Keeper's Reach. Carla Neggers
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and pulled back the curtains, letting in more of the gray light. Her rooster was parading on the edge of a stone fountain in the middle of the courtyard. He was black with white spots, or at least appeared to be. Sunlight would help. He threw back his head and belted out another crow, letting the world know he was awake and ready to take on the day.
“Well, good for you,” Naomi muttered, remembering her granny describing how she would have to catch a chicken and wring its neck for Sunday dinner. That prospect didn’t seem as horrifying at the moment as it had at six years old.
She noticed a handful of brown-feathered hens pecking and warbling in the herb gardens that flanked the pretty courtyard. She doubted they or the rooster were in any danger of becoming dinner. She envisioned the courtyard in spring and summer, when the dripping, winter-browned vines that trailed the trellises and the tall fence would be blossoming with clematis, roses and wisteria. The smattering of tables were all empty now, the cold, gray, drizzly morning not exactly a draw for breakfast outdoors.
With a yawn, Naomi ducked into the bathroom, stifling a yelp when her bare feet hit the cold tile floor. She spread a bath mat in front of the tub and turned on the water, letting it get good and hot while she pulled off her yoga pants and tank top, her standard sleepwear on the road—which meant her standard sleepwear, period. She opened the bottles of luxurious, locally made shampoo, conditioner and body wash. She wondered what it would be like to stay in this place for a few days for a break. A real getaway. It was appealing even now, in midwinter, with its soothing blend of English charm and sophistication and its perfect location in the heart of a small, traditional Cotswolds village.
A getaway would have to wait. She had a late-afternoon flight back to Nashville via Atlanta. She would gain six hours and be home in time to sleep in her own bed tonight.
“Preferably without nightmares.”
And definitely without chickens, she thought, smiling as she stepped into the tub and eased under the steamy shower.
When she stepped out of the tub again and wrapped up in a fluffy towel, she was much warmer and smelled faintly of herbs and citrus. She dried off, combed out her hair, basic brown and ridiculously curly, and got dressed. Since she had expected to stay in London for the duration of her trip, she hadn’t packed any serious country clothes. The slim, stretchy pants and wine-colored cashmere sweater she planned to wear on her flight would have to do for her morning in the Cotswolds. She did have an authentic Barbour jacket, an indulgence she had succumbed to on a long, drizzly walk in London. She never remembered to bring an umbrella with her, and that day she had bolted out of her hotel without so much as a jacket. Too much on her mind. She was good at assembling information and making sense of it, analyzing it and seeing where it pointed, but it was often a messy process that completely absorbed her.
It certainly had been that afternoon in London. She had found herself cold and wet, standing in front of a store that sold Barbour jackets. Her jacket’s waxed dark green cotton and English-country look would do nicely today. Her slip-on ankle boots, at least, were good for walking, if not for a full-blown trek on one of the network of walking trails that zigzagged throughout the region. Before dozing off last night, she had flipped through a bedside notebook filled with “guest information” and had noticed mention of a medieval church in Stow-on-the-Wold whose arched door had reportedly inspired J.R.R. Tolkien when he created the door to Moria.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to prowl through an English churchyard and then relax in an English tea shop?
It wouldn’t happen on this trip.
Naomi ignored a tug of regret mixed with nostalgia and loneliness, as if she had lost something that, of course, she’d never had. Love, trust, understanding.
Someone to wander through churchyards and have tea with her.
It was the nightmare, she knew. It still had her in its grip.
What are your plans for after the army, Mike?
She could see his enigmatic smile, at the same time self-deprecating and confident—and annoyingly fatalistic. Without saying anything, he had managed to tell her that he didn’t think past the army. If he got home to Maine, he got home to Maine. He wasn’t a pessimist, he would say. He was a realist who lived in the moment.
Did Mike Donovan ever imagine himself wandering through old English churchyards and having tea and scones with the woman he loved?
“Not a chance,” Naomi said, grabbing her jacket as she headed out to the courtyard and the chickens.
* * *
The same man who had poured her pint last night showed Naomi into the breakfast room in the pub building across the courtyard. He offered her tea or coffee. “Coffee, please,” she said, not quite choking on her words when she recognized the only other diner, a man seated on a cushioned bench, watching her, his back to the wall. It was all she could do not to turn around and walk out of there. She forced herself to smile at the waiter. “Thanks.”
He retreated, and she pushed back her dismay, frustration and mad curiosity as she walked over to the table where Ted Kavanagh sat with a pot of tea. “I didn’t take you for a tea drinker, T.K.,” she said.
“I’ve been here for an hour. I’ve already had coffee and a full English breakfast.” He motioned to the chair across from him. “Have a seat, Naomi.”
She didn’t want to but if she sat at another table, he’d still be here, a few feet away, annoyed and annoying. She sat, not much distance across the little blond-wood table. “First we run into each other in St. James’s Park in London. Now here we are in the Cotswolds.” She unfurled a cloth napkin. “Honestly, T.K., I don’t need a crazy FBI agent bird-dogging me.”
“Sure you’re not following me?”
“Yes. Positive. I need to get better at spotting a tail.”
“A good skill to have. What’s with the T.K.?”
“We’re in a foreign country. I figure it’s okay to be informal. Don’t your friends call you T.K.?”
“No.”
Probably true. Kavanagh wasn’t wearing a suit this morning, but he had a buttoned-down, perpetually suspicious look about him that she had come to know working with him in Afghanistan. She hadn’t expected to see him again after she left the State Department as an intelligence analyst, and then—poof—there he was in London.
Except there was no poof about it. Ted Kavanagh was a deliberate, calculating, experienced federal agent.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t crazy.
Naomi pulled off her jacket and hung it on the back of her chair. Kavanagh was a decade older than she was, and he had been married when she knew him in Kabul. Since he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, she guessed he wasn’t married any longer. She supposed he could have developed an allergy to metals. She didn’t plan to ask.
“In a perfect world, T.K.,” she said, “it would be spring, and I’d be having breakfast outside with the chickens and the scent of wisteria.”
“Wisteria’s a flower, right?”
“It’s a climbing flowering shrub. It’s all over the Cotswolds but it’s not in bloom this time of year. The flowers are typically purple.”
“I guess that’s good. People like purple.”
“You don’t care about wisteria. Did you stay here last night?”
He pointed at the ceiling. “Room above the pub. I rented a car and drove in from London.”
“Not me. I hired a car. Driving in London is a nightmare. A shame I didn’t know you were following me here. I could have bummed a ride off you and saved myself the money.”
“Traffic was terrible. I’ll never get used to driving on the left.” He didn’t sound as if he expected her to believe him. “You’re staying in the building across the courtyard. What is it, an