Christy McKellen - After Hours...

‘Yeah, there’s never a dull moment when I’m around, huh?’

The air seemed to grow thick between them as their eyes met and he watched in arrested fascination as her cheeks flamed with colour.

Sliding her gaze away, she stared down at the table, clutching her glass, her chewed nails in plain view. He’d known it the whole time, of course, that she was fighting against some inner trauma, as her nerve and buoyancy deteriorated in the face of his brittle moods. Her increasingly ragged nails had been the indicator he’d been determined to ignore.

But not any more.

A string quartet suddenly started up on the terrace behind them and he winced as the sound assaulted his ears. He’d never liked the sound of violins and an instrument such as that should never be used to play soft rock covers. It was a crime against humanity.

‘Come on, let’s take a walk around the grounds and clear our heads,’ he said, standing up and holding out his hand to help her up from the chair.

She looked at it with that little frown that always made something twist in his chest, before giving a firm nod and putting her hand in his.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A WALK WAS exactly what Cara needed to clear her head.

She couldn’t quite believe she’d just spilled her guts to Max like that, but it was a massive relief to have it all out in the open, even if she did still feel shaky with the effort of holding herself together.

Of course, seeing the concern on his handsome face had only made her ridiculous crush on him deepen, and she was beginning to worry about how she was going to cope with seeing him every day, knowing that they’d never be anything more than colleagues or, at the very most, friends.

A twinkling light in the distance danced in her peripheral vision and she stopped and turned to see what it was, feeling her heels sink into the soft earth beneath her feet. Pulling her shoes off, she hooked her fingers into the straps before running to catch up with Max, who was now a few paces ahead of her, seemingly caught up in his own world, his head dipped as a frown played across his brow.

‘Hey, do you fancy walking to that lake over there?’ she asked him.

‘Hmm?’ His eyes looked unfocused, as if his thoughts were miles away. ‘Yes, okay.’

The sudden detachment worried her. ‘Is everything okay?’ Perhaps, now he’d had more time to reflect on what she’d told him, he was starting to regret getting involved in her messed up life.

She took a breath. ‘Do you want to head back to London? I wouldn’t blame you if you did.’

Turning to look her in the eye again, he blinked, as though casting away whatever was bothering him. ‘No, no. I’m fine.’ His gaze flicked towards the lake, then back to her again and he gave her a tense smile. ‘Yeah, let’s walk that way.’

It only took them a couple of minutes to get there, now that she was in bare feet, and they stopped at the lakeshore and looked out across the water to the dark, impenetrable-looking forest on the other side.

‘It’s a beautiful setting they’ve chosen,’ Cara said, to fill the heavy silence that had fallen between them.

‘Yes, it’s lovely.’ Max bent down and picked up a smooth flat stone, running his fingertips across its surface. ‘This looks like a good skimmer.’ He shrugged off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, revealing his muscular forearms.

Cara stared at them, her mouth drying at the sight. There was something so real, so virile about the image of his tanned skin, with its smattering of dark hair, in stark contrast to the crisp white cotton of his formal shirt. As if he was revealing the man inside the businessman.

Supressing a powerful desire to reach out and trace her fingers across the dips and swells of his muscles, she took a step away to give him plenty of room as he drew his elbow back and bent low, then flung the stone hard across the water.

A deep, satisfied chuckle rumbled from his chest as the stone bounced three times across the still surface, spinning out rings of gentle ripples in its wake, before sinking without a trace into the middle of the lake.

He turned to face her with a grin, his eyes alive with glee, and she couldn’t help but smile back.

‘Impressive.’

He blew on his fingers and pretended to polish them on his shirt. ‘I’m a natural. What can I say?’

Seeing his delight at the achievement, she had a strong desire to get in on the fun. Perhaps it would help distract her from thinking about how alone they were out here on the edge of the lake. ‘Does your natural talent stretch to teaching me how to do that?’

‘You’ve never skimmed a stone?’ He looked so over-the-top incredulous she couldn’t help but laugh.

‘Never.’

‘Didn’t you say your parents live in Cornwall? Surely there’s plenty of opportunities to be near water there.’

She snorted and took a step backwards, staring down at the muddy grass at their feet. ‘Yeah, if you live near the coast, which they don’t. I never learnt to drive when I was living there and my parents didn’t take me to the beach that much when I was young. My dad’s always suffered with a bad back from the heavy lifting he has to do at work, so he never got involved in anything of a physical nature. And my mum’s a real homebody. She’s suffered with agoraphobia for years.’

She heard him let out a low exhalation of breath and glanced up to find an expression of real sympathy in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. That must have been hard for you as a kid,’ he said softly.

Shrugging one shoulder, she gave a nod to acknowledge his concern, remembering the feeling of being trapped inside four small walls when she was living at home, with nowhere to escape to. Going to school every day had actually been a welcome escape from it and as soon as she’d finished her studies she’d hightailed it to London.

‘Yeah, it was a bit. My parents are good people, though. They threw all their energy into raising me. And they made sure to let me know how loved I was.’ Which was the absolute truth, she realised with a sting of shame, because she’d distanced herself from them since leaving home in an attempt to leave her stultifying life there behind her. But she’d left them behind, too. They didn’t deserve that. A visit was well overdue and she made a pact with herself to call them and arrange a date to see them as soon as she got back to London.

Max nodded, seemingly satisfied that she didn’t need any more consoling, and broke eye contact to lean down and pick up another flat pebble.

She watched him weigh it in his palm, as if checking it was worth the effort of throwing it. Everything he did was measured and thorough like that, which was probably why he was such a successful businessman.

‘Here, this looks like a good one. It’s nice and flat with a decent weight to it so it’ll fly and not sink immediately.’ He turned it over in his hand. ‘You need to get it to ride the air for a while before it comes down and maintain enough lift to jump.’

He held it out to her and she took it and looked at it with a frown. ‘Is there a proper way to hold it?’

‘I find the best way is to pinch it between my first finger and thumb. Like this.’ He picked up another stone and demonstrated.

She copied the positioning in her own hand then gave him a confident nod, drew back her arm and threw it as hard as she could.

It landed in the lake with a plop and sank immediately.

‘Darn it! What did I do wrong?’ she asked, annoyed with herself for failing so badly.

‘Don’t worry; it can take a bit of practice to get your technique right. You need to get lower to the ground and swing your arm in a horizontal arc. When it feels like the stone could fly straight forward and parallel with the water, loosen the grip with your thumb and let it roll, snapping your finger forwards hard.’