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Miles’ lips twitched as he glanced over my pyjamas. “I have to agree.”
I folded my arms across my chest. I wasn’t wearing a bra, either. Oh, joy. “Can you wait twenty minutes for me to get myself sorted out?”
He sighed, then nodded. “I’ll go and get some things ready for today. Find me when you’re ready to go.” He bade goodbye to everyone else and left through the front door, leaving Dad, Aunt Cat, and Arthur staring at me.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked, getting up and sliding my laptop off the counter. “I want to go and look at plants for the area I’m doing. Get some inspiration.”
“Sure,” Aunt Cat said, unpacking her tins of soup. “That’s why you’re going.”
“It is. I have to get on with it or I’ll fail.” I shuffled out of the kitchen, but not before I heard my father asking, “What do you mean, that’s why she’s going? Catherine!”
***
“Hey, I’m ready if you are.”
Miles looked over his shoulder at me. “Give me a second, I just need to put these seeds back.”
I wrapped my cardigan around my waist and walked over, peering inside the potting shed. “Are you planting?”
“Checking seed levels,” he replied. “Need more lettuce seeds. Bloody pigeons keep getting at them. I swear they’ve figured out how to get past my netting.”
“Probably. Them or the crows. Or magpies. They’re all a nuisance.”
He put the remaining packets back into a wooden storage unit and turned around. “Oh, uh…”
“Sorry, sorry.” In my efforts to see what he was doing, I’d apparently forgotten about giving him any personal space. I backed up to exit the shed, but the back of my foot caught on the little lip of the doorway.
My entire life flashed before my eyes as I fell backwards and screamed.
Miles grabbed hold of my arms and yanked me forwards, but since I’d lost control of my centre of gravity there was only one way I was falling: into him.
I did just that.
With a squeal instead of a scream, my body collided with his. He stumbled back, wrapping his arms around me to keep hold of me, and crashed into the wall of plastic pots that were stacked at the back of the shed. Another high-pitched noise escaped me as I gripped onto his shirt and the pots rained down on us in a cacophony of clatters and bangs that reverberated off the shed walls.
One final pot clattered to the ground, and I finally dared to open my eyes. “Has it stopped?” I whispered.
“I think so,” Miles replied quietly. “You’re just a walking disaster, aren’t you?”
“That’s rude.” I went to push myself up and, after pressing one hand against the wall next to his head, finally realised where I was.
Against his body.
Firmly.
My fingers had wound themselves completely in his t-shirt, and my body couldn’t be pressed any closer to his. His legs were bent slightly as he held himself steady against the wall, and because of how we fell, I was trapped between his thighs.
And, boy.
He had a pair of thighs.
I didn’t need to see them to know they were made of granite. I could feel it.
More than all of that, we were eye to eye, and I was almost leaning over him. If my arm gave out now, I’d actually end up kissing him.
Hm. Tempting.
But a very bad idea, nonetheless.
Not that it stopped me kind of wanting to.
His lips were right there.
So was he.
And he wasn’t making me move, either. His gaze dropped briefly to my mouth, the way it had in the garden before, and if my own heart wasn’t picking up the pace, I’d swear it was his.
His fingers twitched against my back, briefly tightening and pressing into my skin, and my breath caught when his thumb moved oh-so-gently in something that felt awfully like a tender stroke.
Was this what he meant when he said he did smile at me?
Had I gotten it wrong all along?
Did he actually… like… me?
There was a sharp movement in my peripheral, and I started, turning in enough time to fully see Miles bat away one last pot that fell off the shelf.
I cleared my throat and pushed away from him. “We should really…”
“Go?” he offered, finishing my sentence when I trailed off. “I agree.”
I turned around and tiptoed out of the shed, only looking back when I heard the click of the door shut.
“I’ll clean that up later,” he said gruffly. “Are we taking one car or two?”
“Two,” I replied quickly. A bit too quickly, judging by the way he raised his eyebrow. “I like to shop. Especially for plants. And pots. One might not be enough.”
The twitch of his lips said he knew that was bullshit just as much as I did, but he didn’t argue.
And so we took two cars.
