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‘Nope. We’re on a break.’ He gave her one of his most gorgeous smiles. The one that said the world could wait for a moment. This was Rafe’s safety valve. Some people talked things out of their system, a couple of her colleagues had their own blogs, but Rafe seemed to have developed the capacity to just change gear, leave it all behind for a while and divert all of his attention to something else.
‘So what are you doing?’
‘I’m making a boat.’ He tore a leaf from the pad and started folding.
Mimi put the coffee down on the bench between them. When talking about things just sent you round in circles, sometimes Rafe’s solution was the better one. It was usually a great deal more fun.
‘Give me a sheet, then.’
Rafe’s boat turned out to be a complex, double-hulled affair which took more than one sheet of paper and sported a sail. Mimi stuck to a basic coracle shape, but she could make three in the time it took for Rafe to make his one.
They walked to the water’s edge. Like a pair of kids with nothing else to do but mess around with paper boats. Mimi carefully placed her boats and, as the surface of the pond rippled in the breeze, two of them floated towards his.
‘Watch out, Rafe, my pirates will be boarding you any minute...’ She grinned up at him.
‘No, they won’t.’ He picked up a stick, nudging his boat away from hers, and it began to drift slowly toward the centre of the pond. ‘And anyway...’
He produced a wrap of paper from his pocket. ‘What’s that?’
‘Duck food. My secret weapon.’ He gave her a Machiavellian grin. ‘Found it in the glove compartment.’
He’d been feeding the ducks without her. Of course he had. She couldn’t have expected Rafe to go five years without taking time out to feed the ducks.
He tipped a measure into his hand, and then hers. Then threw some of the food into the water. ‘Here they come...’
A large green and blue duck was making for the food, diving for it as it sank beneath the surface. Another well-aimed throw hit one of Mimi’s coracles and the duck tipped it upside down in its eagerness to get at the food.
‘Hey! Two can play at that game.’ She aimed for Rafe’s boat and it wobbled slightly on the water as the grains hit it. ‘Come on...’ She urged a smaller brown speckled duck on, which was paddling across the water towards it.
‘No, no, no...’ Rafe clapped one hand to his forehead as his boat lurched and relaxed as it righted itself. ‘Yesss...’
They were both laughing. Rafe managed to lure another duck towards her second boat and it nudged its beak inside before lifting it out of the water entirely. The little brown duck was making his boat wobble dangerously, but somehow it survived the onslaught.
Mimi still had one boat left, caught amongst the roots of a tree. Picking up a fallen branch, she clambered across to nudge it out on to the water. Leaning out to free the boat, she felt herself begin to tip.
‘Rafe...!’ A knee-jerk reaction—screaming for him before she knew quite what she was doing. And, by the same instinct, he was there, pulling her back from the water’s edge.
He didn’t let go. Mimi dropped the stick, turning in his arms.
‘Nearly...’ He was holding her tight. In a sudden, controlled movement, he threatened to spin her backwards into the water, and then pulled her back again. Mimi clung to him.
‘You wouldn’t...’
‘Is that a dare?’
She knew better than to dare Rafe, particularly when he was in this mood. He might not actually push her in, but he’d find some way of dangling her so close to the water that she’d be hanging on to him, begging him not to.
‘No.’ She tightened her grip on his jacket.
‘Because a dare would be...’ Something melted in his eyes. The reserve that had been keeping them both safe.
‘Dangerous...’ She whispered the word.
‘Yeah. Very.’ He didn’t let go of her. And Mimi couldn’t let go of him.
Getting wet was the least of her worries. Rafe had her in his arms and the look in his eyes... Suddenly nothing was impossible. A vision of their naked limbs, twisted languidly together, flashed into her imagination, making her heart pound.
He was so close. His lips a whisper away. If he kissed her... If he didn’t kiss her, she was going to kiss him.
