Free Lightning Encounter by Anne Saunders Page B

There’s a park nearby. We can have a meal alfresco style.’ He elaborated invitingly: ‘A picnic lunch. Won’t that be fun? Much better than a stuffy old—’
    â€˜It’s not the car. I’m all right,’ she gulped.
    â€˜All right! All right, she says!’ His hand clapped across his forehead in exaggerated disbelief. ‘After what you’ve been through, I’m a brute, a four headed monster for even suggesting . . . I mean, I should know better than anybody. I was there. I dragged you clear.’ His sympathy washed over her like balm; she wallowed in it, she spread her arms in it, she tasted it in her mouth and savoured it on her tongue, and some of it trickled into her throat to thicken her voice. ‘Do you mind if we get in the car and away from here. Before the flood gates open and I make a right spectacle of myself.’
    She held back until they were parked in a quiet lane some three miles to the east of Todbridge. Then it was all up with her. A severely held barricade collapsed and she wept until there wasn’t a tear left in her.
    Mitch was marvellous in the role of comforter, administering soothing words, supplying her with a large clean handkerchief, her own being a useless, sodden, tightly screwed ball, offering her the use of his shoulder. His shoulder she declined, not without regret, because it looked wide and comfortable. But she had no intention of letting misery drive her into a man’s arms. All the same she tried to convey her gratitude for his able handling of an unpleasant task. A regular envoy of mercy, light on tact perhaps, but offering sympathy with a lavish hand.
    So kind of him. It wasn’t his fault she felt blotchy-eyed and wretched, and filled with self-loathing for creating such a scene. He was wonderful. She was tempted to confide all, the true reason for her conduct, but her misery made her maladroit and she couldn’t be sure of finding the words. Besides which, enough is enough. So, contriving a light tone, she beseeched: ‘Any chance of conjuring up some coffee? I’ve got a raging thirst.’
    He produced a flask with the dexterity of a magician. He gave her his own pottery mug and he used the plastic vacuum flask cup.
    â€˜This is good,’ she complimented. ‘Did your wife make it for you?’
    â€˜I made it myself,’ he said, answering only one part of her double edged question. ‘Which is not quite what you wanted to know?’
    â€˜No,’ she admitted unequivocally, even smiling at her own unabashed curiosity.
    â€˜No wife, Karen. The nearest I got was a fiancée.’
    â€˜But not any more?’ No use falling at the first fence.
    â€˜She went away.’
    â€˜Oh.’ Perhaps she should have fallen at the first fence, after all.
    â€˜A long way away. You could say she passed beyond the concept of wordly things.’
    â€˜I’m sorry.’
    â€˜Yes.’ He knuckled his hands, bringing his thumbs together, holding on to something—thought? Reason? ‘It was a bad business. She was too young to . . . too young.’ His voice cracked mid sentence, died, came back with vigour. ‘So you see, we share a common bond. We have both suffered. Shall we cheer one another up?’ He was talking too loud, too fast, and his eyes were heavy with pain. He had suffered. The roles shifted. Now she was the comforter.
    â€˜I should like that,’ she said gravely.
    He countered: ‘Ian won’t approve.’ His eyes narrowed. In taunt? Or speculation? All she knew was that at the mention of that name, some of the fire and vitality that had drained out of her, oozed back.
    â€˜I only work for him. My private life is my own. I don’t defer to Ian, or anybody.’
    His glance slanted in her direction. The pain had gone and was supplanted by a look of triumph, of undisguised caprice. It dried her mouth and gave her the feeling she had been cleverly