Valentine's Day. Nicola Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ underrate yourself. Look at what you do in your back yard. The life you’ve invested that three square metres with.’

      She considered that. ‘When do you want me to come by?’

      ‘How about next Saturday?’

      ‘Aren’t you running?’

      ‘I’m doing a night run. I have all day free.’

      All day? ‘Just how big is this garden?’

      He smiled and ushered her onto the tube steps. ‘You’ll see.’

      * * *

      Enormous was the answer. Gi-flipping-gantic. At least four times the size of the house sitting like a stone sentry on its western edge and that was already very big.

      Georgia turned a slow three-sixty from her spot in the middle of the garden’s first chamber and surveyed the extraordinary, neglected space. Not physically neglected—the turf was mowed and the pruning regular. But Zander was right: this garden lacked any kind of soul.

      ‘This is amazing.’ She looked at him. ‘Do you truly not use it?’

      ‘I shortcut through it from the main street.’

      Sacrilege. To have a garden like this, to have it be all your own and then never use it.

      ‘There’s a lot you could do here.’

      ‘I have brown thumbs.’

      ‘You have something better. Deep pockets. You could hire a team.’

      ‘I don’t want a team. I want you.’

      She glanced at him.

      ‘Someone like you,’ he rushed on. ‘Someone with passion for it. To look after it.’

      The awkwardness of the moment flailed around between them. I want you. She’d practically given herself whiplash snapping her head around to look at him.

      ‘I don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding someone to do more than just mow and prune. I could give you some names if you like.’

      Hers would have been at the top of the list for anyone but him. What she wouldn’t give to get to tinker in this garden.

      ‘That would be great.’

      She basked in the heat coming off him in the cool mid-morning air. Maybe carb-loading turned you into a furnace. Whatever the cause, she caught herself swaying towards his warmth.

      She turned the unintentional move into a full body spin before he noticed it and looked again at the magnificent potential all around her.

      ‘I have hedgehogs,’ he murmured.

      Her eyes fluttered shut. Of course he did. That was just the final nail in the coffin. ‘This is wasted on you,’ she said, bleak. But her soft groan must have communicated her affinity for the space because he didn’t take offence.

      ‘Because I don’t use it?’

      ‘Because you don’t love it. This garden—’ she turned back to the west ‘—this stunning house... These should be in the hands of someone who worked hard their whole life to have it. Not someone who only uses the garden for short cuts and who uses just two of the rooms.’ Yet paid a premium for them. ‘Why do you stay?’

      She’d asked him before but he hadn’t answered.

      ‘Come on in,’ he hedged. ‘I’ll show you inside.’

      Maybe she’d been rude to say it like that—out loud, to his face—but she truly didn’t understand how someone could have all this and not want to spend every waking moment in it.

      Inside was the carefully styled twin of outside. Perfectly maintained, but utterly soulless. Like a short-term executive rental.

      ‘Where’s your study?’ She could hardly ask to see his bedroom, but she was desperate to get a sense of him. Of who Zander Rush really was.

      He led her up a sweeping, curved staircase to the upper floor and along a spotless landing. It struck her then that he’d be better off closing off the unused rooms and throwing cloths over all the furniture. She suggested it.

      ‘No. I don’t want to live like that. It doesn’t take my cleaner long to dust and vacuum. This way it’s ready if people come over unexpectedly.’

      She slid her eyes sideways. ‘Does that happen often?’

      Something told her it didn’t. She had the strangest feeling she was one of only a few people this house ever saw.

      Again, criminal.

      A house like this should be seen. By someone.

      He paused outside a door and looked at her. ‘Welcome to the inner sanctum.’

      It felt like that. Privileged. Rare. Something about the air that whooshed out as he swung opened the big timber door. She thought to see some kind of expansive library with ladders and a massive antique desk and dead animal heads lining the wall. Something as grand as the house. She couldn’t have been more wrong. It was small but not tiny. Opulently carpeted, tasteful timber desk at the far end, and an array of antique bookcases of all different sizes and shapes and filled with books.

      It was charming. And warm. And personal.

      And such an unexpected thing given the rest of the house.

      She stepped forward and trailed her fingers along the various surfaces. He watched her silently.

      ‘It’s lovely,’ she said, conscious that he seemed to expect some kind of verdict. ‘And comfortable; I can see why you spend a lot of time in here.’

      Not as much as the garden, if this were her house and not his. She’d build a nest in the conservatory and hibernate in there.

      ‘I get much more done here at home than at the station.’

      ‘I’m surprised you don’t work from home more.’

      ‘There’s only so much alone time a man can take.’ He smiled. ‘Even me.’

      She couldn’t imagine a busier or noisier Monday to Friday than working in a crowded radio station. She crossed around behind his desk and studied the carved bust by the window. ‘A relative? Some famous broadcasting type?’

      He shook his head. ‘It was in the house when I bought it. I had it moved in here because it seemed a fitting sort of decoration for a study.’

      How sad. A beautiful house full of someone else’s memories. She turned and skimmed her eyes over the paperwork scattered around a closed laptop on his desk. None of it interested her, but a colourful mini-poster pressed to the surface of the desk by a chunk of granite did.

      His next event notice. Hadrian’s Wall, Gilsland to Bowness. The following weekend. She’d never seen a marathon in progress. And it was a СКАЧАТЬ