Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Everything inside her rebelled at the thought of Jack being in her home, but she felt obliged to offer to help. She dropped the dog bed and all the associated dog stuff virtually at his feet.
‘It’s fine. I’ll go to Mum and Dad’s.’
Not home, thought Bets, which was telling, but then the barn had been home to both of them. It felt strange him being here and not coming inside. She really didn’t like it.
‘Don’t be silly, you’re bleeding everywhere and you’ve hit your head pretty hard.’ She couldn’t resist adding, ‘You don’t want to get blood all over the fancy trousers.’
As he tried to scramble to his feet, obviously a little off-balance, she extended a hand to help him up.
The minute his warm hand closed over hers, a flood of emotion washed over her.
She pulled him up with more force than was strictly necessary and he lurched forward, almost cannoning into her.
She saw the reddish lights of his bristle and the mole to the right of his top lip.
The one that she always went to kiss. She felt regret like a kick and as soon as he was upright, she dropped his hand as if it held an unwelcome charge of electricity.
‘Thanks,’ he said, blinking and looking ridiculously adorable. Bets felt the little tremor in her heart and clenched her hand tight, scared he might see her true feelings. He pushed one hand, sticky with blood after he’d swiped at his face, through his dark blond hair, making it stick up in a tuft.
She didn’t say anything, instead dragged the dog bed in, fumbling for her keys in her pocket. Opening the door, she dumped the bed and went into the kitchen. It wasn’t as if Jack didn’t know his way around. They’d lived together every university holiday ever since she’d moved in.
She grabbed a piece of kitchen roll, folded it into a square and shoved it at him. ‘Hold that to stop the bleeding and sit down while I go and find my first-aid kit.’
Jack, looking very pale now and with a definite lump on his forehead, sat down heavily in the chair that his mother had vacated less than twenty-four hours ago.
‘First-aid kit? Since when?’
She glared at him. ‘Just because you didn’t know it was there.’
Turning on her heel, she stomped upstairs. Bloody Jack. She’d had a first-aid kit for at least a year. That showed how much notice he took of things around here. But hadn’t that been the problem? He’d stopped seeing her and the things around her a long time ago.
Her mouth tightened and then she saw herself in the bathroom mirror while she thoroughly soaped her hands.
It was annoying that her feelings were writ large on her face.
Upset and cross. So much for channelling indifference when he was around.
She didn’t want him to know that he still had that power over her.
She wanted him to think she didn’t care anymore.
Pulling several faces in the mirror for practice, she decided on the one of grim determination and walked downstairs again, this time her steps slow and sure.
When she returned, the dog was sitting gazing up at Jack a few feet away, a quizzical tilt to her head, as if to say, What are you doing here?
Bets felt her heart lift just a smidge. Looked like the dog was on her side.
She put down the box from her bathroom cabinet on the table.
‘Let’s have a look,’ she said trying to sound brisk and efficient as she stood over Jack.
This close she could see the paler laughter lines fanning from around his brown eyes.
He’d always tanned easily in the sunshine, with his hair turning a lighter shade of blond, whereas her skin turned pink at the first hint of sunshine, thanks to her redhead’s complexion.
Just another way she felt inferior to him.
‘You painted in here.’
‘Yes, Ella helped me.’ She didn’t confess that she’d had to seek Ella’s artistic flair because the original colour she’d chosen had looked horribly like cat sick.
‘And what’s with the Country Life magazine model look?
You look like you’re trying to be a public schoolboy.
’ She indicated the mustard corduroy trousers.
‘What’s wrong with them?’ he asked, his eyes narrowing.
‘You look like a right twat. What on earth made you buy them?’
Jack’s mouth pursed and she was shocked by the sudden hurt on his face and the way he stiffened. She’d expected him to laugh her comments off. He looked so lost that she decided to take pity on him.
Taking a couple of gauze pads, she motioned to him to move his hand. The blood had started to coagulate but was still oozing from the wound and there was quite a bump there.
‘You need an ice pack on that,’ she observed. ‘Going to have quite a headache.’
‘I’ve already got one,’ he muttered, looking stonily down at the table.
She stepped closer, aware of the tightly coiled tension within him.
Did he dislike being this close to her that much?
Dipping one of the pads into a small bowl of sterilised water from the kettle, she dabbed at the wound, cleaning away some of the dirt surrounding it and washing the dried blood from his skin.
Her fingers brushed his cheekbone and she swallowed.
It had been a long time since she’d been this close to Jack and for the first time, she looked at him with fresh eyes.
She’d almost forgotten how handsome he was, how sharp the cheekbones were.
When she’d first had a crush on him, she’d been fixated on them and how beautiful he was.
Over time, her awareness of him had dimmed.
Now, as she touched him, she was achingly aware of him and grief churned in her stomach.
He flinched.
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s fine,’ he said in a clipped voice, staring resolutely at the cuffs of her shirt.
She wondered again if it bothered him at all, her being so close.
Was he aware of her? She could see the rise and fall of his chest under the ridiculous old-man checked shirt.
He smelled of Pears soap and Nivea skin cream and she had to fight the urge to bury her nose in his neck and inhale him, sink into those familiar scents.
She gritted her teeth and focused on cleaning his face.
There was a tiny scar on his lower jaw, where he’d run into a branch when they were blackberrying one year.
Larking about trying to compete as to who could get the most difficult to reach of the crop.
On his upper lip right in the centre was a funny little bump, which gave him a Cupid’s bow look.
She tried not to notice the tiny details, most of which she’d forgotten about.
She’d forgotten that once upon a time she could read his face with her fingers like Braille, when they’d first discovered sex and couldn’t get enough of each other.
She realised with a pang that their sex life had run out of steam some time ago.
Unfortunately being this close to him brought back stirrings of lust that she’d almost forgotten.
Was he seeing her all over again? She doubted it.
She’d lost her lustre, if she’d ever had any. She knew the women he associated with at university. Glossy, sophisticated, intelligent, with so much more in common with him. How could she possibly have competed with them?
She patched him and then handed him a cold pack from the freezer. ‘There, you’re going to have quite a lump on your noggin. Might even have a black eye.’ She grinned at him.
‘Which you’ll be happy to take the credit for, I’m guessing.’
‘Never thought of that, but yes, why not?’
‘It doesn’t have to be like this, Bets.’
‘Like what?’ she asked sweetly.
‘We don’t have to be enemies. Life’s hard enough. Do you want to make it more difficult?’
‘Only for you,’ said Bets, airily ignoring the churning in her stomach. She was being a bitch and while it assuaged some of the bitterness she’d stored up, she knew, like a hangover kicking in, she’d feel bad about it later. Right now it felt empowering.
* * *
Until he sat down in the wooden chair at the table in the cosy kitchen, Jack hadn’t realised how happy and at ease he’d always been here.
Or how hard he’d worked to fit in when he was in Bristol.
Suddenly he wanted to burn these damn trousers and this stupid shirt.
They symbolised his stupid vanity, his misplaced belief that he belonged with Melissa’s crowd, at his new job – when they’d all known all along that he didn’t.
Now all he could think of was how much this felt like home.
Of all the breakfasts they’d grabbed on the run in here, the dinners they’d had at this little table together, the silly banter about whose turn it was to wash up and the times the washing up had been abandoned in favour of more interesting activities.
He had a memory of pressing Bets up against one of the cabinets, her hands full of soap suds, giggling as he kissed her.
His stomach contracted painfully. He hadn’t expected the memories, like ghosts floating shamelessly in his face, to capture his attention so strongly.
She’d painted the walls in here, he noticed, and that made him feel …
homesick? Sad? It hadn’t occurred to him that she might erase him.
Erase them. Of course Bets was going to carry on without him.
Putting her touch on this place without him.
His mum had been gentle but firm, and she was right: this was Bets’ home.
He had other choices, even if one of them was a camp bed wedged up against his mum’s sewing machine.
Bets didn’t. He thought of the tiny, chaotic house she’d grown up in, where it was often pitch-black or freezing.
Not that he’d been invited in very often.
He knew she was too embarrassed. Unlike him, she hadn’t had any advantages. Yes, this was Bets’ home.