Heidi Rice - Summer At Willow Tree Farm - The Perfect Romantic Escape

She dragged her gaze away not wanting to get caught staring, but Art seemed unconcerned, or uninterested, busy trying to unfold the gown and put it on with one hand.

‘Here, let me.’ She took the gown and held it for him to thread his arms through. For once he didn’t protest, or insist he could do it himself.

She edged it up over his shoulders, standing on tiptoe – because even hunched over, his shoulders were impressive. Clearly spending hours on end rotary-blading things and doing whatever else was needed to keep a seventy-acre farm going was better for the male physique than pumping iron in a gym.

‘What?’

Her gaze snapped to his. And she realised she’d been caught staring.

What a shame those impressive shoulders came with his not-nearly-as-impressive personality.

‘Nothing.’ She sat on the moulded plastic chair in the corner of the room, grateful his distracting chest was now covered in the blue and red geometric cotton of the gown. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Like shit.’ He adjusted his hand on his lap. ‘I’m guessing I look pretty terrific in this outfit too?’

‘Not at all, the red triangles blend with the bloodstains beautifully.’

He gave a gruff cough, which might almost have been mistaken for a laugh.

A small amount of colour had returned to his face. Whatever had spooked him seemed to be passing. While he could hardly be described as comfortable, he didn’t look as if he wanted to bolt for the door.

‘You don’t have to hang around,’ he said. ‘I can make my own way back when I’m done.’

‘Uh-huh, were you planning to jog back to the farm then?’

He coughed again, coming even closer to a laugh. ‘Did anyone ever tell you, your bedside manner is rubbish?’

‘Good thing I never considered becoming a nurse then, isn’t it?’ she said and was rewarded with an actual honest to goodness chuckle this time, albeit rough enough to sound as if someone had been sandpapering his larynx.

‘You’re not wrong.’

The door opened and Dr Grant walked into the room, followed by an older woman dressed in bright blue nurse’s scrubs and wheeling a metal trolley laden with what Ellie assumed must be the supplies needed to stitch Art’s hand.

‘OK, Mr Dalton, Tina is going to give you a tetanus shot and something to numb your hand and then I’ll get to work,’ Dr Grant said.

Art straightened on the bed, making the gown slip off one shoulder.

Apparently, the entertainment portion of the afternoon was now officially over. Sympathy whispered through Ellie. However annoying he was, and however many times he’d been stitched up before, this was liable to be unpleasant. And from the tension on his face, he knew exactly how unpleasant.

Watching Art get tortured wouldn’t have bothered her nineteen years ago after the way things had ended between them. But as the doctor and her assistant injected him, cleaned and irrigated the nasty gash and finally proceeded to stitch him – while Art remained stoic and silent and uncomplaining throughout the whole ordeal – Ellie had to admit that seeing him in pain now actually did bother her, a little bit.

*

‘You are not driving. Are you bonkers?’ Ellie marched ahead of Art across the car park and ignored his beyond stupid suggestion.

‘Why not? I’m fine now. And I’m a safer driver than you are.’

‘You’re not fine.’ She clicked the locks with the key fob and flung open the door. Settling in the driver’s seat, she waited for Art to climb in on the other side. The mulish expression on his face didn’t bother her as much as the white bandage on his hand which covered thirty-two stitches. She knew this because she had counted every single one.

As he wrestled with the seat belt with his right hand, she remembered that he was left-handed. She turned on the ignition and left him to struggle with the seat belt on his own.

‘I can drive one-handed,’ he said. ‘And even one-handed, I’ve got a better chance of getting us back alive than you have.’

‘Hardly. You’ve been shot full of enough painkillers to fell an ox, plus driving will only open up the wound.’ She crunched the gears, shifted into reverse, and wheeled into a three-point turn. Art gripped the dash like an old woman. She ignored the not-so-subtle hint. ‘And even though that would totally serve you right,’ she added, ‘the good Dr Grant’s just wasted twenty minutes stitching you up.’ Twenty minutes that had felt like twenty years. ‘And I’m not going to let you undo all her hard work just because you’re an idiot.’

A dark brow hitched up his forehead. ‘Since when did you become my keeper?’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll be resigning the position as soon as is humanly possible.’ With that in mind she accelerated down the country lane that led to the town’s main street. ‘And anyway, this is my car, so you don’t get a say.’

He didn’t reply, finally having conceded defeat. Feeling magnanimous in victory, she eased her foot off the accelerator as they headed over the speed bumps on the outskirts of town, and took her time getting onto the roundabout, waiting for a space big enough not to require the need to play chicken with any articulated lorries.

They’d been driving along the A30 for a good ten minutes, before he finally spoke again. ‘Thanks for helping me out. The cut was worse than I thought.’

The admission sounded weary and grudging.

‘Just a tad,’ she said, unable to resist a smile at his frown.

They drove on, the road passing the newbuilds on the outskirts of Gratesbury to wind through a landscape of fields banked by high hedges.

His eyelids kept drifting to half-mast and then popping open again. She remembered Josh doing the same thing as a toddler, when he was exhausted but didn’t want to go to bed. The thought made her think of Art as a boy, and the terror on his face when they’d walk into the unit.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you have a phobia of hospitals?’

His eyelids jerked open. He stared at her, the slow blink making her aware of exactly how long his lashes were.

He had the most amazing eyes, the tawny hazelnut brown embedded with flecks of gold. The bloodshot quality added to the glittery sheen of the low-grade temperature the good Dr Grant had told her to keep an eye on – because, at some point during today’s drama, she had become Art’s keeper.

‘I haven’t got a phobia. I just don’t like them much,’ he said, but his gaze flicked away as he said it and she knew he was lying.

How about that? She could still tell if Art Dalton was or was not speaking the truth. The way she had all those years ago.

It was a heady feeling, like discovering a superpower she thought she’d lost.

She drove down the track that led to the farm, recalling their exchange in the treatment room before Dr Grant had returned to give Art his thirty-two stitches.

OK, maybe she wasn’t totally immune to Art’s non-charms. But there would be no more flirting, with or without abs. Handling the fallout from one disastrous relationship was more than enough incentive to keep her libido on lockdown for the next decade, let alone the rest of the summer.

Driving into the farmyard, with Art dozing in the passenger seat, Ellie spotted a woman busy loading a muddy four-by-four while a young girl danced around beside her.

Art jerked awake as Ellie braked. As he hauled himself out of the car, the woman rushed towards them, the little girl bouncing behind her.

‘Art, what the hell happened to your hand?’ The woman’s eyebrows drew together. Tall and slim, with her long mahogany-coloured hair tied back in a ponytail, she looked elegant even in an ensemble of faded jeans, a baggy T-shirt and wellington boots.