Read Online Wish by Kelly Hunter - Free Book Online Page B

been a farce.
    ‘You didn’t fail,’ said Simon. ‘She just wasn’t right for you.’
    Adam said nothing.
    ‘Talk to me,’ said Si.
    ‘What about?’
    ‘Whatever’s eating you.’
    That would be Billie. And dear heaven, Adam hoped it would be soon. ‘Nothing’s eating me.’
    Simon finished screwing the final pipe in place, crouched back on his heels and regarded him steadily. ‘So it won’t bother you if I ask her out for a meal?’
    ‘Suit yourself.’
    Didn’t mean she’d accept the invitation, even if it was a far better offer than anything Adam had in him to give. Adam clenched his jaw and kept a grip on the pipe and the temper in him too. Surely she wouldn’t accept his brother’s invitation. Not now. Not after what they’d done here today.
    God help them all if she did.
    ‘Feel like heading into the pub tonight?’ asked Simon next.
    ‘No.’
    ‘I hear first prize in the darts competition is one of Maude’s high-top apple pies. You could be my wing man in the quest to charm your new tenant.’
    ‘No.’ Temper flashed and Adam knew damn well that his brother had seen it.
    ‘Alternatively,’ drawled Simon. ‘I could be yours.’
    ‘I
said
no. She deserves better than me. They both do.’
    And finally,
finally
his brother fell silent.
    But not for long.
    ‘You know you never gave up on love when Caroline and Jeremy were alive.’ Simon’s words were all the more potent for being so gently delivered. ‘Day after day I watched you and you
never
stopped trying to make it work, no matter how much poison Caroline fed you. How come you’re letting the bitch defeat you now she’s dead?’

Chapter Ten
    Spring rolled into summer. The days grew longer and the nights grew hotter. Christmas was coming. School holidays were barely two weeks away. Maude added blackberry pie to the menu. Roly and Arthur took up golf. Cal’s band had expanded to eight kids in total and Roly suffered in silence as Billie shifted hours and took to teaching them simple riffs and tunes in one of the unused back rooms of the pub after school two days a week.
    Those hours through the day between eleven and three were hers though, and more often than not she spent them with Adam. Loving him with her body and letting him take away her mind. Drawing pleasure, so much pleasure from him, and giving it in return.
    He barely came near her when anyone else was around. And then turned around and treated her better than any man had
ever
treated her when they weren’t. It wasn’t right. Someone was going to get hurt soon and that someone was her, but damned if she could stop what she’d started.
    Nothing to do but build a reputation for saying no to any man who asked her out. No, in some fool attempt to be faithful to a man who was
never
going to ask her out.
    It had to end; whatever this was she had going with Adam. The madness had to stop.
    Just… not yet.
    Her other passion became building the business. Making the premises more appealing to a wider selection of the community; that was her job, the part she enjoyed most, and if it helped her keep her mind off heartbreaker Kincaid and his kisses, well, that was just a bonus. Mothers started getting together as they waited for the music workshops to finish. Mothers who wanted nothing more than a coffee and somewhere to chat, and Billie’s thoughts turned to cappuccino machines and what she might do to draw in an afternoon crowd of mothers with young kids in tow.
    ‘I’ve been thinking we could use a cappuccino machine,’ she said to Roly one afternoon when Maude was there too.
    ‘What do we want a cappuccino machine for?’ said Roly.
    ‘For people who want to drink coffee.’
    ‘People don’t come here to drink coffee, Billie. They come here to drink alcohol. This is a drinking establishment. That’s why we have a liquor license.’
    Billie stared at him steadily. ‘You said you wanted more customers.’
    ‘Well, I didn’t mean teetotal women,’ blustered Roly.