On Monday morning, I got up an hour early to do my chores and get Samara ready to travel to the vet. Luke had promised to arrange transport for eleven, which I assumed meant a driver for Portia's outrageously expensive horsebox. A horsebox that spent its time parked up behind the barn because, according to Susie, Portia had only used it twice in the last year.
At five past eleven, there was still no sign of a driver. I checked my watch again then compared it to the clock in the tack room. Yes, it was spot on.
"Have you got Luke's number?" I asked Hayley.
"I wish."
Should I call the vet? Hotwire the horsebox and drive it myself? No, Ash, forget that option. At ten past eleven, just when I was wondering what Bradley would do in a situation like this, Luke's Porsche swung into the car park. He jumped out and jogged over.
"Ready to go?"
"As I have been for the last half hour. But the driver hasn't turned up."
"Yes, he has. I'm driving."
"You?" Not what I'd been expecting. "You've got an HGV licence?"
"Surprised?"
"You don't strike me as a lorry driver type of guy."
"Don't judge a book by its cover. Or a man by his Porsche."
How many times had I heard that sentiment? An ex once told me I looked like a prom queen and fought like a Velociraptor.
"Fair enough. Dare I ask why you learned to drive a truck? I'm betting it wasn't so you could spend your weekends taking your sister to horse shows."
Luke snorted. "You guessed right. No, I used to go motor racing with a group of friends, and I got the licence to drive the car transporter."
"What kind of racing?" I'd always loved cars, ever since I learned to steal them as a teenager. When I could afford to buy them legitimately, I'd started up a collection. Driving was yet another thing I'd missed since I'd been away.
"We started off with Caterhams then ran a Porsche in the British GT championship. A friend and I shared that drive."
"How long were the races?"
"Anything from one to three hours. I loved that car. There's nothing like driving around Brands Hatch, flat out at the head of the pack."
Hmm... Driving a stolen Camaro with six cop cars chasing you could be pretty exhilarating.
"Did you win?"
"Once or twice. I wasn't too bad."
"You said you used to race. Why did you stop?"
"When my father died, I had to run his company and start living in the real world."
I recognised the flat tone in Luke's voice and the blank look on his face. I used both when I wanted to hide my own feelings.
"I'm sorry," I said, and I meant it. "It must have been hard to give up something you loved."
Luke didn't answer, just walked off to the horsebox. Rather than standing there like an idiot, I went to fetch Samara from her stable. After a brief pause at the foot of the ramp, she followed me into the back of the lorry, and we set off.
"Do we have far to go?" I asked.
"About ten minutes."
Neither of us spoke on the journey, but the silence was strangely comfortable.
"Still hopping lame, isn't she?" the vet said when I trotted Samara up.
"Looks that way. A night's rest doesn't seem to have improved things."
I scratched the mare's neck as she hung her head. Poor girl.
"We'll need to sedate her to do scans, X-rays, and nerve blocks. Can you leave her with us for a couple of hours?"
I raised an eyebrow at Luke. I could stay, but could he hang around?
"Sure, no problem. Do whatever you need to."
The veterinary nurse took the horse, leaving Luke and me on our own in the exam area. Now what?
He turned to me and shrugged.
"Looks like we've got some time to kill."
In my old world, the phrase meant something totally different, but I'd left that girl behind in Virginia.
"I should have brought a book."
"There's a TV in the horsebox." He tapped away at his phone for thirty seconds. "Or we could get lunch?"
If Luke was offering food, that gave me a respite from beans on toast. Burned toast, seeing as my toaster was kind of temperamental.
"Sure. Lunch sounds good."
He strode off, but down the driveway rather than towards the horsebox. After a moment's hesitation, I followed.
"Where are we going?"
Not far in this icy wind, I hoped.
"There's a pub along the road. It's small, but the food's good."
"Anything I don't have to cook is fine by me."
Another plus point was that we weren't going to The Coach and Horses, which seemed to be one of the main sources of village rumours. If I walked in there with Luke, the Women's Institute would be celebrating our engagement by evening.
We arrived at our destination a few minutes later, and Luke hadn't been kidding about the size of the pub. You couldn't fit more than two dozen people inside comfortably. The old wooden bar looked like a relic from the Middle Ages, and a tiny room beyond held a handful of tables. Luke led me to an alcove at the rear beside a roaring log fire.
"You looked cold, so I thought this table would be best," he said.
I smiled gratefully and tucked myself into the seat. The leather may have been worn and cracked, but it was still comfortable. I snagged the menu and looked through the dishes. No macaroni and cheese. Oh well, I couldn't expect the day to be perfect.
"What are you having?" Luke asked.
"I'll go with risotto." I narrowly stopped myself from adding "and chips."
Before we could order, Luke's phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket, grimacing when he saw who was calling.
"Work," he mouthed, covering the mouthpiece. "Could you order at the bar? I'll have cottage pie and mineral water. I've got a tab."
He was already talking into his phone as I followed him back out to the bar, and he continued outside while I told a frighteningly cheerful barmaid what we wanted.
"Ice with the orange juice?" she asked.
"No, thanks."
She pushed the glass towards me, but her eyes were fixed on somebody behind. Assuming it would be Luke, I turned around with an almost-genuine smile, but my face soon fell when I recognised Mr. Wandering-Hands from the previous Thursday night. Was he following me?
"Oh, it's you."
"Hello, sweetheart. Where did you disappear off to last week?" he asked.
"I felt sick."
"You should have stayed. I'd have made it all better."
"I doubt that, since it was you who made me nauseous in the first place. And get your fucking hand off my arm." I'd had enough of playing polite and a little of my old self came to the fore.
The barmaid smothered a snort of laughter, but instead of letting go, the guy's fingers tightened.
"You need to learn some manners—" he started.
I felt another presence behind me, and this time it was Luke. He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me back against him.
"Your hand's still on her arm, Henry. It's not Ash who needs to learn manners."
Henry sneered and gave my arm one last hard squeeze before letting go. "I didn't realise she was with you, Cain. She didn't mention that the other night."
"What other night?"
"When we had dinner."
With that parting comment, Henry made a swift exit. Luke turned to me, his arm leaving my waist.
"You had dinner with him?"
Why did Luke look so hurt? We'd only known each other for five minutes.
"Only in his dreams. I met him at dinner, yes, but I was eating with Susie and Hayley when he and two of his mates decided to join us uninvited. After I got sick of him pawing at me, I climbed out of the window in the ladies' loo and fu...went home."
That at least got a smile out of Luke. "I'm afraid now he's seen you with me, he may well try even harder."
"I take it you two don't like each other much?"
"Not since we were kids. It started off as a feud between our fathers. His old man's a property developer, and my father refused to sell him a piece of land. I own it now, and I still won't part with it. The bad blood fed down to me and Henry."
"I can see that."
"It's become a game. Henry always wants what I have, and he'll try his best to get it."
"So is that what I am now? The latest pawn in your game?"
"No! Don't ever think that. You're anything but a game."
Well, that was nice to know, although I wasn't convinced Henry shared Luke's sentiments.
"Right. Now we've cleared that up, shall we sit down?"
That self-important arsehole had taken up enough of my time today, and I didn't want to dwell on him.
Luke followed me back to the table, and the food arrived soon after. It wasn't much to look at, but Luke was right—it tasted good. As we ate, he apologised for abandoning me to Henry.
"If I'd known he was here, I'd never have gone out. Work's crazy right now. I rarely take time off, and I had to reschedule things this morning to drive the horsebox."
"You were working this morning? That's why you were late?"
He nodded. "Sorry about that. A meeting ran over."
"It's okay. I just got worried nobody was coming, and I didn't know how to get hold of you."
Luke picked my phone up from next to the salt shaker and tapped away at the keys until his own phone rang with "Ride of the Valkyries." Interesting choice.
"Now I've got your number, and you've got mine. Next time I'm late, I'll call."
Next time? What next time?
"Great. Now when one of the girls at the yard wants your number, I can give it to them." I burst into laughter as he choked on his drink. "Oh, lighten up. I was joking."
"Last year, I had to change my number when a group of girls from Upper Foxford got hold of it. I was getting a hundred calls a day."
"Wow, that's dedication."
He grimaced. "It was something. Can I ask a strange question?"
"You can ask. I won't promise to answer."
But I was curious as to what his question would be.
"Most of the time, what goes on inside the female mind is a mystery I can't even begin to solve, but you seem different. Why don't you act like a lovesick teenager around me when almost every other woman does?"
"Refer to Exhibit A: your earlier comment about not judging books by their covers. I judge people by more than looks and money. They have to earn my respect. I've known millionaires with the personality of a dog turd and beggars who are gold." I gave him a wink. "As I've only met you three times, the jury's still out."
Oh, he looked pretty when he smiled.
"I like that approach. If only other women weren't so shallow and judgemental. At first, the attention was flattering, but after a while it begins to grate, you know? The one place I can escape is at work, and that's only because I'm the boss. Even then, they all talk behind my back."
"What do you do for a living, anyway?"
"I run a cyber security company called HC Systems. Our core business is building bespoke security programs for large corporations and government agencies, but we also test for loopholes in existing systems and fix them."
"This was the company you took over from your father?"
"Yeah, not that I had a choice. He died suddenly, and I needed to support my mother and Tia. Mother and the world of work aren't really compatible."
That I could understand, except the woman who'd shoved me out through her money-maker had mostly been found in crack dens. I bet Luke's mother hung out at the country club.
"You've done well with it by the looks of things."
"My father was good at writing software, but he wasn't much of a businessman. He'd take out loans and use them to make bad investments." A roll of the eyes. "Really bad investments, like a vineyard in the Outer Hebrides. When I took over, the company was nearly broke. I wrote new programs, revamped the marketing, and diversified to bring in more cash."
"Good going."
He gave me a small smile. "It is now. I had a lot of sleepless nights in the beginning, though. And now I'm in the process of expanding overseas. We've been getting more American customers, and it's got to the stage we need an office over there. The time difference is killing me right now—too many late-night phone calls."
He stifled a yawn as if for effect, then apologised.
"Whereabouts are you planning to open the office?" I asked.
"I need to decide between California and Virginia. California's better known in the tech industry, but the education system in Virginia's pushing that way too. That means plenty of workforce availability, and there are some good tax breaks for investing there right now."
Virginia. My home. I could certainly vouch for the state being a good place to start a company because I'd done it myself. Not only was the state government supportive of new business, the proximity to Washington, DC and New York meant a lot of key players were within easy travelling distance. But I couldn't have an intelligent conversation with Luke about corporate affairs because as an ex-nobody, I wouldn't be expected to know about those sorts of things.
Instead, I settled for, "I used to live in Virginia. It's got a good track record for employment and, from what I read in the papers, you're right about the government support packages for new companies."
If only I was being me instead of Ashlyn, I could have offered him more help. After all, I had numerous investments in property and businesses in Virginia, and some of those were tech-based.
"I'm still at the planning stage at the moment. I'll need to take a trip out there in the next few months for meetings."
Where would I be in a few months? Would I feel well enough to go home? And what about the man who'd threatened me? Old me wanted to gut him like a fucking fish, but new me figured crawling under my duvet and squashing the pillow over my head would be the best course of action. And today, new me won the toss.
But I didn't want to stay at Hazelwood Farm forever. I was still pondering my options when Luke changed the subject, unfortunately back to me. Bugger.
"So, what brought you to Lower Foxford specifically?"
"Uh, the bus?"
"No, seriously."
"I am being serious. It was the last stop on the bus route I randomly ended up taking when the train I flipped a coin for broke down."
Now he laughed. "Strange how an arbitrary decision can lead to a new course for your life, isn't it?"
Wasn't that the truth? Fourteen years ago, I'd made an arbitrary decision to steal a wallet and ended up meeting my husband. Funny the hands that life dealt you, wasn't it? I just hoped Lower Foxford wouldn't turn out to be a complete bust when it came to helping me back to normality.
An interruption from the waitress, asking if our food was okay, allowed me to sidestep further questions. Time to find out more about Luke.
"Have you lived around here for long?"
"My whole life. Mother and Tia still live in the house where I grew up."
"Weren't you lonely in such a small place?"
I'd grown up in London, and while I didn't have family, I'd had acquaintances.
"Not really. I was one of those weird kids who actually liked school, and I made plenty of friends there. Sometimes I thought it would be nice to have a brother to hang out with, but the stork never delivered."
"You got Tia instead." The booby prize.
"Yeah. She was a surprise to all of us." He gave a long sigh and his fork clattered onto his plate. "I worry about her."
"In what way?"
"Mother's got no interest in her at all. She thinks money buys love, and Tia doesn't know anything else. Yeah, I know I should spend more time with my sister, but things are...difficult." He took the last bite of his meal. "You don't need to hear all my personal shit."
I took the hint and looked at my watch. "About time we got back to Samara, anyway. Thanks for lunch—it was good to get away from the farm for a while."
"Yeah, it was. Honestly, you're not what I was expecting. I'm surprised someone like you is mucking out horse stables for a living."
"Now who's being judgmental?" I asked, thinking back to his earlier comment on women.
"Touché. It's just I've met other women who've suffered through what you have, and they've all been bitter shrews. I guess it surprises me that you're not."
If only he knew the half of it.
"As Victor Frankl said, it's 'the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.'"
Before, I'd always been a fighter and nobody could bring me down. A madman took me to my knees, but he didn't knock me out. Big mistake, because I was slowly getting back to my feet. Today, a shard of the old me had made an appearance. Not quite Diamond, but perhaps cubic zirconia.
"Now, that's the attitude. And it brings me back to my first point. It's not often you find a stable girl who quotes Frankl."
He held the door open for me, and outside, the wind had stepped up a gear to biting. My donated jacket may have been quilted, but it sure wasn't up to withstanding a vicious British winter. Another item to add to my shopping list when I next went into town.
"Cold?" Luke asked.
"Mmm hmm. I need a better jacket."
"Want to borrow mine?"
"Nah, I'll live. Thanks for the offer, but it's too cold for you to be without."
"In that case, come here."
I took a step closer, stiffening as Luke put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into him. While my husband hadn't been affectionate, I'd limited contact like that to a few close friends.
But Luke wasn't to know that. I didn't want to create a scene, nor did I want to delve into my life history, so I forced myself to relax. He was just being nice. A gentleman.
And besides, he did make a good windbreak.
As we strode into the car park at the vet's, a young girl ahead tugged a pony towards a trailer. Her father stood idly by, dressed in a totally unsuitable suit.
"Will you just walk!"
When the pony refused to budge, she walloped it with a riding crop then burst into tears.
"Just give me a minute, would you?" I muttered to Luke.
The girl and pony were in a standoff when I gently removed the stick from her hand.
"That won't help anything. Get me a bucket of food, and I'll have a go."
"Really?"
"Get the food."
She practically threw the reins at me, and over the next fifteen minutes, I coaxed the beast up the ramp one step at a time. A final shake of the bucket got the gelding inside, and I tied him up before returning to Luke.
"Sorry for the delay. I can't stand anyone hitting an animal."
He held up his phone, and even as he did so, it vibrated again. "No rest for the wicked. It's good you cared enough to help."
We had to wait a few minutes for the vet to come out, so I got a cup of terrible coffee from the vending machine while Luke made a phone call. When the vet finally did appear, his expression didn't give much away.
"It's her suspensory ligament, as I suspected. She needs a month of box rest."
Samara wasn't going to enjoy being confined to barracks. "What's the long-term prognosis?"
"She should make a full recovery as long as you don't try to rush her back into work."
"I'll make sure she gets as much time off as she needs," Luke said. "Tia hardly rides her, anyway."
I bandaged Samara's legs up, and she walked straight into the horsebox, eager to get away from the vet. I couldn't blame her. Being a pincushion was no fun.
"That's the best news we could have hoped for," I said as we drove back to Hazelwood Farm.
"I know. If you see Tia doing anything she isn't supposed to, will you call me? I'll deal with her."
"Sure."
I didn't tell him I'd stop his darling sister myself if she risked hurting Samara.
The horse was still dopey when I led her back to her stable at the farm, and I made sure she had hay and plenty of water before I went back out to Luke.
"Thanks for today," he said.
"It's my job."
"I guess." He shifted from foot to foot.
"Don't worry about the lorry. I'll clean out the back. I'm sure you've got enough to do at the office."
"Thanks."
Cue slight awkwardness as he stepped forward and pulled me into a hug. What should I do with my hands? I rested them on his back, curled into tense little fists, as he kissed the top of my head.
"See you soon," he muttered.
He didn't look back as he walked to his car, but I could still feel his arms around me. Why so touchy-feely? Was that just his manner?
Normally, my reputation preceded me, and men gave me a wide berth. How odd for Luke to presume I'd be okay with his affections.
Odd, but not unpleasant. I wasn't sure what to make of that.
I bought a packet of decent coffee in case Luke turned up the following Saturday, but there was no sign of him.
Portia came by herself, dropped off by a polished-looking woman driving a Mercedes. Perfectly coiffed blonde hair that didn't move despite the wind, a tight forehead, that air of superiority that only came with years of practice. Mrs. Halston-Cain, I presumed.
Portia seemed subdued, so at least my poor ears got a break as she groomed Samara. I thought maybe she'd finally grown some compassion, but then I overheard her talking to Arabella. Apparently, Luke had told Portia she had to spend time with Samara as well as her other two horses if she wanted him to pay her livery bill.
As I picked up a broom, I couldn't help wishing Luke had come along. I told myself it was because of the sweeping, but the truth was, I'd enjoyed his company. It had been refreshing to talk to someone with no preconceived notions of me, someone whose eyes didn't flicker with fear when they heard my name. Luke treated me like a normal person.
I was just going back to the trailer for my lunch when the postman wandered onto the yard.
"Got a parcel for Ashlyn Hale. Know who she is?"
"That's me."
He got me to scribble my pretend signature on his electronic pad then handed the box over.
What was it? I hadn't ordered anything. It didn't feel heavy, and the return address was a PO box in Cambridge. Cambridge... Cambridge... I'd killed a man in Cambridge once, a Saudi arms dealer who'd come to visit his old alma mater. But I'd made that look like an accident. No, I quickly ruled out a connection.
Back home, an unexpected parcel would go straight to the lab for testing before I contemplated opening it, but here I didn't have that luxury.
Instead, I used the old-fashioned method and shook it. It didn't rattle.
After staring at it in my trailer for ten minutes, curiosity got the better of me and I slit the tape. It didn't explode. Okay, that was a good start.
I opened the cardboard box then peeled back a layer of tissue paper. What the...? I held the garment up. A jacket. A top-of-the-range windproof jacket, dark purple with a black collar.
Oh, Luke.