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She took a big gulp of her tea. As a hard businessman and entrepreneur he had been pretty devastating, and the side of him she’d seen the evening before had knocked her for six, but this morning the domestic Kingsley, clothed in the silk robe and pyjama bottoms, was every maiden’s prayer. How could anyone make cooking so sexy? she asked herself breathlessly. He could knock all those TV chefs off the face of the planet.
By the time he placed a heaped plate in front of her, along with a glass of ice-cold orange juice, she had expended enough nervous energy to be absolutely starving. ‘This is wonderful.’ There was a note of surprise in her voice.
‘Thanks.’ It was very dry.
‘No, I mean—’ She stopped abruptly.
‘Don’t try to explain,’ he said, his voice so flat she knew it was hiding amusement. ‘It will either make you sound like one of those women who are convinced only the female race can do things like cooking and cleaning and—’
She threw a napkin at him, hitting him square in the face.
He placed it carefully at the side of him, continuing with barely a pause, ‘Or plain jealous at my expertise.’ He eyed her thoughtfully. ‘I rather suspect the latter.’
‘You wish.’
‘Oh, I do, Rosie, I do. I wish for all sorts of things, things that would make your hair curl.’
The heat in his eyes left her in no doubt as to what form these wishes took and she grabbed for her orange juice, swallowing it hastily. When she nerved herself to look at him again he was calmly eating his food, a twist to the firm mouth telling her he had loved every moment of the little skirmish.
Breakfast set the tone for the day. For the first time in years Rosalie found herself being looked after. They had a lazy morning in the garden with the Saturday papers, and it was Kingsley who saw to elevenses, bringing out the most delicious whipped-cream coffee and shortbread fingers to her where she sat reclining in one of Beth’s deckchairs. For lunch he took her off to a nearby riverside pub, where they sat in the shade of a huge red and blue striped umbrella, drinking velvety smooth, cold draught Guinness and eating chicken in the basket, whilst watching a pair of swans teaching their new signets the tricks of the trade and marshalling them into order every now and again.
Rosalie had phoned Beth’s mobile three times during the morning, and just before they had left for lunch her aunt had got back to her informing her that Jeff had a bad attack of flu but that was all. ‘I feel I want to stay the night up here, though, if that’s okay with you?’ Beth had said anxiously. ‘I just want to be with him for a while, after the shock and everything. Will you and Kingsley cope all right? There’s steaks in the fridge I’d got in for tonight, and salad and baby new potatoes, and a whole stack of frozen desserts in the freezer. Don’t go hungry, will you?’
There was no chance of that. After a drive in the afternoon Kingsley stopped at a cottage advertising cream teas, and the mouth-watering homemade scones brim full with jam and cream and cream cakes melted in the mouth. Kingsley won the heart of the elderly owner by asking for a second round, and by the time they left they had had the older woman’s life story, including the account of the giddy affair she’d had in the war with a visiting GI. ‘Spoke just like you, he did,’ the rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed lady—who wasn’t an inch over four feet ten inches—said confidingly to Kingsley. ‘And with the accent and his charm, the local lads didn’t stand a chance. Course, everyone told me it’d come to nothing, but I loved him and he loved me. No doubt about that. But he got killed, see. Just a week before the war ended. I’ve had three husbands since then. Divorced one and buried two but there was still no one like my Hank.’
Rosalie hadn’t known whether she’d wanted to laugh or cry. The little woman was a born comic and she had known it too, regaling them with one story after another about her life, which had been a fruitful one to say the least, but there had been something in her eyes when she’d spoken about her Hank that had gripped Rosalie’s heart and made it ache. It hadn’t helped that as they’d been leaving the lady had grabbed Rosalie’s arm, forcing her to bend her head closer to the lavender-scented little body, whereupon the woman had whispered, ‘Don’t you let him get away, dear; you’ll regret it the rest of your life if you do. And I know. Oh, yes, I know all right.’
‘What did she say to you?’
Kingsley had gone ahead and was waiting on the threshold, holding open the door for her, and as Rosalie edged through the narrow aperture with her crutches she said quietly, ‘Nothing really. Just that she still misses Hank.’
He shook his head as they walked towards the car. ‘That’s a real shame after all these years.’
‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ She glanced at him as he walked beside her, so attractive he made her head spin. He smelled nice. A clean, sharp aftershave with a faint scent of lemons, she thought distractedly, suddenly aware she would remember this moment—the bright sunshine, the man at her side, the smells and colours—for the rest of her life. It produced a feeling so poignant it was physically painful.
She was getting in too deep here. Panic had her heart beating a tattoo. This seductive feeling of being enclosed in his aura, of being safe from the buffeting of the storms of life, was an illusion. At the moment he wanted her in his bed and so everything was hunky-dory. All that could change with the wind.
He opened the car door for her, taking the crutches as she lowered herself into the seat and slinging them in the back before he walked round to the driver’s side. She watched him, the little old lady’s words ringing in her ears. But the woman hadn’t known that they were just ships passing in the night, that Kingsley wouldn’t want it any other way and neither would she. She wouldn’t, she reiterated fiercely when her heart lurched. He wanted a brief affair; she didn’t even want that.
Home again, Kingsley saw to the two cats who met them on the drive as though they hadn’t been fed in years and were starving. Stiff tall tails expressed feline disapproval at the lateness of the hour—eight o’clock just wasn’t an acceptable dinner time in their opinion.
‘Steak, salad and new potatoes okay for you?’ Rosalie asked when she joined him in the kitchen after checking the answer machine for messages. ‘Beth’s left us well provided for.’
‘Sounds great.’ On the way to the cottage the evening before he had insisted on stopping at an off-licence and buying several bottles of—what was to Rosalie—frighteningly expensive wine, and now he said, ‘Which wine would you prefer: red, white or rosé?’
‘Rosé, please.’ They’d had a bottle of Kingsley’s wine the night before as well as one Beth had provided, and she had to admit—wine connoisseur that her aunt was— Kingsley’s had had the edge. Of course he wasn’t supporting three children all doing their own thing at university or whatever, she qualified hastily, as though the thought had been disloyal to her aunt in some way. ‘And while I get underway with the food, you could set the dining table if you like,’ she added. The dining room was much more formal than the way they’d eaten breakfast, close together at the kitchen table, with his shoulder seeming to brush against her every so often, and she needed the distance between them—mentally as well as geographically. It might be weak and pathetic but that was the way she felt.
‘It’s a beautiful evening, why not alfresco?’ Kingsley suggested lazily. ‘I believe in making the most of summer.’
‘If you like.’ Beth’s round wooden patio table was an enormous one with eight chairs—bought in mind for when the children and their partners descended—and again was less cosy than the kitchen.
After opening the wine Kingsley left a glass at her elbow before wandering off. Rosalie was determined to make the fairly plain meal as good as she could, and after seasoning the steaks she put them under the grill on a very low heat, and with the potatoes bubbling away she set to work preparing the salad. The beauty of Beth being such an accomplished cook was that she usually had every ingredient you could imagine somewhere in the kitchen, along with plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit.
Tomatoes, avocado, baby spinach, celeriac, apple, walnuts—that should be enough. Rosalie cut and grated, and was just mixing a creamy dressing—one of her aunt’s recipes—consisting of double cream, dry mustard, lemon thyme, black pepper and nutmeg, the juice of an orange and lemon, and a teaspoon of Barbados sugar, when Kingsley reappeared, dipping his finger in the mixture and licking it. ‘Mmm, gorgeous.’ He eyed her wickedly. ‘And the dressing tastes great too.’
She couldn’t help but smile, even as she said warningly, ‘No tasting until I say so.’
‘Promises, promises…’
