Weddings Collection. Кэрол Мортимер

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      ‘Nobody’s perfect.’ He reached up to soap his hair, his arm brushing against her, doing nothing for her determination to keep this platonic.

      ‘Excuse me,’ she said, attempting to extricate herself without touching any more of him than was absolutely necessary. ‘These aren’t exactly made for two.’

      His arm was around her waist in a heartbeat. ‘That beetle is lying in wait for you.’

      ‘Please, Mike…’

      His eyes darkened. ‘You should get out of those wet things, you know. You’ll catch cold.’

      She swallowed, but found it impossible to look away, pull free, although his arm was loose about her waist, his hold anything but imprisoning. ‘This relationship is over.’ She made her mouth say the words, but she knew that her body, responding mindlessly to his touch, was giving him an entirely different message.

      ‘Is it?’ he asked softly. Then, not waiting for an answer, his mouth came down on hers, tender, undemanding, still offering her the choice to say no. Irresistible. For a moment she didn’t resist. Just for a moment, with the warm water pouring over her, soaking into her T-shirt, into her underwear, she let herself drown in the honey of his mouth, let herself be drawn into the sweet deception that this was a relationship still going somewhere. Then she caught his wet shoulders with her hands and pushed herself away from him. He made no attempt to stop her, there was nowhere for her to go. He just said, ‘Over?’

      ‘It has to be. I want a career. I don’t know what you want.’

      ‘You,’ he said.

      She didn’t doubt it. She knew that look. She swallowed nervously. ‘So how come we were having pasta on the motorway when we should have been knee-deep in smoked salmon and champagne?’ She banged her elbow on the taps and seized the chance to say something very rude to cover the hurt she was feeling.

      ‘You’re right. These shower stalls were definitely built with single occupancy in mind,’ Mike said as he ran his fingers gently along her arm, checking for damage.

      ‘It’s basic,’ Willow agreed. ‘But at least it hasn’t got those disgusting gold taps.’ And for a moment they shared a vision of the huge shower stall in the house they should have been moving into.

      ‘That’s a bonus,’ he agreed after a moment. Then, glancing at her, he said, ‘I thought you liked them. You waxed positively lyrical when Dad gave us the grand tour of the house.’

      ‘He’d just given it to us as a wedding present. What did you expect me to say?’

      He stilled. ‘You really didn’t like the taps?’

      She shrugged. ‘They were rather…ornate, for my taste. You?’

      ‘I prefer things to be simple and functional,’ he agreed.

      ‘Then, this should suit you fine. But if you’ve finished, I’d be grateful if you’d get out and let me take a shower—alone—in peace.’

      By the time she’d finished, he’d dried himself with his T-shirt and was respectably clad in trousers. She mopped herself dry as best she could and then felt positively naked in a pair of knickers and a damp T-shirt that clung to her breasts. She shivered. ‘It’s cold now, isn’t it?’

      ‘Not from where I’m standing.’

      They parted at her bedroom door. ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ Willow said awkwardly, as he turned to go. It seemed entirely wrong to sleep in separate rooms, to be apart. It would have been so comforting to have his arms around her tonight, some reassurance that she hadn’t stepped off the edge of the world without a parachute.

      ‘Not before nine-thirty on a Sunday,’ he warned. ‘And I take three spoonfuls of sugar in my tea.’ He almost smiled as he bent and lightly brushed her cheek with his lips. ‘But you already know that.’

      She shut the door in his face. But only to stop herself from hooking her fingers into his waistband and dragging him inside with her.

      Willow had always assumed that the country was quiet. There was no traffic hum to disturb her, it was true, but the house was full of noises as the air cooled and the old timbers creaked and settled. Above her in the attic space, small creatures shifted and rustled. Mice. Or bats.

      But it wasn’t the thought of bats, zipping in under the eaves with the smug, sitting-tenant assurance of a protected species, that was keeping her awake.

      Her body might ache from her efforts with a paintbrush, but her mind simply refused to shut down, instead constantly rerunning in slow motion the low points of her day.

      What a mess.

      She reached for her mobile, switched it on. The message-waiting icon still flashed urgently. Her mother, as she’d anticipated, every hour on the hour, demanding that she ring. Her father, just asking that she let them know she was safe. She should have done that hours ago. Crysse, almost incoherent in her inability to comprehend what she’d done.

      Willow hadn’t thought it possible to feel any worse. Which showed how much she knew. She tried to return Crysse’s call, but the phone just rang and rang. Even the answering machine refused to listen to her excuses.

      Her father, though, answered on the first ring, as if he’d been sitting by the phone, waiting to snatch it off the hook. He didn’t ask where she was, only how she was coping.

      ‘I’m fine, Dad. Really. I’m at Marlowe Court, helping put the finishing touches to the holiday cottages I was telling you about. I just need to be alone for a while.’ And to do something for somebody else after weeks of what, in retrospect, appeared to have been mindless selfishness.

      ‘Is there anything you need? Anything I can bring you?’

      A dozen things sprang immediately into her mind, but she’d manage without them. Not even her father would understand about Mike being here. She didn’t understand it herself. Especially the fact that she was glad he was curled up in his sleeping bag in the room at the other end of the corridor. Near enough if she called out… ‘No. I’ll manage. And I’d rather you didn’t tell Mum—’

      ‘I won’t.’ Then he said, ‘Willow, about Mike—’

      ‘Dad—’

      ‘Well, don’t worry about him, okay? He took it like a man.’

      ‘But Dad—’

      ‘Your mother’s coming. Unless you’re ready for a lecture, I suggest you hang up now.’

      She bit her lip as tears welled up beneath her lids. The sweet man wasn’t going to tell her that Mike had run out on her. Despite the dreadful day that she had put him through, her father still wanted to save her feelings. But it didn’t make her feel better. She felt infinitely worse. Only one person could do anything to help but he was at the far end of the corridor. She looked around, hoping for a lurking spider to give her an excuse to go running down there and put her sleeping bag next to his.

      That was the trouble with spiders. There was never one about when you needed one.

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