Chapter 6 #3
‘It’s okay.’ He tried to sound reassuring. In control. ‘I’ve got this. You’re safe, Tilly.’
‘I don’t think he wants to hurt us,’ she said. ‘These are farm pigs, not wild sangliers.’ She was getting to her feet, which wasn’t easy given the slippery ground. ‘They’re usually very quiet. Look – the mothers and babies are coming back to see what’s happening now.’
Sure enough, the other pigs were circling closer, the chaos subsiding.
The fierce-looking boar seemed content to remain a spectator and there were more people in the field.
The balloon was a huge, almost flat puddle of rainbow colours on the mud with piglets nudging at the fabric and running across its edges, leaving muddy hoof-prints.
And Tilly wasn’t hurt but she was looking very worried, as she took in his muddy trousers, filthy shoes and the fact that their crew seemed more concerned about securing the balloon than caring for their passengers.
‘I’m so sorry, Angus.’
‘So am I.’
The words came out in an angry growl. Angus turned his back on Tilly and stalked away to try and gain control before he said something that would make things even worse than they already were.
He pushed his fingers through his hair and against his scalp, one hand after the other – taking his chin-rubbing habit to a whole new level – as he put some distance between them.
It wasn’t landing in a pigsty that was upsetting him. It wasn’t that he had underestimated the risks involved in this activity, either.
No… What was really bothering Angus was that deep, primal urge he’d had to protect Tilly.
That crippling fear that she might be badly hurt.
That urge he’d had to fight, even when he knew she wasn’t hurt, to get close enough to simply fold her into his arms and hold her very tightly against his own body. To feel her heart beating.
To know that she was truly safe.
* * *
Waouh…
Tout simplement waouh…
Tilly was still a little stunned by what had happened.
She’d always known perfectly well that dragons do not exist, and wanting a man who might slay one for her was only symbolic of a desire to be important enough for someone to be prepared to face danger in order to protect her.
That was exactly what Angus McLeod had just done.
For a split second there, he looked quite intent on slaying a pig if that was necessary.
And a piece of her heart had just melted.
But now he was stomping across the muddy field – and was he holding his head in both hands? As if he was so totally fed up he just wanted to get as far away from her as possible?
It felt like another small piece of her heart had just cracked in sympathy.
It had been a courageous thing to do, coming here to do this holiday alone, given its whole purpose had been to cement his future happiness.
Had he known that he might be wiggling that knife in the wound himself?
Was that why he was putting himself through the ordeal – to deal with the heartbreak in one fell swoop and then move on with his life?
Tilly had to admire that kind of courage.
He was walking back towards her now, his face like thunder, and she’d never seen his hair so… rumpled. Sticking up in tufts.
It made him look like a small boy who’d defied an order to comb his hair and had messed it up even more with his fingers.
No… It made him look like a fully-grown man who’d just tumbled out of bed after a night of passionate lovemaking.
There was a lot more than a piece of heart melting now. Something as warm and compelling as coming home when you’ve been too far away for too long was escaping her veins to fill her entire body.
It was almost a sense of finding the place where you knew you belonged.
How ridiculous was that?
Here she was standing in a revoltingly slippery, smelly toilet area that many, many pigs had been using and she was being glared at by someone who was obviously furious with her, this situation and probably life in general, but she was also aware that she was standing on an emotional precipice.
One wrong step and she’d be falling head over heels in love with Angus McLeod.
It was just as well that he had shown his disrespect for even those small gestures that were such a vital part of the language of love by dismissing them as no more than performative art.
Oh, he’d jumped through the hoops well enough.
He’d made her catch her breath at the evidence of his passion for Moira when he’d said he was only going to do this once, but he hadn’t been talking about the proposal, had he?
He’d been referring to all the romantic nonsense that was required to persuade someone to marry him.
He had to be the most unromantic man on earth.
Perhaps Sophie’s advice – to treat an unseen destination as being hidden by a curve and that the road might, in fact, lead to where she wanted to go – was something Tilly would take on board for the future.
But not this time.
She didn’t even need to see a curve in this road because there was a huge warning sign that was visible before you even set foot on it.
Impasse.
A road that wasn’t going anywhere.
A dead end.