“Weddings? That doesn’t seem very Joe.”
I laughed. Couldn’t help it. “It isn’t, but it’s a moneymaker for the farm from a building that was otherwise derelict. And he was the first person to get married here, and Harry, obviously.”
“Obviously. Who runs it?”
“Lacey does the peopling. Dylan does the admin. I do the heavy lifting.”
“I don’t know those people. Is there anything you don’t do around here?”
I hooked the last tendril of tiny lights around the solid beams in the roof. “Rescue runs. I don’t have the stomach for it. Joe got sick of me weeping the whole time and benched me.”
Still struggling with guilt, resentment, and relief, I didn’t add that he’d done it for my own good. That crying myself to sleep over every rescued animal had left me a nervous wreck. I’d shown enough weakness in front of Cole. I was done.
I also had nowhere left to hide, unless I wanted to stand on a chair for the rest of my life.
Get down, fool.
I jumped down from the stool. Cole remained on the bar, but as his gaze bored into me, it felt like we were inches apart. His green eyes sparkled with something I couldn’t decipher, and silence rained down on us like a slow, tortuous storm.
My patience snapped. “What?”
“Hmm?” Cole blinked. “What?”
“You’re staring at me like I’m some kind of alien.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Yeah, but still.Why?”
Cole shrugged. “I guess we have more in common than I realised.”
He wasn’t talking about the whiplash-inducing chemistry between us. He couldn’t be—we had nothing in common there. I was a virgin, and he was a sex god who’d probably slept with Rhys. Was still sleeping with him, for all I knew, if them holding hands was anything to go by.
Why are you so fixated on Rhys? It’s none of your business.
Of course it wasn’t. And the rational side of my brain argued that Rhys had been in a committed relationship for as long as I’d known him. That he loved Jevon as much as Harry loved Joe. But I couldn’t be rational around Cole. Reason abandoned me, and all I could do was stare at his lips. “What could we possibly have in common?”
Cole leaned back on the bar, arching his elegant torso. He turned his gaze to the ceiling so I couldn’t read him. “I was benched too.”
“From horse rescue?”
“From life. I used to be a paramedic, but I couldn’t handle it, and I had a nervous breakdown.”
He’d have surprised me less if he’d asked me to marry him. Missing puzzle pieces clicked into place, still blurred, but clearer than they’d been since we’d met. “You were a paramedic? In London? With Rhys?”
“Once upon a time. He was a few years ahead of me and mentored me for a while, but I—I just couldn’t do it.”
“He’s a flight medic now. On the helicopters.” As if that meant anything.
Cole nodded. “He’s amazing. If anything ever happened to me or Ella, he’s the person I’d want to answer that call.”
“Doesn’t mean you failed, though.”
“I know that.” Cole tipped his attention back to me. “At least, I do now, but it screwed me up for a long time. Affected every part of my life. I lost my confidence, my self-esteem, even though I fuckingknewwhat it took to do that job. That ninety per cent of people don’t have it, and they couldn’t do what Joe does either.”