Anything but Vanilla(68)

‘That’s for the long term. We have to prove the idea first.’ She attached Geli’s design. ‘This is the image we’re going for.’

‘Pure Norman Rockwell. Does Ria approve?’

‘We’re working on her.’

Alexander eased off his backpack, stretched his muscles, turned on his phone hoping for a message from Sorrel. After a long hard trek, it was like coming home to a kiss...

We’re working on her?

‘Who is we?’ he dashed off and then wished he hadn’t. He sounded jealous. Hell, he was jealous of anyone who was with her. Could Graeme be back on the scene?

He had to wait a day for her reply— ‘Michael came back with her. He wants to see where he came from. Where you come from. He looks a lot like you, only less battered.’

‘The knocks are collisions with experience. Michael is still a baby.’

‘Keep away from experience, Alexander, it’s bad for your health and rots your clothes. Any closer to finding the elusive plant?’

‘Not yet, but there are plenty of others with potential. I sent a package of specimens back to the lab last week.’

‘That’s the way it goes. You’re saving lives, I’m making ice cream.’

‘Every life needs ice cream, Sorrel.’

And so it continued. Every day there was some small thing to make him think, make him smile, make him wish he could reach out and gather her in. Feel her in his arms, smell her hair, her skin, taste her strawberry lips.

He sent her photographs of the plants he’d found, the shy people who lived in the forest, a shack by the river where he’d made camp, the perfect white postcard curve of beach he’d found when they’d been near the coast.

‘Swam, baked a fish I caught over a fire and slept beneath the stars.’ And, instead of simply enjoying the moment as he would have done before he met her, he longel for Sorrel to be there to share it with him.

‘It looks blissful. I’m glad you had a few days out to rest. Michael has taken Ria back to the States for a couple of weeks, lucky thing. It’s raining cats and dogs, here. Very bad for business.’

Julia had only ever asked when he was coming home. Ria only sent him messages when she needed something. Sorrel was different.

She asked what he was doing, what he’d found, how he’d managed to dry out his socks after heavy rain. He’d begun to rely on that moment at the end of a gruelling day when he could put his feet up and be with her for a moment.

‘Make the most of it,’ he suggested. ‘Have a puddle-jumping moment.’ He grinned as he hit send, hoping that she’d send a picture. He’d bet the farm that she wore pink wellington boots.

There was no picture. For the first time in weeks there was no message from Sorrel waiting for him at the end of the day.

It was some hang-up in cyberspace, he knew, and yet the absence of that moment of warmth, of connection when he returned to camp, left him feeling strangely empty. Cold despite the steamy heat...

As if a goose had walked over his grave.

He shook off the feeling. She was busy. KG was being refitted. She had a business to run, a million more important things to do than keep him amused, but sleep, normally not a problem, eluded him.

When there was no message the following day the cold intensified to a small freezing spot deep inside him and he began to imagine every kind of disaster.

He knew it was stupid.

She lived in a quiet village in the softest of English countryside. She wasn’t going to find herself face-to-face with a poisonous snake in Longbourne. The only plant life that could cause her pain would be a brush with a stinging nettle and the mosquitoes weren’t carrying malaria.

She could have had an accident, his subconscious prodded, refusing to be quieted. A multi-car pile-up in bad weather on the ring road—she’d said it had been raining hard.

She could be in a coma in Intensive Care and why would anyone bother to call him?

He tapped in, ‘Missing your messages. Everything okay?’ Then hesitated. He was overreacting. If anything was wrong, Ria would let him know.

Maybe.

But no one knew how he felt about her. He hadn’t known himself until the possibility that she might not be waiting for him when he eventually turned up hit him like a hurricane.

No...

He deleted the message unsent; she was probably taking his advice and making the most of the moment. He hadn’t asked her to wait for him. He hadn’t wanted her to. He couldn’t handle the burden of expectation that involved.