During the middle of the afternoon, she felt the sudden drop in temperature and her scalp prickled warningly. The storm wasn’t far away now, although the sun still shone brassily. They had three more rows to go and they had just started on the last of them when out of nowhere it started to rain, heavy, cold droplets of moisture, accompanied by growls of thunder and sheet lightning. Then, without any warning at all, the sky opened above them and rain lashed down, beating at the last remaining few flowers they had not picked.
‘That’s it!’ she heard Neil yell out to her above the sound of the storm. ‘Quick, let’s get this lot inside before they get damaged.’
She wanted to protest that there were still flowers to pick, but she knew Neil was right, and as he bent and gathered up his full trugs she followed suit. She was out of breath and soaking wet by the time she reached the drying shed, but thanks to Neil’s foresight the polythene with which they had covered the trugs had kept the flowers dry.
Inside the drying shed, she stared out at the now almost black sky. The small amount of flowers which she hadn’t picked would be lost, but at least they had saved the bulk of them. They had saved, she acknowledged painfully, realising how very different the situation would be if she had not had Neil’s help. She turned to thank him, but the words stuck in her throat.
‘I’m soaked,’ he told her, ‘and so are you. Let’s get inside and get dried.’
Nodding tiredly, she headed for the cottage, aware of Neil at her side even though she didn’t look at him. The storm showed no signs of abating, rain lashing at the windows.
‘We could both do with a hot shower and a strong cup of coffee,’ she heard Neil saying behind her. ‘Any chance of you being able to do anything with this?’
He held out his T-shirt, and she saw that it was soaking wet.
/>
‘I’ll put it in the drier,’ she answered.
He came to stand beside her and asked quietly, ‘What about the rest of your flowers?’
‘Mostly autumn flowerers,’ she told him tiredly. ‘With any luck, they’ll survive the storm. They’re all properly staked and tied, and if anything’s going to damage them it will be the wind and not the rain.’
‘Who’s going to shower first?’ he asked her. Rue was too tired to care. She gave an exhausted shrug.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ he suggested, ‘I’ll shower first and then I’ll make us an omelette or something, while you have yours.’
She knew she ought to tell him that she wanted him to go home, that she didn’t want him here in her cottage, but she was too exhausted to even contemplate arguing with him, and so instead she nodded and slumped into one of the kitchen chairs as he headed for the stairs.
Outside, the rain pounded against the stone walls. Wearily she got up and made her way into the sitting-room, striking a match to light the fire that she always kept made up in there. The cottage felt warm enough, but on stormy nights she found that a log fire was somehow comforting. It made her feel secure and safe. Tiredness seemed to have invaded every bone in her body, and her muscles ached. She longed to lie down and go to sleep.
Instead, she acknowledged tiredly, she would have to go upstairs. Neil should have finished in the shower by now.
CHAPTER SIX
WINCING at the pain in her back, Rue climbed the stairs slowly. At the top she stopped and rubbed the small of her back tiredly. From the landing she looked out at the rain-lashed garden below. Her herbs would suffer very little damage from the storm.
In the field beyond the garden, there were long, flowerless green rows where they had picked the flowers. The sight reassured her. Disaster had been avoided, thanks to the almost miraculous intervention of Neil.
The bathroom door opened behind her, but she was too tired to turn round. She felt the steamy heat surround her and then Neil was standing behind her.
The sky had lightened a little now, the thunder only a distant growl. The noise the heavy rain made drumming down on the roof was oddly comforting. It felt good to be here inside her cottage, protected from the elements raging outside.
‘Shower’s free,’ Neil told her, and she turned round to tell him that his T-shirt was still in the drier and then froze, her mind going stupid with shock.
One of her towels was wrapped around his hips. The silky hair on his chest was damp. Tiny beads of moisture collected on his collarbone and ran down the centre of his chest. Their movement fascinated her; she was unable to drag her gaze away, and she had an odd, compulsive urge to reach out and catch the droplets as they fell.
She saw his chest lift and fall, heard a soft rumble and realised he was talking to her. She lifted her bemused gaze to his face. His eyes had gone so dark that they looked almost as black as his hair, and that, still damp from his shower, curled slightly at the ends. She wanted to reach up and touch it…to touch him, she recognised on a sudden shuddering wave of self-realisation.
‘Rue.’ She heard him say her name sharply once, as though in warning, and then when she didn’t respond to it he said it a second time in a different tone, softer, and yet with a hint of unmistakable challenge.
And even then she couldn’t drag her gaze away from him, from the darkness of his eyes that seemed to burn into her, from the odd paleness of his skin around his mouth as though he were under an almost unbearable burden of tension, and from his mouth itself.
With eyes like a sleepwalker’s she focused on it, unable to look away.
And then, shockingly, the spell that had held her immobile was broken as Neil cursed briefly under his breath and took hold of her.
‘What is it you want, Rue?’ he demanded unsteadily. ‘Is it this?’