The Last Woman He'd Ever Date. Liz Fielding

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      CHAPTER THREE

      CLAIRE Thackeray abandoned her bike, her shoe and, as her hair descended untidily about her shoulders, a scatter of hair pins.

      Hal knew that he would have to go after her, but it hadn’t taken her stunned expression, or her stiff back as she limped comically away from him on one shoe to warn him that laughing would be a mistake.

      It was as clear as day that nothing he did or said would be welcome right now, although whether her anger was directed at him or herself was probably as much a mystery to her as it was to him.

      The only thing he knew with certainty was that she would never again ride her bike along this path. Never toss an apple—the toll Archie charged for letting her pass unmolested on her bike—over the hedge.

      ‘Job done, then,’ he muttered as, furious with himself, furious with her, he stepped down into the ditch to recover the shoe she’d left embedded in the mud. He tossed it into the basket on the front of her bike, grabbed the fishing rod he’d confiscated from Gary Harker and followed her.

      It was the first time he’d lost control in years and he’d done it not just once, but twice. First when he’d kissed her, and then again as her unexpected meltdown had made him forget that his intention had been to punish her. Punish her for her insulting offer of a bribe. Her pitiful attempt at seducing what he knew out of him. Most of all, to punish her for being a Thackeray.

      He’d forgotten everything in the softness of her lips unexpectedly yielding beneath his, the silk of her tongue, the heat ripping through him as she’d clung to him in a way that belied all that buttoned-up restraint.

      Which of them came to their senses first he could not have said. He only knew that when he took a step back she was looking at him as if she’d run into a brick wall instead of a flesh-and-blood man.

      Any other woman who’d kissed him like that would have been looking at him with soft, smoky eyes, her cheeks flushed, her mouth smiling with anticipation, but Claire Thackeray had the look of a rabbit caught in headlights and, beneath the smear of mud, her cheek had been shockingly white.

      Her mouth was swollen but there was no smile and she hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t given him a chance to say… What?

      I’m sorry?

      To the daughter of Peter Thackeray? The girl who’d been too good to mix with the village kids. The woman who, even now, down on her luck and living in the worst house on the estate, was still playing the patronising lady bountiful, just as her mother had. Handing out charity jobs to the deserving poor. Sending the undeserving to the devil…

      That wasn’t how it was meant to be.

      But she hadn’t waited for an apology.

      After that first stricken look, she’d turned around and walked away from him without a word, without a backward glance as if he was still the village trash her father—taking his cue from Sir Robert—had thought him. As if she was still the Cranbrook estate’s little princess.

      The battered wheel ground against the mudguard and stuck, refusing to move another inch. Cursing the wretched thing, he propped it up out of sight behind a tree, then grabbing her shoe he strode after her.

      ‘Claire! Wait, damn it!’

      * * *

      Claire wanted to die.

      No, that was ridiculous. She wasn’t an idiot kid with a crush on the local bad boy. She was a responsible, sensible grown woman. Who wanted to die.

      How dare he!

      Easy… Hal North had always done just what he wanted, looked authority in the eye and dared anything, defying them to do their worst.

      How could she?

      How could she just stand there and let Hal North kiss her? Respond as if she’d been waiting half her life for him to do exactly that? Even now her senses were alight with the heat of it, the blood thundering around her body at the thrill of surrendering to it, letting go in a world-well-lost moment when nothing else mattered. Not her dignity, not her child…

      It had been everything her youthful imagination had dreamt about and more. Exhilarating, a dream-come-true moment to rival anything in a fairy tale.

      Appalling.

      She clung desperately to that word, closing her eyes in a vain attempt to blot out the warm, animal scent of his skin, the feel of his shoulders, solid beneath her hands as she’d clutched at them for support. The taste of his hard mouth lighting СКАЧАТЬ