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She didn’t like Sundays. At least each weekday and especially Saturday she was kept busy at the restaurant from lunchtime until late at night, and with John providing moral support when needed the days didn’t seem too bad. But John always visited his mother some fifty miles away on Sundays and without his friendly presence she had too much time to think.
She sighed heavily to herself as she lay in bed the Sunday morning after Blade’s re-entry into her life, watching a dancing beam of sunlight on the wall opposite. It had been three days since that devastating confrontation outside the restaurant and she hadn’t seen Blade since, although she knew from John that he was still around. John had made it his business to find out that Blade was renting a small cottage on the outskirts of the village. ‘He’s taken a three-month contract,’ John had said grimly, his mild blue eyes worried and angry. ‘What do you think he’s playing at, Amy?’ She had shrugged slowly, shaking her head. She wished she knew. She really did. But whatever it was it wouldn’t be to her advantage, that much she was sure of.
She wandered downstairs in time to eat her breakfast with Mrs Cox, a little routine the older woman appreciated being, Amy suspected, quite lonely most of the time, and it was as she was eating the fluffy scrambled eggs on toast that she asked the question that had just occurred to her, the answer to which made her wish she had kept her mouth shut.
‘You haven’t seen anything of Blade over the last couple of days, have you?’ she asked the small, stout woman quietly as Mrs Cox refilled the big pottery teapot with hot water.
‘Your husband?’ Mrs Cox eyed her carefully. ‘Not since the morning after the night I met him, lass. Why?’
‘He came to see you the next morning?’ Amy asked faintly, hoping against hope Mrs Cox would say they had met by accident in the street, shopping, anything …
‘Aye, lass.’ Mrs Cox’s eyes were steady and direct on hers. ‘And I must say I’ve never been partial to Americans but that one—’ she nodded to herself as she poured her fifth cup of tea of the morning ‘—he’s all right.’ The rebuke was mild but Amy still felt it like a slap in the face. How could she tell the older woman she agreed completely with her analysis? Blade was all right. He was more than all right.
‘What did he want?’ she asked carefully, but Mrs Cox shook her head gently, her gaze unwavering on Amy’s flushed face.
‘Now I think that was betwixt me and him, lovey, don’t you?’ she answered steadily. ‘I don’t interfere in no one’s affairs, as you know. You ask him when you see him.’ There was no malice in her landlady’s voice, nor even accusation, but Amy knew better than to pursue the conversation. And she would have respected the other woman’s honesty in other circumstances, but just at the moment it made her want to shake the poor inoffensive soul.
‘I might not be seeing him again,’ she answered quietly and it was a second later, as though to prove her wrong, that the front doorbell rang imperiously.
‘Is she in, Mrs Cox?’ She heard his voice in the hall and swallowed a piece of toast so quickly it lodged in her throat like a bone. She was gulping tea in an effort to clear it, eyes streaming, when Blade strolled lazily into the small sunlit room.
‘Good morning.’ He made no attempt to smile or lighten the situation in any way as his eyes fastened on to hers like lasers, and she saw he was still immersed in the rage and fury that had tightened the big powerful body into a coiled spring and turned the dark face stony.
‘I was just saying to Mrs Cox I thought I might not see you again,’ she answered at last when her choking had finished.
He eyed her for a long moment before replying and Amy shivered as Mrs Cox joined them and his face became bland and pleasant. There was still something flowing beneath that was toxic. ‘Wishful thinking?’ His manner was genial and Mrs Cox clucked amiably as she bustled away to fetch an extra cup from the kitchen, but the coal-black eyes were as hard as iron and Amy knew his comment had been as sharp as barbed wire, the message contained therein for her ears alone.
‘I’m taking you out for a drive and a pub lunch,’ he said softly after half a minute had ticked by in total silence. Mrs Cox was a long time in returning with the cup; Amy fancied the elderly woman thought she was being tactful! ‘If you have made other arrangements, cancel them.’
The hard arrogance brought every defensive instinct she possessed into immediate life and she stiffened slowly, her face hostile. ‘I’m sorry, Blade.’ She tried to make her voice as bland as she could but it was difficult with every nerve and sinew in her body stretched as tight as a drum. ‘I’m afraid I can’t—’
