‘Come here and I’ll—’ Holy shit. Had he been about to suggest he warm her up? He frowned at Gus, who looked back at him with wide eyes and raised eyebrows, as though to sayWhat? I’m not the one whose blathering like a moron. Also, did you bring treats?
A shivering Kirsty swam past him and lobbed a fat chunk of stick across the water. ‘Go fetch, Gus,’ she said, and the groodle took off with the grace of a curly-haired albatross.
She turned to face him. ‘You’ll what?’
‘Um,’ he said. He heard his phone trilling on the creek bank and ignored it.
‘You know, for a moment there, I was wondering if you were offering to warm me up.’
The creek water was winter-cold, but his spark for her was burning as bright as it had the moment he’d seen her climbing out of that World War II relic in his shed. ‘Would that be a problem?’ he said.
Her hair was floating about her shoulders like she was a South Seas mermaid, and her face was relaxed, her eyes looking at him warmly. Like she cared. Like being here, in this rockpool, with him, was fun and happy and could be the beginning of somethi—
‘I’m not staying,’ she murmured. ‘In a few weeks, I’ll be gone; back down the highway, with Clarence, and Gus—and you—just a fading image in my rear-view mirror.’
An old tree branch, soft with age and wood rot, gave way beneath his feet, and he moved forward to where a patch of sunlight had found its way through the trees. Of course she was leaving. He knew that; it was why he’d let his thoughts drift into a fantasy land that couldn’t harm his heart. A woman who was leaving didn’t need him. A woman who was leaving didn’t need him to risk his heart.
A little happy-for-now might be on her agenda as well as his.
‘That’s not a no,’ he said, and his hand reached out and caught one of hers.
‘I know,’ she said.
And just like that, his mouth was on hers.
And his hands had found—god help him—the dip between hip and rib, and he’d have probably been able to still think if she hadn’t just locked her arms around his neck.
Oh boy.
Despite the chill of the rockpool, his temperature switched up a thousand degrees. He shouldn’t be rushing this. He should be thinking this through—this wastrouble! This was not in his plan.
But all he could do was feel.
She was warm against him, and her lips were soft, but the hand he could feel at the back of his head was the opposite of soft.
She wanted this.
He tipped his head, and she moaned and tipped hers, and the kiss turned into something perfect and sweet and lovel—
He pulled away.
Kirsty’s eyes fluttered open, and he looked—really looked—into those dark, dark eyes.
Oh shit, he thought. He was in trouble. He floundered around for something to say while she looked up at him with that dreamy face.
‘Um. That was unexpected,’ he said. Understatement of the century. That kiss had just smashed his plan—his dumb, flirty, fling-without-strings plan—into broken glass, and then wedged every one of the broken glass pieces into his chest.
He could see she didn’t get it.
He dragged his eyes from her face to give himself a minute to think, and movement on the bank caught his eye.
A man was standing there … a thin streak of a bloke, wearing a shiny blue suit, carrying a laptop bag in one hand and a hat in the other. Beside him was the poker-faced Alicia Pickard, a scrap of yellow paper pinched between her fingers.
Well, crap. That threat to send a valuer out to the farm hadn’t been empty words; how on earth had they found him out here?
Kirsty hadn’t noticed. She was smiling, a gentle drift of happiness on her face that crawled into his chest and lodged there.
‘Kiss me again,’ she said. ‘Maybe that was a fluke.’
It wasn’t a fluke. He needed time to think. He needed a field to furrow, a tractor to drive, and hours and hours of alone time to work out why—freakingwhy—he had just fallen in love with a woman who was deadset determined to leave.
Instead, he slid his hand away from her neck and took a step backwards. ‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘Can you find your own way back?’
Her eyes shot open—wide, surprised—but he couldn’t help that. Not this second, anyway.
He had to get the valuer and his bank manager as far away from that plane as possible.