A Modern Cinderella. Kate Hardy

though they worked in silence for the following fifteen minutes, she could still feel him studying her. He’d been doing it for days. And it was getting to her big-time.

      ‘What, Will?’

      ‘I’m just thinking of going to the kitchen to get a knife.’

      ‘To do what?’ She didn’t look at him. He might have been studying her like some kind of bug under a microscope, but since the beach she’d been able to look at him for no longer than a few seconds before she had to avert her gaze. Apparently his rejection still hurt. And looking at him made it worse.

      ‘To cut the atmosphere in this room…’

      She sighed heavily. ‘Will—’

      ‘Right.’ He pushed to his feet and lifted the sheets from her hand, setting them to one side. Then he grabbed hold of her hands and tugged. ‘Time for a change of scenery. And lunch.’

      It was beginning to feel as if she’d been trapped in the house with Will for years on end. People didn’t get jail sentences as long. Every hour felt as if it was dragging. Plus, if Will kept feeding her the way he was she was going to go home weighing more than when she’d arrived.

      The second she was on her feet he let go of her hands, turned, and headed into the next room. Cassidy automatically fell into step behind him, somehow unable to drag her disobedient gaze from the errant curls of dark hair brushing the collar of his cream shirt. It was easier looking at him when he didn’t know she was, she supposed…

      ‘We’ll eat on the deck,’ he announced as he glanced over his shoulder. ‘The ocean is supposed to have a calming effect.’

      Cass shook her head at his dry wit as they moved into the kitchen. ‘You want me to take anything out?’

      ‘Juice and glasses would be good.’

      She opened a cupboard for glasses and the fridge for juice, feeling a pang of sadness at how they moved around each other as if they’d been doing it for years. It was like a choreographed dance. He reached an arm up to the cupboard door; she ducked under it. She turned for the fridge; he circled around her in one fluent step. She opened the refrigerator door to put away the juice; he reached inside for mayo and ham before he closed it again…

      Cassidy had watched her parents doing a similar dance hundreds of times over the years during her childhood, and had never appreciated how much it demonstrated their ease with each other. But then they’d had decades to learn the moves; Cassidy and Will hadn’t had all that long even when they were together.

      Without thinking she casually handed him a chopping board on her way to opening the sliding doors. When he looked sideways at her, he frowned for a second before taking it.

      ‘It’s always beautiful out here,’ she said from the doorway.

      ‘I know,’ Will answered, with a smile in his deep voice.

      Stepping on to the deck, she set the glasses down on a small table and then moved towards the railing, where she breathed deep and smiled. It was the kind of place she would have allowed herself to relax and just ‘be’, under better circumstances. She wondered if Will ever felt that way. Pleasure in the simple things had never been the young Will’s thing—not that he hadn’t appreciated them; he’d just always been ambitious for more. But Cassidy had learned how precious and fragile life could be. It was important to take pleasure in the simple things, she felt.

      But, looking at the ocean, she found her thoughts wandering inevitably to the same things. For the hundredth time since it had happened she found herself revisiting what had happened the day he’d taught her to surf—which in turn led her to revisiting the kiss during their ‘rehearsal’. She had no idea why she was so obsessed by that kiss. Okay, admittedly the mature version of Will was oh-so-sexy—she would have to be blind not to have noticed. Under tall, dark and handsome in the dictionary it probably said see Will Ryan.

      The sound of a plate being set on the table behind her gave her enough warning to get her thoughts under control before he appeared in her peripheral vision. Then they stood there for a while, side-by-side in silence, before Cassidy chanced a sideways glance at him just as Will turned his head to look at her.

      He smiled a more genuine smile than he had in days, and she felt another shiver of awareness as he asked in his deliciously deep voice, ‘Better?’

      ‘I shook the cold a week ago.’

      ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’

      Yes, she knew it wasn’t what he’d meant. Since stalling never seemed to work with him any better than lying did, she took a deep breath and admitted, ‘I’m sorry. I guess being cooped up in that room is starting to get to me…’

      Will nodded his head, as if he’d already known the answer, his gaze shifting back to the ocean. After a few moments he said, ‘Thank you.’

      ‘For what?’

      Turning around, he reached out and lifted a glass before smiling at her with a light sparkling in the green of his eyes. ‘For helping with lunch.’

      Cass smiled back at him. Liar. But she didn’t call him on it; she appreciated that he hadn’t pushed her any further on why she was feeling the way she was. Apparently a little honesty really did go a long way. Anyway, she had a sneaking suspicion he already knew, and was letting her off the hook by not saying it out loud. She should really thank him in return for that. But she didn’t, because that would be bringing it up all over again. Instead she turned away from the railing and sat down in one of the comfortably padded wicker chairs on the deck, reaching for a sandwich as Will did the same and sank into a matching chair beside her.

      They managed a whole ten minutes of companionable silence, but then he casually ruined it by asking, ‘So…you want to tell me what else has been bugging you?’

      The half-eaten sandwich froze halfway to her mouth, her appetite waning. Then she took a deep breath and went right ahead and took a bite, filling one side of her cheek as she chewed.

      ‘Okay, then.’ Will lifted another sandwich. ‘I’ll just ask every half hour from here on in until you yell it at me in the middle of an argument. That usually works.’

      Then he glanced at her from the corner of his eye and had the gall to add a wink. She forced herself to speak. ‘Still got that pitbull quality to your personality, don’t you?’

      ‘Mmm-hmm.’ He took a large bite of sandwich and grinned at her as he chewed.

      ‘That wasn’t actually meant as a compliment…’

      He spoke with the food still in his mouth. ‘I prefer to think of it as a dogged determination to get to the root of an issue before it becomes a bigger problem than it needs to be.’ Ridiculously thick lashes brushed against his skin a couple of times while he considered her and swallowed his food. ‘If my memory serves right—letting you work things through in your head for too long before you talk about them does that.’

      ‘I’ve been stuck under a roof with someone I can barely hold a conversation with for two weeks. How is that not supposed to get to me? Maybe I have a right to be moody for a while under those circumstances?’

      ‘No, you don’t. Not if talking about it is all it takes to fix it.’ He frowned, ‘Who likes being moody anyway?’

      Shrugging her shoulders, Cassidy focused her attention on her sandwich, mumbling under her breath, ‘In my experience cute guys who think it adds to their feeble attempts at seeming mysterious…’

      There was a very noticeable silence that drew her gaze back to his face, where a stunned expression was warring with amusement. She scowled at him. ‘What now?’

      ‘You think I’m cute?’

      ‘I didn’t say that.’ Well, not on purpose she hadn’t.

      ‘It’s okay. I’m fine with you thinking I’m cute. Though I should probably tell you it has a slightly different