A Funny Thing Happened.... Caroline Anderson

kettle boiled and he made tea, pulled on his coat and boots and went out. It was cold and crisp, his breath making little puffs on the bright moonlit air, but the wind had dropped and the sun would be creeping over the horizon in an hour or so. Strange how fickle February could be.

      He trudged across the yard towards the barn, slid the door back and was greeted with a smile that warmed him down to the bottom of his boots.

      ‘My hero!’ she said with a laugh, and she got stiffly to her feet, pressed her hands into the small of her back and stretched, giving a little groan.

      ‘Sore?’

      ‘Am I ever. I thought I was fit. How about you?’ He grinned. ‘Oh, I can feel muscles I didn’t know I had.’ He gave her her tea. ‘How are the hands?’

      ‘Better.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘I never really thanked you—I fell asleep while you were doing it.’

      ‘It’s my magic touch—and anyway, you were already asleep.’

      ‘I wonder why?’ She buried her nose in her mug and drank a huge gulp of tea, then sighed. ‘Gorgeous. I was dying for tea. I thought I might finish the cows and come and get some, but they’re being really awkward. They just won’t let down for me this morning. I don’t think the water’s very warm any more, that’s the trouble.’

      He drained his mug. ‘I’ll get you some. I put the kettle back on the hob.’

      ‘You’re just a regular sweetheart. Remind me to thank Mary for lending you to me.’

      He leant back against the wall, arms folded. ‘Just as a matter of interest,’ he said slowly, ‘where is their farm?’

      She coloured slightly. ‘Over the hill.’

      ‘About three or four hundred yards?’

      ‘Something like that.’

      ‘So I could have got there last night.’

      To her credit she met his eyes. ‘Possibly.’

      He smiled slowly. ‘Just think,’ he said, ‘what I might have missed.’

      Something sad and a little desperate happened to her eyes. ‘Yes, just think. You could still have been in bed now.’ She handed him her mug. ‘Better get on.’

      He went back to the kitchen, filled the bucket with hot water and poured her another mug of tea. She’d drunk the first almost in one gulp. He wondered why she’d looked sad when he’d talked about getting to his grandparents. Did she think he’d go? And leave her, with this lot to do?

      She didn’t know him very well, he thought, picking up the tea and the bucket. After he’d delivered them he carried water into the house, some to the kitchen, some to the bathroom, and then he went back to the barn.

      ‘Fill the troughs?’ he suggested.

      She looked at him in amazement. ‘Aren’t you going?’

      ‘Without my car? You have to be kidding,’ he joked, but she nodded, as if she thought it was perfectly reasonable.

      ‘In which case...’

      Hope flickered in her amber eyes, and if he’d cherished any illusions about being able to escape, they evaporated like mist in the early morning. He couldn’t abandon her—and if he did, his grandmother would kick him straight back down here again before he was even over the threshold!

      ‘I’ll fill the troughs,’ he said, and wondered why the thought of shifting a hundred and fifty buckets of water made him want to whistle...

      CHAPTER THREE

      THE dawn, when it came, was glorious. The wind had gone, the sun sparkled on the snow and if she hadn’t been so phenomenally tired Jemima would have loved it.

      Sam, for all his bucketing, seemed full of energy this morning, and she wanted to hit him for it. She’d listened to him whistling cheerfully as he brought the water up from the stream—seventy-five times, or thereabouts—and now he was shovelling snow away from the barn doors and making paths from the house to the hens, the calves and the stream.

      Still, she wasn’t surprised. As a boy he’d never sat still for a minute. ‘There’s some sand somewhere you can put down on those paths,’ she told him, sticking her head out of the hen house.

      He looked round at the farmyard. Snow had come straight off the field across the road and dumped itself on the yard, and Jemima took one look at his expression and hid a grin.

      ‘Any helpful suggestions where I should start looking?’ he said mildly.

      ‘Ah.’ She gave up and grinned. ‘How about ash from the bottom of the Rayburn?’ she offered.

      His expression cleared. ‘Good idea. Got a metal bucket?’

      ‘By the back door—it’s got ash in it. If you’re going in, could you take these?’

      She handed him a basket of eggs and he peered at them and cocked his head on one side with a quizzical grin. ‘I wonder what’s for breakfast?’ he murmured.

      She laughed. ‘Put the kettle on, too. We’ll do the paths together in a minute.’

      She ducked back inside the hen house, collected and packed the last of the eggs and checked the water, then shut them up and went across to the house. She wondered when he’d remember who she was, if he ever did, and decided to let it go on a bit longer before saying anything. It made the day more interesting, waiting for the penny to drop, she thought as she kicked off her boots.

      The warmth wrapped itself round her like a blanket as she went in, and she dropped into a chair by the Rayburn and propped her feet on the front edge. ‘Oh, bliss,’ she groaned, and shut her eyes.

      A hard, lean, masculine hip nudged her ankles. ‘Come on, out of the way. I’m trying to cook.’

      She cracked an eye open. ‘Cook?’ she said disbelievingly.

      ‘Cook. Put some handcream on and keep out of the way. Is there any butter?’

      She got up and found butter, then milk, then cut some bread and put it in the toaster.

      ‘When did you intend to have breakfast?’ he asked drily, and she muttered and flipped the bread back out of the lifeless tool and plopped back into the chair.

      ‘We’ll have bread,’ she suggested, and he. laughed, turning those astonishing navy eyes on her so her heart hiccuped. Wow, she thought, if he really set out to be charming he could be a real stunner—

      ‘How do you like your eggs?’

      ‘Soft and creamy.’

      ‘Ditto. Right, up you get.’

      She was suddenly ravenous. The heap of rich, golden scrambled egg was cooked to perfection, and she stabbed her fork into it, forgetting all about Sam and his gorgeous dark blue eyes.