Jas was laughing so hard she inhaled some of the icing sugar and started to cough and sneeze at the same time. Louise, who was starting to cough herself, patted Jas on the back. Neither of them had any idea he was there.
He looked around the room. On every available space, there were cake tins and wire racks, assorted cake ingredients and almost-clean mixing bowls with finger marks in them. Megan would have had a fit if she’d seen her precious kitchen like this. It looked wonderful.
‘Dad!’ Jas spotted him, pulled away from Louise and ran over to him.
‘Jasmine.’ He tried very hard to keep a straight face. Someone had to bring some sanity into the proceedings.
‘Come and see what we’ve made!’
Before he could argue, she slipped a sticky hand into his and pulled him across the kitchen to where a row of cooling racks stood, with various cakes, all in different stages of decoration. Louise was there, standing straight and tall. She’d been laughing a moment ago, but now her eyes were watchful and her mouth was clamped shut. He saw her gaze sweep around the kitchen.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘We kind of got carried away.’
He wanted to say something grown-up, sensible, but not one word that fitted the bill entered his head. He was too distracted by the smudge of icing sugar on Louise’s nose.
‘What?’
‘You’ve got-’
Ben leaned forward, meaning to brush it away, but she stepped back and went cross-eyed trying to see what he was looking at. Then she rubbed at her nose with the heel of her hand, which only served to add a drop of jam to the proceedings.
He stayed where he was. She could sort herself out. It was better that way.
Louise was staring at him. Slowly, she walked over to the double oven and checked her reflection in the glass door. He handed her a piece of kitchen towel and she took it, without looking at him, and dabbed at her face. When she stood up again, she was blushing.
It was so unlike her normal armour-plated facade that he couldn’t help but smile. ‘Much better.’
She blushed harder and smiled back. ‘Good,’ she said quietly.
Only he wasn’t sure if it was better. There was something rather appealing about an icing sugar covered, vanilla-smelling Louise Thornton in his kitchen. She seemed…real. Not unapproachably beautiful or spikily vulnerable. Just real.
‘It’s time we started clearing up, Jas.’ Louise reached for a tin and headed for the dishwasher.
Ben waited for the whining to start, but Jas just nodded and started closing up bags of flour and putting egg cartons back into the fridge. He shook his head, then decided to put the kettle on-mainly to distract himself from the rows of cupcakes, sitting silently on the counter, just
He turned round to offer Louise a cup of tea and found her standing right behind him, a plate full of cakes in her hand. He swallowed once again.
‘Would you like one?’
Now, if it had been Jas doing the offering, he would have immediately responded with,
‘Raspberry and lemon muffins, jam doughnut muffins or iced fairy cakes?’
His eye fell on something golden-yellow and covered in sugar.
She smiled. ‘Jam doughnut muffin it is, then.’ She looked down at the cakes for a few seconds, then up into his face. ‘Actually, I’m trying to butter you up.’
She was? ‘You are?’
Louise nodded. ‘I saw something on the television last night…’ her eyes glazed over and she seemed adrift for a few seconds before she caught herself and carried on ‘…about Laura Hastings and Whitehaven. The garden…well, it looked lovely and I wondered if you’d consider…um…taking on the job of restoring it for me.’
He was speechless. For years he’d wanted to have free rein at Whitehaven. Now was his chance. He should be whooping with joy and dancing round the kitchen hugging someone-hugging
‘You do that kind of thing, don’t you?’ She was looking at him strangely.
Twice his head dipped in a nod. He’d started off in landscape gardening and when that had been going well, he’d trained as a landscape architect. The resulting design practice, with specialist teams to do the ground work when required, was one of the things that made his firm so successful. However, he didn’t seem to be able to articulate any of this to Louise.
‘Good. Perhaps we can chat another day-during work hours. I don’t expect you to give up your time to…’A tiny frown creased her forehead and she stared at him for a couple of seconds, then her gaze dropped to the plate in her hands. ‘Still want one?’
The muffin was still warm when he picked it up and, when he bit into it, liquid raspberry jam burst out and added its acidity to the dense but moist texture of the muffin. Pure heaven. Louise just nodded. Oh, she knew she was good! She knew exactly how much her baking had reduced him to a salivating wreck. And she was enjoying it.
Ben stood up very straight and resisted the urge to lick the sugar off his fingertips. Suddenly, this wasn’t just about cakes any more. Perhaps it had never been about cakes.
Yup, he was pretty sure he was in big trouble. Because, despite all his efforts at logic, he was starting to think that, far from being the wrong kind of woman, Louise Thornton might suit him just fine.
December, so far, had been incredibly mild, but a cold snap was coming. He could feel it in the slicing wind that raced every now and then up and down the river. Ben hunched his shoulders up to try and escape the draught snaking down the back of his neck as he steered the little dinghy through the sharp, steely waves.
Jas moved into the stern with him and he held up an arm for her to snuggle under. He smiled down at her and she buried her head further into his side. His lips were still curved when he returned his attention to the river. It didn’t matter if the weather was cold enough to freeze the Dart solid, the fact that he’d managed to create a living thing so wonderful would always melt his heart.
This was one of those perfect snapshot moments that would live in his memory for ever. Everything on the river seemed to be in shades of grey and silver-the waves, the reflection of the pearly sky. And, directly in front of him, perched on the hill like a queen on her throne, was the bright white house he was heading towards. In their waterproof coats-his dark green and Jas’s vibrant purple-they were the only blobs of colour on the river spoiling the effect.
‘Do you think it’s going to snow, Dad?’
He pursed his lips, thinking. ‘I don’t know. It would be nice, though, wouldn’t it? The last time we had a white Christmas I was a boy.’ He hugged Jas to him, then released her as they neared the jetty below Louise’s boathouse. ‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
After tying up the dinghy, he stood for a moment and stared up the hill. The house was hidden by the curve of the land and by the trees, but he knew in which direction it was.
There were ugly gashes in the earth near the house which his team had created in the midst of doing the hard landscaping. It would look a mess when he approached the front lawn. But, in his experience, things often had to get a lot messier before they were transformed into something beautiful. In the spring, the digging and paving would be finished and they’d be able to plant. Come summer, Whitehaven’s garden would be transformed. And, over the years, it would mature into something unique and stunning.
Unique and stunning…
How easy it was for his thoughts to turn to Louise.
Recently Jas had taken to showing him any photographs of Louise which she found in the Sunday papers or magazines. Most of them weren’t current, as she hadn’t really been anywhere to be photographed recently. Photographers who turned up in the village these days were often sent on a wild goose chase by the locals, who had warmed to Louise as quickly as he had and were now very protective of the celebrity in their midst.
