Josie Metcalfe - Miracles in the Village

What could he do? He picked up the glass, took a breath and sipped, then frowned at it. ‘This is really nice,’ he said, surprised, and she smiled—in relief?

‘Good. Drink up, and you can go and have a lie-down. You look tired.’

He was, and, curiously, what he wanted more than anything was to ask her to join him, but he didn’t think he could. Not easily. Not after last night.

So he drank up, took some more painkillers and went to bed.

Alone.

HE SLEPT most of that day, and the night was made easier by the stack of pillows under and around his leg, propping it up and protecting his toes from the pressure of the quilt. Not that he needed it, because it was hot, and in the end they abandoned it in favour of a sheet.

But then it grew cooler, the wind picking up a little, and because their bedroom was on a corner and there was a cross-draught from the windows, Fran found herself snuggling closer to him for warmth.

Only her head and shoulders, her body carefully kept out of reach, but he slid his arm round her and held her, and together they slept the rest of the night till the fingers of light crept over the horizon and woke them.

Well, woke her. And when she looked up, Mike was watching her, his eyes curiously intent, and her heart thumped.

‘Want a drink?’ she asked him, easing away and stretching out the kinks in her neck.

‘Mmm. Tea would be nice.’

She hesitated. ‘How about juice? It’s quicker and it won’t keep you awake.’

He gave a short laugh. ‘Fran, I’ve slept for nearly eighteen hours straight, apart from waking up for supper. I don’t think sleep’s an issue.’

‘OK.’

She slipped out of bed and went down to the kitchen, foraging in the back of the cupboard for the decaf tea bags she’d bought for them. ‘Oh, Brodie, it would be so much easier if I could tell him what I was doing and why, but I don’t know if I can. What do you think he’ll say?’

And that was the trouble, of course. Mike was avoiding her, she was avoiding him, and they just weren’t talking. Not that they ever had, really. Maybe that was the trouble, but once the lid was off that box …

‘I can’t talk to him, Brodie. Not about getting pregnant again. Not until I know how he feels about me.’ And, of course, without talking to him, she never would.

‘So—what are we going to do today?’

Mike dragged his eyes from the window and looked at her. They were in the sitting room overlooking the garden and the sea in the distance, the church and lighthouse just visible on the horizon.

‘I don’t know. You tell me,’ he said, wondering if he sounded like a spoilt brat. He felt like one. If it wasn’t for the physical impossibility, he would have stamped his foot, but because he couldn’t he just ground his teeth and crossed his arms over his chest, drumming his fingers on the other arm.

God, he hated the inactivity! Hated sitting still, being unable to do anything, just—sitting, for heaven’s sake! He never sat! Well, not unless he was in front of the computer, filling in endless farm returns and tweaking the farm-shop website. Maybe he should do that.

‘How about going for a drive?’

He thought about it, but his ribs probably weren’t up to being jostled and he’d quickly discovered that if he didn’t have his foot up, the cast got uncomfortably tight. Although comfort wasn’t really a word he could have used truthfully and it was all a matter of degree.

‘We could play Scrabble.’

Fran stared at him. ‘You hate Scrabble.’

‘Not as much as I hate lying here doing nothing. Got any better ideas?’

She looked away, and he was stunned to see a warm sweep of colour brush over her cheeks. Fran, blushing? She got up hastily and crouched down, rummaging in the cupboard where the games were kept, and by the time she straightened up her colour had returned to normal.

She still didn’t look at him, though, and he was fascinated. Fascinated, and very curious, and strangely a little edgy.

‘If I move the coffee-table over by you, can you manage on that?’ she asked.

‘I’ll give it a try.’

It worked. Sort of. It was a little low, but that was fine, because every time she leant over to put her letters down on the board, he got a view straight down the V of her T-shirt, and it was worth every second of the discomfort he felt when he put his own letters down.

Especially when she realised it was hurting him and started taking the letters from him and putting them down for him. So he got twice as many opportunities to see the soft, warm shadow between her breasts.

The effect was predictable, and he shifted a little on the sofa, pretending it was to do with his ribs but actually trying to ease the tension in his boxers.

‘Grackle? You can’t have that!’ she said. ‘It doesn’t exist.’

‘Want a bet?’

‘What is it, then?’

‘It’s a type of mynah bird.’

She sat back and stared at him. ‘Really?’

‘Look it up.’

‘And lose my go? No way. I know you and animals.’ She added the score, and he leant over and shifted one of the letters to expose the coloured square.

‘Don’t forget it’s on a double word score,’ he pointed out, and she scribbled out the score and wrote the correct one in.

‘I’m not going to let you win,’ she said fiercely, scowling at her letters and checking the board. ‘You always win—even though you hate it, you always win.’ She put down ‘lathe’, and he added an ‘r’ to it and got another double word score.

‘Don’t sulk,’ he teased, and she glared at him, then laughed and threw a letter at him.

‘Don’t gloat, then! I was going to do that when I got an “r”.’

‘You should have hung on.’

‘No doubt.’ She shuffled her letters, grinned and hung ‘runcible’ on the ‘r’ of ‘lather’, getting a triple word score and a bonus for using all her letters.

‘Runcible? You can’t have that, it’s not a proper word!’ he protested.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Rubbish. It’s Edward Lear—he has a runcible spoon in “The Owl and the Pussycat”—“They dined on mince and slices of quince which they ate with a runcible spoon.” It’s just nonsense.’

‘And a runcible cat in “The Pobble Who Has No Toes”,’ she said, and quoted back at him, ‘“He has gone to fish, for his Aunt Jobiska’s runcible cat with crimson whiskers.” I rest my case,’ she said smugly.

He tried not to laugh. ‘It’s not in the dictionary.’

‘Oh, yes, it is.’

‘I bet it isn’t.’

‘What do you bet?’

He took a slow breath, his eyes locked with hers. ‘A kiss.’

She coloured, and then looked away and laughed a little oddly. ‘You’re on.’ And she handed him the dictionary.

Except he didn’t take it. He caught her wrist, gave it a gentle tug and toppled her towards him. She gave a little shriek and grabbed the back of the sofa with her free hand so she didn’t fall on him, but his nose ended up in her cleavage, and he turned his head and brushed his lips against the soft, shadowed skin.

She caught her breath and straightened, sinking down onto the edge of the sofa, and their eyes locked. Slowly, carefully, he leant forwards, stifling the groan as his ribs pinched, and touched his mouth to hers.

For an endless, aching second she was still, then she moved away. ‘Uh-uh,’ she said, her voice over-bright and her smile pinned in place. ‘You have to win a kiss, and you haven’t looked it up yet.’ And she stood up and moved back to the other side of the coffee-table and safety.

He found it—of course. She was never so definite if she wasn’t sure about something, and he’d bet she’d looked it up recently when they’d been doing Lear at school.