The Girl He'd Overlooked

She looked up at him and for the first time the sight of him didn’t thrill her.

‘Don’t beat yourself up, Jen. I kissed you back and for that I apologise. I shouldn’t have.’

But he had and she knew why. What man wouldn’t succumb to a woman who flung herself at him? It was telling that he had come to his senses in a matter of seconds. Even with everything on offer, she hadn’t been able to tempt him.

‘You’re young. You’re about to embark on the biggest adventure of your life—’

‘Oh, spare me the pity talk,’ Jennifer muttered.

‘I’m not pitying you.’ He stuck his hands in the pockets of his trousers and shook his head in frustration.

‘Yes, you are! I’ve been a complete idiot and I’ve put us both in an awkward position and none of it is your fault! Okay, so when you asked me out to dinner tonight, I thought it was more than just two friends having a meal. I fooled myself into believing that you might have begun to see me as a woman instead of the girl next door! Instead of the clumsy, ungainly, unappealing, borderline unattractive girl next door.’

‘Don’t put yourself down. I don’t like it.’

‘I’m not putting myself down.’ She managed to meet his eyes without flinching although it cost her every ounce of will power. ‘I’m being honest. I’ve had a crush on you—’

‘And there’s nothing wrong with that…’

‘You knew.’

‘It was endearing.’

‘Well, a pleasant distraction from when your pocket-sized blonde bombshells were being too demanding, at any rate.’

‘You had a schoolgirl crush and there’s nothing sinful about that,’ James told her with such sincerity that she itched to slap him. ‘But you’re young. I know you said that you’re only a few years younger than me, but in terms of experience we’re light years apart. Trust me when I tell you that in a year’s time you’ll have forgotten all about this. You’ll have met some nice lad…’

‘Yes,’ Jennifer parroted dutifully, wanting this entire conversation to be over so that she could go upstairs and bury herself under the freshly laundered covers.

He sighed and shook his head. This was a Jennifer he didn’t recognise. Gone was the smiling, malleable girl. Had he known that she had a crush on him? Yes, of course he had, although he had never openly addressed the issue. Now, for the first time, he could sense her locking him out. He understood but it was a strange sensation and he didn’t like it.

‘Your feelings for me are misplaced,’ he told her roughly. ‘I wasn’t lying when I told you that you want to enjoy your youth with boys who are uncomplicated and fun-loving.’

‘You make it sound as though I was looking for… looking for something more than just…’

‘A romp in the sack?’

Mortified, Jennifer shrugged.

‘You deserve a lot more than I could give you.’

By which, she thought, you mean that there’s nothing you’re interested in giving me aside from a peck on the cheek every now and again and lots of good advice about how to live my life.

He was being patronising and the worst of it was that he wasn’t even aware of it.

‘Don’t worry about me, James,’ she said with a forced smile, relieving him of the obligation to keep thinking about her feelings because he was a decent human being. ‘I’ll be fine. These things happen.’ Two steps back, putting distance between them. ‘I probably won’t see you before I leave.’

‘No.’

‘Of course I’ll keep in touch and I’m sure we’ll bump into one another now and again.’ One more step back.

‘You’ll be all right, will you?’

Jennifer chose to interpret this at face value and she looked at him with a polite, unfocused expression. ‘Of course I will. As I told you, the job I’ll be doing over there isn’t going to be substantially different than what I’ve done over the summer vacations. Naturally, I’ll be following through on a lot more and there’ll be a great deal of translating but I’m sure I’ll be able to handle it.’

‘Right. Good.’

‘So.’

James hesitated and raked his fingers through his hair.

‘Thanks for dinner, James… and I’ll see you…’

She remained frozen to the spot as he brushed past her, pausing fleetingly, as though hesitant to leave.

What did he think she was going to do? Jennifer wondered. Fling herself out of her bedroom window because he had rejected her? Was she so pathetic in his eyes that he doubted her ability to get over the slight?

The soft click of the front door closing signalled his departure and it was only once she was certain that he had left the cottage that Jennifer slumped.

She closed her eyes and thought of the excited girl who had bought a new outfit especially for her big date. She remembered her anticipation at having him all to herself over dinner. She had dreamt of seduction and of finally having this crazy crush of hers fulfilled. It suddenly felt like a million years ago and, although a year wasn’t long, it was long enough to say goodbye to that person.

CHAPTER ONE

EXCEPT one year became two, which became three, which became four. And in all those four years, Jennifer had not once set eyes on James. Each Christmas, she had contrived to bring her father over to Paris for the holidays, which he had loved. What had begun as a one-year placement, during which she could consolidate her French, had seen her rise through the company, and as she had risen so too had her pay cheque. She found that she could afford to holiday with her father abroad, and on those occasions when she had returned to England she had been careful with her visits, always making sure that they were brief and that James was nowhere in the vicinity.

He had walked out of the cottage four years previously and she had fled to Paris, her wounds still raw. She couldn’t imagine ever facing him again, and not facing him had developed into a habit. He had emailed her, and she had been happy enough to email back, but on the occasions when he had been in Paris she had excused herself from meeting him on grounds of being too busy, prior engagements, not well, anything because the memory of him gently letting her down remained, that open wound quietly hurting somewhere in the background of her shiny new life.

Except now…

She had nodded off on the train and woke with a start as it pulled into the station.

When she looked through the window it was to see that the flurries of snow that she had left behind in London were a steady fall here in Kent. The weather was always so much harsher out here. She had forgotten.

At six-thirty in the evening the train was packed with commuters and fetching her bags was chaotic, with people jostling her on all sides, but eventually she was out of the train and braving the freezing temperatures and snow on the platform.

She wasn’t planning on staying long. Just long enough to sort out the problems in the cottage, problems she had learnt about via an email from James who had been checking his house in his mother’s absence and had happened to walk down to the cottage to take a look only to find water seeping out from under the front door. Her father was away on his annual post-Christmas three-week holiday to visit his brother in Scotland. The email had read:

You can pass this on to your father, but I gather you’re in the country so you might want to check it out yourself instead of ruining your father’s fishing trip. This, of course, presupposes that you can interrupt your busy schedule.

The tone of the email was the final nail in the coffin of their enduring friendship. She had run away and, never looked back, and over time, the chasm between them had become so vast that it was now unbreachable terrain. His emails, which had been warm and concerned at the beginning of her stint in Paris, had gradually become cooler and more formal, in direct proportion to her avoidance tactics. It occurred to her that she actually hadn’t heard from him at all for at least six months.

In Paris, she could tell herself that she didn’t mind, that this was just the way things had turned out in the end, that their friendship had always been destined to run its course because it had been an unrealistic union of the inaccessible boy in the manor house and the childishly doting girl next door.

But now here, back in Kent, his email was a vaguely sexy reminder of how things used to be.

She wheeled her suitcase out to where a bank of taxis was only just managing to keep the snow on their cars from settling by virtue of having their engines running. Everywhere, the snow was forming a layer of white.

The water had been cleared, James had informed her, but there was a lot of collateral damage, which she would have to assess for the insurance company. He had managed to get the heating started. So at least when she arrived at the cottage, she wouldn’t freeze to death. She hoped he might have left her some fresh provisions before he cleared off, on his way to Singapore for a series of meetings, he had politely informed her in his email, but she wasn’t banking on it.

That was how far their friendship had devolved. When Jennifer thought about it for too long, she could feel a lump of sadness in her throat and she had to remind herself of that terrible night when she had made such a fool of herself. Someone better and stronger might have been able to survive that and laughingly put it behind them so that a friendship could be maintained, but she couldn’t.

For her, it had been a devastating learning curve and she had learnt from it.

She gazed out of the window of the taxi but could barely see anything because of the snow. Deep in the heart of the Kent countryside, the trip, in conditions like this, would take over an hour. She settled in for the long haul and let her thoughts drift without restraint.

It had been a while since she had returned to the cottage for any length of time. She and her father had spent summer in Majorca, two weeks of sun and sea, and every six weeks she brought him over for a weekend. She loved the fact that she could afford to do that now. She knew that there was a part of her that was reluctant to return to the place that held so many memories of James, but that was fine because her father was more than happy to travel out to see her and she always, always made sure that she met Daisy, James’s mother, for lunch in London when she was over on business. She had politely asked about James and given evasive non-answers whenever Daisy showed any curiosity as to why they no longer seemed to meet. Eventually his name had been quietly dropped from conversations.

To think of him moving around in the cottage made something in her shiver. Sometimes, a memory of the scent of him, clean and masculine and woody, would surface from nowhere, leaving her shaken. She hoped that scent wouldn’t be lingering in the cottage when she got there. She was tired and it was too cold to run around opening windows to let out an elusive smell.

By the time they reached the cottage, driving was becoming impossible.

‘And they predict at least a week of this,’ the driver said bitterly. ‘Business is bad enough as it is without Mother Nature getting involved.’

‘Oh, this won’t last,’ Jennifer said airily. ‘I’ve got to be back in London by day after tomorrow.’

‘Lots of clothes for an overnight stay.’ The driver struggled up to the door with the case, unable to wheel it in the snow.

‘I’ll be leaving one or two things behind. Clearing out old stuff.’

She paid him, thinking of the task that lay ahead. Aside from sorting out the cottage, she would be bagging up all those frumpy clothes that had once been the mainstay of her wardrobe. None of them would fit any more. In the space of four years, she had been seduced by Parisian chic. She had lost weight, or maybe, thanks to her daily run, the weight had just been reassigned. At any rate, the body she had once avoided looking at in the mirror now attracted wolf whistles and stares from strangers and she was not ashamed to wear clothes that accentuated it. Nothing revealing, that would never be her style, but fashionable and figure hugging. Her untamed hair had been tamed over the years, thanks to the expert scissors of her hairdresser. It was still long, longer even than it used to be, but it was cleverly layered so that the frizz had been replaced with curls.

The cottage was in complete darkness although the door was surprisingly unlocked. She lugged the suitcase through and slammed the door shut behind her, luxuriating for a few seconds in the blissful warmth, eyes closed, lights still off because she just wanted to enjoy the cottage before she could see all the damage that had been caused by the flood.

And then she opened her eyes and there he was. Lounging against the door that led into the kitchen.

The cottage hadn’t been in complete darkness, as she had first thought. No, one of the kitchen lights had been switched on, but the kitchen was at the back of the house and the door leading to it had been shut when she had entered.

She literally froze on the spot.

God, he hadn’t changed. He was still as beautiful as he always had been, still the man who towered over other men. His hair was shorter than it had been four years ago and she could tell from the shadow on his jawline that he hadn’t shaved. In the space of a few seconds, during which time Jennifer felt her breath catch in her throat, she took in everything. The lean, long body in a pair of jeans and an old striped rugby jumper, the sleeves of which were shoved up to the elbows, those amazing deep blue eyes, now focused on her in a way that made her head swim.

Disastrously, she felt herself catapulted back to the young, naive girl she had once been.

‘James. What on earth are you doing here?’ She knew that her hand was trembling when she hit the light switch. ‘You told me that you would be leaving the country!’

‘I should be in the air right now but the weather got in the way of those plans. It’s been a long time, Jennifer…’

The silence stretched and stretched and stretched and she had to fight to maintain her self-control. Four years of independence, of cutting herself free from those infantile ties that had bound her to this man, and she could feel them melting and slipping away. She could have wept. Instead, she let the little ball of remembered bitterness and anger form into a knot inside her stomach and she began to get rid of her coat, which was heavy and damp from the snow.

‘Yes. Yes, it has. How are you?’ She forced a stiff smile but her heart was thumping like a sledgehammer.

‘I thought I’d stay in the cottage until you got here, make sure you arrived safely. I wasn’t sure whether you were going to drive or take the train.’

‘I… I took the train.’ Her car was parked outside her friend’s house in London where she stayed every time she came back to the city. ‘But there was no need for you to hang around here. You know I can take care of myself.’

‘You’ve certainly been doing a very good job of that while you’ve been in Paris. My mother frequently regales me with news of yet more promotions.’

She still hadn’t taken a single step towards him because her feet appeared to be nailed to that one spot in the hallway.

He was the first to break the spell, turning away and heading into the kitchen, leaving her to follow him.

He hadn’t said a word about how much she had changed. How could he have failed to notice? But then, why was it so surprising when he had never really noticed her? The ease she had once felt in his company was nowhere to be found and it was a struggle thinking of polite conversation to make.

‘It’s been a very successful posting for me,’ Jennifer said politely. ‘I never thought that I’d end up staying over there for four years but as I accepted more and more responsibility, the work became more and more challenging and I found myself accepting their offers to stay on.’

‘You look like a visitor, standing there. Sit down. You might as well forget about getting anything done tonight. We can work on detailing what will need to be done to the cottage tomorrow.’

‘We? Like I said, there’s absolutely no need for you to help me with this. I plan on having it all finished by tomorrow afternoon and I’ll be leaving first thing the following morning.’ This was not how two old friends, meeting after years of separation, would act. Jennifer knew that. She could hear the sharp edge to her voice and, while she was dismayed by it, she was also keenly aware that it was necessary as a protective tool, because just looking at him rooting around in the fridge with his back to her threatened to take her down memory lane and that was a journey she wasn’t willing to make.

‘Good luck arguing with the weather on that score.’

‘What are you doing in the fridge?’

‘Cheese, eggs. There’s some bread over there, bought yesterday. When the snow started, I realised I might find myself stuck here and if I was stuck here, then you would be as well, so I managed to make it down to the shops and got a few things together.’

‘Well, that was very kind of you, James. Thank you.’

‘Well, isn’t this fun?’ He fetched a bottle of wine from the fridge, something he had bought along with the food, she was sure, and poured them both a glass. ‘Four years and we’re struggling to pass the time of day. Tell me what you’ve been up to in France.’

‘I thought I just had. My job is very invigorating. The apartment is wonderful.’

‘So everything lived up to expectation.’ He sat back in the kitchen chair and took a deep mouthful of wine, looking at her over the rim of the glass. God, she’d changed. Did she realise just how much? He couldn’t believe that the last time he’d seen her had been four years ago, but then she had made sure to be unavailable whenever he’d happened to be in Paris, and somehow, whenever she’d happened to be in the UK, he’d happened to be out of it.

She had cut all ties with him and he knew that it had all happened on that one fateful night. Of course, he didn’t regret the outcome of that evening. He had had no choice but to turn her down. She had been young and vulnerable and too sexy for her own good. She had come to him looking for something and he had known, instinctively, that whatever that something was he would have been incapable of providing it. She had been trusting and naive, not like the hard-edged beauties he was accustomed to who would have been happy to take whatever was on offer for limited duration.

But he had never suspected that she would have walked out of his life permanently.

And changed. And had not looked back.

‘Yes.’ Jennifer played with the stem of her wine glass but there was no way that she was going to drink any of it. ‘Everything lived up to expectation and beyond. Life has never been so good or so rewarding. And what about you, James? What have you been up to? I’ve seen your mother over the years but I really haven’t heard much about you.’

‘Shrinking world but fortunately new markets in the Far East. If you like, I can go into the details but doubt you would find it that fascinating. Aside from the challenging job, what is Paris like for you? Completely different from this neck of the woods, I imagine.’

‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

‘Are you going to expand on that or shall we drink our respective glasses of wine in silence while we try and formulate new topics of conversation?’

‘I’m sorry, James. It’s been a long trip with the train and the taxi and I’m exhausted. I think it’s probably best if you went up to your house and we can always play the catch-up game another time.’

‘You haven’t forgotten, have you?’

‘Forgotten what?’

‘Forgotten the last time we met.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Yes. Yes, I think you do, Jen.’

‘I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by dragging up the past, James.’ She stood up abruptly and positioned herself by the kitchen door with her arms folded. Not only were they strangers, but now they were combatants, squaring up to each other in the boxing ring. Jennifer didn’t dare allow regret to enter the equation because just looking at him like this was making her realise that on some deep, instinctive level she still responded to him. She didn’t know whether that was the pull of familiarity or the pull of an attraction that refused to remain buried and she was not willing to find out.

‘Why don’t you go and change and I’ll fix you something to eat, and if you tell me that you’re too exhausted to eat, then I’m going to suspect that you’re finding excuses to avoid my company. Which wouldn’t be the case, would it, Jen?’

‘Of course not.’ But she could feel a delicate flush creep into her cheeks.

‘Nothing fancy. You know my culinary talents are limited.’

The grin he delivered was an aching reminder of the good times they had shared and the companionable ease they had lost.

‘And don’t,’ he continued, holding up one hand as though to halt an interruption, ‘tell me that there’s no need. I know there’s no need. Like I said, I’m fully aware of how independent you’ve become over the past four years.’

Jennifer shrugged, but her thoughts were all over the place as she rummaged in the suitcase for a change of clothes. A hurried shower and she was back downstairs within half an hour, this time in a pair of loose grey yoga pants and a tight, long-sleeved grey top, her hair pulled back into a ponytail.

It had always been a standing joke that James never cooked. He would tease her father, who adored cooking, that the kitchen was a woman’s domain, that cooking wasn’t a man’s job. He would then lay down the gauntlet—an arm-wrestling match to prove that cooking depleted a man of strength. Jennifer used to love these little interludes; she used to love the way he would wink at her, pulling her into his game.

However, he was just finishing a remarkably proficient omelette when she walked into the kitchen. A salad was in a bowl. Hot bread was on a wooden board.

‘I guess I’m not the only one who’s changed,’ Jennifer said from the doorway, and he glanced across to her, his eyes lazily appraising.

‘Would you believe me if I told you that I took a cookery course?’

Jennifer shrugged. ‘Did you?’ She sat at the table and looked around her. ‘There’s less damage than I thought there would be. I had a look around before I went to have a shower. Thankfully, upstairs is intact and I can just see that there are some water stains on the sofa in the sitting room and I guess the rugs will have to be replaced.’

‘Have we finished playing our catch-up game already?’ He handed her a plate, encouraged her to help herself to bread and salad, before taking up position opposite her at the kitchen table.

Jennifer thought that this was the reason she had avoided him for four years. There was just too much of him. He overwhelmed her and she was no longer on the market for being overwhelmed.

‘There’s nothing more to catch up on, James. I can’t think of anything else I could tell you about my job in Paris. If you like I could give you a description of what my apartment looks like, but I shouldn’t think you’d find that very interesting.’

‘You’ve changed.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘I barely recognise you as the girl who left here four years ago. Somewhere in my memory banks, I have an image of someone who actually used to laugh and enjoy conversing with me.’

Jennifer felt the slow burn of anger because he hadn’t changed. He was still the same arrogantly self-assured James, supremely confident of their roles in life. She laughed and blushed and he basked in her open admiration.

‘How can you expect me to laugh when you haven’t said anything funny as yet, James?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m talking about!’ He threw his hands up in a gesture of frustration and pushed himself back from the table. ‘You’ve either had a personality change or else your job in Paris is so stressful that it’s wiped out your sense of fun. Which is it, Jen? You can be honest with me. You’ve always been open and honest with me, so tell me: have you bitten off more than you can chew with that job?’