‘Hey, right on time,’ he said as I put my keys down on the counter. ‘The oven is pre-heating and the kettle is boiling.’
‘What’s the kettle for?’
‘Coffee,’ he answered. ‘You don’t expect me to bake without any caffeine in me, do you?’
‘Okay, I’ll make it,’ I offered, busying myself. When I looked up, he was sticking his head through one of his mum’s old aprons – precisely one with a Toile de Jouy pattern.
To see a man like Jack, who was six feet, had a permanent five o’clock shadow and shoulders the size of a Bentley, wearing such a dainty little number was just too much and I bent over in a fit of giggles, nearly spilling our coffees as tears slid down my face.
‘Wha-at…?’ he said, laughing along as he took a sip. ‘I find it rather suits me, don’t you think?’
I wiped my eyes, paused to look at him once more, and started giggling all over again.
‘Laugh it up,’ he chuckled, shaking his head. ‘It’s easy for you to talk. There’s nothing you can’t cook, while I don’t know how this kitchen is still standing.’
‘I told you, it’s easy. Here,’ I said, bumping him aside with my hip. ‘Watch the real experts at work. The first thing is your filling. Have you got your apples ready?’
‘Has the Pope got a Bible? Fresh from the orchard,’ he assured me, sweeping a large hand over his bounty of colloget pippins covering the opposite end of the island.
‘Might have been useful to start peeling them, you lazy toad,’ I said, reaching for a knife. ‘Or at least peel them and put them in water so they don’t oxidise.’
He grinned. ‘I like it when you talk dirty, Nina.’
‘Come on, you, start peeling,’ I said, and soon we fell into companionable silence as we worked through the mountain of apples.
‘Christ, how many do we need for one pie?’
‘We should make more than one. Try different sizes and stuff,’ I said. ‘Now you add just a touch of sugar, a bit of cinnamon – at least that’s the way I do it. And you can freeze the filling for next time, too. That’s the beauty of it. Where’s your flour?’
He put his knife down and looked at me in panic. ‘Shit.’
I laughed. ‘I’ll go home and get mine. I always have some on hand.’
‘No, let me check the pantry,’ he said, wiping his huge hands on the tiny apron and I wanted to laugh all over again as he filled the entire pantry with his person, looking like a giant in a dollhouse as he rummaged around the top shelf, knocking over boxes and jars in the meantime. ‘Got it!’
‘Check the expiration date.’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘Flour expires?’
‘Usually when the weevils arrive, yeah.’
He stuck his head in the bag. ‘No weevils in here.’
‘You sure? Then we’re good to go. Sieve?’
He joined me back at the island, where I showed him how to dice the butter and, using only his fingertips, mix in the flour. ‘You need to be very delicate so the butter doesn’t heat up.’
‘Like this?’ he asked dubiously, his huge fingers gently plucking the flour and butter.
‘Perfect. Now pull it all together into one big lump and gently knead it. Like this,’ I said, taking over as he sat on the stool and observed me.
‘You watching carefully?’ I prompted.
‘Huh? I was actually looking at your hands. They’re so tiny.’
‘Says the Jolly Green Giant. Yours could whack a man back to yesterday. Then you take your rolling pin and even out your pastry. Depending on the diameter of your pie, you thin it out accordingly so you don’t get paper-thin wagon wheels or tiny pies that are so thick you can’t even eat them. Here, have a go.’
‘Like this?’ he asked as he delicately spread the pastry out.
‘Hey, you’re actually good at this. Sure you’ve never done it before?’
‘No, but I used to watch my mum.’
Next, we filled our pies and I taught him to crimp the edges with a twist of my fingers. It was funny how many things were second nature to me but presented a problem to him. Anyway, his hands were too big. ‘I’ll get you a crimper to make it easier for you.’
When we had made enough shapes and sizes to fill both ovens, we bunged them in and set the timer, bearing in mind that the tiny pies only need a few minutes, so we placed them at the front of the oven.
‘Satisfied?’ I asked, as we knelt to the floor to peer through the glass door, his head level with mine.
‘Absolutely chuffed, Nina. Thank you.’ He turned to me, his eyes twinkling and crinkling at the corners. I had never noticed that they were actually a dark hazel, and not brown. And there was an inner ring of golden flecks just around the pupil. The things you could see up close. How had I managed to spend all these years in his company and never notice that?
And why, all of a sudden, did any of that matter? Why, after three years, were his good looks and charm having such an effect on me now, of all times? How had I never noticed that he was so manly, sexy but at the same time impish and adorable? It had to be the dimples bracketing his lips. When he smiled they danced like… April showers in a ray of sunlight.
‘I couldn’t have done it without you,’ he continued as he moved in to kiss my cheek, but at the same time I turned my head, and his lips accidentally smacked mine in a kiss. I froze for a moment, suddenly unsettled.
‘Oops, sorry!’ I then tittered, but he was looking solemnly, deeply into my eyes as if searching for something, his eyes darting to my lips, and before I knew what he was about, he took my head in his hands, and with an urgency I never knew he was capable of, caught my mouth
