Page 48 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm (Highland Cookery School #2)
She wanted, so desperately, for him to say everything was forgiven and they could turn back the clock to how things were, but she knew she didn’t deserve that.
‘It’s OK. You don’t have to say anything.
I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry.
’ There was more than that. ‘And that us, you and me, that was real. It wasn’t a lie. I promise.’
He nodded quickly. ‘Right. Thank you.’
She let him go this time. He’d spoken to her.
That was more than she had any right to hope for.
Jodie made her way back into the kitchen.
The babble of excitable chat hushed the moment she came through the door.
Everyone was here – Bella, Adam, Darcy, Flinty and Veronica.
Jodie took a deep breath in. ‘I am so sorry for everything that happened before, but I saw the storm on the news and I know how important Hogmanay is for you and I really do want to help.’
Adam and Bella exchanged a look.
‘You really want to help?’ Bella asked.
‘I do.’
‘You broke that boy’s heart.’ Darcy wasn’t letting her off the hook.
‘I know.’
‘And you lied to all of us,’ Bella added. ‘People thought you might be the mole feeding stuff to McKenzie and I said, “No. I trust her.” How much of an idiot am I?’
‘I didn’t tell McKenzie anything. I promise.
You trusted me. And I really wanted to be the person you thought I was.
’ Jodie was determined to stick with her new truth-first policy.
‘I’m not Gemma. I never was.’ The next part was the hardest to say.
She believed it. She really did and the belief itself was new.
‘And if you let me help, I really think I can.’
Bella sighed. ‘I don’t know.’
Veronica cleared her throat. ‘It strikes me that we require all the help we can get at the moment.’
‘That’s true,’ Adam conceded.
‘And,’ Veronica continued, ‘whatever her indiscretions, Miss…’ She paused. ‘Simpson?’
Jodie nodded.
‘Miss Simpson was actually very helpful in her time here.’
Bella rubbed her eyes. She looked exhausted. ‘Fine. You’re in.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. You’re on trying to get our customers back. Adam and Darcy are going to sort out the ballroom. I’m going to replan the food to use what we’ve actually got and then work out how to fill the gaps without spending any money.’
‘Yes boss.’
By New Year’s Eve afternoon they were almost party ready.
Now Jodie just had to find them some customers.
Her research over the last few days, combined with what she remembered from her time as Fiona’s assistant, had been helpful.
She talked her bosses through it at the kitchen island.
‘So, the McKenzie guests basically break down into two groups. There’s the ones they stole from us.
So far as I can tell they’ve paid McKenzie in full already. ’
Adam frowned. ‘So?’
‘So,’ Jodie couldn’t quite look him in the eye, ‘so even if we get them back I’m not sure how we make them pay us as well. If we just say “Hey, why not come to this different party?”, they’re going to say, “No thanks. We’re already here.” And if we trick them…’
‘Which is your idea,’ Bella pointed out.
‘Yeah. And we still could, and it fills the room and advertises Lowbridge for the future and all that, but it doesn’t make us any cash right now, cos so far as they’re concerned they’ve already paid.’
Both her bosses’ faces fell.
‘But, then there’s the other group.’ Jodie had seen when she was working with Fiona that the McKenzie estate was taking bookings through agents and tour operators.
She’d mentally logged it as something she should look into for Lowbridge in the new year, but now she realised it could make all the difference to Lowbridge’s fortunes today.
‘They’re all booked through tour operators, and they’ve paid the operator, but the operator doesn’t pay McKenzie until the end of the trip. So…’ She let the conclusion dangle.
Adam shook his head. ‘So?’
‘So if they end up here, then we could totally argue that they had to pay us?’
‘And if they say no?’
That was a very real risk. If some of their guests just somehow ended up at the wrong party then it was entirely possible the travel companies would just shrug and claim it wasn’t their problem.
‘That’s why the plan has to work this way,’ she explained, trying to keep the wobble out of her voice.
Jodie’s plan to fill the ballroom had three prongs.
Firstly, Bella’s council of war had been set to work drumming up as much local interest as possible.
Reverend Jill, in particular, had been a star.
It seemed like most of her congregations from across the area were now planning to be there.
Secondly, Jodie had worked the phones and charmed as many of their previous bookings as possible.
As she’d expected, most had politely explained that they now had other plans, but a few had accepted that they’d got the wrong impression about Lowbridge’s event being cancelled and reinstated their bookings.
The third prong was the biggest, the riskiest, and by far the most legally questionable, and it all had to happen this afternoon and nothing at all could go wrong.
In Jodie’s experience plans she made did tend to go wrong.
‘I want to come with you,’ Bella insisted.
Jodie shook her head. ‘We can’t really stop for puke breaks. And you need to be here. There’s deliveries you need to check.’
‘I know. What if it doesn’t work though?’
Jodie didn’t have an answer to that. The headline to her plan was so simple.
The McKenzie estate had stolen their customers and their band.
Now they were going to steal them back, and just a few extra paying customers besides.
The details were a little more intricate.
Because of the scale of the McKenzie estate guests were being ferried from their accommodation in the hotel block and the cabin and lodges around the estate in branded minibuses and four-wheel drives.
That was a problem because the local drivers, at least, would know the way, and they couldn’t send Lowbridge cars to pick the guests up, because key to Jodie’s plan to get paid was that they were able to say the official transport had brought the guests to them and they had simply helpfully offered hospitality to get their rivals out of an embarrassing screw-up.
As it turned out, Storm Gemma had helped their plan.
Since the storm, Adam’s drive over to the enemy side of the hills had confirmed there were trees down across McKenzie’s land, so a diversion sign or two wouldn’t seem out of place.
Those diversions would send the drivers across the estate to the closest point to the Lowbridge land, and over the border onto a farm track that would bring them down to the castle, where Bella and Adam would greet them in full laird and lady charm-offensive mode and hopefully have everyone into the ballroom and nicely primed with whisky or champagne before too many objections were raised.
In short, they were planning to kidnap a Hogmanay party. What could possibly go wrong?
The first thing that could go wrong was that Jodie’s lead co-conspirator could very easily refuse to work with her.
To take the diversion signs Jodie had carefully created and printed with McKenzie estate logos over to their destination they needed a van, and Lowbridge’s favourite man with a van had left every room they’d been in together since she returned.
So now she was standing outside the coach house with a pile of home-made signs at her feet and only Adam’s assurance that Pavel had promised he was still in to keep her company.
If he did turn up she had three hours, give or take, alone with him and not a clue what she could possibly say.
She checked her watch. Five past three. They needed all the signs in place by five thirty.
Early enough that people wouldn’t already have been picked up.
Not so early that anyone had time to notice and wonder if something was awry.
At ten past three Pavel’s van pulled up in front of her. He jumped out without a word, opened the side door and lifted her signs in. ‘I’m doing this for Adam and Bella.’
‘I know. Me too.’
He nodded and climbed back into the van.
Jodie had hand-drawn a map of the McKenzie estate and marked where the van could easily access, without raising suspicion, and which junctions signs needed placing at. She pulled it from her pocket and smoothed it out on the dashboard of the van. ‘It’s a bit rough.’
Pavel inspected her handiwork. ‘You did this from memory?’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s good.’ He tapped one of the tracks she’d marked as accessible to the van.
‘We won’t get down there though. Not after the amount of rain we’ve had lately.
’ He thought for a second. ‘If we park up there,’ tapping the map again, ‘the van’ll be hidden by the trees and we can do this part on foot. ’
‘OK.’
He pulled the van onto the road. ‘Do you think this’ll work?’
‘If it doesn’t will Adam really sell to John McKenzie?’
‘I don’t know if he’ll have much choice. Having the accommodation ready helps but that’s longer term, isn’t it? They need some money now.’
‘The coach house looks great,’ Jodie offered. It really did. Like everything else he did, Pavel had clearly lavished care and attention on his work. ‘You’ve done a brilliant job.’