Love Me

Episode 6

There must be a break in the fence somewhere—the new fence which he had just

severely depleted his carefully hoarded bank balance to buy—which meant...

There had been rumours about rustlers being in the area; other farmers had

reported break-ins and losses.

Once he had seen Kelly settled at the house he would have to come back out

and check the fencing.

Kelly winced as the Land Rover hit a rut in the road, sitting up and just about

managing to suppress a sharp cry of pain—or at least she thought she had

suppressed it until she heard David asking her curtly, ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing... I’ve got a headache, that’s all,’ she stressed offhandedly, but her

face flushed as she saw the look he was giving her and she realised that he

wasn’t deceived.

‘A headache?’ he queried dryly. ‘It looks more like a migraine to me. Have

you got some medication for it or...?’

‘It isn’t a migraine,’ Kelly denied, adding reluctantly, ‘It’s... I... It’s a stress

headache,’ she admitted in an angry rush of words. ‘I...I get them occasionally.

The travel...flying...’

David’s mouth hardened as he listened to her.

‘What’s happened to you, Kelly?’ he asked her quietly. ‘Why should it be so

difficult for you to admit to being vulnerable...human...? What is it that pushes

you, drives you, forces you to make such almost superhuman demands on yourself?

Anyone else, having flown across the Atlantic and driven close on fifty

miles without a break, would have chosen to rest and relax a little bit before

starting to work, but not you...’

‘That may be the way, but it’s different in Usa,’ Kelly told him

sharply. ‘There, people are rewarded, praised, for fulfilling their potential and

for—’

‘Driving themselves into such a state of exhaustion that they make themselves

ill?’ David challenged her. ‘I thought that Nichole was supposed to...’ He stopped,

not wanting to put into words, to make a reality, the true relationship he knew

existed between Kelly and her boss. ‘I thought he cared about you...valued

you...’ he finished carefully instead.

Kelly was sitting upright now, ignoring the pounding pain in her head as she

glared belligerently at David.

Nichole doesn’t...he isn’t...’

She stopped, shaking her head. How could she explain to David of all people

about the thing that drove her, the memories and the fears? As a teenager she had

done so many foolish things, and even let down the people who had loved and

supported her; her involvement with Jeny was something she knew she would

always regret.

She hadn’t known at the time, of course, just what he was. In her innocent

naiveté she had never guessed that he was anything other than someone who had

bought a handful of recreational drugs to pass on to people at rave parties.

When she had run away from university, though, to join Jeny and the band

of New Age travellers who had invaded her brother’s lands, she had quickly

learned just what a mistake she had made, and she knew that she would always

be grateful to Jack and his wife Mollie, not just for the fact that they had helped

her to extricate herself from a situation she had very quickly grown to fear, but

also for the fact that they had supported her, believed in her, accepted her

acknowledgement that she had made a mistake and given her the opportunity to

get her life back on track.

She and Jeny had never actually been lovers, although she knew that very

few people would believe that, nor had she ever used drugs; but she had been

tainted by his lifestyle, had had her eyes opened painfully to certain harsh

realities of life, and after Jack had interceded for her with her mother and with

the university authorities, getting her a place at Assar where she had been able

to complete her education, she had promised herself that she would pay him and

Elly back for their kindness and their love and support by showing the world and her detractors just how worthy of that support she was.

At Assar she had gained a reputation as something of a recluse and a swot;

dates and parties had been strictly out of bounds so far as she was concerned and

her dedication had paid off with excellent exam results.

And now, just as she had once felt the need to prove herself to Jack and

Elly she felt a corresponding need to prove herself worthy of Nichole’s trust in

her professional abilities. It was true that sometimes she did drive herself too

hard...but the scornful verbal sketch of herself that David had just drawn for her

quite illogically hurt.

Given that she had striven so hard to be considered wholly professional, to be

capable and strong, it was quite definitely illogical, she knew, to wish forlornly

that David might have adopted a more protective and less critical attitude towards

her, that he might have shown more concern, some tenderness, some...

‘Why the hell didn’t you say you weren’t feeling well?’

David’s curt demand broke into her thoughts, underlining their implausibility,

their stupidity, their dangerous vulnerability.

‘Why should I have done?’ Kelly countered defensively, adding tersely, ‘I

hardly think that either the Trust or the owners of the properties it acquires

would thank me for wasting both time and consequently money by bringing up

the subject of my own health during business discussions. You and I may know

one another from the past, David, but so far as I am concerned the fact that we

have dealings with one another in the present is entirely down to the business

and professional relationship between us.’

It was several seconds before David bothered to respond to her unrehearsed but

determinedly distancing little speech, and for a moment Kelly thought that he

was actually going to ignore what she had said, but then he turned towards her

and said, ‘So what you’re saying is that it’s to be purely business between us, is

that it?’

It took every ounce of courage that Kelly possessed, and then some, for her to

be able to meet the look he was giving her full-on, but somehow or other she

managed to do so, even if the effort left her perilously short of breath and with

her heart pounding almost as painfully as her head, She agreed coolly, ‘Yes.’

David was the one to look away first, his face hardening as he glanced briefly at

her mouth before doing so.

‘Well, if that’s what you want, so be it,’ he told her crisply, returning his

attention to his driving.

His response, instead of making her feel relieved, left her feeling... What? Disappointed that he hadn’t challenged her, hadn’t given her the opportunity

to...to what? Argue with him? Why should she want to? What was it she felt she

had to prove? What was it she wanted to be given the opportunity to prove?

Angry with herself, Kelly shook her head. There was nothing, of course. She

had made her point, said what she wanted to say and now David knew exactly how

she viewed their working relationship and exactly how she viewed him. He

could be in no doubt that, were it not for the fact that he was the owner of a

property the Trust had decided to acquire, she would have no cause, nor any

wish, to be involved with him.

Up ahead of her she could see a grove, a small wooded area; David drove into it

and through it towards the mellow high red-brick wall and through its open

gates.

The house which lay beyond them took Kelly’s

breath away.

She was used to grand and beautiful properties, to elegance of design, to

scenery and settings so spectacular that one had to blink and look again, but this

was something else.

This was a house as familiar to her as though she had already walked every

one of its floors, as though she knew each and every single one of its rooms, its

corners. This was a house, the house she had created for herself as a girlhood

fantasy. A house, the house, the home which would house and protect the family

she so much longed to be a part of.

Totally bemused, she couldn’t drag her gaze away from its red-brick walls,

her professional eye automatically noting the symmetrical perfection of its

windows and the delicacy of the pretty fanlight above the doorway. An

ancient wisteria clothed the facing wall, its trunk and branches silvery grey

against the rich warmth of the brick; its flowering season was now over but its

soft green tendrils of leaves were coolly restful to her aching eyes.

Prior to her mother’s second marriage to Jack’s father, they had lived in a

smart apartment —her mother had been a very social person,

involved, as she still was, in a good many charities and a keen bridge player, but

Kelly had never really felt comfortable or at home in the elegant Australia flat.

Before his death her father had owned a large house in one of Australia’s squares

and Kelly still missed the freedom that living there had given her.

To comfort herself she had created her perfect house and the perfect family to

go with it, mother, father, daughter—herself, plus a sister for her to play with

and a brother too, along with grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. It had been the house that she had given most of her mental energy and

imagination to lovingly creating, though. A house for a family, a house that

wrapped itself lovingly and protectively around you...a house with enough land

for her to have a pony. A house... The house... This house...! David had stopped the Land Rover. Lily she got out, unable to take her eyes

off the house, barely aware of David’s expression as he watched her.

Just for a second, seeing that luminous bemused expression on her face, he

had been transported back in time...to a time when she had looked at him like

that, a time when...

Grimly he reminded himself of what Kelly had just said, of the terms she had

just set between them. She had made it more than plain, if he had needed it

underlining, which he had not, that the only reason she was here in his life was

because of her job and that, given the choice, she would far rather be working

alongside someone else...anyone else.

The gravel crunched beneath Kelly’s feet as she walked slowly, as if in a

dream, towards the Rectory’s front door.

Already she knew what would lie beyond it—the soft-toned walls of the

hallway with its highly polished antique furniture, its glowing wooden floors, its

rugs and bowls of country-garden flowers. In her mind’s eye she could see it all

as she herself had created it, smell the scent of the flowers...see the contented

look in the eyes of the cat who basked illegally on the rug, lying there sunning

himself in a warm beam of sunshine, ignoring the fact that his place and his

basket were not here but in the kitchen.

Automatically her hand reached out for the door handle and then she realised

what she was doing. Self-consciously she stepped back, turning her head away

so that she didn’t have to look at David as he stepped past her to unlock the door.

It was cruelly ironic that David, of all people, should own this house that so

closely epitomised all that she herself had longed for in a home as a young girl.