Free The Green Hills of Home by Emma Bennet

moods, despite their bonding the previous evening, he was
now grouching at her again. He’d been made completely aware of Gwen’s home
situation before he left London. She’d done her best to be accommodating; she’d
put him up in her home and done everything she could to re-organise her shifts
at work so she’d have as much time working with him as possible.
    She appreciated that he had a job
to do, and that it was her book he was working so hard to complete, but she
felt he had to understand that she couldn’t be at his beck and call around the
clock and forget all her other responsibilities. From a practical point of view
her contract still hadn’t arrived from the publishers, and until it was all
signed, no advance would be arriving in her bank account; if she didn’t do at
least some shifts at the tearoom then she’d have no money to live on.
    Gwen was also beginning to feel
that absolutely nothing about her or her life were good enough for John. She’d
even felt embarrassed serving him a ham sandwich at lunchtime the day before,
worried that the ham and bread wouldn’t be up to the standards he was used to
in London. She knew it was partly her own insecurity as John hadn’t been
directly rude about anything, except possibly Oscar, but it didn’t help that he
seemed to have a permanent scowl on his face, that appeared to deepen whenever
something annoyed him, which was pretty often. Any food or beverage which Gwen
served, particularly coffee, seemed to cause this reaction, as did everything
Oscar did and the house’s plumbing, which was proving to be a source of endless
fascination and annoyance in equal measure.
    He was so intense all the time,
and extremely driven and focused! He wasn’t simply a workaholic: it almost felt
that he considered what he did had a higher purpose, that the company wasn’t so
much a job but something of veneration.
    She was grateful to be escaping
to the tearooms for a few hours and yet was surprised when she spent the
majority of her time away from John wondering what he was doing and whether he
was thinking about her.

Chapter 5
     
    John again found it very hard to
keep his temper with Gwen the following afternoon - she was infuriating and
completely unreasonable, and he was mad with himself for noticing how very
beautiful she looked when she was being obstinate.
    His mood wasn’t helped by his
feeling that he was completely out of the loop with events in the London offices, he felt he didn’t have the control he needed. He really shouldn’t be here:
the only place more remote would be the Outer Hebrides for goodness sake.
However, despite the farmhouse’s many shortcomings, he had to admit that
something about the place and its location touched a note in him.
    But that woman! He just didn’t
know how she managed to get under his skin so much.
    The trouble had started when Gwen
interrupted halfway through his explanation of why she should move a particular
paragraph to the end of the chapter they were working on. She’d apologised but
explained she’d be late to see her mother if she didn’t leave soon.
    "We have to get this chapter
done," he’d insisted.
    "I have to see my mother."
    "Missing one visiting time
wouldn’t be the end of the world!"
    "It would be to me."
    "The Earth does not revolve
around you Gwen."
    "I never said it did,"
she’d replied angrily.
    "I’m doing this to help you,"
he’d said, feeling exasperated.
    "No you’re not!" Gwen
had said, full of righteous indignation. "You’re doing it to make money
for your company."
    Before he’d had a chance to
reply, Gwen had continued, getting into her swing: "Your Company were made
aware that I need to visit my mother. I never hid that. I’ve been working all
day, and, if we need to, I will continue working when I get back, but now I’m
going." And with that she’d had marched out of the room.
     
     Upstairs, closing the door to
her bedroom, Gwen checked herself in the mirror. She was shaking