Free Second Thyme Around by Katie Fforde Page B

giggle. She turned and leant against the sink, biting her lip.
    ‘Perhaps you’re too scrupulous to be a television cook, Lucas.’
    He heard the laughter in her voice and strode towards her, bringing his hands down hard on her shoulders. ‘I suppose you think this is funny!’
    ‘Well, of course I do! It’s hilarious! You coming into my house, my kitchen, to do a cookery programme. You must see the funny side! Or have you completely lost your sense of humour?’
    It was important to make him laugh, then he might let her go. Having Lucas’s hands on her shoulders was unsettling. He always had had the ability to arouse her with the lightest, most innocent of touches. It seemed that he still had.
    His mouth twitched, first in one corner, and then it curled into a grin made more attractive by the fact that he tried to suppress it. ‘I suppose it is a little bizarre, and not something I would have imagined happening six months ago.’ His hands slipped off her shoulders, down her arms and away. ‘It must have been a shock for you, seeing me again after all these years.’
    Not as much of a shock as this note of concern in his voice. ‘Well, yes. But it must have been just as much of a shock for you.’
    ‘Not really. I knew Kitty lived in the area, after all. And I saw your name under Bonyhays Salads.’
    ‘Of course. But if I hadn’t delivered salads to you, you wouldn’t have looked me up?’
    ‘Why not? I know we parted on bad terms, but I would have hoped we could have got over that.’
    She turned away from him and put her hands into the sink, trying to make it look as if she was doing something. ‘Bad terms doesn’t really cover it, Lucas. You abandoned me for another woman, in the most hurtful circumstances possible.’
    ‘I know, and I’m not proud of it. But you’ve got over it, haven’t you? You seem fine.’
    She turned back to him. ‘Yes, of course I’m fine. But it’s no thanks to you, and you really couldn’t expect to swan back into my life and for me to forgive and forget.’
    ‘I didn’t say anything about coming back into your life,
Perdita. Just that I would have looked you up and hoped we could have been civil to each other.’
    ‘Then it’s a shame that’s obviously quite impossible, particularly as you’ve got yourself involved in a television fiasco which seems to need my co-operation!’
    ‘I can do without your co-operation! I can easily find another picturesque cottage where, possibly, you don’t have to do the washing-up on the floor! But can you do without the money? They’ll pay you for using your kitchen, though not much. They’ll give you something, and pay for all the vegetables they use.’
    ‘I run a flourishing business. I don’t need my life messed around by a television crew.’
    ‘If your business is so flourishing, why don’t you drive a half-decent van? Why don’t you have a cooker that works? Surely, even if you don’t cook, you’d like an oven to heat up your ready-meals.’
    ‘“Need” and “want” are different things! I have everything I need, and most of the things I want.’
    ‘Then buy a van.’
    ‘I don’t want to!’
    ‘But you do need to,’ he shot back at her. ‘And you can’t afford one.’
    ‘If I really needed, or wanted, a new van I could use the money you gave me.’ She hadn’t meant to mention this money. It was a symbol of a time of failure and misery in her life, and she had tried to blot it out of her consciousness. Somehow it flung itself into the conversation uninvited.
    Lucas frowned. ‘Then why the fuck don’t you?’
    ‘Because I would rather deliver my vegetables in a wheelbarrow or in a sack on my back than use a penny of your blood money – money you sent me to make yourself feel better about ditching me!’
    ‘I sent it because I thought you might need it! I could ill afford to do without it at the time! I should have known
that you would have fled back to dear Auntie Kitty and she would have picked up