he said when he put the phone down.
It felt very odd to be domesticated, Roland thought as he laid two places at the kitchen table. For nearly two years he’d eaten most of his evening meals alone, except if he’d been on business or when Hugh, Tarquin or his sister Philly had insisted on him joining them. Being here alone with Grace was strange. But he just about managed to make small talk with her until the food arrived.
His hand brushed against hers a couple of times when they heaped their plates from the takeaway cartons, and that weird prickle of awareness he’d felt at the wedding made itself known again.
Did she feel it, too? he wondered. Because she wasn’t meeting his eyes, and had bowed her head slightly so her hair covered her face. Did he fluster her, the way she flustered him?
And, if so, what were they going to do about it?
Not that he was really in a position to do anything about it. He’d told Hugh and Tarquin that he was ready to date again, but he knew he wasn’t. How could he trust himself not to let a new partner down, given the way he’d let his wife down? Until he could start to forgive himself, he couldn’t move on.
‘Don’t feel you have to entertain me,’ she said when they’d finished eating and had sorted out the washing up. ‘I’ve already taken up more than enough of your time this evening, and I don’t want to be a demanding house guest. If you don’t mind, I’m going to sort out Bella’s shoeboxes for her so all her papers are in some sort of order.’
So Grace was the sort who liked organisation and structure. That made it even stranger that she’d call off her wedding only three weeks before the big day. There was a lot more to that story than met the eye, Roland was sure; but he didn’t want to intrude on her privacy by asking.
‘I’ll be in my office next door if you need me. Feel free to make yourself a drink whenever you like. There are tea, coffee and hot chocolate capsules in the cupboard above the coffee machine.’ He gestured to the machine sitting on the work surface.
‘Thanks.’ For the first time, she gave him a teasing smile. ‘Now I’ve seen your house, I’m not surprised you have a machine like that.’
‘Are you accusing me of being a gadget fiend?’ he asked.
‘Are you one?’ she fenced back.
He grinned. ‘Just a tiny bit—what about you?’ The question was out before he could stop it, and he was shocked at himself. Was he actually flirting with her? He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d flirted with anyone.
‘I use an old-fashioned cafetière and a teapot,’ she said. ‘Though I might admit to having a milk-frother, because I like cappuccinos.’
Tension suddenly crackled between them. And Roland was even more shocked to find himself wondering what would happen if he closed the gap between them and brushed his mouth very lightly over Grace’s.
What on earth was he doing? Apart from the fact that his head was still in an emotional mess, Grace was the last person he should think about kissing. He’d just rescued her from a burst pipe situation. She was as vulnerable as Lyn had been. He needed to back off. Now. ‘See you later,’ he said, affecting a cool he most definitely didn’t feel, and sauntered into his office.
Though even at the safety of his desk he found it hard to concentrate on his work. Instead of opening the file for his current project, he found himself thinking of a quiet, dark-haired woman with the most amazing cornflower-blue eyes—and he was cross with himself because he didn’t want to think about her in that way. Right now he couldn’t offer a relationship to anyone. Who knew when he’d be ready to date again—if ever.
* * *
Grace sorted through the contents of Bella’s shoeboxes at Roland’s kitchen table, putting everything in neat piles so she could file them away properly in a binder. She tried to focus on what she was doing, but the mundane task wasn’t occupying anywhere near enough of her head for her liking. It left way too much space for her to think about the man who’d unexpectedly come to her rescue.
And now she was seeing Roland Devereux in a whole new light. He’d been cold and taciturn when she’d first met him. She would never have believed that he was a man with vision. A man who could create such a stunning modern design, which somehow didn’t feel out of place in its very traditional setting; he’d merged the old and the new perfectly to get the best of both worlds.
She couldn’t resist taking a swift break and looking him up on the Internet. And she liked what she saw on his company website, especially the way they paid attention to detail. Although the houses they built were prefabricated, the designs didn’t feel as if they were identikit; from the gallery of pictures of the finished houses, Grace could see that Roland’s company had added touches to each one to make it personal to the families who’d wanted to build them. And not only was he great at design, he’d worked with conservation officers on several projects. One in particular involved an eco extension that had enhanced the old building it was part of, rather than marring it, and he’d won an award for it.
There was much more to Roland Devereux than met the eye.
And she had to push away the memory of that moment when he’d flirted with her in the kitchen. Right now, her life was too chaotic for her to consider adding any kind of relationship to the mix. And, although Roland seemed to live alone, for all she knew he could already be committed elsewhere.
So she’d just put this evening down to the kindness of a stranger, and consider herself lucky that her brother-in-law had such a good friend.
* * *
Roland had already left for the day when Grace got up the next morning, even though she’d planned to be at her desk by eight. He’d left her his spare door key along with a note on the table asking her to set the house alarm, giving her the code. He’d added, Call me if any problems.
She texted him to say that she’d set the alarm and thanked him for the loan of his key, then headed for the office. At work, she explained the situation to her boss, who was kind enough to let her reorganise her work schedule so she could meet the loss assessor at the flat.
But the news from the loss assessor wasn’t good. It would take a couple of weeks to dry out the flat, even with dehumidifiers, and there was a chance they might need to take all the plaster off the walls to stop mould developing, and then re-plaster the walls. Which in turn would take time to dry. And the landlord would probably have to look into replacing the plumbing completely in the very near future. And that meant even more disruption.
How could a burst pipe cause so much chaos?
And she could hardly invite herself to stay with Roland for an unforeseeable amount of time. Her parents lived too far out of London for her to be able to commute from their place, and she knew her friends didn’t have the room to put her up, so she’d just have to find a room in a budget hotel. Hopefully Roland wouldn’t mind her leaving her stuff in his garage for another day or so until she could organise storage.
She called in to a specialist wine shop to buy a thank-you gift for him on her way back to the office, then worked through her lunch hour and left late that evening to make up the time she’d had to take out to meet the assessor. When she returned to the house in Docklands, Roland was in the kitchen, making himself a coffee.
‘Hi. Coffee?’ he asked, gesturing to the machine.
‘Thanks, but I’m fine. Oh, and I got this for you.’
She handed him the bottle bag, and he blinked in surprise. ‘What’s this?’
‘To say thank you,’ she said. ‘I have no idea if you prefer red or white wine, so I played it safe and bought white.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ he said.
But she noticed that he hadn’t even opened the bag to look at the wine. ‘Sorry. Obviously I should’ve gone for red.’
‘Actually, I don’t