Page 29 of All Summer Long

‘Because the first one was kind of hot, wasn’t it?’ He bumped shoulders with her and she shrugged, smiling.

‘I can’t remember,’ she lied. ‘I’d had a glass or two of wine.’

‘You remember just fine, Goldilocks.’ His smile creased his cheeks and his eyes glittered in the dwindling light. ‘I can always remind you, if you need me to?’

His little finger toyed with hers where their hands lay flat between them on the deck, and the tiny movement was enough to distract her completely. He leaned a little closer and met her gaze, half joking and half serious.

‘You know, I think I do remember after all,’ she breathed, afraid he was going to kiss her again. Kissing Robinson again right now would be a bad idea. She was already emotional, she was entirely likely to drag him back to the Airstream and do things she’d regret in the morning.

Standing up, she dusted her jeans down with her hands, the camera safely slung around her neck.

‘I’m glad we’re friends again,’ he said, getting up too and walking with her towards the Airstream. Were they friends? He was alone here in England and she was really the only person he’d allowed into his life on any real level, so she was probably as close as it got to friends for him right now.

‘Want to talk about whatever had wound you up yesterday?’ she said, keeping it casual.

He kicked the dust with the toe of his boot as they crunched over the gravel path. ‘Not much to say really. I’m supposed to be someplace else and I don’t want to be there, not now or, the way I feel right now, ever again.’

‘Work, you mean? Or with your wife?’

‘Ex-wife,’ he corrected. ‘And no it wasn’t her turn to wind me up today. I mean she did, because just the thought of her winds me up pretty much every day, but this was work stuff.’

His description of his glittering career as a famous country music artist as ‘work stuff’ was just about the understatement of the year.

‘Do you have commitments you need to go home for?’

‘That’s just the thing, Alice. Home doesn’t feel like home any more.’ He shoved his hands down into his pockets as he walked, his arms stiff, his shoulders bunched. Everything about his stance said stressed. ‘Let’s just say I wasn’t doing so well there.’

‘And here? Are you doing better here?’ she ventured.

His mouth twisted. ‘Yes and no.’

As answers went, it was frustratingly vague. Alice opted for silence in the hope that he’d elaborate. She was in luck.

‘Being here, I have space. I can breathe, I can relax, I can forget about the shitty stuff. But in the back of my head I know it’s all still there waiting for me. Trouble’s kind of patient like that, you know? It can play the long game.’

Alice did know. She was becoming adept herself at burying her emotional problems underneath a landslide of to-do lists and plans in the hope that they’d be squashed so flat that they’d disintegrate without her needing to address them.

‘What kind of trouble are you in?’ she asked as they made their way through the trees. The residual daylight had pretty much gone now and the woodland had taken on its spindly nighttime shroud.

Robinson half laughed under his breath and shook his head, a hollow, joyless sound. ‘Ah, you know. The kind where if I don’t get my sorry ass back to Nashville and honour my commitments they’re gonna sue me halfway to hell and back.’

Wow. As ‘work stuff’ went, thatwaspretty stressful.

‘Gosh,’ she said.

Robinson laughed, softer this time. ‘Quite.’

Alice opened the caravan door. ‘Coffee?’

She didn’t know why she said it. Every last one of her instincts told her that asking him in was a reckless move, and yet she went ahead and did it anyway. Robinson Duff was turning out to be a man who switched her logical brain off and left her vulnerable, and that made him very dangerous indeed.

CHAPTER TWELVE

For his part, Robinson truly considered saying thanks but no thanks. Every last one of his instincts told him that spending time alone with her was unfair on both of them, and yet he went ahead and did it anyway. Alice McBride was turning out to be a woman who pressed the override switch in his head and put his body in charge, and that made her a very dangerous woman indeed.

‘Coffee would be good,’ he said. ‘Bourbon would be even better.’

Alice glanced over her shoulder at him as she led him in to the Airstream.

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