Page 77 of Coming Home to Wishington Bay
‘Ha! I’m not. You already took some of the blame for being so full of yourself about how I’d never be able to tackle you. And no backsies.’
He might have rolled his eyes. It was hard to tell.
‘Do you have an ice pack? You’re supposed to ice these things. I know that much.’
‘I’ve got a frozen ready meal. That’ll do for now.’
‘You can’t put a ready meal on your face! Just go and wash the blood off and then come back. I can at least cook you dinner tonight to make up for it all, and I’ve got a proper ice pack in the freezer so you can just sit and rest with that on it for a bit while I get on with things.’
‘You don’t have to do that, Holly. It was an accident.’ He thought about that for a moment. ‘Sort of.’
‘It was!’ I agreed, quickly and then saw his point. ‘Sort of. And I know I don’t have to do it. I was actually going to see if you were free this evening anyway.’
‘Really?’ He looked more pleased than I expected and I felt a little rush of unexpected happiness at the reaction.
‘Yes. I thought maybe I could do a little swotting up on you.’
‘Swotting up?’
‘Yes. You already know way too much about me but I don’t know that much about you.’
‘Oh, I have a feeling Gigi told you plenty more than you needed to know.’ He laughed.
‘OK. Some. But still. There’s probably still more I should know, that I would already know if we had actually been dating the length of time we’re supposed to have been.’
‘That is true. Although, we’re both so busy, it’s not always easy to get the chance to talk as much as we want to.’
‘Ooh!’ I grinned, pointing a finger. ‘That’s a good one. I like it.’
‘It might be useful to pull out in an emergency at least.’
‘Please come back and let me put some ice on that and have dinner. I picked up some of those handmade dog treats from that little pet shop in the village for Bryan and thought he could have one for pudding.’
Gabe looked down at his dog. ‘Mate, you should have waited until this one found you instead of me. Lap of luxury, you’d have had.’
I laughed. ‘I think he’s doing pretty well already.’ We both smiled down at the little dog who was trying to bite flower heads off some of the wild flowers growing at the edge of Gigi’s fence.
‘Please come, Gabe.’
He looked up. ‘Thank you. I’d like that. I’ll just go and shower and change and grab the mutt’s stuff. Won’t be long.’
‘OK. Be careful.’
‘Promise.’
Chapter 14
‘How come you have an – ow – ice pack anyway?’ he asked as I pointed him towards the sofa and laid it gently across his nose. Now that he’d washed the oceans of blood away, all that was left was a bit of a red patch and although I still felt bad, at least it no longer looked like I’d been after him with a kitchen knife.
‘Oh, one of the drawers upstairs had a loose side so I thought I’d put a couple more tacks in it before I set about painting, and I sort of missed the tack on one swing.’
‘Sort of?’
‘Entirely.’
‘Ah.’
‘Yes. I had a bag of peas in the freezer so that did for that particular escapade but I thought I’d get a proper thing in ready in case there were any more incidents. This, admittedly, wasn’t one of the scenarios I’d imagined it might be used for though.’
