Running Scarred by Jackie Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

behind her.     
    She took one last long look into the forest, staring hard into its impenetrable depths, hoping to catch another glimpse of his tall figure, and then she gave it up. She had an appointment to keep. She’d catch up with the man some other time and if she didn’t, she’d leave his coat by the Chateau door. It seemed the obvious place. It would be a shame if she couldn’t see him again. She wanted to find out if the strange electrical tingling that she had felt every time she thought about him was just a figment of her imagination. She flushed at the wild thoughts that came far too easily once again and pressed her hand to her belly to stop the mad flipping sensation deep in her stomach,
    She lifted the bag holding his coat to her face and breathed the lush smell in deeply. Her stomach leapt again and her heart pounded furiously beneath her ribs. Oh God! She thought and closed her eyes. Why was she feeling like this when she was just sniffing at his old coat? Maybe it was just as well that she didn’t meet him again. She didn’t think her body could take it.
     
    He had turned sharply away as soon as he realized who was in the giant car and that she had seen him. He had hurriedly stepped back deeper into the woods, and stood with his back pressed to the trunk of a wide pine tree, momentarily annoyed that he was going to have to delay his trip to the local market.
    And then he took a quick glance to see if she was following him. His breath caught in his throat and he gazed at her , mesmerized, silent in his new hiding place. It hadn’t been any trick of the moonlight. She was completely stunning. Her rich, chestnut hair was tumbling over her shoulders, sweeping across her beautiful face in the gentle breeze. Her eyes were the darkest brown, wide and framed by impossibly thick eyelashes. Her lips were full and tinged the softest pink. He groaned as he looked lower at her curving frame, fuller in exactly the right places and accentuated by a close fitting jumper and skin hugging jeans.
    His stomach rumbled and clenched in tightly, but he didn’t think it was because he was hungry. He waited quietly, hoping she would go away quickly, so that he could forget those wonderful curves and that beyond beautiful face. He needed to be practical and get to the market before it closed.
    He had only just started plucking up the courage to limp along the stalls, buying meat and fish and delicious home grown vegetables. It had taken a week or two for him to notice that people didn’t stare at him here. They didn’t seem to mind his odd voice as he practiced his rasping, schoolboy French, ordering oddly named cheeses and strange cuts of meat. He had only found out later that they thought he was a leftover of an older era.
    When he had bought his cottage in the woods, all he had wanted was somewhere to live completely alone, where nobody could bother him ever again. He hadn’t taken any notice of the fact that the tiny building stood in the grounds of the huge , derelict Chateau. He seemed to remember the agent telling him that the cottage had originally been the gardener’s house, and that although it had no official garden itself, in an attempt to get someone to buy the place, it was being sold with access rights to the whole of the estate.
    Estate was a very grand term for his overgrown surroundings. It might have once been a fabulous garden with acres of grounds, but now everything had been taken back by nature. The imposing driveway and avenue of trees were completely hidden already. There were remnants of the formal gardens, now being covered by the rampant rhododendrons and even though some of the remaining flowering shrubs looked good in the spring, they were fast being smothered by ivy and brambles.
    The huge Chateau and stable block wi th riding school were also being suffocated by the relentless creeping growth. He kind of liked the abandoned look of the place. The empty windows, some with jagged broken