Chapter Six
‘It happens,’ he said, quietly. She was looking away, now, watching mothers pushing buggies, toddlers trying to keep up. Now she was no longer sunburn red, tiny freckles kissed her nose. Her ponytail was a toffee-coloured cloud, but when he had found her on the patio this morning her hair had hung loose over her shoulders, not in waves but in ripples. He liked her hair. He liked her pixily determined chin and short, straight nose. But not as much as her pretty mouth. She had a seriously pretty mouth. Her lips were glistening with the last of the smoothie and it begged to be licked away.
She was no cover girl; her beauty was too quirky, too expressive. Too dependent on the pretty mouth that he couldn’t stop watching as she said, ‘I was five and Dad and me were a unit, when they got married. Karen was a good stepmom but, of course, she couldn’t love me as much as she loved her own kids. Sometimes she’d act as if I’d been a lot of trouble and get Dad to take me off somewhere, like she was saying, “This one’s your child, sort her out.” She carried on with her career until she was pregnant with Jessamine, and Jess was a difficult baby and Zachary followed quite soon, so Grandma carried on caring for me when Daddy wasn’t home until I went to junior high when I was twelve. Old enough to get the school bus and old enough to watch Jessie and Zach.’
‘Watch them do what?’ He couldn’t resist teasing her for her American terminology.
A smile flickered across her eyes. ‘I watched them do just about everything — helping them if it was a good thing, stopping them if it was a bad thing. You say “babysit”, right?
‘You know how you get that child in a family, the one who is older and more self-possessed, who runs lots of errands? Well, that was me, because when I was responsible and helpful, Karen didn’t make other arrangements for me. So it was a lot easier on everyone.’ She turned her fine green gaze on him and smiled. ‘You can’t fault her logic — I’m not her kid. Families do you in, don’t they?’
He commiserated with a touch to her hand. Her nails were manicured and her fingers dainty. ‘Mum would have called you “a fine-boned lady”. That was her greatest compliment because she was like my sisters — short and sturdy, like peasant stock. And I’m a big guy.’
She laughed. ‘You sure are.’
His glance flickered contemplatively to her mouth. But he just took her hand and surged to his feet. ‘Ready to go?’
She winced. ‘Ow! Ooh,’ as she began to use her legs, so he led her back out of the underpass and along the undercliff to Eastingdean at a snail’s pace. He should never have kept running when he knew she was blown; it didn’t seem like such a good joke, now, because she was walking as stiffly as a heron. And it was taking forever to get back to Eastingdean.
‘All I can see from here is the top of your cap,’ he observed, when she seemed to be walking more easily.
‘Doctor’s orders were that I cover up in the sun for a while.’ She glanced up. ‘I don’t think I ever said thank you for dragging me in from the sun and calling Dr Zo?. You were the good guy, looking after things for your sister, and you got a sick American to take care of. One more thing to hold against Clarissa.’
The undercliff was busy and he sidestepped a small child on tow behind a large black dog and steered her to a slope up to the road. ‘I’m being kind to her, at the moment, even when she pulls all the sister-mum crap. Her husband did one, a few months ago.’
Her eyebrows dipped. ‘Did one what?’
‘Did a runner. Went off with another woman.’
They’d reached the clifftop and the traffic and the breeze combined to make it difficult to hear each other so they’d crossed the road to the bungalow before she answered. ‘Poor Clarissa. I didn’t know about her husband.’
‘She and Duncan were going to live in the bungalow.’ He nodded up at it. ‘They moved in with Nicola while they did this place up so Clarissa’s still there, because when Duncan took off Clarissa had to take the mortgage on her own. That’s why she’s renting the bungalow out. Nicola’s between relationships — none of my sisters but Clarissa ever bothered getting married — so she’s happy to share living expenses. But I still feel bad for Clarissa.’ He watched Honor’s behind as she walked up the terrace steps. ‘Duncan Wells had always been a problematic bastard but the crunch was when another woman came on the scene. So Clarissa embraced being single again, and went back to calling herself Mayfair.’
Honor halted at her door. ‘Horrible for her.’
He tilted the baseball hat gently off her head, sliding it slowly down her ponytail and stretching around her to hang it on the door handle. Now she was in the shade her skin was safe. And the damned hat would only get in the way when he kissed her.
But she was still frowning over Clarissa’s troubles. ‘You’re obviously on her side when it matters. That’s real important.’
He propped his hand on the doorframe. ‘She drives me mad, but of course I’m on her side. She was hurt. Also, she gave me hell.’
‘Gave you hell?’
He shuddered at the remembered purgatory. ‘Straight after Duncan left, it came out — in the worst way — that I was in a relationship with a married woman, Rosie. In my defence, the first I knew of it was when Rosie’s husband turned up, threatening to kill me.’
‘Wow,’ she breathed. ‘That sucks. How could you not know?’
‘Exactly Clarissa’s point. But it seems that the endless lies and deceit that come with having an extra-marital affair can be used to blindside the lover as well as the husband. I honestly didn’t know. I was so pissed off with Rosie. Apart from subjecting me to a horrible scene and making me look an idiot, she involved me in hurting her husband, which I hated. She didn’t wear her wedding ring, she stayed out all night — how the hell was I supposed to know?’
‘Maybe she wasn’t all that married? Like — separated, or something?’
‘It’s true that they were only “kind of” married, according to her. But that message didn’t seem to have reached her husband . . . Anyway, I’ve sworn off married women. I don’t need them.’ He dismissed Rosie and her excuses. His primary interest in this conversation was wondering when it would pause long enough for him to get to know that pretty mouth.
Which was no longer smiling. Instead, Honor sighed. ‘So this would be where I tell you I’m kind of married, too.’
He took a look into her eyes. There, too, the smiles were gone. His heart began a slow float downwards, hardening his voice as he straightened up and stepped back. ‘And you don’t wear a wedding ring, either.’
Her smile was defensive. ‘They’re not compulsory.’
Anger ripped through him, firing words from his mouth. Not loudly. Quietly. Like a ticking bomb. ‘Maybe they ought to be — to stop poor bastards making dangerous assumptions!’
And before he could soften, explain it was disappointment that made him snappy and that he was prone to speaking first, thinking later, she unhooked her cap and opened the door. ‘Assumptions are always dangerous. If they weren’t assumptions, they’d be intelligently researched conclusions, wouldn’t they?’
And the door shut, firmly, in his face.