‘All you’ll smell if you stand there is bacon,’ she said, twitching away.
‘You’re using one of those herbal shampoos,’ he said.
‘Me and the rest of the world.’
‘No…’ This wasn’t something mass-produced. It came from some little specialist shop; it was a national chain now, but it had started in Maybridge and Phoebe had been a fan. ‘Rosemary?’
She said something that sounded like, ‘Humph.’
As she made a move to escape him, he put his hands on her shoulders and kept her where she was while he lowered his head to lay his cheek against the smooth, fair skin of her neck.
She twitched at the touch of his beard, trembled beneath his hands just as she had when, eighteen years old, she’d come to him. When they’d made love….
‘Lemon and myrtle,’ she said abruptly. ‘From Amaryllis Jones in the craft centre.’
That was it.
The scent on his sheets. The thought acted like an aphrodisiac and he backed off before he embarrassed them both.
‘I had the lemon,’ he said. ‘I’d never have got the myrtle. What is that?’
‘A bush. Small white flowers, long stamens, lovely scent. There’s one in the garden,’ she said, picking up a fish slice and holding it up like an offensive weapon. ‘If you’d rather shower first, I can put this on hold.’
A cold shower might be a good idea. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to leave her.
He’d dreamed about Grace. Hot, sexy dreams that left him aching with need, but he’d never responded to her physical presence with such an instant hard-on before. Not since the night when, trembling in his arms, she’d kissed him and he’d lost his mind.
But then, since that first night, she’d held him off with all the force of a quarterback scenting a touchdown.
‘I’ll eat first,’ he said, pulling out a chair, sitting down, watching her as she fussed with the breakfast, avoiding eye contact, flustered in a way he’d never seen her before. But then she’d always had someone on hand to run interference for her when he’d been home. All those good, steady men. Never the same one twice… ‘So,’ he said, ‘what game can the two of us play with Posie?’
The fish slice slipped from her fingers and clattered on the quarry tiles.
‘I thought I might walk into town,’ she said, picking it up, rinsing it under the tap, drying it. ‘Posie and I could do with some fresh air. You could take my van if you like.’ Then, when he didn’t say anything—since not saying anything was prompting her mouth to run away with her—she pulled a face. ‘Maybe not. It doesn’t quite fit the tycoon image, does it? Phoebe’s car is in the garage.’ He saw her eyes dim as she thought about her sister. Tried to imagine what this last week had been like for her. ‘Eggs?’ she asked. ‘One, two?’
‘Just one, thanks. I’ll walk in with you and Posie, Grace. I seem to have spent the last three days sitting in a plane and I need to stretch my legs.’
Grace, who he’d seen handle the tiniest beads with the precision of a surgeon, missed the edge of the pan and, as the egg shattered against the hotplate, sizzling and burning, she leapt back with a tiny scream.
‘Did you burn yourself?’
He was with her before she could answer, taking her hand, turning it over to see what damage she’d done. Leading her to the sink to run it under the cold tap.
She shook her head, not looking at him but back at the stove. ‘It’s nothing, just a splash. I need to clean up…’
‘I’ll do it,’ he said, leaving her with the utmost reluctance, but knowing that, if he didn’t, she’d do it herself. He removed the pan with the bacon from the hotplate and picking up the slice that was having a very hard day, used it to scrape burnt egg off the cooker.
She turned off the tap.
‘Grace…’
‘It’s fine. Nothing. There’s so much to do.’ She pushed long slender fingers, which could conjure up an original piece of jewellery out of nothing, through her short hair. ‘I need to go and make up a bed for your mother. Did you say she’s coming this morning? Someone will have to be here to let her in. Maybe I’d better stay. She’ll want to see Posie, too. I asked one of my friends to take care of her on the day of the funeral. I thought she’d stay on for a while…’
He saw her stop, think about that and then, as she remembered what he’d said about her being at the back of the queue when it came to Posie’s future, turn to him for reassurance.
Thinking that if she hadn’t stayed, couldn’t spare the time to wait and see her baby granddaughter, there was no possibility that she’d be interested in custody.
He would not give her that. Could not. Not until he knew whether Michael had made a new will. If he had, then he would surely have named Grace as her guardian. If not, it would be open season…
‘I have no idea what my mother will do about Posie, Grace. But you can be certain that, whatever it is, it will be for her own benefit rather than as a result of grandmotherly instincts belatedly kicking in.’
He wanted her to understand that she was going to have to fight to hold on to her baby. His parents, her mother, maybe even him.
She stared at him. ‘You really do hate her, don’t you? Your mother.’
‘No,’ he said, grabbing the kitchen roll to wipe the surface of the Aga. ‘I don’t hate her.’
For a long time he’d thought he did but he’d learned, over the years, that relationships were never that simple. He’d come to understand that people were driven by desires, forces beyond their control.
Maybe that was the dominant trait that both he and Michael had inherited—the selfish gene that allowed them to fix on a goal without thought for the havoc created in the wake of achievement.
His father had left them both for a younger woman and, in her misery, his mother had jettisoned him to chase her own second chance of happiness.
Much in the same way that, justifying himself that it was in her best interests, he’d walked away from Grace. Had pursued and married the girl every other man he knew had wanted to bed, without a thought what marriage to him would be like. Alone for weeks on end. Not anger, no sense of betrayal, only relief when she’d found someone to console her…
Then, realising that Grace was still watching him, trying to read his expression, he said, ‘If I could have hated her, it wouldn’t have hurt so much when she left.’ Facing a truth he’d fought since she’d left him with Michael. Sharing it with Grace because she was the one person he knew would understand.
‘I tried to hate my mother, too,’ she said. ‘Hate is so much easier. But the bad stuff is mixed up with all kinds of good memories.’
‘What good memories?’ he asked. She had never talked about her life with her crazy hippie mother, her life on the road, and he’d never pushed her, even in teasing, instinctively knowing that it was beyond painful. ‘What good memories?’ he repeated.
Grace thought about it as Josh returned the bacon to the hotplate, cracked an egg into the pan and dropped a couple of slices of bread in the toaster.
‘Stringing beads is my first stand-out memory,’ she said. ‘My mother was making jewellery to sell at a craft fair and, to keep me from bothering her, she gave me a thin piece of leather and a box of big bright beads so that I could make my own necklace.’
She remembered sitting at a table in the old minibus they were living in, sorting through the box of painted wooden beads, totally absorbed by the smooth feel of them, the different sizes, vivid colours. Laying them out in rows until she found a combination