Playing With Fire. Kat Black
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which he hoped to garner some ideas for incorporating a similar scheme into his Tulaí venture.
But, whizzing along in the fast lane with the throttle open, she noted they were heading well away from Bath and showing no signs of slowing down. She felt a twinge of unease as the road signs on their new route began to feature names she recognised from a long time ago, names like Malmesbury and Stroud that told her they were heading north, towards the heart of the Cotswolds.
Surely, with the entire South of England countryside to choose from, he couldn’t have happened to choose the one area she never wanted to see again as long as she lived? An area filled with too many heartbreaking memories. What were the chances of that?
The slightly sick feeling of apprehension rising in her stomach told her she couldn’t take the risk of waiting to see. She needed to find out exactly where they were headed. But with little traffic to slow them down on the long stretches of country road, Aidan seemed lost in the pleasure of putting the bike through its paces, keeping their speed high enough to make communicating difficult.
Realising the danger of distracting him too suddenly, she tried to get his attention by squeezing him around his waist. After a couple of attempts, she felt their speed drop a little, felt Aidan shift as one of his gloved hands covered hers and squeezed back. Relief had barely begun to register before he leaned forward to grip the handlebars again and, with a renewed kick of power, the bike surged forward once more.
What? No. He’d misunderstood and now they were going even faster than before. She tried squeezing him a few more times, but the action was obviously failing to convey her urgency as they kept motoring along regardless. As the name Tetbury began to appear with increasing regularity her alertness grew into apprehension – that was a place that really was too close to the past for comfort.
Cautiously, she loosened one of her arms and tried to get Aidan’s attention by tapping him on the ribs.
Thank God that seemed to work. She felt the power throttle back and the bike begin to slow. Aidan’s hand covered hers again, giving a brief pat of acknowledgement. Ahead, she saw a crossroad junction and realised they were slowing their approach. Good, that would give her the opportunity to tell him to pull over, turn around. And not a moment too soon, she realised with a lurch of panic. With the signs ahead pointing left to Wootton-under-Edge and right to Tetbury, Annabel suddenly realised precisely where they were.
As they rolled to a slow speed, she began to loosen her hold around Aidan’s waist, prepared to flip up her visor to shout at him, or take the opportunity to dismount if necessary. But she found herself stopped by a sudden firm grip encasing her wrists, trapping them in place. Before she could even think to pull herself free, the grip was gone and the bike jumped forward again, throwing her off balance and leaving her instinctively to grab on tight.
Her heart leaped into her throat as she realised they were turning right. No. This couldn’t be happening. Panic took hold, desperate, helpless panic, as though she were racing head-on towards a cliff edge with no way to stop, no way to turn, no way to get off.
She fought the rising sense of light-headedness that had little to do with the sudden twists and turns of the narrow country lane as it wound through hedgerow-fringed fields and into the dappled shade of a small wood. Even before they rounded the final turn that would take them out of the trees, she knew what she’d find. The small roadside sign announcing that they were entering the village of Marton Chilbury, and just beyond that …
She thought about closing her eyes as they rode past, figuring that, if she didn’t look, she could pretend it wasn’t there. Yet when they rounded the bend, she found her eyes drawn to the exact spot she wanted to avoid. There, on the lefthand side of the road, where it had stood for hundreds of years, was an old thatched coaching inn. The place she’d once called home. The White Harte.
A cry of disbelief escaped her when she registered that Aidan was slowing the bike and pulling into the entrance of the carpark. She realised she’d been holding her breath for too long when her vision blurred and a rush of dizziness assaulted her, making her feel like she was going to throw up, or pass out. Or quite possibly both.
She tried to fill her lungs but within the close confines of her helmet she couldn’t seem to find enough air. What had happened to all the oxygen? She began to gasp, but that only made the dry, tight feeling in her chest grow worse.
She couldn’t breathe. She needed to get the helmet off or she was going to suffocate.
Barely waiting for the bike to stop, she jumped off, stumbling in her haste and nearly ending up flat on her face. Her knees felt too weak to hold her up so she let herself drop to them as she fought to pull the helmet off.
Her sense of panic increased as she realised it was stuck. Holding it tightly between her hands she tugged harder. It was only then she remembered the chinstrap. She tilted her head back, finding herself blinded by the sun shining on her visor, the rasping sound of her sobbing gasps filling the confined space as her gloved fingers, numb and clumsy, scrabbled to release the strap.
Then a shadow fell over her. Her hands were firmly grasped and lowered from their futile fumbling. An instant later the chinstrap was released and Annabel ripped off the helmet and sucked in huge sobbing gulps of air.
‘Take it easy, a mhuirnín. You’re going to hyperventilate.’
Aidan’s gentle, reasonable tone should have calmed her, but instead it infuriated her. Take it easy? He wasn’t the one who’d nearly suffocated, whose fingers and toes had gone numb and tingly through lack of oxygen. She dragged in another lungful and another and another.
‘Come on now. You’ll only make it worse.’ This time, his soothing murmur was accompanied by a stabilising hand that slid around her nape and exerted steady pressure downwards, pushing her head toward her knees. ‘Breathe.’
Couldn’t he tell that was what she was trying to do? Anger erupted through the panic. This was his fault anyway.
She pushed back against the pressure of the hand until she could glare at him where he crouched in front of her, his own helmet nowhere in sight. ‘Why the fuck did you ignore me? I wanted you to pull over miles ago,’ she bit out between gasps. ‘We need to turn around and go back. I can’t be here.’
He reached for her again. ‘Calm down –’
‘Don’t you dare!’ she shouted over him. ‘Don’t you dare tell me to calm down. We need to leave. Now.’ Staggering back to her feet, she grasped the helmet between her hands as she mustered every ounce of the courage she’d need to make herself put it back on, even though it was the last thing she wanted to do. ‘You’ve no idea what you’ve done here.’
Aidan also straightened. ‘I do know, Annabel. I know what this place is to you.’
Something icy-cold shot up the back of her neck, and her gaze flew up to his face. ‘What?’
‘I know this is where the photograph of you and your father was taken.’ Those grey eyes of his seemed even more intense than usual, focused unwaveringly on her. ‘The place you grew up. I brought you here for a reason.’
Annabel gaped at him for a frozen moment then the shock cracked open and she went for him, shoving the helmet at his chest with enough force to push him back half a step. ‘You bastard. How dare you?’ She shoved again, but this time he was braced and ready and simply rocked on the spot. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’
‘I’m not playing,’ he said, raising his hands to block the third shove aimed at his chest so that they both held the helmet gripped between them. ‘This is too important for it to be a game.’
‘Oh, please! Everything’s a game to you.’ Including her. This was why she needed to protect herself against him. He had no boundaries when it came to bulldozing his way into every corner of her being, exposing every part of her.
‘Not this. Believe me.’
‘Believe you?’ she stared at him with wide-eyed incredulity. ‘When all you do is pull dirty