| |
FROM THE ROAD AT THE end of the driveway to The Old School House, the woman kept watch from her car, chewing on a piece of gum, and scratching at the rash creeping up her forearm.
Moving the interior mirror, she checked her reflection, the dark circles under her hazel eyes the result of nights with little sleep spent pacing the floor of the cottage she’d rented on the outskirts of Bliss Bay village. Stifling a yawn, she rolled down the window to let in a gust of bitterly cold fresh air and pulled the peak of her baseball cap low over her forehead.
The growl of an engine shook her from her daydream and she raised the window and slid down a little further in her seat when a car approached from the opposite direction. She watched as it turned into the long driveway before disappearing behind a bank of trees that shielded its progress up a small incline.
Narrowing her eyes, she focused on the top of the hill where the car reappeared outside a large house, still strung with Christmas decorations, and its driver alighted, followed by a boxer dog that sniffed here and there before bounding across the grass with its tongue lolling out.
She raked her fingernails across her arm, her heart beating a little faster when her eyes fixed on the man. Tall, broad-shouldered and long-legged, he pushed his dark hair from his forehead and whistled for the dog before opening the front door of the house and stepping inside.
Jack Windsor had barely changed. Apart from swapping his sharp suits for jeans and t-shirts, he looked the same. And now she knew where he lived, she could put her plan into action.
The woman thanked her luck that it was early January, and the bare branches of the trees and shrubs only partly restricted her view; a few weeks from now, leaves and flowers would fill the gaps. Not that she needed to see any more—she knew she’d found the man she was looking for—and just knowing she had, made the angry rash on her arm feel a little less bothersome.
Rummaging in her bag, she took out a crumpled newspaper cutting and smoothed it out on her lap. Even reading it now, months later, she felt a physical jolt in the pit of her gut and gulped back the nausea.
Mr J Windsor and Ms M Fallon
The engagement is announced between Jack, son of Mr Alec Windsor and Mrs Louisa Windsor of Madison, Wisconsin, and Megan, daughter of Mr Nicholas Fallon and Mrs Claudia Fallon, of Bliss Bay, Devon.
There could only be one Mrs Windsor, so there was no way Jack could marry this Megan woman.
He simply couldn’t.
Pushing herself back up in the seat, she took the cap from her head and shook her long, coal-black hair free from its confines. Taking one last glance at the house on the hill, she turned the key in the ignition, a smile playing about her lips as she drove away.
“I’ll be seeing you, Jack.”
