Page 10 of The Allotment on Willow Tree Lane

‘Ugh. That wasn’t as nice as I hoped it was going to be,’ she said with a grimace. ‘Too dry.’

‘You prefer the sweet stuff?’

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’ She shoved the bottle at him. ‘Are you a wine connoisseur?’

‘Hardly. I wouldn’t know good wine if it bit me on the backside.’

‘What’s your tipple of choice?’ she asked, watching him take another swig.

He gave her back the bottle, his fingers brushing hers and a spark of desire ignited inside her at the touch. She eyed the wine warily, wondering if it was a good idea to drink any more if it was going to make her act this way.

‘Promise you won’t laugh?’ he asked.

‘I promise.’ She took a gulp.

‘Sherry.’

Ceri almost choked as the alcohol went down the wrong way, and when she had finished spluttering, he said accusingly, ‘You promised not to laugh.’

‘I wasn’t laughing. I was drowning. The wine went down the wrong way.’

‘Yeah, because you were laughing,’ he shot back.

‘OK, maybe a bit.’ She snorted, a most unladylike sound. ‘Honestly, though –sherry?’

‘It reminds me of my gran,’ he replied haughtily. ‘She used to love a glass before dinner.’

Ceri noticed the past tense and thought it best not to tease him any further. ‘I like Advocaat,’ she admitted. ‘It reminds me of Christmas. And port.’

‘You do realise that port and sherry are kissing cousins?’

‘I’ll shut up then, shall I?’ she laughed. ‘I haven’t got a leg to stand on.’

‘You won’t if you keep knocking back the wine.’

‘You’re not as funny as you think you are,’ she retorted snootily. ‘And for your information, I’m nowhere near legless.’

He held out his hand for the bottle. ‘And the puns just keep coming,’ he chuckled.

They sat in silence for a while. It wasn’t an uncomfortable one, and Ceri didn’t feel the need to hunt around for anything to say. She was quite content to sit in the meadow, listening to the music. Having a handsome man to sit there with her was a bonus.

A breeze caught the tendrils of hair around her face, and Ceri noticed that her up-do was gradually becoming a down-do. She’d woven flowers into her locks at the start of the day but they were now beginning to wilt. One thing she couldn’t tolerate was dying flowers. It was a pity they hadn’t lasted longer, because she loved the hippy chick look. Absently, she teased them out of her hair and laid them on the grass, and debated whether to replace them with the daisies that were dotted through the grass, then hesitated. They had closed up for the night, looking more like shuttlecocks than flowers, revealing the pink-daubed undersides of the petals, so she left them where they were, as something else caught her eye.

It wasn’t easy to tell what it was in the dark, so she lowered herself down until she was lying on her side and stretched out a hand to stroke the flower.

A faint but unmistakable scent reached her. ‘Evening primrose,’ she muttered.

‘Excuse me?’

‘These flowers. Can you smell them? They’re evening primrose. Pollinators love them.’

Damon lay down and shuffled over. ‘I can smell something nice, but I thought it was your perfume.’

‘It’s these. And there’s honeysuckle, too.’ She twisted over to look at him and got a shock when she realised how near his face was to hers.

He inhaled deeply. ‘My gran used to have honeysuckle in her garden.’ Abruptly he flopped onto his back as though realising he was invading her personal space. ‘I wonder if she’s up there, watching us.’

Ceri lay back and looked at the stars. ‘Would you like her to be?’

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