Just Say Yes! by Caroline Anderson

Author:Caroline Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

‘WELL, I suppose looking on the bright side, it’s saved me having to turn out the cupboards, but I didn’t realise Joe would go to such lengths to avoid tidying his room!’

Matt looked at the tight smile on Georgia’s stricken face and ached for her. She was being so brave about it, but she was hanging by a thread, and he could see why. The bedrooms were seriously damaged. Only a detailed inspection once it was clear would decide how much damage there had been.

‘It could have been much worse,’ he reminded her. ‘You’re all OK, that’s what matters.’

‘I know.’

She cast another despairing look around Joe’s bedroom, at the charred remains of his furniture and the gaping hole in the ceiling where the rafters had caught, and went out, picking her way carefully across the landing to the stairs.

He followed her down, avoiding the soot-streaked banisters with their blistered paint, breathing in the bitter smell of wet ash. It was like tramping through an old bonfire, he thought.

The sitting room was ruined by the fallen ceiling, soggy sheets of plasterboard sagging down across the furniture over the firemen’s plastic sheeting. Ornaments were smashed, little treasures that she picked up and shed silent, controlled tears over.

It wasn’t like her to be so controlled, so passionless. Matt wanted to take her away, to shield her from it, but he knew he couldn’t. She went out of the sitting room and into the kitchen, streaked with soot and stinking of wet smoke, like the rest.

‘This should clean up,’ he told her, but she didn’t seem to be comforted. She moved on, through the sodden hall squelching with the filthy water on the floor, through to the studio in her converted double garage.

It was hardly touched, except for the smuts and soot lying over everything, and he watched as she went through, picking up ruined pieces of artwork and putting them down again.

‘Thank God I got the Red Book and the project out,’ she murmured. ‘I think the smoke did more damage than the fire.’

‘It usually does.’

‘I know. Really there’s very little in here that’s lost—the paperwork in the filing cabinets is all safe, at least. That means I’ve got the insurance policy.’

She shuddered, rubbing her hands over her arms in a way that was becoming familiar to him. She did it when she felt stressed or insecure, and right now, he imagined, she must be feeling both.

‘We’ll have to find somewhere to live—I was hoping it would be a case of cleaning up and moving back in, but it’s not, is it?’ she said, turning to him with eyes wide with realisation. She swallowed. ‘It’s going to have to be stripped out and rewired and redecorated, and the roof done—good grief, it almost needs to be rebuilt. It could take months!’

‘You can stay with me,’ he said, without thinking, without hesitation. There was nothing to think about. They were more than welcome.

‘I can’t,’ she protested. ‘You’ve got a life to lead—and anyway, I need to find somewhere where I can set up the business until the house is sorted out.

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