The Girl He'd Overlooked by Cathy Williams

Worse, he would wonder why.
    ‘Patric isn’t a taboo subject. I just think that I already told you everything there is to know about him, and what I didn’t you probably gleaned from the Internet. He’s a big name in Europe. Or at least, he soon will be. His last exhibition was a huge success. Everything sold and he has a number of galleries vying to show his work.’
    James had read all of that in the glowing article on the computer. They had not stinted in their praise.
    ‘You were never into art.’
    ‘I… I… never really thought that it would be something practical to do so I dropped it at school and really, around here… well, museums and art galleries aren’t a dime a dozen. I think I started realising how much I loved art when I went to university… so it was easy to fall in love with it in Paris where it’s all around you…’
    ‘And the French guy was all part and parcel of the falling-in-love process?’
    Jennifer shrugged. ‘We were close friends first. Maybe I got caught up in his passion and enthusiasm over the years. I don’t know.’
    ‘And it didn’t work out in the end.’
    ‘No. It didn’t. Now, why don’t you start getting the rugs together and I’ll give you a hand? There’s a great wad of tarpaulin in the coal shed at the back of the cottage. If Iget that, then we can cover the rugs and hopefully they won’t get too wet when we lug them over.’
    What little personal conversation she had submitted to was over. James was receiving that message loud and clear. He had never been one to encourage touching confidences from women. Events in his past had conspired to put a cynical spin on every relationship he had, although that was something he kept to himself. It was weird that he was now increasingly curious to find out more about Jennifer. It was almost as though he had suddenly discovered that his faithful pet could spout poetry and speak four languages.
    He wondered whether his sudden interest was a result of being marooned with her by the snow, compounded by the fact that he hadn’t seen her in years. Had he met her at his mother’s house, would they have skirted over the same ground, played their usual roles and then parted company to meet again in three weeks’ time and repeat the process?
    Hauling rugs into an outbuilding seemed an inadequate substitute to having his curiosity sated, but he dropped the subject and, for the next couple of hours, they worked alongside each other in amicable companionship, exchanging opinions on what would and wouldn’t need to be done to the cottage. It was an old place and prone to all the symptoms of old age. Things needed replacing on a frequent basis and an updating process was long overdue.
    ‘Right,’ Jennifer said, once they were back in the cottage. ‘You’re going to have to go now, James.’
    The past couple of hours were a warning to her that she had to be careful around him. She had always found his charm, his wit, his intelligence, irresistible and time, it appeared, had not diminished his appeal in that area. He could still make her laugh, and wading through the fast-fallingsnow was a great deal safer than sitting in a cosy kitchen where they had eye-to-eye contact.
    What alarmed her were those casual touches, the brush of his gloved fingers against her arm, the feel of his thigh next to hers as they had manoeuvred the rug into the outbuilding, laughing and looking at the collection of junk they had had to shift to make room.
    Her body had felt alive; her skin had tingled. She had been that twenty-one-year-old girl again, yearning to be touched. At least, it had felt like that. What if this whole unforeseen situation, trapped in the snow, made her do something regrettable? It was barely a thought that she allowed to cross her mind, but she knew that it was there, like an ugly monster shifting lazily underneath the defences she had laboured to pile on top of it. What if, on the spur of the moment, she let her hand linger just