The Country Escape - Jane Lovering Page 0,82

stared at me. ‘That was a horrible sentence, Katie.’

‘I know what I mean. And I think you do too.’ I sat next to him and took the proffered croissant. ‘I’ve done my time. Luc is French, which gives him an excuse, but, my God, I’ll take a man who brings me breakfast over a man who looks good in a ripped vest and knows his way around an AK-47 any day.’

‘But I crochet and quilt for a living!’ He took the tea.

‘That doesn’t matter. Someone has to, why not you? And from the things I’ve seen that you make, you are bloody good at it too. So why wouldn’t you do something that you are good at, just because it’s not seen as something men usually do? Nobody really turns a hair at a woman doing anything these days – that’s equality. Well, why shouldn’t it work the other way too?’

He sighed. ‘Yes. I’ve been caught in the double-standards trap, haven’t I?’ He put the tea down and turned on the sofa to face me. ‘I’ve been caught in a lot of things. But I really, really like you, Katie.’

My heart started to drum. ‘But you know about me. Me killing my dad.’

‘You know that was an accident. You’re using it as something to hide behind, like you use Poppy,’ he said, very matter-of-factly, whilst shifting around on the snaggy velvet as though his trousers were Velcro. ‘You’ve had a complicated life, Katie, but, and I can’t stress this too much, mostly because I’ve got half a croissant lodged in my molars, it wasn’t your fault.’

‘I think we should get a dog,’ I said. Changing the subject was all I could think of to do. ‘Poppy really wants one and after last night – well, I think something else alive in the house would be a good thing. But I’m out so much, and if I have to travel for work…’

‘There are dog walkers, even out here.’ He followed my switch of topic easily, and I fell just a little bit in love with him then. The tea in my hand began to slop over the rim of my mug. ‘And dogs are good company. Just, you know, don’t go for something like Tansy and Davin’s Brian – he’s not really a dog, he’s Victor Meldrew in a furry suit.’

‘Gabriel…’ I wasn’t sure what I had been going to follow this up with. I was just standing there in front of him, watching him wriggle around against the pull of the velvet, looking all dark and approachable and leggy in his black jeans and sweater, like a windswept Goth. He stood up.

‘I know,’ he said, and his voice was very quiet, almost inaudible over the sound of the wind trying to break in. ‘I know.’

And he reached out and pulled me against him; his mouth was warm and his breath tasted of croissant and his hands were so gentle against my skin. He held my face, cupping it in his long fingers, and I could feel his heart sledge-hammering his ribs, even over the feel of mine doing the same.

We stood like this for, what? Minutes? Hours? Breathing one another in. Handing one another all our insecurities silently, accepting them and taking comfort. We only broke apart when a log thumped and fell in the burner behind me and I realised that something else needed to happen.

I didn’t need to speak. Just looped my fingers around his wrist and began to walk and he followed, not pulled along, just… walking. Complicit. I didn’t stop until we reached my bedroom.

‘I think…’ I said, and tailed off. The bed looked crumpled. Inviting.

He looked at it too. ‘I think so too,’ he said, and suddenly we were kissing again, not the decorous, reassuring kisses of downstairs, but kisses that were heavy with desire. Kisses that didn’t confine themselves to mouths but began to wander, and soon clothes were extraneous and then not there, and we were tumbling into one another, falling into the – thankfully clean – tangled sheets as though someone had released some kind of aphrodisiac gas into the room that we were powerless to resist.

I don’t know why I’d expected a man who looked as he did to be inexperienced. His general diffidence, I suppose – his certainty that women wouldn’t want a man who could colour-match fabric and crochet a throw had given me to think that he might have been limited in his dating pool. He might have