The Bookshop on the Corner (31 page)

She held his gaze in a single timeless, endless moment, an instant trembling in the heat, as though the world had pressed pause, as though she were a shy ballerina waiting to take the stage.

Then Lennox took a brief step backward and pushed the barn door closed behind him with a loud bang.

What happened next was so quick, it took her totally by surprise, even though she had decided, had clearly and deliberately chosen to be provocative, was thinking of nothing but the fact that this was what she wanted.

But even with that, the speed and ferocity of his kiss was overwhelming. He kissed her skillfully but hard, insistently, as if there was some biding fury in him that he had to work very, very hard to control.

It was by a vast margin the best kiss Nina had ever had. She kissed him back, furiously, realizing that up to this point in her
life, kisses had always been a prelude, a tease or an exploration, a precursor to what might or might not happen next.

This was not the case here. This kiss was several steps down the line from that; this was serious and purposeful, it was the real thing, and Nina felt the thrill go through her down to the bones.

And when they stopped, momentarily, with a huge rush of disappointment on her part, she felt sure he would apologize, like the gentleman she knew him to be, step back. Everything she knew about Lennox and his taciturn ways made her think that what came next would require discussion, negotiation, embarrassment, possibly; dinner, probably, and her heart sank.

Instead she simply whispered in his ear, “More.”

“Oh God,” she heard him groan, and he pulled back, breathing heavily, looking at her. Outside, there was noise.

“I have to . . . I have to see to the workers.”

Nina nodded, still staring at him.

“Later?” he said shortly, and she wondered why, all along, she had bothered about how little he spoke to her. It didn't feel to her like they needed words at all.

T
he high tea was agony. Or rather, in other circumstances, it would have been entirely marvelous.

The early sunset went down slowly in a bright blaze of pink and gold, and many of the farmhands' wives turned up with extra plates of food to share—great shining pies and sides of ham—as the hungry men and women came in from all around for the party. Huge jugs of cider were filled to the brim and emptied equally quickly; hunks of thick homemade bread with farm butter and local cheese were consumed on the side. Ben and large numbers of other local children ran in and out of the house, chasing the farm cat, who was unimpressed, giving food to Parsley, who was delighted, and stealing nips of cider.

Someone had brought a fiddle, and couples danced up and down the courtyard; songs were sung and jokes were made. Nina and Lennox simply stared at each other, utterly oblivious to everything around them, clumsy and unfocused. Nina felt sure everyone could guess exactly what was going through her mind; she found herself blushing at regular intervals, utterly unable to
concentrate, always aware of where he was standing and which way he was facing and how long she would have to wait until the instant they managed to steal themselves away.

At last the dishes started to be cleared away, and by mutual agreement, as soon as was even vaguely polite, they left the revelers and headed to her barn, with its windows facing away from the farmhouse and other prying eyes.

Nina wondered briefly if the sight of the flouncy curtains, the expensive kitchen, the immaculate Scandinavian bed might not make Lennox broody and sad, but still he said nothing; the second they were inside, he grabbed her again and kissed her breathless. Then he led her upstairs and took off her clothes, quickly, expertly, and when they were both naked, he laid her down on the bed.

“You,” she said in surprise, staring at him. “It's you.”

He held her gaze and looked back at her, his hands caressing her body.

“I think it is,” he said wonderingly, almost as surprised as she was. “I didn't . . . I didn't mean this to happen. I just . . . I can't stop thinking about you. Everything about you.”

He held off, his hands on either side of her face.

“The look you get when you're reading in your van, and your feet are up and you sit so still, and your face is alight, and I don't know where you are; you could be anywhere, so far away, off in a part of your mind I'll never get to . . . It drives me crazy. The way you just came here, just got up, changed your entire life . . . I mean, my family's been here for four generations. It would never have occurred to me to do what you did, just to start over and do something different. Amazing. You're such a tiny thing . . . you'd never think you had it in you. And that train driver . . . that drove me crazy. I'm sorry. I was jealous.”

Nina's heart felt like it would burst.

“I couldn't . . . I couldn't let myself . . . I couldn't handle another stupid crush, another waste of everything that didn't go anywhere and just left me feeling stupid, and you did treat me like an idiot . . .”

“Because
I
am an idiot.”

Nina closed her eyes. “Kiss me, please. Right now. Hard. The way you do.”

His face darkened. “Kate,” he said. Nina winced. “Kate . . . she didn't like how I was in bed. Said I was too rough.” His face took on an uncharacteristically vulnerable cast.

Nina looked at him, her eyes misting over slightly as she felt a slight cracking in him.

“Everyone is different,” she said, softly but clearly. “Everyone is different in what they like. Which is okay. And what I like, I think . . . is you. Very much.”

“You don't look the type,” he muttered, plainly embarrassed.

“You can't tell anything about anyone just by looking at them,” said Nina pertly, and stuck her tongue out, which finally elicited a smile from him.

“No,” he said. “I suppose you can't. Can we stop talking now?”

And they did. Afterward, there was no laughing or joking or small talk. They simply leaned against each other, out of breath, his head collapsed on the side of her neck, the bristles against her soft skin, a little overwhelmed, almost scared, by what they had done, Nina's heart still beating fast, the tension relieved momentarily but even now building up again, her chest stained a deep red.

That had been something else altogether, a surprise, something inside herself she didn't even know was there.

“Can I stay?” he whispered finally.

“Yes,” said Nina abruptly, and she didn't say thank you and she didn't say please, because this was a very different Nina in a very different space, and she didn't know how long it would last.

His face, she realized as he tumbled into sleep for a brief interlude, did not relax in slumber as most people's did. She couldn't look at him and admire the prettiness, or the boy he once was, or see a deeper softness beyond his harsh interior, like one could imagine doing with a lover.

No, this was what he was: the steely jaw, the look of utter concentration, whether on the farm or on her. She stared at him in fascination, until he woke up, without a second of confusion, and pulled on her wrists.

“Nina,” he said, as if he was starving for her, and he was, he absolutely was, and as the fiddles and the partying went on late into the night, so did they.

B
y the fourth day after the party, it was getting ridiculous. They couldn't go on like this. For starters, she was going to end up in the hospital, and bankrupt. And second, they hadn't spoken at all about what they were actually doing, and that couldn't go on indefinitely.

Because she couldn't help herself. She couldn't think of anything or anyone else at all. She couldn't handle money, she couldn't be trusted to work; she recommended nothing but Anaïs Nin, which raised the minister's wife's eyebrows (although she notably didn't return it).

There wasn't a time of day when he wasn't either working or coming back to find her, wherever she was, which once involved him walking into the Women's Institute book swap and telling Nina with a completely straight face that his Land Rover required a tow from the van and could she come at once? Nina assumed, given the sensibleness of the nice ladies discussing Second World War novels, that they all thought this was perfectly normal and she didn't notice for a second the raised
eyebrows and titters as she left and he drove her the shortest distance possible out of town where they couldn't be seen and took her roughly and without preliminaries behind a tree, and she yelled so hard she thought she might die.

Nina found it extraordinary. For a man so closed up in himself, so uncommunicative, he was wildly inventive and varied as a lover, and extraordinarily passionate. It was as if everything he couldn't say he could express in other ways. This was how she was getting to know him, getting to the heart of him. Not through long chats or fancy poetry or shared interests, but through the physicality of him, the same way he worked at one with animals, or the landscape, and never felt the need to question why; he was simply a part of the earth, and so was this.

And she was falling in love with him, she realized anxiously, day by day; she was learning to speak his language, and she couldn't help it, or help herself; she was delirious with it, heady, desperate for him in a way that made her feel utterly vulnerable, and she knew that if he didn't feel the same way, she wouldn't be able to bear it.

“We're so different,” she said on the phone. “Honestly, it's . . . I don't know. I don't know. It might just be sex.”

“Oh my God, that's everything,” breathed Surinder. “Tell me more.”

“I don't want to tell you more,” said Nina. “First, you're disgusting, and second, it'll just make me miss it and go over there, and if I don't get some sleep, I'm going to crash the van.”

“I thought he'd be like that as soon as I saw him,” said Surinder.

“You didn't.”

“I totally did. He's the type. I could just tell. All buttoned up and devastatingly sexy underneath. All that repressed emotion.”

“Stop it!” said Nina. “I can't bear it. I have absolutely no idea what he feels and it's driving me bananas.”

“Oh, sweetie,” said Surinder, contrite. “I'm sorry. I didn't realize . . . I didn't realize you'd really fallen for him.”

“I haven't,” said Nina, panicking. “I haven't. I can't. I won't.”

“Right, that's why you sound completely normal and unfussed when you talk about him. Come on. Did you feel like this about Marek?”

“No,” said Nina. “But I didn't sleep with Marek.”

“Do you think it would have been like this?”

Nina paused before she spoke. “Nothing has ever been remotely like this.”

“Well then.”

“We haven't even discussed his ex. He's probably still in love with her. We haven't discussed
anything
.”

“Are you absolutely a hundred percent sure you're not overthinking this?”

“I might be homeless soon,” said Nina, looking around the lovely little barn, tears plopping onto the expensive sheets. “Kate's probably awesome. I'm probably just a local distraction. Convenient, that's all. Maybe I've just rushed stuff.”

“It's not your fault. If he's a dick, you need to deal with that. If he's a nice guy going through a hard time, well. Maybe he's worth hanging on for.”

“I think he's ruined me,” said Nina in a small voice. She expected Surinder to tell her to stop being so melodramatic. But she didn't.

D
o you want to go for a walk?”

Lennox looked at her strangely. “A what?”

It was five thirty on a clear, windy Sunday morning. Lennox was getting dressed. Nina was lying exhausted, happily weary, in bed.

“A walk. You know. Enjoy nature and the countryside?”

He blinked. “By walking up and down it?”

“Uh-huh!”

“But that's what I do all day.”

Nina sat up. “Well, let me come! It'll be, like, an outing.”

Lennox frowned. They hadn't, Nina was more than aware,
been
anywhere. Not to the pub, not to the bakery to get delicious sausage rolls and sit outside kicking their heels against the wall like the teenagers did, pastry flaking down for Parsley to grab. They hadn't jumped in the Land Rover and gone for a romantic picnic, or walked hand in hand along the beach . . .

She looked at Lennox shrugging into a clean twill shirt. It
had to be, she had figured out, several degrees below freezing before he added a jacket. At the door, he leaned down to lace himself into his heavy work boots. He poured coffee from the pot on the stove into an insulated cup; he'd eat breakfast later. Nina watched him as he prepared to leave in silence.

“Not coming then?” he grunted eventually.

Nina leaped up. “Yes!” she said, piling her clothes on enthusiastically. She grabbed her coat from the peg and chased him outside.

Dawn was breaking, and it was bitterly cold outside. Parsley galloped cheerfully out of his kennel and Nina made a big fuss over him. Lennox disappeared back inside and reappeared with a second cup of hot, sweet black coffee that he passed to her wordlessly.

The waking birds chirruped in the hedges as they passed by. Early morning mist hovered over the fields. Wrapped up snugly, with a steaming coffee cup warming her hands, Nina scampered to keep up with Lennox's long strides as he marched ahead, popping his head into the cows' barn to make sure milking was going ahead properly—Ruaridh nodded quickly when he saw him—then on up to the high fields to check on the sheep's grass and feed. The sun was rising pink in the mist over the far hills, and Nina gasped to see it, but Lennox was simply moving on through his morning: checking that one of the stone walls wasn't crumbling too much, examining a fence for deer damage. As he did so, Nina saw, a few meters away, a fawn, brown spotted, its head lifting and nose twitching in excitement. It gazed at her for a second, its huge brown eyes luminous, then turned and bounded away.

“Whoa!” she said. “Did you see that?”

“A deer?” said Lennox incredulously. “Can't get rid of the buggers.”

“But did you see how lovely it was?”

“Bloody protected species,” said Lennox.

“You have no romantic soul,” said Nina, rather despairingly, watching as he carefully fixed a tiny hole in the fence with a spare piece of wire and some pliers he'd pulled out of a Swiss army knife in his pocket. He looked at her, and she realized she had made a mistake, that she might not have been the first person to say that to him.

“Mmm,” he said.

“I don't mean that,” said Nina. “I just thought the deer was beautiful.”

Lennox crossly extended his arm. “You know, the trees from here all the way up to Sutherland . . . they're centuries old. Go back to Mary, queen of Scots, and even earlier. And they used to house grouse and hedgehogs and golden eagles and millions of midges and bugs. But oh no, the deer were the prettiest. Everyone watched the film and thought deer were cute and they were the ones that had to stay. So now they overrun everything. They eat the tree roots and they eat the seeds and they eat pretty much everything, which means there are fewer and fewer of those ancient forests left, because the deer destroy all the ancient habitats. So there are no robins and no cuckoos and no adders and no woodlice. But they're not as pretty as Bambi, right?”

Nina looked at him. “I didn't realize,” she said.

“Didn't read it in one of those books o' yours?”

They headed back to the farm in silence, Nina desperately worried.

“I'm sorry,” she said, back at the farmyard gates.

“What about?” he said.

“Saying you weren't romantic.”

“Oh,” he said. “I'm not. You coming in?”

“Yes,” Nina said. “Yes. I want to . . . Can we talk?”

Lennox sighed as she followed him into the pretty sitting room. “You wouldn't rather . . .”

“What don't you want to talk about?” said Nina. “Is it . . . is it your ex?”

Lennox looked weary. “Nina, must we have this conversation?”

Nina looked at him for a long time. Then she shook her head.

“Obviously not,” she said. “Sorry. I thought this meant something. But clearly it doesn't. When you still can't even say if I'm going to get my marching orders any minute.” She stood up to leave.

“Oh Lord, Nina. I'm not even a single man yet. You must know it's out of my hands.”

“So this isn't anything to you? Fine.”

He looked at her, shaking his head in amazement that she would even talk like this.

“Me neither,” said Nina, regretting the words before they were out of her mouth.

There was a very long pause. Lennox stood up slowly, went to the door and put his boots back on.

“Don't . . . don't go,” said Nina, looking at his broad back in consternation. If there was one thing she knew about him, one tiny thing he'd let slip about himself, it was how vulnerable
he'd been after Kate had left him. And what had she done but go straight for the heart of that vulnerability, take what he had offered her and reject it for not being enough, just like Kate had.

“I didn't . . . I didn't mean anything. I didn't.”

“I know,” said Lennox gruffly. “It's all about the house. But really you want the hearts and flowers and everything like that. That's what you think is important.”

“It isn't! I don't think like that at all!” She looked at him. “Will you . . . do you want to come over and eat later?”

“Ruaridh and I will probably eat at Alasdair's,” he said, not catching her eye.

She watched him go, and something rose in her, something that threatened to overwhelm her, a flood of emotion and pain. As he ducked through the doorway, she said his name briefly—his first name. She hadn't even known it until he'd told her.

“John,” she said quietly.

But although he stiffened for a second, he did not turn back.

“You're an idiot.”

“Shut up, I know. He is too, though.”

“You were one first. Why did you have to push?”

“Maybe it's better I know now that he's a sullen bastard.”

“Oh for God's sake, you knew he was like that anyway. Neens, you wouldn't know the real thing if it came up and spat in your face.”

“I wouldn't put that past him either.”

“Nina, WAKE UP!” yelled Surinder, whom she'd woken up. “It's not about fricking romantic picnics and moonlit walks and
storybook stuff! This is real life. Yes, he's difficult and grouchy. He's going through a divorce. He's also sexy, solvent, and nice, and until about half an hour ago, he seemed very into you.”

“Oh God.”

“I'm coming up.”

“You can't possibly have any more annual leave.”

“Mmm,” said Surinder.

“What?”

“Nothing,” said Surinder. “They owe me, that's all.”

“Don't come up. What could you do by being here?”

“Hang out? Buy ice cream to cheer you up? Smack you on the head and tell you to stop being such an idiot?”

“Maybe he'll come over,” said Nina hopefully.

“He doesn't seem the type to beg for forgiveness,” said Surinder.

And Surinder was right.