Read Online The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley - Free Book Online

and not ten minutes after we’d pulled out of Waverly Station my train unexpectedly stopped.
    In the midst of the murmured confusion that followed, the elderly woman who’d taken the window seat next to me glanced out the window and said, ‘Oh, I do hope there’s not been an accident.’
    I’d reassured her, ‘It’s probably nothing.’
    ‘Debris on the line,’ said the young man just over the aisle from us, his quiet voice certain. ‘We’ll not be here long.’
    It surprised me that I hadn’t noticed him earlier. I usually didn’t miss noticing good-looking men. And on top of it all, he’d been reading a book, and a man doing that didn’t often escape my attention.
    He sent us a friendly look, lifted his book and went on reading.
The Dead Zone
by Stephen King. I felt my mouth curve. The story of a man who has the curse of seeing visions of the future life of anyone he touches. Rather the reverse of my own curse, but I could sympathise.
    The young man reading seemed to like it well enough. He looked absorbed, his dark head bent so that one wave of hair fell just beside his eye, his jeans-clad legs stretched out as much as possible in that cramped space, one foot edged slightly out into the aisle. He was wearing black Doc Martens, and on seeing them my first unguarded thought was,
Oh God, wouldn’t it be great if
he
was Rob.
    The thought just hung there for a moment, then incredibly he raised his head and looked at me and grinned, and I turned twenty shades of red.
    ‘I’m Rob McMorran,’ he said, lowering the book again and holding his place with his thumb while he held out his right hand, the hand with the narrow gold signet ring on the last finger.
    I slammed my defences in place before braving the handshake, and kept it brief. ‘Nicola Marter.’
    And that was the start of it. By the time the train got underway again I’d learnt that he was a police constable, coming up on six years in the force, and that he didn’t live in Edinburgh but journeyed up from Eyemouth in the Borders; that he drove most times, except his car had broken down two days ago so he’d been forced to use the train, a minor hassle since the train didn’t actually stop in Eyemouth. ‘The nearest stop’s Berwick,’ he’d told me, ‘in England, and then you get into a taxi, turn round and come over the border again.’
    ‘Well, at least it’s not a fortified border,’ I’d consoled him, ‘with guards and wire.’
    ‘It should be.’ His tone had been dry, but his eyes had been mischief. ‘They’re nothing but trouble, the English.’
    ‘We are not. We’re wonderful people.’
    ‘Oh, aye? Will you prove it, then? Give us a len of your mobile.’
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    He’d held out his hand and rephrased. ‘May I borrow your mobile? Mine isn’t working.’
    ‘Oh.’ I’d handed the phone over, and Rob had dialled a number that set off an answering ringtone from one of his own pockets. Calmly ringing off, he’d passed my mobile back across the aisle. ‘Thanks.’
    ‘That’s a sneaky way of getting someone’s number.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You could have asked.’
    He’d looked at me, all innocence, and said, ‘I’ve no idea what you’re on about.’
    And looking at those eyes I had agreed with Dr Fulton-Wallace, that he
was
a devil. But I’d missed him when he’d left the train at Berwick.
    Ten miles out, my mobile had chimed out the tune that meant a text message had just arrived. ‘Am safely back in Scotland,’ it had told me. ‘Where are you?’
    We’d texted back and forth for the next three hours, my whole way down to London. I had asked him later why he’d gone to all that trouble, typing all those texts, when he could simply have reached out to me with thoughts. He had the skill.
    He’d told me, ‘You weren’t ready for it, then.’
    I’d slipped my hand in his and said, ‘I’m ready now.’
    But I’d been wrong.
     
     
    I set Rob’s wristwatch on the shelf beside the pillow of the bed