Just the Thought of You Ch. 02

No, I wouldn't think about that. Just concentrate, Steph.

I grabbed my largest overnight duffel bag and started piling random things on the bed. Why were none of my nice things clean? I looked down in dismay at what I was wearing. The pictures had shown dainty little country lanes and lots and lots of green. Which meant mud. Skirts and blouses were out.

I stripped off and hauled on my favourite black jeans instead, digging through my sock drawer for anything actually resembling a pair of warm socks. A t-shirt and cardigan would have to suffice. This wasn't a fashion show, I reminded myself.

I stopped and regarded myself in the mirror. Flushed cheeks, hair floating out at a crazy angle. Yeah. This was really going to entice the guy to fall for me. Off came the t-shirt and cardy. A frantic pawing through my closet yielded a pale blouse with soft detailing around the neckline. Shivering, I conceded that the cardigan could stay, but picked out a long one with a belt that hadn't been munched on by moths all winter. I nodded to myself in the mirror, smoothing my rebelling hair, satisfied that I wouldn't look like an entire train wreck.

Oh shit. Trains! I checked my clock. How could it be after noon already? I would just have to get to the station and hope for the best.

* * * * *

Tooth brush? Check. Clean underwear? Check. I drummed my thumbs against my thighs, eyes glued to the arrivals and departure boards. Deodorant? Damn it! I eyed the closest pharmacy along the far side of the station. Did I dare risk it? Not enough time.

The pale afternoon light filtered through the domed curve of the cavernous Victorian roof. Around me, everyone was walking at a pace, trundling their suitcases, gripping their briefcases, clutching papers under their arms. Everyone was moving purposefully, confidently, with direction. It only made me feel more lost. What did I think I was doing anyway? I had no way of knowing what sort of reception I would have when I showed up on the doorstep. No way of knowing if it would just make matters worse instead of better. But I had to take the chance, didn't I?

I blinked my eyes, trying to relieve the strain of watching for the boards to reveal the track I'd have to run to if I wanted to catch my train. I examined my feet again. My low-heeled ankle-boots would have to do. Flats were out, knowing the mud-puddles I was likely to encounter. Trainers were just...vile. I'd chucked my old worn pair into the bag at the last minute. Just in case I ended up hiking the breadth of Dartmoor in search of his damned cottage. I dragged the map out of my pocket again, tracing the small, sparse lines of the rural track leading to the little red marker. Dread rolling around in my stomach. He really had picked something out the way, hadn't he. As in, completely uninhabited.

Something unintelligible came barking out of the intercom. Shit! The boards. I scanned them again. There it was. London Paddington to...to...yes! Newton Abbott. Track 4. I jogged to the barriers, fumbled my ticket into the slot, and I was through. I had to pass several first-class carriages before I found one I could get on, but I was soon slumped in a seat, my bag clutched in my arms. All I could do was sit there, head resting back against the seat. And breathe, Steph. You did it.

* * * * *

Two and a half hours, the guy at the ticket booth had said. More like two and a half years. Endless fields slipped past. Villages, flanked by expanses of perfectly tended garden allotments. Meadows filled with herds of daydreaming cows and the odd retired pony. Everything got greener. The villages grew further apart. It got darker. A lot darker.

The further south-west we travelled, the larger and more expansive the clouds were growing. Umbrella? Shit. That's what you get for packing in a hurry.

I pulled out my Austen book, having remembered that at least, but I couldn't read. The words all clumped together on the page, meaningless. When I'd sat reading the same paragraph for the third time, I sighed and dropped it back into my bag. There was nothing for it. All I could do was sit there. Drawn inexorably towards a fate I'd only half-chosen. Yes, I'd been the one to get on the train. But what drew me was some other thing. Was it love? I didn't really know for certain. Just that it was bigger than anything I'd felt before. There was a inescapable certainty about it. As if it had known before I had, and it was now sitting there, in the empty seat across from me, informing me of the contractual terms of what I'd signed up for. This love thing cost so much more than I'd ever bargained for.

I let the cage door open just a crack. Closed my eyes and let the memory of him slip through into my mind. Just that one time, that look in his eye. It had told me everything I needed to know. It said more than he'd meant to say to me. It was the sort of look you could die for. Just to see it again was worth the risk. And I had everything to lose.

* * * * *

I woke with a start and a jolt of panic. The train was slowing, waking me out of a muddy haze. When had I fallen asleep? My eyelids felt like I'd left them open to dry out or something, then stung as they watered. It took a few blinks before I could read the sign on the station platform. Shit. We were here.

* * * * *

"What do you mean, the bus only runs on Saturdays?" I stared, dumbfounded at the perspiring, chinless man in blue behind the ticket counter. Seriously? Who only runs a bus on a Saturday?

He shrugged, calm and unconcerned. "You could catch a cab?"

A cab. Okay, I could that. It might cost me my life-savings, but I could do it. I turned my back on him and started walking towards the door. After a few steps I stopped. What was I doing? I didn't know the first thing about cabs out here. Irritation and the edge of anxiety fuelled me as I turned on my heel and made a beeline back to the damp man behind the glass divider. "You couldn't possibly call me one, could you?" I said in my sweetest tone.

He huffed a bit, but pulled a few cards from below the counter and got on the phone.

I tapped my fingers against the scratched laminate of the ticket counter. What I could see of the sky through the station doors didn't bode well. Dark was approaching quickly, and the deep grey of the low-hanging clouds was not good.

Eventually Mr No-Chin nodded to me, receiver still to his ear. He pointed to the doors and mouthed, 'Two minutes'.

I nodded my thanks, hauling my bag straps further up my shoulder. Somehow it weighed about thirty pounds heavier than when I'd left the house.

I wandered out through the station doors onto the pavement. There were cars everywhere, but it was difficult to pick out which ones might be taxis.

After an age, a sedan pulled up, the driver lowering the window and leaning across the front passenger seat.

"Widecombe?"

"Yes."

"Any bags?"

"No, I got it," I said, pulling on the back door handle. I could put it in the boot, but somehow having something to clutch tight to my chest was a comfort I direly needed.

The guy seemed to be a big fan of those pine-shaped air fresheners. There had to be at least six of them in a variety of flavours festooning his rear view mirror, the mingled odours making my already jumpy stomach start to churn. After an aborted attempt at conversation, he got on with driving, and I got on with watching the hedgerows go by.

The roads weren't exactly wide to begin with, but they just seemed to get narrower the further we went. Around about the time we popped out into what appeared to be the blink-and-you-miss-it town centre, the rain began to fall in spatters on the front windscreen. Within seconds we were awash, and the windscreen wipers were doing double-time and still not keeping up. I got a vague impression of a church spire and dark trees through the rivulets on the window, and then we plunged off into tiny lanes again. My fearless cabbie seemed to know the roads off by heart, and didn't take the complete lack of visibility as a cue to slow down. Teeth practically rattling in my head and losing my stomach with each dip in the road, I held on as best I could.

He slowed, the branches of the now impossibly-close hedgerows scraping wetly against the windows. My heart lurched, but we were only letting another car through a small lay-by before taking off again.

When we finally did stop, it was with an abruptness that nearly pitched me into the headrest of the seat in front of me.

"This is as far as I go, love," he said, hitching around slightly to look at me.

I rubbed at the condensation on the window, trying to orient myself, frowning. This didn't look anything like the road I'd seen on the street view of the map. I traced the road again on the paper with my finger.

"This doesn't look like it..."

He pointed off and to the left, in front of where we were parked.

"That's the turn-off you want, up there."

"Can't you get any closer?" The rain was drumming steadily against the car roof. I'd be soaked within seconds as it was.

"Sorry, love," he shrugged, "Just got this little motor and I'm not about to get her dinged up rattling down that cow track."

I growled in my head. But I could tell he wasn't about to budge. I'd have to walk it, rain or no.

I hitched my bag further up my shoulder, having shoved the last of my cash into his hand through a crack in the window. I barely escaped getting drowned in a wave of dirty water as he ground his tyres into the gravely side of the road. I pushed a wet strand of hair out of my eyes. My shoulders slumped as I felt the cold, wet trickle of rain make it right through to my underwear. Great. Just...great.

My map was almost in tatters, sodden and wet, but I could see the turn-off ahead. No time to change into my trainers now. My boots would just have to recover later. If there was a later.

I pushed the what-comes-next out of my mind and concentrated wholly on the task of picking my way between the ever-increasing mud puddles swamping the narrow road. Rising around me on all sides was more and more hedgerow. As if I'd wandered into some mad, holly-infested labyrinth with a monster waiting for me in the middle. Except it wasn't a monster waiting. It was Jarod. Though somehow that scared me even more shitless than any mythical beast ever could.

The reality of his reaction to me showing up, dripping wet and bedraggled, on his doorstep, was just starting to trickle in a chill down my spine. The thought of it followed the creeping cold rainwater that dripped from my hair and ran down my back, raising goosebumps all over my body. What had I done?

I just stood there, at the end of the short pebbled driveway. It was the place from the picture all right. A bit less sunny and whole lot wetter than the photograph, but the wisteria arched over the doorway just as winsomely as I'd imagined. And why did the roof have to be thatched? How could anyone resist a thatched roof?

It was everything perfect and idyllic that I was not. That we were not. The whole picture felt entirely incongruous, and knowing that walking up to the door...the door with the little wobbly-glass inset-windows with the warm, warm light pouring out. That walking right up there would break the spell. Poof, and perfect harmony in the universe would be expunged. Permanently, probably.

I was about to destroy the world.

I made myself go up the steps. Stood and stared for a few dazed seconds at the quaint limestone planters, brimming with succulents. He was right on the other side of that door. Ears straining over the patter of rain, I could hear someone moving about inside. The scrape of a drawer opening and closing. The clatter of a pot on the stove.

He was cooking.

* * * * *

JAROD

He wasn't sure how angel-hair pasta was going to fill the dull ache in his gut, but the grumbling from his stomach was just getting irritating. The whole getting-away thing had yet to improve the foulness of his mood. Everywhere he looked, he saw where she should have been. But she wasn't. She wasn't handing him a wooden spoon to stir the pasta. Or sitting on the bar stool at the kitchen island, feet dangling, elbows propped on the counter-top as she watched him play chef.

The knock at the door didn't make much sense, but then nothing much did at the moment. Still lost in his thoughts, he put the knife down on the chopping board and grabbed a tea-towel, drying his hands as he went. Neighbour maybe. Lost sheep or something. Whatever it was people knocked on doors for around here.

He'd seen her so clearly, there, with him. When he opened the door he kept seeing her. But instead of inside and warm and dry she seemed to be drenching wet, hair plastered to her head. Face paler than pale and looking just a little scared.

The hand holding the tea-towel dropped to his side, and he just stood there, dumb.

"Hi," she said, her voice sounding faint and far away.

He stared down into those dark eyes of hers, and a thought bubbled up. What on earth was she doing here?

He regained enough presence of mind to step back a little, giving her room to come through the doorway onto the mat and out of the downpour. She really was dripping everywhere, soaked through. He knew he should be forming words, but his eyes kept being drawn back to other things. Like the beads of moisture clinging to the hollow at the base of her throat. Or the dark lacy pattern of her undergarments pressing through her wet top.

He blinked and shook his head, his eyes finding their way back to hers.

"You said you couldn't come," he said, like a dolt.

She didn't answer, just kept looking at him with those big eyes. Which is when he finally understood that the funny noise she was making was her teeth chattering and she was shaking with chills or cold or whatever it was, and could barely get her mouth open.

"Shit, Steph, why were you out in that mess?" Brain finally engaging with the situation, he took her by the shoulders and pushed her into the kitchen, ignoring her protesting noises about getting the floor wet.

He got his fingers under the handle of her bag and prized it from her freezing fingertips, and was reaching for the neck of her coat when she stepped back, eyes darting to his, then away.

"No." More teeth chattering. "I just need...a towel," she managed to say. She looked up at him. "Do you have a towel? I think I need to get out of these clothes?"

He had to think hard, his brain still slow and as muddy as the wet boots making dirty puddles on the kitchen tiles. Still trying to puzzle how he'd manage to think about her so hard and so long that she'd just...appeared. He took a breath and pushed a hand through his hair. Get yourself together, man.

He took her by the shoulders again and pushed her in the direction of the bedroom.

"There's towels in the bathroom."

She got halfway there and started hopping on one foot, trying her best to pull her wet boots off.

He strode over and grabbed for her flailing foot, pressing into her until she had to lean on him as he bent down. He gripped the heel, tugging hard to get the wet boot off her foot. Shit. Even her socks were drenched through.

Turning her, he did the same with the other boot. Straightening, he grabbed for her arm as she made to rush off into the bedroom.

"Hey...hey. Take a hot shower or a bath or something, okay?"

She seemed to bristle at his words, still not meeting his eyes, tugging at his hold.

"Don't be an idiot, Steph. I'm not having you die of hypothermia. Take a bath."

She seemed to accept the sense of his words and slipped into his bedroom without any further protest, wet socks trailing.

Hell. How did she get herself into such straights? And why on earth was she here? Here and looking too scared to say boo to a goose.

He shook his head, walking backwards to where the pasta had boiled itself away into complete mush. Damn it.

He tipped the lot of it into the bin and started again.

* * * * *

STEPHANIE

Oh, I'd acted like such a dork. "I think I need to get out of these clothes"?? I'd practically propositioned him right then and there, though it wasn't what I meant. At all. I really did need to get out of clothes that felt like they'd turned to frozen concrete on my body.

But when that door swung open and he was there. Just there, hair mussed, jeans (jeans?!) slung low on his hips, the v-neck of his dark t-shirt showing just a hint of chest hair I'd had the privilege to stroke and know how silky it felt. If it hadn't been for the fact I'd started to freeze to death somewhere between the driveway and the top step, some part of my body would have exploded from the sheer heat of it all.

What had the expression on his face been? Blank at first. Confused, then it closed off. Shutters down. And somehow I'm wobbling around trying to get my boots off and then that big hot body of his is seeping glorious heat against my side and up to my breast and I'm staring down at the nape of his neck while he wrestles with my wet shoe. All I can think about is reaching out my chilly fingers and stroking that little sweep of hair right there on his neck. He smells so good. So damned good.

But I'm cold and wet and drowned and it's such a relief to be in a bath of hot, hot water. In his bath. In his cottage-of-the-weekend. Dampening his towels. My wet clothes in a mangled pile on the tiled floor. I can't even remember where my bag went. And I don't care. I made it.

And he didn't turn me away. Yet.

* * * * *

JAROD

He was pacing. Back and forth, as much as the small cottage living-room allowed it. Stepping back to the stove every now and then to check on the pasta and sauce. He didn't need to make yet another gluey mess out of it.

Why was she here? Why had she changed her mind?

He found himself standing up next to the closed bedroom door, listening. To make sure she was okay, he told himself. Not because her being there at the front door had opened up a yawning chasm of hunger that had nothing to do with Italian food. It had everything to do with the part of his heart that got swallowed up entirely the moment he looked into her eyes. More. Just...more. He needed more of her.

He felt like some quivering thing was vibrating - buzzing inside him. Teasing at him. The bare sliver of a thing. Hope? That little chink of light through into the dark pit he'd been trying to fill with useless plans and angry words and self-recrimination.

He stopped himself, hand on the door. Breathed deep. She was here.

* * * * *

STEPHANIE

I stood behind the bedroom door and pondered, hitching the bath towel a little higher under my armpits.

Steal one of his shirts, or wander out in nothing but a towel in search of my bag? My hair still hung down my back, wet but clean now.

I cracked the door open a little and felt the weight of something sag against it. My bag. Well, that was moderately thoughtful. As long as it wasn't some signal that I should pack that bag and leave as soon as possible. I pulled the door open just wide enough to get my hand out and the bag in.

My jeans were completely soaked. I'd hung them up on the towel radiator but they wouldn't be dry for hours. I'd sort of planned to wear them most of the weekend. If there was going to be a weekend.

I was nearly at the bottom of the bag, my things in a steadily growing mound on the floor. Oh thank god. I'd packed some extra leggings. Maybe with my long tunic top...

* * * * *

I finally emerged from the bedroom, wet hair brushed back, my feet entirely grateful for the extra pair of socks I'd packed, even though they were a horrid shade of green. Lord knew what I looked like. Sans make-up, green-footed drowned-rat chic.

His back was to me as I stepped into the living room, my stomach jumpy and a little sick with what must be nerves. I was here now, and he was here. Now what?