by Alice Ross
The kitchen door was wide open when he arrived. He popped his head inside. Sophie sat at the table, her little face creased with concentration as she fiddled with some pink wool. Beside her was a kindly-looking lady with lily-white hair, wearing a floral skirt and sensible blouse which, despite the heat of the day, was buttoned right up to her neck. Pip lay in his basket snoring soundly. Jake allowed himself another quick glance around the room. Yet again it looked incredibly inviting, the brilliant sunlight bouncing off the yellow walls. And yet again something tightened in the area of his heart. He quickly pulled himself together and knocked lightly upon the open door.
‘Hello there.’ No sooner had the words left his mouth than Pip leaped out of his basket, darted over to him and began dancing around his legs. Jake bent down and picked him up. The dog immediately began licking his face.
‘Mr Sinclair,’ squealed Sophie, holding up her handiwork for him to see. ‘Look what we’re doing. It’s called finger-knitting.’
‘Wow,’ said Jake. ‘That looks very complicated.’
‘It is. Mrs Mackenzie showed me how to do it. She’s very clever and used to make all her own clothes.’
‘Really?’ said Jake, smiling at the old lady. ‘And you are Mrs Mackenzie, I presume?’
‘I am indeed,’ replied the lady in a broad Scottish accent. ‘And you must be the young man who is staying in the manor for a few weeks. Sophie has told me all about you. I hear you got a nine for your colouring-in. Quite an achievement.’
‘Beginner’s luck,’ chuckled Jake. ‘Look, I’m really sorry to bother you but I was wondering if George was around.’
Mrs Mackenzie furrowed her brow. ‘There’s no George lives here, hen. It’s just Annie and little Sophie here. I’m the babysitter.’
‘Oh,’ muttered Jake, ‘I’m sorry. I just saw the cake on the bench yesterday and thought …’
Mrs Mackenzie glanced over at the cake. ‘Oh. That cake. No, that’s for old George Carey. He has the florist shop next door to Annie’s. Annie brought it home to decorate so he wouldn’t see it and spoil his surprise. Now, is there anything we can do to help you?’
Jake stared at her blankly for a few seconds. He didn’t know why but the news about the lack of a significant George in Annie’s life had made him momentarily forget why he was there. Oh. Of course. The boiler. ‘Well, I don’t know if you’ll be able to help or not. You see there’s no hot water in the manor and I can’t find the boiler.’
‘It’s in the lilac room upstairs,’ piped up Sophie. ‘And it’s always breaking down. Mum says the P.S.’s really need to invest in a new one.’
‘Right,’ said Jake, smiling at Sophie’s detailed knowledge. ‘Well, now that I know where it is, I can have a look and see if there’s anything obvious wrong with it.’
‘Sorry we can’t be more help, dear,’ said Mrs Mackenzie. ‘Annie should be back by five if you need her.’
‘Right. Thanks.’ Jake set down Pip on the floor and turned to leave. He had only taken one step when the dog began howling.
‘Heavens, I’ve never known him do that before,’ gasped Mrs Mackenzie, scurrying over to the dog and bundling him up in her arms. ‘I’ll give him a biscuit. That’ll sort him out.’
Jake flashed a grateful smile before leaving the cottage and heading back across the dividing lawn.
‘Goodness,’ puffed Mrs Mackenzie when Annie arrived back home from work later that afternoon. ‘That’s a very nice young man you’ve got staying in the manor there. Now if I was thirty years younger…’
Annie’s stomach lurched. Jake Sinclair appeared to be charming every woman in the village. Thanks to Lydia’s introductions, every one of her female customers that day had passed some comment on how gorgeous, or charming, or handsome he was. And now he’d even worked his magic on Mrs Mackenzie.
‘Wh-what was he doing here?’ she asked, hoping her voice didn’t sound quite as panicky as she felt.
‘That boiler is playing up again and the poor love couldn’t find it. Hardly surprising in a place that size.’
Annie sighed. If the boiler wasn’t working she’d have to call out a plumber and the chances of finding a willing one at this time on a Saturday evening were slim. She ran a hand over her face. She was bone-tired. Saturdays were always hectic in the shop and today she’d spent two hours with a particularly demanding bride, confirming the details of a wedding cake. A frisson of excitement shot through her. Now that the girl had finally made up her mind, Annie knew the cake would be spectacular. So spectacular, she could hardly wait to start work on it. But first, she had the very unspectacular matter of Buttersley Manor’s boiler to resolve.
There was no sign of Jake when Annie entered the manor. She called his name several times. No reply. He must have gone out, she concluded. Lydia, as magnanimous as ever, had probably offered him the use of her shower. Annie quickly quashed the image that sprang into her mind at that thought. Still, now she was here, she might as well take a look at the boiler and see if there was anything obvious wrong with it.
She climbed the stairs to the first floor and made her way to the lilac room. No sooner had she opened the door to the cupboard in which the machine resided, than she realised she was wasting her time. Not only was the contraption ridiculously large, but its complicated arrangement of knobs, dials, gauges and buttons would not have looked out of a place on a 1960s flight deck.
‘Oh. Hello.’
Annie spun around to find Jake standing in the doorway, dripping wet with a towel around his waist.
‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ he said.
Annie couldn’t reply. Her breath hitched in her throat and her head began to spin. Her gaze adhered itself to Jake’s impressive torso, which was golden brown, lean and sprinkled with a smattering of fine dark hair. Little rivulets of water wound their way down it in such a sensual manner that she had to bite back a whimper. Never, in her entire life, had she wanted to be a little rivulet of water more than at that particular moment.
‘I fixed it,’ he said.
Fixed it? Fixed what? She stared at him nonplussed.
‘The boiler.’
Annie’s eyes grew wide. Oh my God. Not only was he devastatingly sexy, but he could fix a boiler.
‘You-you fixed it? How?’
He winked at her. ‘By-product of a misspent youth. Strange how some things stay with you.’
Like the image of him standing there, dripping-wet, dressed only in a towel. Annie could imagine that image staying with her for a very long time.
‘It wasn’t too complicated really,’ he continued, striding over to the cupboard. ‘Look, this button controls the…’
Annie didn’t hear a word. He was so close to her she could smell his citrusy shower gel again. Her head went fuzzy and any remnants of rational thought shot into orbit. As he pointed out things on the boiler, she watched, transfixed, as the muscles in his smooth tanned back tantalisingly flexed. Something deep in the pit of her stomach fizzed as she imagined smoothing her palms over the contours, tracing the muscles with her fingers, reaching around to his front and untying the towel –
‘So if it happens again, you’ll know what to do,’ he turned and looked her directly in the eyes. It was more than Annie could bear. A wave of red-hot lust crashed over her. With a great deal of effort she tore her gaze from his. Bad move. Her temperature soared and her heart hammered as she stared directly across the corridor into the room Jake was obviously sleeping in, the bed he was obviously sleeping in. The bed with its crumpled sheets. Sheets that would now hold his masculine scent. Sheets that she wanted to lie on, with Jake beside her, wet and naked. She wanted him to pick her up, carry her across the corridor, throw her on the bed and ravage her senseless.
‘Annie? Are you all right?’
Annie clattered back to the here and now to find Jake looking at her with a very peculiar expression on his face. Which wasn’t surprising. She’d just made yet another fool of herself in front of him. She only hoped h
e couldn’t read her thoughts. But, by the way he was looking at her, maybe he could. Burning with embarrassment, she cleared her throat.
‘Right. Well. I’m, um, glad it’s fixed,’ she managed to squeak, before turning on her heel and flying down the stairs and back to the cottage as fast as she could.
‘You all right, dear?’ asked Mrs Mackenzie as she bowled into the kitchen a few minutes later.
‘Yes, fine thanks,’ said Annie, making a stab at nonchalance.
‘Why is your face red?’ demanded Sophie.
‘It isn’t.’
‘Yes it is. And you’re breathing all funny.’
‘I ran back over the grass,’ said Annie, ignoring the strange look Mrs Mackenzie slanted her. ‘I just need a, um, glass of water.’ She scuttled over to the sink, grabbed a glass and filled it from the tap.
‘Has Mr Sinclair fixed the boiler?’ asked Sophie, going back to her finger-knitting.
‘Yes. Yes he has,’ said Annie.
‘Well, well, well.’ chuckled Mrs Mackenzie.
Still with the towel wrapped around his waist, Jake flopped down on his bed the moment Annie left. What the hell had happened there? Clearly he had startled Annie when he’d walked into the room. Her emerald-green eyes wide with shock, and tendrils of blonde hair escaping the confines of her ponytail, she had looked so incredibly sexy, that he’d battled a prehistoric urge to sling her over his shoulder and carry her across the hall to his bed. Instead, in the absence of any better ideas, he’d babbled on about buttons and switches, clearly, judging by her hasty retreat, boring her rigid in the process.
Crikey. He’d been in the village less than forty-eight hours and that was his second disconcerting experience. More worrying was that the first had also involved Annie Richards or, more precisely, her silky smooth skin as he’d brushed the smudge of chocolate from her cheek the previous evening. The bewildered look in her beautiful green eyes had caused something to squeeze around the area of his heart. Almost as unfathomable as the wave of relief that had washed over him on learning that she and Sophie lived alone at the cottage. What difference could that possibly make to him? None, he reassured himself. None at all. Annie Richards might be as tempting as her limoncello cupcakes, but that didn’t mean he was interested in a relationship with her. He would never be interested in a relationship with anyone. Ever again. Because relationships involved feelings; feelings that had been buried at the same time as Nina’s body; feelings Jake would never experience again. Nor did he want to. Because grief wasn’t the only emotion he had struggled with over the last five years. There was another emotion – much much stronger – and completely insurmountable. And that was precisely why he had no romantic interest in Annie Richards. None at all.
Still, one of her many endearing qualities he acknowledged, as he pictured her with that squashed cupcake on her foot, was that she made him smile. And smiling was something Jake had not done a lot of over the last five years.
‘So how are things in Utterly Buttersley?’ asked Portia a couple of days later. She’d called Annie at the shop from somewhere war-torn, thousands of miles away, ending in –astan.
‘Oh, you know,’ said Annie, ever conscious that, compared to Portia’s world, anything that happened in Buttersley seemed trivial in the extreme. ‘The usual round of wife-swapping parties and drunken street brawls. And we very nearly had a riot on our hands the other day. The florist sold out of lilies and Mrs Coombes was not best pleased.’
Portia giggled. ‘Life on the edge as usual, then. And talking about life on the edge … how you getting on with that list of things to do before you’re forty?’
‘What list?’ asked Annie innocently.
‘The one I stuck on your fridge door so you couldn’t possibly forget about it. I take it from that response that you haven’t dyed your hair purple and put the bin out in your undies yet?’
‘Maybe next week,’ said Annie. ‘But I am training for the 10k race.’
‘Boring. What about the exciting stuff? The stuff involving those creatures from the other side?’
‘Aliens?’
‘Men! Anything happening there?’
‘Absolutely nothing,’ replied Annie.
Five more minutes of goading from Portia and the call ended. Annie hung up, silently congratulating herself on saying nothing about Jake. If Portia got so much as a sniff of her fancying him, she would be unbearable. Not, of course, that she did fancy him – much. She’d simply been over-tired on Saturday which was why the sight of him in that towel had triggered her imagination to such a ludicrous extent. And why was she analysing the whole thing – again? She really didn’t have time for such trivia because today she was about to embark on her most ambitious project yet – the wedding cake for the demanding bride. Not only would it test every one of her technical skills, but the timescale was incredibly tight. Annie had thought long and hard before accepting the order, researching exactly what was required before she committed herself. And she wouldn’t have committed herself, had she thought it beyond her capabilities. Still, though, she had to admit that her excitement was tempered with a dash of nerves. Nerves she needed to quash. She had to think positively, feel confident. Which was why, in between serving customers, she attempted to set out a detailed plan of action, working back from the date of the wedding.
As the day progressed, the task was proving more and more difficult, which she suspected had something to do with every female customer from eighteen to eighty wanting to gossip about Jake Sinclair. Annie quickly mastered the art of changing the subject. She didn’t want to gossip about Jake Sinclair. And she certainly didn’t want to see him. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that Jake was to blame for her nerves. Since his arrival in the village her confidence had taken a severe battering. Every time he was around she seemed to make a fool of herself. And she’d spent enough time in the past feeling a fool – thanks to Lance. It had taken her years to rebuild her confidence and she had no intention of having it shattered by another man.
In his writing room at Buttersley Manor, Jake O’Donnell leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms over his head. He stared at the clock on the desk. It must be wrong. It couldn’t be six-thirty already. He reached for his mobile to double-check. The same time beamed back at him. Which meant, with a brief interlude to sleep last night, he’d been writing solidly all day, for the second day in a row. Great for the book. Not so great for the body. He’d scarcely moved for hours and he hadn’t eaten a thing. He could murder a decent meal and a pint. The memory of the fish and chips he’d enjoyed at the village pub a few days ago floated into his head, causing his stomach to rumble. Right, that was decided. He’d have a quick wash, change his T-shirt, and wander down to the village. The walk and fresh air would do him good. Come to think of it, he really should build more exercise into his day, get his heart pumping, burn some fat. It was a wonder he hadn’t developed DVT sitting still for so long. And then there was the unavoidable fact that middle age would soon be upon him. A milestone he had no intention of welcoming with flaccid open arms and an expanding paunch. Maybe he should take up running again. He’d always enjoyed it in the past and he could easily fit it around his writing. He could even use it as thinking time, to work through sticking points in his plot. An image of another runner suddenly leaped into his head - a runner with long, tanned legs and a pink baseball cap. How Annie found time to fit running around the other million things she seemed to do, amazed him.
As much as he willed it not to, Jake’s gaze meandered over the lawn to the gatehouse. Annie was in the garden, wearing denim shorts and unpegging washing from the line. She bent down to put something in the laundry basket. Jake gulped and dragged his attention back to the computer screen.
Monday night was quiz night at the village pub. It was also Annie’s one – much looked forward to – night out of the week. Of course, she was aware that a few drinks and a natter with cake-making friends wasn’t exactly a riot, but th
en Annie no longer did ‘riot’. It was yet another word that belonged in her ever diminishing past. Thankfully. Even thinking about how much she used to drink made her queasy. And the notion of staying out after eleven brought on a mild panic attack. No, the weekly quiz served her well enough and was always good for a giggle.
Fresh from the shower, she rummaged through – what she acknowledged to be – the pitiful contents of her wardrobe. She pulled out a pretty floral shift dress she’d bought pre-motherhood. She hadn’t worn it for ages but it was a lovely sunny evening and somehow she didn’t feel like pulling on her usual jeans and T-shirt. She held her breath as she slipped the dress over her head, praying it would fit. It did. And, what was more, she actually felt nice in it. She brushed a little mascara onto her lashes, swiped a coat of gloss over her lips, then clipped up her hair in a loose knot, before slipping on a pair of ballet pumps and heading downstairs.
‘You look nice, dear,’ remarked Mrs Mackenzie, sitting at the garden table on which lay a piece of paper and a snoozing Pip.
‘Thanks,’ said Annie. ‘Now, are you three going to be okay without me?’
In her crab position on the lawn, a leotard-clad Sophie piped up, ‘Of course we are. I’m practising for the Olympics and when I’ve finished, Mrs Mackenzie is going to hold up a mark.’
‘I see.’ Annie turned over the paper on the table. ‘But there’s only one mark here and it’s a ten.’
‘Of course,’ replied Sophie matter-of-factly.
Still smiling at her daughter’s unabashed confidence, Annie drank in every detail of her surroundings during her walk to the pub. Every season highlighted something wonderful about Buttersley, but none more so than spring with its sweep of new life.
The Duck Inn had pride of place on the village green. Built as a coaching inn during the eighteenth century, it had been extended, upgraded and refurbished over the ensuing centuries, its most recent addition being a spacious conservatory. The pub was abuzz with chatter and laughter when Annie arrived, with lots of patrons making the most of its gastro-delights.