but struggling to control her excitement.
He flashed her a smile. “It’s very small, you know.”
“It’s so pretty,” she exclaimed as the front door swung open.
“And there is no central heating, just old-fashioned electric heaters,” he warned.
Cass locked her fingers together. “Is there a fire?”
“Better than that,” Bill declared. “There’s a wood-burning stove and a good stack of dry logs in the shed around the back.”
As a vision of herself basking in the warm glow of burning logs after a hard day at work slid into her mind’s eye, a smile spread across Cass’s face. “I’ll take it,” she said.
“But you haven’t seen everything yet,” Bill reminded her. “And you don’t even know how much I’m going to charge.”
Cass flushed, feeling stupid. It wasn’t like her to be so impulsive.
“Let’s have a proper look around, and then we can talk business,” Bill suggested. “Of course, you might find it a bit too isolated. It can be pretty bleak here in the winter.”
“Nowhere is too isolated for me,” Cass said, welcoming the idea. “And anyway...I might get a dog for company.”
The vague idea, now put into words, made her feel panicky. What was she talking about? Having her own dog had been a plan for the future—somewhere in her dreams. Did she really even want a dog? Was she ready for that kind of commitment?
Oblivious to her doubts, Bill nodded. “That’s a good idea. In fact, we have some pups for sale at the farm, you’ll have to come and see them.”
* * *
AS SOON AS the words left Bill’s lips, he realized it was a bad idea. Technically, they were Jake’s pups, and it was pretty obvious that his son had taken a real dislike to his prospective tenant—mainly because of Rosie, of course, but it was more than that. After Tara let him down so badly, he seemed to avoid all contact with women. Cass was nothing like Tara, although... Bill cast her a sidelong glance. She might not have had Jake’s ex-wife’s glamorous good looks, but the young vet certainly did have something. An innocent, untouched beauty.
Suddenly, Bill found himself questioning his decision to offer her the cottage at all. He and Jake had drifted apart since the accident.... He took a breath. He and his son needed to build bridges, and bringing Cass here might be knocking them down.
“You would probably be happier closer to the village, don’t you think?” he asked. “Closer to work and...”
His voice trailed off as he noted the disappointment in her dark eyes. “You’ve changed your mind, haven’t you?” she said sadly.
“No, of course not. It’s just...”
“You don’t need to worry,” she assured him. “I won’t come anywhere near the farm, and I’ll stay well away from your son, if that’s what this is about. He won’t even know I’m here.”
“Well, in that case...” Bill held out his hand. “It’s five hundred a month, payment in advance, and you pay the council tax and any fuel bills.”
Cass took his hand and shook it firmly for the second time that day. “It’s a deal. I’ll move my stuff in tomorrow, if that’s okay.”
“Whenever you like.” The older man smiled. Never mind what Jake thought,