The surface of the sun is currently cooler than my burning cheeks. I reach up with the intention of smacking his hand where his warm fingers are curled into my upper arm, but as soon as I touch his skin, my hand sort of ends up staying there, closing over his. I don’t make any attempt to move, despite the fact Fiona’s eyes have swivelled to our joined hands and even Fergus is craning his neck for a better look.
‘Were you in marketing before?’ Fiona asks, her eyes alternating between my shoulder and Noel’s face. ‘We should take you on as a market manager permanently. You’re wasted as a tree farmer.’
‘Not as wasted as the trees are most days,’ Noel replies quickly.
My face contorts as I try to stop myself chuckling but fail magnificently. This time I do smack his hand. ‘Will you stop it?’
His other hand comes up and brushes my long hair aside so he can lean down and whisper in my ear. ‘Every time you say that, it makes me want to make you laugh even more.’
If my grip on his hand tightens with that delicious Scottish accent so close that every word moves my hair against my skin then it’s completely coincidental, and it’s absolutely not connected to the way I close my eyes and lean into him for a moment.
I can feel Fergus and Fiona’s eyes analysing every movement we make. I know I should move away from him, but he’s solid and his body heat is warm through his olive plaid shirt and I can feel the flex of his forearms against my back.
‘Fiona’s right, you know,’ he says loudly. ‘Every time you speak, I find myself saying ‘why have we never done that?’ You’re exactly what Elffield needs.’
‘Exactly what someone else needs too, hmm?’ Fergus waggles his eyebrows.
This time, Noel steps away and his cheeks are as red as mine when I glance up at him, and I try not to think about how much I liked that arm around my shoulders.
‘You two should pool your ideas for the Christmas tree campaign. Why don’t you both pop off for a cuppa and we’ll watch the stalls before we leave for the day?’ Noel offers.
Fergus and Fiona don’t need telling twice.
‘Don’t forget to talk to the other traders and see what they make of the idea,’ he calls after them as Fiona slips her arm through Fergus’s and they hobble away.
‘You’re meddling again.’ I point an accusatory finger in his direction once they’ve disappeared around the corner towards the hot drinks counter and seating area.
‘Me? Meddle?’ He manages to look so simultaneously innocent and affronted that it makes me grin again. ‘Oh, come on. They’re head-over-heels. I know you see it too.’
‘Yeah, of course. They’re adorable together. They spend most of their time making eyes at each other across the aisle. I’ve never seen someone put away as much gingerbread as Fiona gets through from all the times she wanders over to see Fergus, and he must be the nicest smelling man in all of Elffield with the amount of bathbombs and bubblebath he buys.’
That soft smile plays across his face again. ‘Let me put it this way – I’ve been to Fergus’s house and he doesn’t own a bath, only a shower. He has no need for bath products.’
‘Aww.’ I can’t help the noise that comes out of my mouth. ‘That’s so sweet.’
‘And you wonder why I meddle.’
‘Speaking of meddling …’ I start. ‘The main thing they’re head-over-heels for is village gossip, and you’re only making it worse.’
‘I’m not doing anything!’ He holds up both hands with a grin, and even though I’m trying to be annoyed, I can’t help grinning at the cheeky glint in his eyes.
‘Are you trying to get them to talk about us so they stop trying to set you up with pigeons or something?’
‘Yes. On my list of possible matches, you are marginally above a pigeon. Only marginally, mind. And only because I think you’re slightly more likely to share your chips.’
He makes it impossible for me to frown at him.
He must notice the expression because he sighs. ‘Look, they’re romantic old sods who believe people need a relationship to be happy. I’ve told them I’m not interested about fifty million times and it doesn’t make any difference. They’re determined to see something that isn’t there. If we have a laugh together, they think it’s the start of something, but equally, if I ignored you and we didn’t speak to each other, they’d convince themselves that we were playing hard to get because we liked each other.’ He winks at me. ‘And where would be the fun in that when there are the drunken antics of trees to discuss?’
‘Maybe they’re trying to get you back for all the meddling you do?’
‘I don’t meddle. That makes me sound like a crotchety old bat twitching the net curtains all day. I don’t even have net curtains. I’m just trying to help two elderly singles enjoy their twilight years together before the pair of them bankrupt themselves by buying each other’s gingerbread and bathbombs that they don’t use.’
I raise an eyebrow. ‘So it’s retaliatory meddling then?’
‘They’re always worried that I’m lonely. A beautiful girl moving in next door to me is the nosy pensioner’s equivalent of all their Christmases coming at once.’
I ignore that. He’s seen me snotty-nosed and mid-ugly-cry, as well as first thing in the morning having vaulted out of bed at 6 a.m, and up to my elbows in rubber gloves, cleaning products, mud, and then the facepaints at his farm on Halloween. No one could think I was beautiful after that. I’m plain and forgettable at the best of times. The only thing anyone’s likely to remember about me is that my hair’s so long I can almost sit on it. In his case, the snot bubble has undoubtedly made me unforgettable for all the wrong reasons.
‘So I’m sorry, but you’ve unwittingly walked into the middle of a powder keg of gossip. It’ll fizzle itself out next time someone accidentally eats tinsel or gets their head stuck in a Christmas stocking.’
‘Are you lonely?’
‘You’re never lonely with a Chihuahua,’ he says without missing a beat. It sounds like a line he’s said many times before.
Instead of giving me a chance to push any further, he takes an empty jar from the bakery crate, fills it with water from a bottle, and picks up the bouquet of roses from the table where I’d put them down.
I decide it’s best to end this conversation here like he so clearly wants to do. ‘How do you accidentally eat tinsel?’
He lets out a bark of laughter without looking up from the paper wrap he’s trying to wrestle from the roses. ‘I love how you say that like intentionally eating tinsel is completely normal.’
I watch as he slices the bottom off the stems with a penknife on his keyring and puts an abnormal amount of effort into arranging the flowers.
‘You’re going to do it, right?’ I say quietly. ‘The tree thing, I mean. If it works out like we hope and other businesses go for it, you’d have a great chance of winning. Kids love Halloween and fairytales, and pumpkins are inherently fairytale-esque, and you’re so creative, and—’
‘Of course I’m going to,’ he cuts me off before I have time to turn that into a compliment. ‘And if I didn’t, then Mum would never let a chance to knit a pumpkin pass by. It’s a great idea. Genuinely.’
It makes me blush again because he sounds so impressed and for the first time in a long while, it makes me feel like something I do could actually make a difference.
I can’t help smiling when he looks up at me. His bright eyes twinkle as he holds my gaze, the corners of his mouth tipping up more with every second until he lets out a full laugh and ducks his head. It’s enough to make me forget about everything else.
The back table is still full of pumpkins, but instead of traditional Jack O’Lantern faces cut into them, they’re carved with swirl patterns and snowflakes now it’s November, their tealights blinking inside them. He walks over to sit against it, stretches his legs out and shakes his hair back, using his fingers to pull it out of his shirt collar and detangle it. He whips a black hairband from around his wrist and p
uts it up in a short ponytail, his forearm muscles moving as he works, and I think I might’ve accidentally started drooling.
I’ve never watched a man tie up his hair before, but I’m used to doing it with my long mane and generally I just get into a mess and spend most of my time trying to detach hair from my bra straps and untrap it from where it inexplicably gets caught in my armpit, but my breathing has sped up involuntarily at how insanely sexy he looks. I think porn companies should give up on all the sweaty nakedness stuff and just concentrate on men putting their hair up from now on. His dark lashes fall across his cheeks as he looks down and bites his lip in concentration.
He knows I’m watching him without looking up. ‘What?’
‘I like it,’ I say. I don’t know what else to say, because ‘you are the hottest man on the planet’ probably wouldn’t go down too well. ‘You don’t see many guys with long hair, but it suits you.’
‘Even though I’m not a hipster with skinny jeans and a man-bun?’
I smile at the thought. There’s no way his muscular legs could be vacuumed into skinny jeans, and a man bun would never work. His hair is so thick that it doesn’t sit nicely in a ponytail and a couple of the shorter bits have already sprung out, and there’s something questionable about my sanity given how much I want to go over and tuck them back.
Thankfully he speaks again before I have a chance to do anything that stupid. ‘Thank you. My mum thinks I’m an unkempt slob.’
My breath catches in my throat because there’s something in his voice that I haven’t heard before, a flatness, a resignation. A vulnerability.
Like he can sense how much it makes me want to go over and sit next to him, he looks up at me and our gazes lock and the air suddenly feels charged with expectation, like we’re both waiting for something to happen.
I take a step towards him and he suddenly launches himself off the table, making one of the pumpkins roll off and thud onto the floor. The flickering tealight inside it goes dark as he makes a show of checking his watch like it was the reason he got up so fast.
I bend down to pick the pumpkin up, turn the tealight back on, and replace its lid as I set it back on the table.
I can feel his eyes on me, and I’m blushing again for no reason. When I turn around, he’s got that soft smile on his face again and he’s shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other.
Thankfully Fergus and Fiona choose that moment to reappear, and we watch them tottering down the aisle towards us arm in arm.
‘We’re going to catch them snogging behind the bike sheds one day.’ Noel leans down to whisper like he can read my mind. ‘They nip off for coffee every morning and they always return ten minutes later, all giggly and clinging onto each other.’
It’s probably a good thing that we don’t have any bike sheds. Because I could easily imagine myself kissing Noel behind them.
I shake my head at myself. Lingering gazes, desires to touch, and kissing men behind sheds or in any other place … I don’t know what’s got into me lately.
Chapter 10
‘Not like that, like this.’
It must be the fortieth time Noel’s said it so far this morning, and I still haven’t got the hang of it. We’re out in the Balsam fir field below the stream, Gizmo’s safely at home with Glenna due to the proximity of sharp knives, and Noel’s trying to teach me how to shear a Christmas tree.
‘Did that tree drunkenly catcall you or something?’ He looks sorrowfully at the overgrown thing I’ve just wielded my knife at. ‘It’s obviously done something to make you hate it.’
I’d never seen a shearing knife up close until I spent an hour in the barn this morning trying to work out how to sharpen them and polish them. They’re like a cross between a sword and a massive knife, and I’d feel a bit like a swashbuckling pirate if it wasn’t for the fact he’s insisted I wear leg and arm protectors and goggles. I actually feel like a foam-covered Transformer off to a welding class, with protective plates covering my jeans from foot to knee, knee to upper thigh, and again from wrist to elbow. I’m not sure if they’re to stop me getting injured or just because he wants to see me look like an idiot.
Noel, of course, swishes two knives around like a cross between a master swordsman and Jack Sparrow. He walks around each tree, cocking his head to the side and looking along the edge of the knife to judge the angle, and then swish, swish, swish, like a better-looking Edward Scissorhands, and the tree in front of him has gone from an overgrown jumble of branches to a perfectly conical tree that would look good in anyone’s living room.
‘How are you doing that?’ I haven’t even got to grips with the one-handed method yet and he’s twirling both two-foot long blades around like a demented hairdresser.
‘Like this.’ He executes another perfect swish and unwanted branches spray from the tree in a snowstorm of green needles that make the balsam scent even stronger and drop to the ground in a perfect circle.
‘You’re just showing off now.’
He grins. ‘I’m not. But I’ve been doing this for twenty-something years, and you thought Christmas trees naturally grew in a perfectly symmetrical cone shape.’
I watch as he demonstrates again, but watching Noel is never conducive for concentration, and what I find myself watching is the way his biceps move, straining against the cream and brown flannel shirt with every flick of his knife. He’s wearing faded, holey work jeans and that navy padded bodywarmer again, and his shirt sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, despite the fact there’s a fine mist of drizzle in the air.
He gestures towards the tree in front of me, indicating that I should try again, so I point the knife at the Christmas tree.
‘My name is Inigo Montoya …’
I burst out laughing so hard that I have to drop the knife for safety reasons.
‘Will you stop doing that?’ I rasp at him. It’s not the first The Princess Bride reference he’s made today and I have no doubt that it won’t be the last. ‘Are you trying to make sure I’m terrible at this so I have to beg you for help or what? Are you secretly looking for another job?’
‘I love doing this.’ He shrugs. ‘This is not work to me. You have a lot of trees to prune and, no matter how quickly you learn and how many workers you employ, you’re not going to get them all done with less than three weeks until December. Although, like I said, it’s completely the wrong time of year for pruning. We need to do only the ones you intend to sell this year and the rest can be tackled in the spring. The spruces and firs can survive being pruned now, but the new growth becomes harder and more difficult to shape in the future, so you’re setting yourself up for problems down the line, but it’s a choice between that or absolutely no trees for sale this year, apart from the Peppermint firs, and with only those to offer, the crop will be decimated too quickly.’
I pick up the knife again and aim it at the tree, holding it sideways on. I try to mimic the downwards slicing motion he makes look so effortless. There are plenty of branches sticking out from the dense body of the five-foot tall tree in front of me. It cannot be that difficult.
‘Aaargh!’ I decide a battlecry will help as I swoosh the knife down the edge, determined to nip at least a few surplus bits off, unlike the last attempt in which I took a huge chunk out of the poor undeserving tree but somehow managed to avoid all the bits that should have come off. This time, what actually happens is that I miss the tree completely, and the knife slices down and thwacks blade-first into my shin pad. Maybe they weren’t such a bad idea after all.
When I look up, Noel’s bent double with laughter. I raise an eyebrow because it’s not that funny, and eventually he stands up and throws both of his knives onto the ground. ‘Come on, we’re going to have to do the Ghost thing.’
‘I don’t think pottery is going to help in this situation.’
‘I don’t think anything’s going to help in this situation.’ His boots make imprints in the freshly weeded earth as he walks towards me. ‘It’s no wonder these
trees need to drown their sorrows. Poor buggers. Look what you’ve done to that one.’
He points out my first attempt from earlier, in which I aimed the knife the wrong way and embedded it directly into the heart of the unsuspecting tree’s trunk.
‘Right, c’mere.’ He steps up behind me and the closeness sends a shiver through me that has nothing to do with Christmas tree shearing. ‘Okay to touch you?’
I nod, afraid that if I try to talk, it’ll come out as ‘ahrumguurrgh’ or something that makes equal sense.
His chest presses against my back and his hands slide over the protective pads on my arms until his skin touches mine and his fingers cover my hands. He squeezes gently in a way that I’m sure has nothing to do with tree cutting as his elbows fit underneath mine and he somehow uses the strength of his arms to pull me closer. Every inch of his body wraps around me and his chin lands on my shoulder, his barely-there stubble brushing against the side of my neck, and I wish that his bodywarmer wasn’t there because it provides a padded barrier between us.
And that aftershave. I have never met a man who smells so good. An earthy mix of juniper and dark patchouli, with a hint of cinnamon that smells different depending on whether he’s warm or cold.
He’s murmuring something about the knife in my ear but I haven’t heard a word of it, and it strikes me that maybe I shouldn’t spend quite so much time thinking about his aftershave.
His fingers curl around mine and he angles my hand, pressing his head against the side of mine to tilt it sideways. He picks up my second knife and holds it up so both blades touch at the tip, forming a triangle. ‘The branches need to come out in a conical shape from the leader, hold your knives like this as a guide at first, but eventually it’ll be second nature and you can easily eyeball it.’
Snowflakes at the Little Christmas Tree Farm Page 18