do. Because all of those outlets were denied him right now the sensation that the walls of his surroundings were pressing in on him added to the already considerable stress he was under. He longed to get out—to fill his lungs with some fresh air and breathe freely again.
Kit was standing by the worktop waiting for the kettle to boil when he entered. Her beautiful red hair had been curtailed into two neat plaits, and dressed in jeans and a tunic-style white shirt—wearing no make-up as far as he could tell—she looked just like a schoolgirl. Despite his irritability, Hal’s heart missed a beat. He might be mad at her for running out on him last night, but it didn’t make him want her any less. The blood in his veins was already simmering at the mere sight of her, and the thought that he might never again have her in his bed soured his already dark mood even more.
‘Morning,’ he muttered, deliberately averting his gaze and wheeling himself across to the table.
‘I was just about to bring you in some coffee and toast and help you to get dressed.’ She stopped speaking and sighed, and Hal couldn’t resist lifting his head to check out her expression. ‘But I see you’ve managed it without me,’ she finished.
‘I’m not entirely helpless,’ he returned gruffly. To his astonishment, her lips curved in an amused smile—which wasn’t the reaction he’d expected. ‘What’s so funny?’ he demanded, privately furious that she might be mocking him.
The smile vanished. ‘You’ve put your sweater on back to front.’
Glancing downwards, Hal saw that she was right. The grey cashmere V-neck was indeed back to front. Hardly welcoming the fact being pointed out to him, he muttered a curse and then impatiently pulled it up over his head. Bare-chested, it didn’t help to maintain his dignity when he got into a tussle with one of the sleeves in an attempt to turn the sweater the right way round so he that could put it back on again.
Kit instantly reacted. ‘Let me help you.’
Presenting herself in front of him, she carefully relieved Hal of the cashmere, sorted it out so he could put it back on, and gently pulled the jumper down over his head. By the time she’d completed the task, tugging it gently but firmly down to his hard lean waist as though he were a child, his heart was thudding fit to burst. It didn’t help matters that he found it almost unbearable to be so close to her and not be able to spontaneously reach out, pull her down onto his lap and embrace her.
‘For God’s sake, stop fussing, woman! How old do you think I am? Three? If you want something useful to do you can go and see to my coffee and toast.’
‘I intend to do just that,’ she answered primly, her hands crossed over her chest. ‘But a simple thank you for helping you out wouldn’t go amiss. My mother may not have been an educated woman, or have been able to afford for me to stay on at school, but the one thing she absolutely insisted on when she raised me was my having good manners. I think manners can tell you a lot about a person.’
The revealing comment stopped Hal from coming back at her with a cutting or flippant rejoinder. He frowned. ‘Does it bother you that you had to leave school early and didn’t get a better education?’
At first she turned away from him. But she turned back again almost immediately, her hands on her hips and her cheeks flushed. ‘It depends what you mean by “a better education”. I may not have been to college or university, or studied for a profession, but I’m not stupid. I’ve learned a lot on my way to becoming a fully-fledged adult—including the wisdom to know what’s best for me and the importance of making good decisions. I’ve learned that you suffer if you don’t. There are a lot of important facts about life that even a privileged or expensive education can’t buy, you know.’
‘Are you perhaps suggesting that my own education was privileged and expensive?’
The rosy tint on Kit’s alabaster cheeks grew even pinker. ‘It’s pretty well documented that it was. Are you saying that’s not true?’
‘It’s true. I did indeed have a privileged and expensive education. I also grew up with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth. But does that make me a bad person? A person you wouldn’t think it worthwhile getting to know? I may have had most of the material advantages that a lot of people aspire to having, but that doesn’t protect a person from experiencing the challenges we all have to face as humans and nor should it.’
To his surprise Hal’s heart was racing as he came to the end of his little speech, and he realised just how much resentment and hurt he’d harboured over the years at being perceived as ‘having it all’—meaning he couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to go without anything and therefore his opinion shouldn’t count. That just wasn’t true. He did know what it was like to go without. The most fundamental thing a human being needed in life was to know that he was loved, Hal believed. But aside from the love of his sister Sam that was the commodity that he had been bereft of most of all.
‘You said—you said that you’d tell me more about your mother leaving. Was that one of the challenges you meant?’
It was extraordinary how Kit seemed to have the unerring ability to get straight to the heart of something, he thought. Rubbing his hand round his jaw, Hal shook his head. ‘I don’t want to talk about that. Maybe if you’d consented to spending the night with me I might have told you. But all I want right now is my breakfast, and after that I just want to get out of here for a while.’
‘I’m sorry that you no longer want to tell me about your past...about your mother I mean. But I understand why you don’t. You think that I let you down by not agreeing to stay with you last night. Maybe you even think it was easy for me to make the decision. I assure you it wasn’t. I was only trying to do what was best for both of us. Anyway, you said you wanted to get out. Any idea where you want to go?’
Not missing the fact that there was a telling break in her voice—as if she was striving to put on a brave face and show she didn’t care that he’d refused to tell her about his mother’s desertion—Hal lifted his shoulders in a shrug even as his heart ached to tell her everything.
‘I don’t care. Anywhere that’s not here would be a good start. If I was mobile I’d go for a run, or even a walk. I can’t do that so I’ll leave it up to you to come up with an idea of what to do. I just hate being cooped up like this.’
Flipping one of her burnished copper plaits over her shoulder, Kit surprised him with a smile. The sight was like a welcome glimpse of the sun coming out on a day that was cloudy and grey, and it didn’t fail to warm Hal’s heart.
‘Well, there’s no need to stay here feeling like you’re a prisoner in your own home,’ she announced. ‘We should get out and get some fresh air. Leave it to me. I’ll mull over where we can go while I get you your breakfast.’
* * *
Kit’s resolution to distance herself emotionally and physically from Hal was severely tested that morning. She’d been able to tell the instant he’d come into the kitchen that he hadn’t had much sleep. And it wasn’t just because he hadn’t had a shave. His lean, carved features looked almost haggard, and she couldn’t help feeling guilty that her decision not to spend the rest of the night with him was the cause. She hadn’t had a lot of sleep herself for the same reason.
And when he’d struggled to put his sweater back on, after inadvertently donning it back to front, the sight of his broad tanned shoulders and heavenly chest had made her insides flip at the memory of how incredible it had felt to make love with him. Without a doubt she knew that the act of passion they’d shared had been not just irresistible but necessary too.
Not that Kit had needed reminding. Her body still ached and tingled from Hal’s ardent attentions and she longed to be able to share with him how he’d made her feel. She’d never felt particularly attractive or sensual, but he had helped her feel both of those things last night. Now she was torn between following her heart and her finely honed instinct for self-preservation, and therein lay the dilemma.
Not wanting to dwell on her own inner turmoil above