“Can you get a vase out, I think there is one in the cupboard down there.” She gestured her head down towards the corner of the kitchen.
His face was impassive as he bent down to reach the vase, but she had caught the quick look of dismay that passed over him as he took in the farmhouse’s old fashioned and worn interiors.
He stood up holding a large brown vase that Alexis had seriously considered throwing away in her first frantic week of cleaning. She rather thought now that maybe she should have thrown it away. It was indeed terribly ugly.
He filled the vase with water and held it out to her to put the flowers in just as she sneezed forcefully, right into his face.
“Bless you,” he said delicately, as he wiped his face with his sleeve.
Alexis was mortified. This was not the reunification scene she had imagined for so long. She had always expected to see him in New York, where he fitted in so well. Out here, he just seemed so wrong. So out-of-place.
That evening she fed him Spanish chicken stew, which he appreciated, on Bert’s old, chipped stoneware plates, which he didn’t. When he thought she wasn’t looking, he ran his fingers over the chips with a look of distaste.
“So, you wanted to talk?” she said, once they had finished eating. There was no point spoiling good food with awkward conversation.
“Tomorrow?” he suggested. “I’m bone-tired.”
She made up a bed for him on the couch with some spare sheets, so old and well-used they were almost transparent. No Egyptian cotton here.
The couch was covered in cracked vinyl and was both slippery and too short for James’s lanky frame, but it couldn’t be helped. It was either that or the floor.
He cast a wistful look at her bed, but she squelched down any sense of pity she felt for him. A couch was all that unexpected and uninvited guests would get, and he could count himself lucky to get that much. He had broken up with her, after all.
The following morning James was waiting for her when she arrived back home after a morning of checking on the sheep. He had cooked her breakfast, a very sweet but slightly misguided move, seeing as she had been out for four hours and it was now sitting cold and soggy on the bench, with an equally cold coffee sitting next to it.
He also hadn’t bothered to do the dishes afterwards and was instead busy spreading various work folders and notes around the kitchen table, leaving very little room for Alexis to sit down to eat.
She could feel his annoyance at her radiating from him. It hadn’t been quite the welcome he had expected, with her sneaking out of the house before 6 a.m. and not reappearing until nearly ten.
Tough. She was a farmer now.
For a few more weeks.
Granted, she could have rushed through it in little more than an hour, possibly even had Terry, the more experienced of the two farmhands, do a quick check for her, but she enjoyed the crisp feel of the wind on her face and the silence that stretched around her for miles. It was a freeing feeling, and it felt to her that the pent-up thoughts that were crammed into her head could have room to move while she was out here.
Guilt at what had happened with Mason was consuming her thoughts, and had been ever since James had appeared at her doorstep with his apology. His apology and his smile and his perfect model-looks and his damn self-assuredness.
He hadn’t thought for a moment that she might not take him back. Perversely, his confidence made her angry, and she felt frustrated at herself for giving in so easily. No, you couldn’t call it ”giving in”, because that would mean she had fought it at first. Instead, she had spent yesterday afternoon crying in his arms.
At least she had made him sleep on the couch last night. That was the only part of yesterday that she felt good about.
She had been dreaming of this for a month, yet now that James was here, all she wanted to do was to get out of the house and seek the company of these blasted sheep instead.
Not because she wasn’t sure of him anymore. Of course not. She was still in love with him, wasn’t she?
James was what she knew. He was from the life she knew, the life that she was comfortable in, the life in which she belonged.
Maybe she was feeling an attachment to this place, but that was understandable. She had come here with a broken heart and she would leave here again with a mended heart and James’s arm around her. This last month would be nothing more than a chapter in her life that didn’t fit with the rest of her life story.
“Thank you for making breakfast,” she ventured, bravely taking a bite of the soggy scrambled eggs. Her words seemed to have the desired effect and James looked up from his computer screen.
“I didn’t know where you’d gone,” he muttered accusingly.
“I just had to tend to the sheep. I didn’t get a chance to yesterday with you arriving and—”
“It’s okay, babe. I forgive you.” He smiled at her with perfect white teeth and Alexis once again wondered how come he had never been signed up to a modeling contract. “Anyway, it won’t be long until we’re out of here and it’s up for sale, like you should have done at the start!” He laughed jovially. “I still can’t believe how you’ve been here for a month and turned into such a tomboy. I need to get you back to the city before you really let yourself go.”
The scrambled eggs suddenly felt chewier and Alexis struggled to swallow her mouthful. Let herself go? The words stung, and she looked down at her hands. Her usual manicure had long since chipped off and she hadn’t bothered to repaint her nails since. What was the point when they would just get dirty again?
Her fake tanning routine had been given up in favor of heading to bed a few minutes earlier each night, in order to wake up before the first rays of sunlight hit her eyes. Her perfect, allover light golden glow had been replaced with a freckled nose and suntanned, peeling shoulders, and some very obvious tan lines from her everyday wearing of tank tops and t-shirts.
Her own t-shirts, too, not ones that she had borrowed from James.
She had never used to wear t-shirts, but they had become a staple of her wardrobe now due to their comfort. In New York, comfort had always been a pleasant bonus of a nice outfit, not the deciding factor in what she would wear.
Her hair was longer than it had ever been and had regained its natural curls after a month of letting it air-dry and not attacking it with hair straighteners and blow-dryers every day. Even her carefully maintained gym figure was changing, her slight curves turning to hard lines and taut muscles from physical work every day.
She hadn’t realized until now just how much her looks had really changed. She would have to do something about it before she could show her face again in the city.
“I’m taking you for dinner tonight. I think we need to treat ourselves to something nice, what do you say?” He stood up with a stretch, pushed his laptop away and cupped Alexis’s chin in his fingers, drawing her face up to his.
Her heart melted a little bit as his eyes met hers. He hadn’t meant his criticisms in a mean way, she knew that.
“What’s the nicest restaurant here babe? It's my treat. Somewhere nice, it’s what you deserve.”
“There’s only a couple of restaurants that I know of around here. The Hunter and Hound pub is meant to be nice?”
“Done. I’ll book a table for the two of us for around eight.”
Alexis stepped out of James’s rental car with cheeks burning in embarrassment. He had hired possibly the most expensive car she was sure that was available for hire and its blatant macho cry of “Look at me, I’m an expensive car!” was matched only by its extremely loud exhaust system. And he took care to really thrash the engine to ensure the sound reached its peak level of noise.
The car, however, struggled on the gravel driveway of the pub and he swore as he had to slow down and take the bumpy road at a snail’s pace.
She winced as he went over a particularly high bump and the bottom of the car made an eye-wateringly loud crunch.
He lost his New York coo
l at that and swore loudly. “How do people live like this?”
“They drive four-wheel drives,” she said, with an eye roll that he thankfully didn’t see.
His temper didn’t improve when he parked in the poorly lit car park and stepped out of the car straight into a pile of cow poop. “Oh, you have got to be shitting me!”
“No pun intended, I’m assuming?” Alexis replied with a giggle. She had quickly learned that animal droppings were a fact of life in farm country, and if you didn’t want to step in them, you watched where you put your feet.
“It’s not funny, these are thousand-dollar shoes.” James hopped up and down on his clean shoe. “Honestly Alexis, I have no idea how you managed to put up with this place for so long.”
“It’s grown on me.” She walked towards the pub doors, the bright lights looking cheery and welcoming after the long, awkward drive. They had struggled to make conversation and for the last ten minutes they had lapsed into silence.
The bar was playing reggae music. She hoped James didn’t complain about this as well. So far, little about New Zealand had appealed to him.
“Where are you going?” He was still hopping around on one foot, lifting his soiled shoe in the air. “Can you get me a tissue or something?”
“Why don’t you wipe it off on the grass?”
She could hear him muttering in contempt as he hobbled over to a patch of cow poop-free grass and gingerly wiped his shoe.
“It’s like a battlefield of landmines,” he complained, as he joined her at the pub doors, his shoe now free of cow poop. “I don’t feel safe walking anywhere on these roads.” The smell, however, still seemed to follow him, though she pretended not to notice.
She reached forwards to open the door, but he put his hand out to block her. “Let me get that,” he said valiantly, and he strode forwards with his chest in the air.
He pulled the door open for her and waited for her to walk through first, although she thought she could very well have done it herself.
The door opened into a cozy-looking bar, decorated with various hunting memorabilia. There was a large and rather impressive looking deer head, with antlers that must have been at least a meter long, mounted above the bar which stretched the full length of the room. To their left were a few low steps leading to another section, obviously the family restaurant side. It was a comfortable-looking, seated restaurant area where a number of diners were already tucking into plates of burgers and fries. The walls were covered in shabby framed photos, faded with age, that depicted various men in their classic outfits of shorts and gumboots, holding various dead animals up to the camera with pride.
The bar area on their right was busy already, with groups of men standing around the pool tables and perched on bar stools, their Speights beer bottles clinking as they cheered each other on.
In pride of place, a large flat-screen TV was replaying the rugby game from a couple of hours ago and a group of graying men, their arms resting on their beer bellies and their feet clad in gumboots or flip-flops, were debating the plays and whether the call the ref had just made was fair to the New Zealand team. The New Zealand rugby team, she now knew, was a team that inspired pride and passion and patriotism in the locals, who were otherwise pretty relaxed people.
She remembered what Mason had told her about when their rugby team, the All Blacks, lost a game—there were always fights at the pub. When they won, everyone put aside their differences and could drink until five in the morning as best friends.
There were a few women out as well, dressed mostly in ripped jeans and sneakers. She envied them for a second, and their casual comfort and confidence in a room of men. Never would she have gone for a night out in Manhattan without putting a significant amount of time into her makeup, her hair and her outfit choice. Sometimes she would buy a new outfit each weekend to avoid being seen in the same dress, and here these women looked so much more confident in their jeans than she had ever felt in her best silk or linen sheath dress and stiletto heels.
A waitress guided them to their table and took their drinks orders, a glass of New Zealand pinot gris for Alexis and a pinot noir for James. She pointed at a blackboard where the daily chef’s specials were written in messy chalk. “Wave me over when you’re ready to order, and I’ll be back in a sec with your drinks.” She gave them a smile and sauntered off, stopping on her way to the bar to say hello to a family that had just arrived at another table.
“Not off to a good start with that service,” James commented wryly. “Let’s hope the food is better. Is everywhere this casual here?”
He glanced around, and Alexis could see him taking in the shabby carpet, the worn tables, the slightly grimy windows, and the casual attire of everyone inside, from the waitstaff to the restaurant diners.
“It’s meant to have the best food for miles around, that’s why it’s so busy.”
He glanced dismissively at the menu. “I guess you can’t expect much from a backwards country like this.”
Alexis held her tongue at this. She had recently learned that this backwards country as James referred to New Zealand had in fact been the first to give women the right to vote, but if she said anything, she’d only be bringing it up to disagree with him. She wasn’t sure why, but his comments were rubbing her up the wrong way like never before. Had he always been this...this negative before?
His rudeness continued throughout the evening. When the waitress came up to take their order, Alexis had to put her hand on his arm to shush him as he argued about the cut of the steak not being what he wanted.
When she came back again to deliver their food, looking slightly miffed still at his earlier rudeness, Alexis made a show of smiling brightly and thanking her profusely. The waitress left looking a little appeased.
Alexis dug into her burger with enthusiasm to make up for the distinct lack of enthusiasm coming from James. He poked the steak with his fork looking disgruntled. “I think it’s time we looked at booking flights back home, babe,” he declared as he cut into his steak.
He was sawing at his steak much more vigorously than was really needed; his steak wasn’t that badly cooked. She wondered if this was yet another petty way of showing her how little he thought of the food here, and was going to comment but thought better of it. They were snapping at each other a lot today and this James wasn’t the wonderful loving man that she had remembered. Had he changed this much in such a short time? Or had she?
She couldn’t help letting her thoughts drift to Mason. His relaxed and carefree attitude was the exact opposite of this man sitting in front of her, in a designer suit that looked almost ridiculous in this low-key restaurant.
But Mason had made it clear that he wanted her gone. He had only wanted to buy her farm, everything else had been a lie. Even that night where she had been so close to giving herself to him, not just her body but her heart—it had all been to buy her farm.
She snorted to herself. Men.
“Alexis?” James was looking at her, as if waiting for a reply.
“Sorry, I uh—what did you say?” Her thoughts were jumbled, and images of Mason’s smile and his bright eyes were burning themselves onto her retina. Why couldn’t she get him out of her head when the man she had been heartbroken over for the last month was sitting here with her?
“I was just saying it’s time to go home. You’ve been here far too long already. I’ve been worried about you and so has Phoebe. Living in this—place—on the other side of the world, hardly keeping in contact, missing work. It’s not like you. I mean, look at you! You hardly look like yourself anymore. I’m taking you home and we should book flights tonight.” He smiled gently and reached across the table, placing his hand on top of hers.
“I haven’t missed work. I took my annual leave. I had lots owing.” She hadn’t thought about work in weeks and surprise hit her as she realized she didn’t miss it.
“I know I hurt you, but I have shown you how sorry I am by flying over here. I’m taking y
ou home as soon as I can, and we are going to go back to what we had before. And the first thing I’m going to do is take you out to a proper restaurant.” His eyes turned to her short and bare fingernails, then traveled up to her head where her hair fell loose and curly well past her shoulders now. “Maybe not first thing. We can stop, and you can get your hair and nails fixed up first.”
She pulled her hand out from under his. “I like my hair like this.”
“Well, of course it’s practical for the farm,” he laughed. “You can’t go back to work like this though.”
He suddenly sat up and leaned forward over the table to her, giving her a lingering kiss on the lips that was obviously meant to be a romantic gesture.
She could feel the diners looking at them out of the corner of her eye and her neck was stuck in an awkward position. James had his eyes closed and one second, then two seconds went by.
Her neck was terribly uncomfortable. Three seconds, then four. Had every kiss with James felt this boring and awkward before?
She quickly moved her elbow, catching her glass of pinot gris and knocking it across the table, all over James’s overdone steak and his designer suit.
He broke away from her with a start, shouting some colorful expletives as he frantically tried to mop up the wine seeping into his suit.
Alexis massaged her neck, her cheeks burning in embarrassment. If anyone already hadn’t seen that awkward kiss, they were certainly staring now. She put her head down, wishing she could sink into the chair. The two of them stuck out like a sore thumb in their city clothes. She should have just worn jeans like she had been planning on, but James had insisted she dress “nicely”. This is what she must have looked like to Mason when she first arrived here, and he had seen her in her tailored skirt on the farm. Like she didn’t belong.
But she did belong here. It was James who was out of place.
What she couldn’t see was that out of her field of vision, tucked into a far corner next to a dirty pool table, Mason stood deathly still, clenching his fist around a pool cue and shooting daggers at James with narrowed eyes.
Head First (Quinn Brothers Book 1) Page 13