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Of course, it would have been a whole lot easier to convince herself of that, if Art hadn’t started popping up all over the place since that moment of insanity in the workshop.
After weeks and weeks of hardly crossing paths with him, now he seemed to be constantly in her face.
Had he always looked at her like that? The way he’d stared at her that night at the millpond? Why hadn’t she noticed it before now? Or was she just imagining it? Maybe it was all in her sex-starved, sleep-deprived head? She flopped onto her stomach, and shoved her head under the pillow. But the maddening memory of those dark chocolate eyes on her, refused to piss off.
He’d shown up to dinner on both Saturday and Sunday, his conversation as monosyllabic as usual, but she’d caught him staring at her. His arm had brushed hers as he reached past her for the salt yesterday and it felt as if she’d touched a power line. Was he getting in her face deliberately? Why would he? To what purpose? Was he trying to drive her insane?
They’d agreed, hadn’t they? That they weren’t going to take this thing further? Or rather she’d said it and he hadn’t disagreed. There were so many reasons why them having a sexual relationship had the potential for catastrophe. It would be madness to jeopardise everything she’d found at Willow Tree this summer, for the sake of an endorphin fix…
She’d always been so good at ignoring her desires, subjugating them to the common good, the higher purpose, so how come all Art had to do was look at her a certain way and she had the insane urge to leap across the dinner table and take him down?
The front door shut downstairs, and then the loose floorboard squeaked as footsteps came up the stairs, lighter than usual. She slipped out of bed, grabbed her robe and yanked it on, then tied her hair in a soft knot.
Art had disappeared after dinner – leaving her achy and tense and unable to sleep – to head to the workshop as he did every night. It was now five minutes past midnight. Everyone else had been asleep for hours, and she wanted to sleep, too.
With Maddy and Jacob now happily nesting on the other side of the farm acreage she ought to be getting ten solid hours a night. She needed ten solid hours a night, what with the shop chores and all the wedding planning, she had a lot of responsibilities on her shoulder. And she couldn’t do any of it efficiently with Art and his ‘jump me I dare you’ looks turning her into an insomniac.
She’d had enough. This situation required action.
Taking two deep breaths, she whipped open the door as the footsteps approached in the corridor outside.
‘Art,’ she whispered furiously.
He stopped, his broad body illuminated by the light from her room. She noticed the sheen on his slicked-back hair and the damp patch on his T-shirt. Her gaze travelled down to take in his bare feet. He carried his boots, which would explain the lighter tread on the stairs. Liquid fire tugged at her abdominal muscles. Had he just been for another midnight swim?
Visions of the swim she’d observed two weeks ago swam into her head.
Down, girl.
He didn’t move, didn’t say anything. No surprise there then. He was going to leave it up to her to handle the awkwardness.
‘We need to talk,’ she finally managed.
‘About what?’ His gaze didn’t even flicker.
‘The WI’s new jam-making regulations, what do you think?’ she snapped. Was he actually serious?
‘Huh?’
‘Don’t be dense. We need to talk about what happened on Friday evening.’ She oscillated her hand between them. ‘The… That bloody kiss.’
‘What about it?’
‘I don’t want it to happen again. So you need to stop looking at me like that.’
‘Looking at you like what?’ he said, as if he didn’t know. But his gaze flicked away and she knew either he was lying to himself, or he was lying to her or quite possibly both.
So she hadn’t been imagining those hot looks.
‘Like you want it to happen again,’ she said.
He didn’t deny it.
‘Look, Art, I’ll admit I’m struggling not to…’ She paused. Did she really want to give him this much ammunition?
If he’d looked smug, she might have stopped there, but he was giving her that intense look again, the one that made every one of her pulse points throb with unrequited need.
‘Not to want to do something about it, too.’ There, she’d said it. He didn’t respond, not in words, but the muscle in his jaw twitched. ‘But we both know it wouldn’t stop with a kiss next time,’ she carried on. ‘And we both agreed that would not be a good idea.’
