Page 30 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm (Highland Cookery School #2)

Jodie’s hackles rose slightly. Another of her mother’s regular snippets of life advice rang in her head.

Men who liked to be seen as the source of power while the women around them ran around and did the work were not to be trusted.

You were much better off with a laird who was happy to be told to butt out and shut up.

‘We are in quite a remote area here. So I’m asking everyone as well, how they feel about that? It can be a bit hard if you’re not used to it.’

Jodie smoothly trotted out her practised soliloquy in praise of the Highlands and the wildlife and the undiscovered beauty. ‘Honestly, I don’t know why anyone who came here would ever leave.’

‘Can I ask,’ Fiona put down her pen, ‘not officially, but what brought you up here?’

‘Honestly,’ partly honestly, ‘I had a relationship end and I needed to get away so I took a break from work and set off travelling. My plan was to head overseas when my passport came through, but then I landed here and I don’t know.

’ Jodie could feel the beginning of a tear stinging the corner of her eye.

‘I felt at home.’ The tears were still threatening to fall and something about what she’d said wasn’t quite right.

‘Not at home exactly. Maybe I felt more myself.’

She blinked hard against the tears.

Fiona seemed oblivious. ‘I know exactly what you mean. That’s why I didn’t leave when…’ She shook her head. ‘I just couldn’t be anywhere else.’

The door Jodie had come in through swung open and a tall, slightly older man in a tweed jacket over blue jeans came into the room.

Fiona jumped to her feet. ‘John! This is Jodie Simpson. She’s here about the assistant job.’

Jodie stood and accepted his proffered hand. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being assessed, and not for her professional attributes. This guy was checking her out. She pulled her hand away from his fractionally too tight grip.

‘Lovely to meet you, Jodie. I hope we meet again.’ He nodded at Fiona and marched out of the room.

The rest of the interview was unlike any interview Jodie had ever had before. Fiona barely made a note and chatted apparently randomly, rather than asking her the bland questions from the printed list Jodie could clearly see on the table. ‘Is there anything you wanted to ask me?’ Fiona asked.

Jodie had prepared her question for this part. ‘I guess what would I be working on? Are there any big projects coming up?’

Fiona nodded. ‘Keen to hit the ground running? That’s the attitude John loves. Well, assuming you could start quite soon…’

‘Straight away,’ Jodie assured her.

‘We’re busy getting ready for Christmas in the retail areas and event spaces and then it’s Hogmanay. We’re doing a huge multi-layered event experience.’

A what now?

‘It’s the first event of its kind in the area. I have no idea why nobody else had thought of doing something.’ She beamed. ‘John is such a visionary.’

You say visionary, I say lying, stealing bastard. Tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to.

Fiona stood and smoothed down her heather-purple skirt. ‘Thank you for coming in…’

Jodie texted her lift as soon as she was out of sight of the building and waddled as briskly as she could in ill-fitting shoes back to the road. Adam was already waiting.

‘How did it go?’

Jodie thought back over John McKenzie’s blatant look over her body and shuddered. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure they were deciding based on suitability for the job.’

Pavel stared at the menu in front of him.

Usually he and Jill chatted easily about anything and everything.

Crazy stories from across Jill’s parish.

Moans and quibbles from whatever job Pavel was working at the moment.

TV they’d seen. Books Jill would press on him and he’d forget to read. Normally it was easy.

Today it was anything but. He stared at the menu some more. One of them had to say something. ‘So, they do pies…’ he tried.

‘Yeah. Yeah. And burgers.’

‘Sure. Burgers are good. I think there’s a specials board. I could go and look. Maybe take a picture.’

‘I looked already. When you were at the bar.’

‘Right.’

‘Pork belly. Something with fish. Maybe risotto?’

‘OK. I might try the pork belly.’ Silence threatened to descend once more. ‘Pork belly. Poooork belly. Belly. Belly.’

‘Pavel?’

‘Yeah?’

‘This is horrible.’

It was. But that was OK. He could fix it. When things weren’t right he made them right. ‘I’m sure we can…’

Jill shook her head. ‘Pavel, it’s horrible.’

It was. It made no sense, but it was. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. We’ve had lunch before.’

They had. ‘And we’ve talked like normal humans.’

‘And it was fun. That’s why I thought this might be…’ She rested her face into her hands for a second. ‘I’m sorry. I pushed this, didn’t I?’

‘No.’

‘You can admit it.’

‘Maybe a bit. But not just you, to be fair.’

She raised her head. ‘Who else?’

‘Who didn’t? Basically all of Lowbridge agrees that this should work.’

Jill took an enthusiastic glug of wine. ‘I wasn’t aware it was up to them.’

‘No.’ Obviously it wasn’t. ‘But…’

‘What? I hope you didn’t go out with me because the Ladies’ Group thought you should?’

‘No.’ Not just that at least.

Jill sighed. ‘I see their point though. This should work. We get on. You’re hot.’

Pavel shook his head.

‘Your muscles have muscles. Don’t pretend you don’t know. And I’m, I mean, I’m not supermodel pretty but I scrub up all right.’ She paused. ‘You could say something nice about me there, you know?’

‘Sorry.’ Pavel wasn’t even managing to make anything better. ‘You’re gorgeous.’

‘Thank you. So what’s wrong?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Bollocks.’

Pavel raised an eyebrow in mock shock. ‘Reverend, really?’

‘Come on. We both know what’s wrong. It’s OK to say it.’

To say what?

‘I need you to say it. Please. I need you to let me off your hook here. Say it. For me.’ She folded her arms and stared him down.

‘I can’t…’ He couldn’t hurt her. He didn’t want to be cruel.

‘Please. This isn’t a broken pipe you can replace and make good.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Pavel took a deep breath and forced the words out. ‘I don’t think of you that way. I mean I love you.’ That was true. ‘You’re my best friend but just a friend, you know.’

‘Thank you.’ She took a sip of her wine. ‘That’s fine. Genuinely fine. I don’t want to go out with someone who’s only there because he knows everyone else thinks it’s a good idea, or because – bless your little heart – he doesn’t want to disappoint me. I want to be adored. I deserve to be adored.’

‘Too right. So just friends?’ He didn’t want to lose her. He wouldn’t have been here at all if he was blasé about that.

‘Friends.’ She nodded. ‘Don’t say just friends. Friends is something. Don’t make it sound less than. Friends is brilliant.’ Her usual smile was already starting to reassert itself.

‘You’re sure you’re OK?’

‘Of course. I mean, I might eat a whole tub of ice cream and watch When Harry Met Sally on repeat tonight but this is fine. I promise.’

‘So we can have lunch like normal?’

‘Oh please.’ She grinned. ‘When it was a date I was going to insist on going Dutch to set the right boundaries and all that. If we’re here as mates you are so paying.’

‘Deal.’

‘And you’re telling your mam it didn’t work out?’

Pavel winced. ‘Maybe I could email her?’

‘Or tell Anna?’

‘You could put it in the parish newsletter?’

Jill laughed. ‘Same difference. One thing though…’

‘What?’

‘You don’t want this.’ She gestured from him to her and back again. ‘That’s fine. But what do you want, Pavel?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you do everything for everyone, but what do you want? For you?’

Pavel didn’t want for anything. He’d grown up with love. He was part of a community. He was needed. ‘I’m fine.’

‘So you don’t want anything just for you?’

For a second Pavel’s nerve endings tingled and he was somewhere else entirely, standing in a ballroom full of junk, leaning towards a girl he barely knew – and sometimes felt he didn’t know at all – and then he was back in the pub in the moment.

He shook his head. ‘I want a burger and maybe extra chips.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘Course not. I’m fine.’

Two days later Adam dropped Jodie off at the same spot at the end of the lane up to the McKenzie estate main office, wearing a different borrowed outfit. ‘Good luck. Don’t forget your name’s Jodie.’

Jodie had told herself the double deceit would somehow be easier, but the layers upon layers were already blowing her mind. ‘I’ll try not to.’

She arrived at reception at precisely five minutes to nine – as discussed at length over dinner the previous night. Eight forty-five looked too keen according to Darcy but Veronica was very clear that on time was already late.

‘Hi. I’m here for Fiona MacCellan. It’s my first day.

’ Jodie smiled brightly. Even though she was being Jodie, she wasn’t being actually Jodie.

She was New Jodie, Better Jodie – the sort of Jodie who paid attention and didn’t screw up.

She read the name badge pinned to the receptionist’s jacket. ‘Saira. Nice to meet you.’

Saira looked her up and down. ‘Good luck.’

‘What do you mean?’

Saira shrugged.

‘Come on.’ Jodie tried her best to sound girly and matey and conspiratorial. ‘You can’t leave me hanging.’

‘Just her. Mr McKenzie’s great, but she’s all over him like…’

Before she could finish, the door to Fiona’s office swung open and Fiona and John McKenzie strode out. ‘Jodie.’ He strode towards her, hand extended, holding on again for slightly too long. ‘Good to see you. I said to Fiona, she’s the one. You’ve got what we need.’

The urge to ‘accidentally’ stamp down hard on John’s booted foot rose strongly through Jodie’s body. He exuded sleaze, but it wasn’t just her mess if she lost this job the moment she’d got it. She was doing this for everyone who’d welcomed her in and put their faith in her. ‘I hope so.’

‘I know you do. I can always spot it, can’t I, Fi?’

Fiona nodded wordlessly beside him.