Chapter Four
It was probably childish of me, but I rather enjoyed the moment when our taxi drove straight past the cluster of newspeople still congregated at the front of the hospital.
‘I wonder when they’ll realise we’ve gone,’ I said, swivelling in my seat and watching as the group got smaller and smaller in the back windscreen.
‘I hope the hospital security is tight and no one reveals our names. Or at least not until we’ve decided who we want to tell.’
Rhys was looking at me with an enquiring expression, as though he wasn’t sure if his next question was appropriate but was going to ask it anyway.
‘Do you have family or a partner in the area? I was kind of surprised there was no one with you at the hospital today.’
‘I could say exactly the same thing about you,’ I batted back.
His laugh was equal parts irony and humour, seasoned with a pinch of admiration.
‘My parents live in Jersey, far enough away that they won’t have heard about what happened today. I think it might be best to wait and tell them in person.’
He raised his eyebrows and gave me an encouraging it’s your turn now look.
‘My mother and I are . . . we’re not exactly . . .’ I blew out a long breath that probably explained things far better than my faltering, incomplete sentences. ‘I’m going to go with your “tell them in person” thing. Probably. Eventually.’
Those brilliant green eyes could easily be my kryptonite. I could feel them lasering straight through my emotional defences and seeing the uncomfortable truth far more clearly than I wanted him to.
‘I told the hospital staff that I’m going to be nursed back to strength by a non-existent sister I don’t have.’ I made a big show of checking my watch. ‘She’ll be at mine any minute now.’
Rhys grinned even while he was shaking his head and tutting at my lie.
‘Speaking of which,’ he said, ‘we need to give the driver your address. The only one he has so far is mine.’
The urge to say ‘We could go back to yours’ was so strong I had to bite my tongue to stop the suggestion tumbling out. That, and the fact that Rhys hadn’t given even the smallest hint that he wanted to extend our time together.
Could being struck by lightning regress a person so far into adolescence that they actually forgot all the good sense they’d accumulated as an adult? I resolved to look that up online as soon as I got the chance.
My cheeks were warm with embarrassment as I leant forward and gave the driver my address.
‘So, do you get on well with your fictitious sibling?’ Rhys asked as the cab changed direction and began threading its way through the early rush-hour traffic towards my part of town.
‘Incredibly well. Probably better than I do with most real-life people.’
I hadn’t intended my answer to be so revealing, nor for it to be delivered with a plaintive quality in my voice that I swear I’d never heard before. I rushed to self-correct.
‘But that’s probably because for the last three years I’ve put everything on hold to concentrate on getting my business off the ground. It’s been both a passion and an obsession.’
My answer brought tiny frown lines between Rhys’s eyes, and it set me on the defensive.
‘Not that I’d change anything. It’s been worth the effort. I just meant that’s the reason why there isn’t a crowd of people queued up to collect me from the hospital. I’ve kind of dropped off the friendship radar recently.’
I’d been examined and scrutinised by doctors and specialists for most of the day, but I don’t think any of them had looked at me as intently as Rhys was now. Forget kryptonite, Rhys’s gaze was more like Superman’s X-ray vision, and it was starting to make me feel uncomfortably exposed.
I had every intention of turning the tables on him and asking why there’d been no one at his bedside, except for Olly, who didn’t really count as he worked at the hospital, but I never got the chance.
Without noticing it, we’d already travelled the length of my road, and the taxi was manoeuvring into an empty parking space right in front of the converted Victorian townhouse where I lived.
‘Oh. That was quick,’ I said, fairly certain even the cab driver could hear the disappointment in my voice.
Rhys leant a little closer to the window to view the building, which was catching the last of the sunlight at all the right angles.
‘Nice house.’
‘It’s only the top floor that’s mine. But the rooms are big and airy, and it has a great view of the church on the heath,’ I said, reaching into my purse and extracting a ten-pound note that I attempted to press into his hand to cover my half of the fare.
Rhys gave me a slightly disappointed look and gently shook his head.
‘That’s okay. I’ve got this.’
I gave a small laugh that didn’t come as naturally as I’d have liked.
‘Well, I’ll pay for the next cab we share, then.’ And that came out all wrong too. It really was time to get out of the taxi before I managed to squeeze my other foot into my mouth.
My hand was on the door handle, but curiously so too was Rhys’s on the other side of the back seat.
‘Could you just wait here for a minute, while I walk her to the door?’ he asked our driver.
Rhys was out of the cab before I could protest that I walked unaccompanied to my front door every single evening, often quite late into the night if I’d been working.
As charming as it was, I wasn’t used to this kind of chivalry.
Except, when his hand came to rest lightly at the small of my back, every single protest appeared to have got stuck somewhere between my brain and my mouth.
Never before had I been so glad that we had the longest front garden in the street.
It extended my final moments with a man I should probably never have met, and who I already knew was going to be hard to forget.
The meter was running on the cab almost as fast as our minutes together were ticking away.
My key was in the lock of the main front door, but I didn’t turn it.
‘Well, thank you once again for the prison break . . . and the getaway car . . . and the . . .’ I was running out of felony comparisons and my words dried up. I bit my lower lip and looked up into a face I was going to miss in a way that made no sense whatsoever.
‘This is wrong. This is all wrong,’ Rhys said, looking from me to the building, taking in the basement flat, the ground and first-floor ones, and not stopping until he reached the level that I called home.
I followed the route his gaze had taken.
‘No. This is it. This is definitely where I live.’
He gave a crooked grin that only occupied one half of his mouth. I knew that because I’d been spending far too much time looking at his face.
‘I mean it feels wrong to just leave you here on the doorstep when there’s no one to keep an eye on you. What if you have a concussion?’
I didn’t. The hospital had already confirmed that. But even so I nodded solemnly, as though he’d just uncovered a colossal hitch.
‘You could slip into a coma, and someone needs to be there to call an ambulance . . . and we can’t rely on your imaginary sister to do it.’
‘She is, admittedly, rubbish at stuff like that,’ I confirmed, already feeling a fizz of excitement bubbling in my veins.
‘And your heart could stop again,’ I chipped in with. ‘Clearly you shouldn’t be left alone either. What if you need CPR?’
‘Do you know how to do it?’
I shook my head. ‘But I could google it on my phone. I can type extremely fast.’
He was all-out smiling now.
‘Seems to me that, having cheated death, it would be nothing less than irresponsible if we parted ways right now. We should at least spend a few hours monitoring each other.’
‘Well, when you put it like that, we really don’t have a choice, do we?’
He took a step back on the short flight of marble stairs that led to my door. His eyes were locked on mine. ‘This is crazy, you know that?’
‘I don’t do crazy. Ask anyone. I was born middle-aged and sensible.’
Rhys descended a further two steps and for a horrible moment I thought he had changed his mind. But instead, he spun around and ran lightly down the remaining four treads.
‘Don’t move,’ he said over his shoulder as he jogged towards the cab, already pulling his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans.
‘Wow. This is a really incredible flat.’
The estate agent in me warmed to him even more at that. The rest of me was already a lost cause.
There had been a fleeting moment of sanity when Old Ellie had elbowed her way back into my consciousness. Halfway up the three flights of stairs leading to my flat, she questioned the advisability of inviting a total stranger into my home.
You don’t know this man, she insisted on the second-storey landing.
He could be a con artist, a burglar, or something a great deal worse, she pointed out darkly as we crested the final flight of stairs.
You’re too street-smart to be this unbelievably gullible, was her final thrust as I slid my key into the Yale lock.
That one almost hit home. In my job I was careful never to be alone in a building with a man I didn’t know, and yet here I was, happily breaking my own rules.
Because you know this man. Even though you’d never met him until today . . . you know him.
It made no more sense than surviving being hit by lightning had done. But I trusted my instincts every bit as much as I trusted him.
I felt a glow of pride when Rhys complimented the period details of my home, the ones that had made me fall in love with it. The intricate ceiling roses, the painstakingly restored shutters, and the polished wooden floorboards all won his admiration.
‘In comparison, my place is a functional, dull, soulless box,’ he admitted.
‘Why did you pick it then?’
It didn’t seem like a tough question, but it certainly made him look uncomfortable.
‘Circumstances.’
He wasn’t looking at me but was studying the walls I’d splurge-painted in Farrow and Ball’s finest.