Page 60 of All Summer Long

‘I’ll teach you to ride him, if you want,’ Robinson said. ‘It’s easy enough. Kinda like dancin’, you just need to feel the rhythm and go with it. You couldn’t ask for a better first ride than this old boy.’

‘I’d like that,’ she said. Horse riding wasn’t something that she’d ever tried, but watching Robinson with Banjo over the last week made it look appealing. Caring for Banjo as a method of payment for something as glorious as the caravan seemed almost like robbery, because he was a gentle joy to be around and added rather than detracted from the glampsite. Looking at him, Alice had fanciful notions of wedding parties coming to stay, and of the bride riding Banjo to church with flowers twined in his mane. She could even rent out rooms in the house as well as in the gardens for bigger parties.

Robinson dropped down on the uncut grass of the meadow and lay flat on his back.

‘I don’t believe a word they say about British weather being awful,’ he said, peeling off his t-shirt and tucking it beneath his head as a makeshift pillow. He squinted up at her and patted the ground for her to lie down beside him.

Alice flopped down and propped herself up on one elbow to study his profile. His eyes were closed as if he were sleeping, and a smile hovered around the corners of his lips as if he were having the most delicious of dreams.

‘You sure brought your cowboy sunshine with you,’ she said softly, plucking a long blade of grass and using it to tickle Robinson’s bare chest.

‘I’ll leave it behind for you when I go,’ he said, a promise they both knew he couldn’t keep. He opened his eyes and looked at her when she brushed the frond of grass slowly across the skin above the waistband of his jeans.

‘I can always take them off if they’re in your way.’

She laughed lightly and shook her head.

‘Don’t want to startle Banjo.’

She looked towards the huge horse happily grazing at the far end of the meadow.

‘I think he’s happy here,’ she said, dropping back flat onto the grass.

Robinson rolled onto his side and took the slender blade of grass from her fingers.

‘Of course he is. He’s with you.’

Alice let his compliment settle over her, warmer than the sun’s rays. She jumped a little when he drew the grass along her arm from fingertip to shoulder.

‘Sunshine suits you,’ he said. ‘You look as if someone dipped you in gold dust.’

No one had ever made Alice feel the way Robinson could with a few uncensored words. He wore his unavailable heart on his sleeve and was always generous with his compliments. As confidence boosters went, he was right up there with losing a stone and pillar-box-red Chanel lipstick.

She laughed as he traced an intricate pattern from shoulder to shoulder across her body with the strand of grass.

‘What did you draw?’

Robinson flicked the grass out of his fingers and slid his hand up her thigh until he reached her cut-off shorts.

‘I didn’t draw. I wrote,’ he said.

Alice turned her head to look at him, shading her eyes from the sun.

‘What did you write?’

He leaned in and kissed the corner of her mouth.

‘My name,’ he said.

She wistfully wished he’d tattooed it in ink instead of invisible, blow-away-on-the-breeze letters.

‘I should probably pay you for your autograph then,’ she said, making light of it.

‘Only if you let me write it again in indelible ink,’ he murmured, his words too close to her own thoughts for comfort.

‘I think it probably breaks the rules of holiday romances to leave a permanent mark.’

‘Bit late for that,’ he said, sliding his hand up inside her vest, warm and sure on her skin. ‘You’ve already left your mark on me, Goldilocks.’

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