A Special Kind of Woman (3 page)

His lights trailed her all the way home, then as she pulled up they flashed a couple of times and he drove away.

How chivalrous, she thought with a tiny smile, and then looked up at the dark window in her flat over the shop. Oh, lord. No Milly to nag and bully and hug. None of her various friends to trip over, no festering coffee-mugs on Milly’s bedroom window-sill, no frenzied searching for a bag, a phone, a piece of paper.

Just silence.

Cait braced herself, and got out of the car. It was time to start the rest of her life.

She slid her hand into her pocket to pull out her house keys, and the sharp corner of Owen’s card scratched the palm of her hand. She pulled it out and looked at it in the dim light of the streetlamps, and a smile curved her lips.

Maybe—just maybe—her new life had already started.

C
AIT
would have gone crazy in the next few days without the cat to keep her company. They were both a little lost without Milly, and to comfort herself poor old Bagpuss took up residence in Cait’s immediate vicinity.

Wherever she was, the cat was too. She slept with her, she followed her round all day, and she cried piteously if Cait shut her out.

It was getting on her nerves, but since she could understand it, it was hard to get cross with her.

Well, most of the time. On the second Sunday Milly was gone, she put down a wedding dress for ten seconds and came back to find the cat making a nest inside the piles of tulle.

‘Out!’ she ordered firmly, not daring to pick the cat up for fear of plucking the fine netting, and Bagpuss stalked off with her tail in the air. It didn’t last long, though. Within moments she was back again, scratching at the door until Cait relented and let her back in.

She jumped up and settled down on the sewing table next to the pins and bobbins, tucking her paws under her and purring gloatingly because she’d got her own way again. Every now and again she reached out an idle paw and batted at the threads trailing from the needles in the
pin cushion, making Cait nervous. She moved the pin cushion out of reach.

‘I don’t need a vet bill,’ she said, but the cat just washed herself and settled down for a snooze. ‘Tired?’ Cait asked unfeelingly. ‘That’s because you were miaowing all night and keeping me awake. I told you, she’s gone. She won’t be back for ages. Maybe even Christmas.’

Christmas? Good grief. It seemed such a long time away, but it wasn’t really. She was just finishing off this last of a run of wedding dresses, and then she’d have to overhaul her winter ball gowns, all the reds and blacks and deep greens that were so popular for the Christmas balls.

Some would need revamping, others would go in the pre-season sale, and she would have to do a lot of restocking, so she wouldn’t have time to miss Milly.

Not really. Only every time she got out two plates for supper, or cooked two jacket potatoes instead of one, or weighed out the wrong amount of spaghetti. Only whenever she went into the bathroom and it was tidy, with no soggy towels dropped on the floor or nightdress abandoned over the edge of the bath or the scales missing.

Only whenever she heard something funny and wanted to share it with her daughter, and then remembered she wasn’t there.

She was getting on fine, by all accounts—or at least she seemed to be. She’d rung a couple of times, between one party and another, and she seemed to be having a great time.

Unlike Cait, who was submerged under a pile of tulle that had to be ready by tomorrow.

And then, of course, there was the evening class she’d enrolled herself on.

She sighed. Maybe she was trying to take too much
on, but she couldn’t afford to get someone else to run the shop and she didn’t dare farm out the sewing. She’d tried that before, with disastrous consequences.

So she’d struggle, and she’d probably have to stay up half the night every now and again, but she’d get there.

She had an essay to finish for tomorrow night, come to that, but her bride was coming for a fitting at nine in the morning, and she had to get the dress to the right stage by then. Still, it was straightforward enough, a variation on a pattern she’d made several times before.

She stayed up until eleven working on it, then started on the essay. Not a good move. Her brain felt like treacle, and the words seemed doubly impenetrable through the fog of exhaustion.

She fell asleep with her head in the book at one, went to bed and tried to carry on, and finally at three she admitted defeat, turned out the light and disappeared into blissful oblivion until eight thirty-eight.

Twenty-two minutes till her fitting.

Great!

She shot out of bed, had the fastest shower in the history of mankind and gave the cat a double portion of food by accident as she rushed out of the flat and downstairs to the shop, the dress carefully held aloft so she didn’t trip over it and shred the bottom.

Her bride was late. Almost half an hour late—time for a cup of tea and some toast while she finished off her essay, had she but known, but she didn’t, so she spent the whole time waiting for the young woman to arrive.

Still, she got the shop tidied after Saturday’s hectic rummaging and started her winter stock check, so the time wasn’t exactly wasted, although it was a bit irritating because it was Monday and the shop was shut on Mondays except for fittings and for regular clients who
couldn’t come on any other day. She could have been having a lie-in, she thought resentfully, or finishing the darned essay.

Her bride arrived, and the dress, by a miracle, was wonderful on her, elegant and flattering to a figure that was less than perfect, and she was ecstatic. Good, Cait thought, I’ll get paid, and then just as she was seeing her off and locking the shop again, a car pulled up outside.

She just caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of her eye, and her heart sank. Not another customer. Not today, when she had the essay to do!

She turned back to the door and her heart zoomed back up out of her boots and started hammering away at the base of her throat.

Owen—here, of all places, out of the blue and unheralded, when she’d just dragged a comb through her wet hair and pulled on the first clean clothes on hand. Why was he always destined to see her at her worst?

She glanced down at her jeans and sweater and shrugged. Perhaps not her very worst. At least the sweater didn’t have holes in it and the jeans were the ones that fitted her bottom nicely. Pity about the make-up, but two out of three wasn’t bad and it
was
lovely to see him again.

Very lovely. Wonderful, in fact, she realised, as her heart skittered about and did strange things to her insides.

Trying not to grin too inanely, she opened the door again and leant against the doorframe, her arms folded across her chest, one leg resting slightly bent against the other. ‘Hi, there,’ she said, feeling the smile widen despite her best efforts. ‘Don’t tell me, you want a ball gown.’

He grinned back. ‘Shucks, you guessed. Still, it can be our little secret. I thought something off the shoulder…?’

She felt one eyebrow climb, and her lips twitched. ‘Come in, I’ll see what I can do for you.’

‘Too kind.’

He walked past her into the shop, passing within millimetres of her, and all her senses screamed to full alert. Suddenly the shop seemed absurdly small and crowded.

Cait turned the lock on the door and eyed him blatantly, disguising her sudden confusion with a jokey appraisal of his body. ‘Mmm. Those shoulders could be a problem,’ she teased, and he smiled.

‘Ah, well. Never mind the gown, I’ll settle for a coffee.’

A coffee. She had tea, she had hot chocolate. Coffee she was out of—and the kitchen looked as if a bomb had gone off in it. ‘Um—’ she flannelled, but he cut her off.

‘I’ve got the day off. I just called on spec because I thought you’d be in, but—as you’re shut—maybe we could go out—if you’d like to, that is, or you’ve got time?’

‘Out?’ she said blankly, and could have kicked herself for sounding so vacant.

‘Out—you know, maybe to the seaside or a craft centre or something? I don’t know. Whatever you fancy.’

He sounded a little lost, and she tipped her head on one side and studied him thoughtfully. ‘You miss him, don’t you?’

Owen’s mouth kicked up at the side and he gave a short huff of laughter. ‘Rumbled,’ he said wryly, and searched her face. ‘How about you?’

Cait shrugged. ‘It seems very odd. She’s rung me a couple of times, when she’s been able to fit it in—they seem to do nothing but go from one party to another. I can’t get her on her room phone at all.’

‘Ditto. Josh says the medics really know how to party. I don’t think he’s been to bed for more than a hour at a time for the last week and a half.’ He shoved his
hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. ‘So—fancy playing hookey?’

Her mouth tipped in a slow smile. ‘Do I ever,’ she said with feeling. ‘I have an essay to finish for tonight for my Law evening class, I have to put that wedding dress together now she’s had a fitting, and the place is a tip. Oh, yes, I fancy playing hookey—in capitals!’

He laughed. ‘Let’s go, then.’

‘I need to change,’ she said, eyeing his suit, but he shook his head.

‘No. You’re fine. I wish I was wearing something less formal. I hate suits.’

‘So why did you put it on?’ she asked, puzzled.

‘Because my day off was unscheduled. They had to close my theatre because of staff shortages, so my list was cancelled at the last minute. I suppose we could go via my house and I could change. How long can you spare?’

Cait thought of everything she had to do, and then thought of the rest of her life spent doing just that, and smiled defiantly. ‘As long as you like.’

He nodded, a smile hovering in his eyes. ‘OK. We’ll go via mine and I’ll change. You can meet the dogs then—are you all right with dogs?’

‘I love dogs,’ she told him. ‘I just can’t have one in the flat. The garden’s tiny and it’s not really fair when I’m at work all day, even if it is just downstairs.’

Owen pulled a thoughtful face and nodded again, slowly. ‘I agree. I didn’t know what to do about mine when Jill died, but I think they’d probably rather stay with me and put up with my long hours at work than be rehomed, and anyway, I’d miss them. Still, I have a home help who comes in every day for a couple of hours, so it’s not too bad.’

Every day, Cait thought enviously. She’d give her eye teeth for someone to come and run a vacuum over the flat once a month, never mind every day. She kept the shop immaculate, but the flat always seemed to run away with her. Ah, well.

‘What do I need?’ she asked, and he shrugged.

‘Coat? Shoes for walking if you fancy walking, or not if you don’t. Nothing much.’

She nodded. ‘Give me five seconds and I’ll be back,’ she said, and then threw over her shoulder as she headed for the door marked P
RIVATE
, ‘You could pick out your ball gown while you’re waiting!’

She ran up to the flat, apologised to Bagpuss for deserting her and dithered for a moment over her make-up. No, too obvious, she decided, and grabbed a coat and her trainers and bag and ran back down.

‘I thought this one,’ he said, holding up a few strips of gold held together with imagination. It was an outrageous gown and just the thought of Owen in it made her lips twitch.

She shook her head. ‘No. You need a bigger bust to carry it off,’ she told him, deadpan.

He hung it up again, pulling a regretful face, and she laughed.

‘Ah, poor baby,’ she teased, and his mouth quirked.

‘You’re a hard woman—I’m sure my bust is big enough for that dress.’

‘You’d have to wax your chest, though,’ she pointed out wickedly, and he winced.

‘Perhaps not, then. I’ll stick to the DJ.’

‘Might be safer.’

Cait locked the shop behind them, and he settled her into the luxury of the passenger seat before going round and sliding behind the wheel. The car purred to life and
slid out seamlessly into the traffic, and she settled back against the seat and allowed herself to be pampered.

Soft music flowed around them, and as he drove they chatted about this and that. He was so easy to talk to, she thought, with his teasing sense of humour and his ready wit, but there was so much more to him, such depth and breadth and a wonderful human warmth that drew her like a moth to a flame.

Don’t start having fantasies about him, she warned herself, but it was pointless. Every moment in his company she felt herself drawn closer to him, and by the time they arrived at his house she knew she was in deep trouble.

For the first time in her life, she realised, she was in serious danger of falling in love. Not lust, not a teenage crush or the hopeful dreams of a lonely young mother, but love.

And only a fool would allow herself to fall in love with a man who was so clearly out of reach.

I
T WAS
a wonderful house. Snuggled into the side of a hill off a winding country lane, the old half-timbered barn looked out over the gently rolling farmland to the woods on the far side.

Autumn colour was just beginning to touch the leaves, and Cait guessed that in a few weeks the blaze of colour would be spectacular. In between, the land was freshly ploughed, the turned earth like rich, dark chocolate, and in the distance she could see a tractor moving slowly across a field, seagulls swooping and fluttering in its wake like the tail of a kite.

She breathed deeply of the fresh country air and thought of Josh and Milly stuck in the middle of London, surrounded by all those fumes, and she wanted to cry for them.

Owen opened the door and held out an arm to her, beckoning her inside with a smile. ‘Come on in—dogs, get down!’ he said, and the dogs subsided, wagging round them both and sniffing her with interest. ‘They’re just checking you out, they won’t hurt you,’ he told her, not that she needed reassuring. She guessed she was more in danger of being licked to death. ‘This one’s Daisy, the other one’s Jess. Say hello nicely, girls.’

Cait looked at them, identical chocolate Labradors, and wondered how on earth he could tell the difference.

‘Different collars,’ he explained, reading her mind, and she laughed and patted them, introducing herself and trying to learn the difference, and then she straightened up and saw the interior of the barn, and fell in love all over again.

‘Oh, wow,’ she said softly, her breath almost taken away. They were in a lobby near one end, and through the open doorway she could see a wonderfully cosy sitting room at the end nearest her, and then beyond an open studwork partition the dining room soaring to the roof, with huge windows on both sides stretching up to the eaves.

A massive stove squatted between the two rooms, a gleaming stainless steel stovepipe emerging from the top of it and stretching up towards the roof. At the far end of the dining room two steps rose to the kitchen, with more open studwork to divide it from the central area.

‘Come on in,’ he said.

She followed Owen through the cosy and inviting sitting room into the central dining room, and tilting her head back she looked up into the great beamed vault of the roof. The ends were divided off with closed studwork, the beams still visible, so that over the kitchen and sitting room were two rooms, presumably bedrooms, and between them a walkway was suspended from the tie beams by steel rods, accessed by a sweeping spiral staircase in gleaming steel.

It was a fascinating mix of ancient and modern—sort of high tech meets country, Cait thought, and then she moved her head and caught a glimpse of the view through the wall of glass, and she was spellbound.

‘Oh, it’s gorgeous!’ she said with feeling.

‘You like it?’ he asked, sounding curiously vulnerable. She turned to him in amazement.

‘Like it? It’s wonderful! Of course I like it!’

‘Not everybody does. Bit rustic. Jill wouldn’t have liked it—she used to say she couldn’t understand why anyone would want to live in a shed.’

Hence the vulnerability. Oh, yipes.

‘Maybe it wasn’t her kind of thing,’ she said carefully, anxious not to criticise the dead woman. ‘It might be a bit…informal for some tastes.’

Owen nodded. ‘She liked order and everything in its place. We had a big Victorian house in the town before—formal and elegant and no surprises—and for all she loved them to bits, the dogs weren’t allowed out of the kitchen and breakfast areas.’

‘And now I suppose they sleep on your bed,’ she teased.

He laughed softly. ‘No. Just the settees. It’s a bit hard to stop them when there isn’t a door to close, but I don’t care. It’s not a showpiece, it’s a home.’

‘I think it’s gorgeous,’ she said, wondering how to ask him to show her round and unable to say the words. She didn’t know him well enough, and it was such an intrusion.

‘You want a guided tour?’

She pulled a wry face. ‘I’m sorry. Is it so obvious?’

Owen laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I know what it’s like. I love looking at other people’s houses. It’s so revealing.’

Thank goodness I didn’t let him up into the flat this morning, then, she thought with a bubble of hysterical laughter threatening. Revealing wasn’t in it. He would have run a mile!

He took her through the ground floor first, back past the front door in the lobby and through to a pair of bedrooms each with doors out to the garden and
their own shower room just next to them. ‘Josh has this bit of the house,’ he explained, but it was self-evident in the posters and clutter and general abundance of teenage gear, even without all the things he’d taken away.

‘What a good idea,’ she said, regretting the smallness of her flat. ‘It must be more peaceful. Milly’s music drives me potty.’

He laughed. ‘Ditto. The house isn’t very good at being soundproof with all the open studwork. This way I didn’t have to listen to
his
dreadful choice in music.’

They retraced their footsteps back through the sitting room and dining room and into the kitchen. While Cait looked round enviously at all the cupboards and conjured with the very thought of having enough room for a central work island, he put the kettle on the Aga and gave her a quick glance at the pantry and utility room, then he led her up the staircase to the bedrooms.

‘This is the spare room,’ he said, taking her along the walkway to the one over the sitting room.

‘Oh, it’s huge!’ Cait said, looking round at the four-poster bed nestled under the roof, with the window opposite so you could lie in bed in the morning and look at the woods and the fields and wallow in the beauty of it all.

‘Why don’t you sleep in here?’ she asked, sticking her head round the door of the
en suite
bathroom. ‘It’s gorgeous.’

‘I know. It’s a lovely room and it’s got a fabulous view, but I prefer the other one. It’s over the Aga and it’s warmer, and it’s got a funny door. It just appeals to me.’

She followed him back down the walkway to the other room, and he pointed out the door that was cut along the top to fit the contours of the beam. She had to
duck to clear the beam, and climb three little steps, and then they were in his bedroom.

The bed was huge, and yet it seemed scarcely big enough for the vast expanse of space. A row of doors in aged oak led to the little shower room, the loo and the walk-in wardrobe down one side, and on the other was a window criss-crossed with beams, looking out over the valley again.

Owen glanced round and rubbed his chin ruefully. ‘I’m sorry, it’s not exactly tidy. Mrs Poole doesn’t arrive until eleven and I left in a bit of a hurry this morning, so I didn’t make the bed.’

‘Don’t apologise—I didn’t make mine, either,’ she said with a laugh, but her eye was drawn to the tousled quilt and the dented pillow, and she felt a shiver of hot and cold run over her. Suddenly the enormous room seemed tiny and Owen seemed very, very close—scarily close, and extremely male.

I’m going to make a fool of myself, Cait thought, but then a noise caught her attention, a high-pitched whistle, and he turned towards the door.

‘The kettle’s boiling,’ he said. ‘Mind your head on the way out.’

‘Why don’t I go and take it off while you change?’ she suggested, and he turned on the steps and bumped into her, reaching up to steady her.

Their eyes locked, and Cait couldn’t breathe. Oh, lord, now what? she thought, but he seemed to pull himself together visibly. ‘Good idea,’ he said, and stepped back, knocking his head on a beam behind him.

He ducked and swore softly, and Cait made her escape down the stairs to the kitchen, stifling a chuckle.

The dogs were bracketing the Aga, and she stepped over them to remove the kettle. ‘I hope you really are
friendly,’ she said, and they thumped their tails and grinned at her. ‘I take it that’s a yes.’

‘Coffee’s in the cupboard next to the Aga,’ Owen called down. ‘Instant or real—take your pick. There are teabags, too. The fridge is in the corner.’

‘Thanks,’ she called back, suddenly aware of how close he was and what he was doing. Excitement tingled along her veins, and she tried not to think about him changing his clothes so very close to her. She could hear the odd clonk that was probably shoes coming off or going on, and drawers and doors opening and shutting, and the slight creak of the bed as he sat on it.

There had been a towel draped over the end of the bed, but she hadn’t noticed any pyjamas lying around. Did that mean he slept naked? Heat shimmered over her skin, and she slapped her wrist.

‘Cait, behave,’ she told herself fiercely. ‘It’s none of your business.’

But she wanted it to be. For the first time in her adult life, she really, really wanted to develop a relationship with a man—this man, this funny, sensitive, generous man with eyes like molten toffee and lips she was aching to kiss…

Owen sat on the edge of the bed and sighed. He was going to make an idiot of himself over her, just because she was warm and gentle and funny and seemed totally unaware of how lovely she was.

He’d nearly kissed her when he’d turned on the steps and bumped into her, and her mouth had been just there in front of his, soft and slightly parted with surprise, and the longing had hit him like a thunderbolt.

Then he’d leapt out of the way and crowned himself
on that beam, and she’d run down to the kitchen, no doubt splitting her sides laughing at him.

He rubbed the back of his head ruefully and sighed again. Damn. He had a bruise. Oh, well, it would serve him right—remind him not to make an idiot of himself. Or at least a worse idiot than he already had. He tugged on his jeans and a thick rugby shirt, pulled a sweater out of the drawer and put on his comfortable old shoes, then ran down to the kitchen.

‘What did you make?’ he asked, but she just smiled that lovely wide smile and shook her head, and heat slammed through him.

‘Nothing. I didn’t know what you’d want. I’ll make it now, if you like.’

Suddenly the kitchen seemed terribly small and intimate, and with nobody else around to dilute the atmosphere he could hardly breathe. Plus any minute now Mrs Poole would be here, and he couldn’t cope with her insatiable curiosity. ‘Let’s go out,’ he suggested rapidly. ‘We’ll get coffee somewhere—unless you’d rather not?’

She shook her head again. ‘I don’t mind. Whatever.’

‘We’ll go out,’ he said, more firmly, and headed for the door.

Was it something she’d said? Owen seemed preoccupied and uncomfortable, and Cait wondered if it was because she’d said she liked the barn and reminded him about his wife.

Had he taken her remarks as a criticism? Surely not—she’d only said she liked the house, but maybe he felt guilty because he liked it, too, and if Jill wouldn’t have done—oh, it was hopeless. She couldn’t work it out, she didn’t know enough about him, so she sat
quietly beside him as he drove across to the coast, and they walked along the front at Aldeburgh in the keen October wind, and when their fingers and noses were frozen they took refuge in a hotel bar for coffee.

He seemed more relaxed now, and so she found herself able to relax and enjoy his company. He was very easy to talk to, and after a while she found herself talking about Milly.

‘I was so worried about how she’d cope, but she seems to be having loads of fun. Partying till dawn, by all accounts. I don’t know, I never had so much fun when I was her age—well, of course I didn’t, because I had her running around underfoot all day and night.’

He studied her thoughtfully over his coffee cup. ‘You must have been very young when you had her,’ he said in a gentle voice totally devoid of criticism. ‘It must have been hard.’

‘It was. I was seventeen—just. My parents were in the throes of splitting up, my boyfriend’s parents had split up—we were in the same boat, really, and I suppose we just turned to each other for comfort. Anyway, when I found I was pregnant my parents went off at the deep end and threw me out, and he was sent away to sixth-form college, and that was the end of that. He wrote for a while, but he never sees her and he’s living abroad so I don’t get any financial help from him. I never have had—well, that’s not quite true. He sent her a cheque for a hundred pounds for her eighteenth birthday and she gave it to me because she said she didn’t want it and my car needed servicing.’

Oh, dear. She hadn’t meant to tell him that, to let him know how close she came to the wire in a bad month, or what a knife-edge they lived on. She had no sickness insurance, so if she had to have time off—well, she couldn’t, and she’d always managed to struggle down
stairs to the shop no matter how bad she’d felt, and luckily she’d been reasonably well.

The threat was there, though, and it worried her, but it wasn’t Owen’s business, and he didn’t need to know.

‘I thought we were young, at twenty-one,’ he told her, and she did a quick calculation that made him thirty-nine, just four years older than her. ‘How on earth did you manage? At least we had help from our parents, and we had each other. It must have been a nightmare on your own.’

Cait nodded agreement. ‘I stayed with a friend until the baby was born, then the council gave me a flat, and I started doing alterations and making clothes for people. I picked up an old sewing machine and someone gave me an overlocker that didn’t work, and I got it mended for a few pounds and used it for years.’

‘So what gave you the idea of the shop?’ he asked curiously, and she smiled.

‘Money. A friend asked me to make her a ball gown, and said she’d gone to a hire shop and the cost was outrageous. I made the dress for less than the cost of the hire, and she said it was one of the nicest at the ball. Some of her friends came to me, and then they didn’t want them again and started to swap, and I thought, if I had a hire shop, I could appeal to a wider market.’

‘So you opened the shop.’

‘Yes—and I’ve been there ever since. It’s been wonderful, because living overhead I could work in the holidays without compromising Milly’s safety, and it was within walking distance of her school and friends without being in a town centre, and it’s got parking outside for customers—it’s perfect.’