Page 26 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm (Highland Cookery School #2)

Burglars were all but unheard of in Lowbridge, but sheep wandering in through open patio doors were a much more present danger.

Pavel readied himself to shoo a confused ewe away from the building, but opened the door instead to find a slightly wild-eyed, distinctly cobweb-covered Gemma Bryant, standing in the middle of the castle’s ballroom surrounded by what looked like varying sizes of mountains of junk. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Tidying.’

Pavel looked around the mounds of stuff. ‘Are you though?’

She stopped and slowly turned around. ‘Yeah. I’m organising.’

‘Right.’ He moved to the middle of the room. ‘What’s this pile then?’

‘Furniture – not broken.’

‘And this one?’

‘Furniture – broken but fixable.’

‘OK.’ He scanned the room. If you really tried to get into Gemma’s mindset there was a sort of system. The mounds were broken down into furniture, textiles, smaller household items. He moved to the biggest pile of all. This one didn’t seem to have an obvious theme. ‘What about this lot?’

The determined expression on Gemma’s face faltered slightly. ‘That’s things that didn’t fit into any other category.’

‘Right.’ Despite the surface chaos, she’d clearly done loads. ‘What time did you start on this?’

She shrugged. ‘Couldn’t sleep. What time is it now?’

‘Seven-ish.’

‘Shit.’

‘Have you been up all night?’

She ran a slightly grimy hand through her hair. ‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe?’

‘Definitely.’ She folded her arms. ‘I… sometimes I get something in my head and it like itches away at me and I can’t sleep until I’ve dealt with it, so…’

‘And the messy ballroom was itching away at you?’

She nodded. ‘You don’t get that?’

Pavel shook his head. ‘I sleep like a baby.’

‘That’s a stupid phrase. Babies are terrible sleepers.’ She laughed. ‘You don’t have any younger brothers or sisters?’

‘No. How many have you got?’

‘One… two.’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘About two.’

‘About two?’

About two? The incredulity in Pavel’s face was entirely understandable.

Who didn’t know how many brothers and sisters they had?

Well, someone who had one and who had remembered halfway through the word that Gemma had a sister and a brother, and panicked that that might somehow have come up in her job interview.

So now Pavel thought she had an uncertain number of brothers and sisters.

She shook her head. ‘Exactly two. I have been up all night.’

He flipped one of the non-broken chairs over and sat down. ‘So I told Bella I’d help in here. What do you want doing?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s fine. You’re busy with the coach house.’

‘It’s fine. Strach’s over later.’ He looked around. ‘Do you think we need a skip?’

Jodie had no idea. She’d never cleared out a ballroom before. ‘I guess. It’s not my stuff though. Shouldn’t we check with Bella before we get rid of things?’

Pavel nodded. ‘Should check with Adam probably. Some of this could be stupidly valuable.’

‘Really?’ Jodie hadn’t even thought of that. She’d just been chucking stuff around. ‘I broke a side table.’

She clambered over the pile in front of her and pulled the tabletop from the ‘broken furniture – probably not fixable’ area. Pavel took it from her hand. ‘I think you’re all right. Not a lot of chipboard in a genuine Chippendale, I don’t think.’

Doubt was rushing through Jodie’s head now though. This was what she did. She waded in, didn’t think and messed things up. ‘We need to put it all back.’

‘What?’

‘Put it all back.’ It was the only option. Put everything back exactly where she’d found it and resume her previous plan of just slipping away. She grabbed the broken tabletop back off Pavel.

‘Gemma!’

She could feel the panic rising. She had to get ahead of it before the bright fizziness turned black and started to close around her. ‘It’ll be fine. We’ll put it all back and then Bella or Darcy or Adam, or whoever, can come and look at it and they won’t know I did all this and…’

‘Gemma.’ Pavel’s hands were on her shoulders, softly, not gripping her, holding her gently on the spot. ‘Gemma, you don’t need to put it all back. This place was a mess.’

‘Yeah but…’ She could feel the room around her contracting, squashing her in.

‘But nothing. What you are suggesting is moving a whole lot of crap into one disorganised mound out of multiple actually relatively organised mounds.’ Pavel’s face filled her vision. ‘Breathe.’

Jodie did as she was told.

‘Breathe.’

‘I’m breathing.’ In and out and the panic was receding. ‘I’m OK.’

‘OK.’

She realised he was crouching at the knees to bring his face down to her level, his face that was inches away from hers, and the hands that had been anchoring her gently back into herself were now creating pools of heat on her skin. Pavel’s face and Pavel’s touch were all there was.

And his lips, close. She could almost feel the taste of them, the warmth, the way that she would melt into him. She leaned towards him, just a little and…

He jumped backwards like she’d slapped him. Oh. No.

‘I’d better get back to the coach house.’ He was already in the doorway, holding it open as he spoke to her. ‘I’ll send Strach over maybe to help you later.’

‘Right. Thank you.’ What had she been thinking?

Pavel was just being kind. He was dating a fucking vicar.

This was why she had to learn to think before she acted.

This was the whole thing that trying to be more Gemma was supposed to avoid.

Jodie wanted the floor beneath her to open up and eat her whole.

At least that was what most of her brain wanted.

But there was another part, the bad part, the incorrigible part that could no more be Gemma Bryant than it could fly to the moon, that was whispering something else.

He didn’t pull back straight away, it whispered.

There was a moment, not even a moment, a fraction of a hint of a moment, before he’d remembered himself, where she was absolutely sure Pavel Stone was going to kiss her.

‘You all right, Pav?’ Adam Lowbridge was grabbing a bag out of the boot of his four-wheel drive outside the coach house.

Pavel nodded. ‘I’m fine.’ He was fine. Why wouldn’t he be fine? He’d had a chat with Gemma in the ballroom and nothing else had happened at all.

‘What are you doing here at this time?’

‘Just checking what needs doing in the…’ Not in the coach house because that wasn’t officially happening. ‘The ballroom. With Gemma. She’s fine.’

‘OK.’ Adam grinned. ‘I’m guessing you heard Bella’s news.’

A change of subject. Pavel silently thanked the universe. ‘Congratulations.’ He pulled his old friend into a hug. ‘Darcy knows so I think you can assume everyone knows.’

‘Yeah. I wasn’t supposed to be back until tonight, but I squashed all my meetings into yesterday and then drove through the night.

’ He shook his head a little sheepishly.

‘And then I realised that was a crazy idea and ended up having to pull over somewhere off the A9 for a rest. I wanted to see her, you know?’

Pavel nodded. He didn’t know though, did he? Not really. He had people he loved. So many people. He was lucky, but he didn’t have that one person that he’d drive through the night just to see, to the point of exhaustion, beyond the point of good sense or sanity. A shiver ran down his spine.

‘She’s probably still in bed.’ Adam looked up towards the first floor of the castle.

‘Adam!’ Bella’s scream echoed across the courtyard.

‘Or not.’ Adam grinned as he turned to pull the woman running towards them into his arms.

Pavel stepped back. He was intruding on a private moment now. Adam and Bella had forgotten he was there the second they clapped eyes on one another.

He went back to the castle and into the kitchen. Darcy was sitting at the island, still in her dressing gown, swiping through headlines on a tablet and sipping on a mug of coffee almost the size of her head.

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ He turned to leave.

‘Don’t be. Come in. Coffee?’

He let her fill a mug for him, and took a stool at the island. ‘Everyone’s up early today.’

She frowned. ‘You’re the first soul I’ve seen.’

‘Bella’s outside, and Adam’s back.’

Darcy beamed. ‘Oh, I’m so glad. I felt so bad for him with us all being here and him hearing about his baby over the phone. I haven’t seen Gemma yet.’

‘No,’ Pavel answered quickly. Too quickly? ‘I haven’t either. Not this morning, I mean. Obviously I have seen her at other times.’

‘Course you have, sweetie.’ She looked up. ‘Speak of the devil.’

Gemma stopped dead in the doorway to the kitchen. ‘Hi.’

He nodded. ‘Hi.’

‘Thanks for before,’ she added.

‘Before?’ Darcy asked.

‘Oh, I was sorting out the ballroom and I got a bit…’ She shook her head. ‘Pavel was very helpful.’

‘This morning?’

Pavel stared at his shoes.

‘Yes,’ Gemma confirmed.

He could feel Darcy’s eyes boring into him without needing to look up.

‘You will not believe this!’ Bella marched into the kitchen, with Adam trailing behind her. The romantic reunion seemed to be firmly on hold.

‘What?’ Gemma asked.

‘Two different sets of people just cancelled for Hogmanay.’ She was waving her phone at them, as though the communication device itself was to blame.

She tapped on the screen. ‘Listen to this. As we have now heard that the Lowbridge celebrations no longer offer a ceilidh or… ’ She seethed out the next words: ‘ Professional catering, we have decided to cancel our booking. ’

‘What?’ This time Gemma’s question was a yell. ‘Who told them that?’

‘Who do you think?’

Gemma’s face was blank but the penny in Pavel’s head dropped quicker. ‘McKenzie?’

‘So they stole our band and now they’re taking our customers?’

‘And bad-mouthing the food,’ Bella added. ‘They’re doing a whole Hogmanay party just to spoil ours,’ she added.

A bell rang in Pavel’s mind. ‘I heard them talking about New Year when I was over there.’

Bella’s eyes narrowed. ‘I can’t believe you’re working for them.’

‘It’s not even definite yet.’

‘Even so…’

Pavel stared down at his feet.