The Girl from Honeysuckle Farm / One Dance with the Cowboy. Jessica Steele

      But—Phinn fidgeted in her bed—why was she feeling just a little disturbed? As if there was something not quite right somewhere?

      CHAPTER FOUR

      PHINN was up and about long before Ash called for her the next day. She had tended to Ruby’s requirements earlier, and spent her time waiting for Ash in folding Ruby’s blankets and in getting the mare’s belongings together.

      Turning Ruby out into the field for the last time, Phinn cleaned out her stall so that Geraldine would have nothing to complain over. But even though she felt sure Ruby’s new accommodation would be adequate, she still wanted to look it over before she moved her.

      A little after nine Ash drove into the yard and found her waiting for him. He looked dreadfully tired, Phinn thought, as though his nights were long and tortuous.

      ‘Ready?’ he asked, pushing out a smile.

      ‘There’s rather a lot to cart over,’ she mentioned apologetically.

      They had almost finished loading the pick-up when Geraldine Walton appeared, and Phinn introduced the two. ‘You manage the estate, I believe?’ Geraldine commented pleasantly, clearly having been in the area long enough to have picked up village gossip.

      ‘Something like that,’ Ash muttered, and hefted the last of Phinn’s cases into the back of the pick-up. ‘That it?’ he asked Phinn.

      She smiled at him and, feeling that he had perhaps been a little off with Geraldine, smiled at her too. ‘I’ll be over for Ruby later,’ she confirmed.

      ‘She’ll be fine until then. No need to rush back. I’ll keep an eye on her,’ Geraldine promised.

      A minute or so later and Ash was driving the pick-up out of the stableyard. Her job, Phinn realised, had begun. ‘Er—Ty gone back to London?’ she enquired—more to get Ash to start talking than because she had any particular interest in his brother.

      But Ash took his glance from the road briefly to give her what she could only describe as a knowing look as he enquired, ‘Didn’t he phone you before he left?’

      There was no reason why he should phone, as far as Phinn was aware, and she almost said as much—but that was before, on thinking about that knowing look, the most astonishing thought hit her! It couldn’t be—could it?

      She tried to look at the situation from Ash’s angle. Given that she was unable to tell Ash that the real reason she was coming to live at the Hall was in order to keep an eye on him and, unbeknown to him, be his companion, did Ash think that there was more in his brother’s invitation for her to stay at the Hall than his gratitude after yesterday’s events?

      She opened her mouth to tell Ash bluntly that there was nothing going on between her and his brother Ty, nor likely to be, but the moment had passed. Then she was glad she had said nothing; she had obviously got it wrong. In actual fact, when she thought of the glamorous females that Ty probably dated, she was doubly glad she had said nothing. Far better to keep her mouth shut than to make a fool of herself.

      Ash drove straight to the stable. There were bits and pieces of packing cases outside, she noticed as they drove up. ‘I was supposed to have the stable empty before you got here, but I—er—got kind of sidetracked,’ Ash excused.

      ‘Well, with two of us I don’t suppose it will take us very long,’ Phinn said brightly, more concerned with having a look inside than anything else just then.

      Taking into account that there were more packing cases inside, plus an old scrubbed kitchen table and other items which she guessed had come out of the Hall when it had been modernised, the stable was more than adequate—even to the water tap on one wall. Indeed, once she had got it all spruced up, brushed out, and with fresh straw put down, it would be little short of luxury for Ruby.

      ‘Roll your sleeves up time!’ she announced.

      ‘You don’t want to go into the house and check on your room first?’

      Where she laid her head that night was immaterial to Phinn just then. Her first priority was to get Ruby settled. ‘I’m sure it will be fine,’ she answered. ‘Will you help?’

      Reluctantly at first, Ash started bundling boxes out of the way. And then gradually he began to take over. ‘Leave that one,’ he ordered at one stage, when she tried to manhandle what had been some part of a kitchen cabinet. ‘I’ll move that.’ And later, ‘What we’re going to have to do is to take this lot down to the tip.’

      Sacrilege! Phinn took out her phone and pressed out Mickie Yates’s number. With luck she’d get him before he went for lunch, and she needed to talk to him anyway.

      She was in luck. He was home. ‘Mickie? Phinn Hawkins.’

      ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ he replied, a smile in his voice. ‘Three o’clock.’

      ‘Change of plan,’ she stated. ‘I’m—er—working and staying at the Hall for a while.’ She could feel Ash’s eyes on her, and felt awkward. ‘The thing is, we’re clearing out the stable for Ruby. Can you find homes for some kitchen units and the like that still have some life in them, do you think?’

      ‘Today?’

      ‘That would be good.’

      ‘An hour?’

      ‘That would be brilliant.’

      ‘See you, lovely girl.’

      Putting her phone away after making the call, Phinn looked up to find that Ash was staring at her. ‘You’re working here?’ he enquired.

      She went red. Grief—what was it about these Allardyce brothers? ‘Shut up—and help me move this,’ she ordered—and to her great delight, after a stunned moment she saw a half-grin break on Ash’s features. It seemed an age since she had last seen him smile.

      She was delighted, but a moment or two later she distinctly heard him comment, ‘She blushes, and Ty says he’ll try and get back tonight…’ And then she heard him deliberately sing a snatch of ‘Love Is in the Air’.

      ‘Ash,’ she warned.

      ‘What?’ he asked.

      What could she say? ‘Nothing,’ she replied.

      ‘Sorry,’ he apologized. ‘Am I treading all over your tender feelings?’

      There was no answer to that either. ‘Now, where did I put that yard broom?’ she said instead, but knew then she had to believe that Ash thought that there might be something going on between her and his elder brother.

      What? After only seeing her once? Though on second thought, how did she know that since Ty did not want Ash to know the real reason she was there, Ty had not instigated or at least allowed Ash to nurture such thoughts? He could quite truthfully have told Ash that, apart from the time she had called at the house with his camera, they had bumped into each other on a couple of other occasions and stopped for a chat.

      That, ‘Get off my land!’ and a threat to summons her for trespass hardly constituted ‘a chat’ was neither here nor there. But it was plain Ash thought that there was more to Ty inviting her to live under his roof and offering to stable her horse than appeared on the surface. Hadn’t she herself asked Ty, ‘You think he’ll believe such philanthropy?’ Clearly Ash did not. What Ash had chosen to believe was that she was some kind of would-be girlfriend to his brother. And, bearing in mind that she could not tell Ash the truth, there was nothing she could do to disabuse him of the idea.

      Having reached the conclusion that Ash was not so down as she had at first thought, she saw the more cheerful mood he had been in while they had been busy start to fall away once the stable was empty of impedimenta and Mickie Yates had called and carted everything away.

      ‘I think I’ll take a shortcut through the spinney and collect Ruby,’ Phinn said lightly. Straw was down;