The Burning Read Online Free

together for six, and from the moment I’d moved into Ian’s place, the fighting had started. I’d fallen for a big smile, broad shoulders and a job that had nothing to do with crime. He’d told me he liked the dynamic, busy detective with long legs and no ulterior motives. I wasn’t looking for a husband who could be the father to my children – yet. My eyes didn’t light up with pound signs when I heard he was in banking. It was all so easy. We saw one another when we could, snatched hours in bed at his place or mine, managed dinner together every so often and when my lease came up for renewal, Ian had taken a chance, the sort of gamble that had made him rich, and invited me to move in with him in his ludicrously over-designed, expensive flat in Primrose Hill. It hadn’t been a good idea. It had been a disaster. And I wasn’t sure how to get out of it. After two months, we hadn’t known one another, except in the biblical sense. We hadn’t worked out what we had in common, or how we might spend long winter afternoons when the weather made going out an unappealing prospect. As it turned out, we stayed in bed or we fought. There was no middle ground. I started to stay longer at work, left earlier in the morning, popped into the nick over the weekend even if I wasn’t on duty. The only silver lining was the overtime pay.
    The night air was harsh and I shivered as I hurried down the road, my hair cold against my neck. I was glad of the coat Ian had bought me, full-length and caramel-coloured in fine wool that was really too nice for hacking about crime scenes, but he had insisted on it. Generosity was not one of his shortcomings – he was open-handed to a fault. Even allowing for the extra overtime cash, there was no way I could compete. We weren’t equals, couldn’t pretend to be. It was no way to live.
    When I got to my car, parked where I could find a space the night before, which was not particularly close to the flat, I stopped for a second to fill my lungs with sharp-edged air and centre myself, letting the silence fill my mind. That was the idea, anyway. Somewhere an engine revved as a neighbour drove away; traffic noise was building already, even at that early hour. And I needed to be elsewhere. Enough of the Zen contemplation. I got into the car and got going.
    My heels were loud on the tiled floor and Rob saw me coming a long way off. He was sitting on an upright chair with his legs stretched out in front of him, taking up most of the corridor outside the intensive care unit.
    ‘Morning.’
    ‘Is it?’ he said interestedly, handing me a cardboard cup with a plastic lid. ‘I thought it was still Thursday night.’
    ‘Nope. It’s Friday. The twenty-seventh of November. All day, if that helps.’
    He grinned up at me, dark stubble bristling on his face, halfway to a decent beard already. Welsh forebears had given him black hair, blue eyes, pale skin and charm to burn, but he needed to shave twice a day to keep his five o’clock shadow in check. Rob never quite made it to groomed, but he was looking particularly rumpled, and I recognised his shirt as being the one he’d worn the day before.
    ‘You didn’t make it home.’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘You’ve been sitting there for hours.’
    ‘Yep.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘That,’ he said, wagging a finger at me, ‘would be telling.’
    I sat down on the chair beside him and took the lid off the cup, smelling the hot-metal steam of machine-brewed coffee. ‘How many of these have you had?’
    Instead of answering, he held his hand out so I could see the tremors that made it quiver.
    ‘God. No more caffeine for you.’
    ‘Aw, Mum …’
    I sipped coffee, smiling against the edge of the cup, as Rob leaned his head back against the wall and yawned.
    ‘You made good time. I expected it to take the full hour to get you from bed to here.’
    It should have taken me longer, but I had driven comfortably over the speed limit most of the way, and had thrown the car