Country Secrets by Fiona Walker

Author:Fiona Walker [Walker, Fiona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784977306
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

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There was nowhere Pax’s mind could gallop to escape reality.

Kes wasn’t here…

She had nowhere to run to. Nowhere to gallop.

Kes was gone…

There wasn’t a drink in the house to fall into. She’d searched everywhere, angry with herself for pouring out the emergency ration in the kibble bin, then grateful, then angry again.

Kes was gone, taken by Mack because Mack was still in charge. She’d been fooling herself to think she’d ever be free of that. She had no control.

Kes wasn’t here and it was all her fault.

She stood in the dark kitchen, the small window glowing behind its blue blind as Luca crossed the yard again, checking on Nancy first. Luca who was so good. She could hear the horses greeting him: Beck’s demanding bawl, Cruisoe’s nicker. More distant, Lottie’s shrill delight.

Horses made sense. She needed horses. Luca understood that.

Knott was whining at the door, desperate to join him.

Pax found she couldn’t move. She closed her eyes and tried to gallop.

Kes was gone…

Beyond the window, Beck whinnied again and Luca soothed him, voice soft as a shanti.

Still Pax couldn’t move. She felt as if she was trapped in an airlock chamber between marriage and another life entirely. No longer a wife. Half-mother, half-child. The door hatch was in her grasp, its wheel ready to turn, but she wasn’t sure she had the breathing equipment to swim to the surface and she needed to know Kes would be with her and be safe out in this new ocean.

Knott barked at the door.

Forcing herself to move, Pax let him out, watched him race away, envying him, letting her breath cloud, her eyes sting, the cold bite her bones.

Then she saw them on the doorstep.

Luca’s boots.

She swallowed a sob, a laugh, another sob, remembering him playing the stablehand. Walk a mile in my shoes.

She needed his kindness.

She stepped into them and walked. Jogged. Ran. Sprinted, tripping over their clownishly big toes to search the yards, the barns, the hay store, the tack room. A mile in Luca’s shoes.

The main house was the only place left to look. The back door was unlocked. Pax stepped out of the boots, tiptoeing past her forefathers’ mahogany-topped ones to the back stairs and stopped dead in her tracks as she remembered.

Sex isn’t a ship. It’s a sport.

It wasn’t kindness or goodness she craved. It was the oblivion of abandoning herself to something forbidden to her for so long.

She heard faint music from the kitchen behind her.

Luca was sitting at the table, Knott at his feet. The big, easy smile was wider than ever, but the green eyes glinted as she’d not seen them before, his voice matching their devilry. ‘They walked you here, then?’

She hesitated. ‘Are you drunk?’

‘On you, definitely.’ He stood up, emitting an amused ‘oof’ as she hurled herself at him.

The kiss was a headrush, not remotely coy anymore. She knew what she wanted, already undressing him. He was covered in hay, his jeans hems wet and muddy. And how could he be wearing so many sweaters? He was like a sexy Babushka doll.

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