Page 26 of A Recipe for Love
‘What did you do?’
‘Horticultural college. Grandmother wasn’t best pleased but honestly plants were the only thing I was any good at. Took me four goes to pass GCSE maths with a good enough grade to get in there.’
Bella rolled her eyes. ‘I was awful at school.’
‘In what way?’
‘Oh you know. The usual stuff. Got bored easily, and life with Nan was…’ She sank down deeper into the water. ‘It was so different to school. School was all rules and it felt, I don’t know, small. My nan was all about having adventures.’
‘My nan was not,’ Adam joked.
‘No. I got that.’
‘So did you go to catering college or something then?’ Was that too downmarket? He wasn’t sure about the terminology. ‘Or culinary school?’
Bella shook her head. ‘Nowt so fancy. I worked in a cafe in town from when I was about fourteen. Just at weekends. Then when I was sixteen I got a job washing dishes in a hotel, and that turned into a bit of commis cheffing – basic stuff, chopping potatoes and peeling veg, and I kept going. If you can cook you can pretty much work anywhere. Chefs, hookers and undertakers.’ She grinned. ‘The only people who’ll never be out of work.’
‘Not like high-end landscaping in tiny Highland villages.’
‘I thought business in Edinburgh was good?’
‘It is. For now at least, but I’m not there, am I? Ravi can keep things ticking over, but a garden design business does need a garden designer.’
‘We’ll work it out.’ She sank back into the bath. ‘Let’s get things sorted here. One thing at a time.’ She gave a soapy shrug. ‘And then we’ll find our next adventure.’
Bella’s positivity was infectious. He’d been swept along by her for the last four weeks, to the point where he, Adam Lowbridge, sensible, cautious Adam, had proposed to a woman he, by any reasonable standard, barely knew. He waited, as he’d been waiting ever since that question had left his lips, for the doubt to rush in, but it simply wasn’t there. Instead her presence gave him an unfamiliar feeling of certainty.
He let her soothe him. She was right. It was the sensible thing to do. Get things in order here. Give his father a proper send-off. And then maybe he could get back to his real life? It wasn’t as if his grandmother needed him to run the estate anyway. It wasn’t as if she would actually let him even if he tried.
Adam moved off his perch on the toilet lid and knelt on the floor next to the bath, leaning over far enough to plant a kiss on his fiancée’s lips. She snaked a damp arm around his neck.
‘You’ll get me all wet,’ he protested.
She leaned over and wrapped her other arm around his waist, pulling him towards her and splashing water across his chest and back and onto the floor.
Chapter Four
The following morning Bella gratefully accepted Adam’s offer to bring her breakfast over on a tray rather than her come over to the house on her sore ankle.
‘Castle,’ she corrected.
‘Don’t start that again.’
She sat up in bed, wedging pillows behind her as she heard footsteps on the stair, and letting the sheet that was wrapped around her drop below her breast in a way she hoped was saucy and alluring, rather than merely dishevelled.
Adam’s grandmother pushed the door open. ‘Oh my!’
Bella grabbed the sheet and hoiked it over her boobs.
Veronica turned towards the wall. ‘I was informed that you were ready for breakfast.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Bella was still, she felt, at something of a disadvantage.
Veronica turned around somewhat gingerly. ‘I’ll put this over here.’ She placed the tray on top of the chest of drawers at the furthest corner of the room. Clearly she hadn’t got the ‘breakfast in bed to save Bella’s ankle’ memo, but if it meant she left sooner then Bella would happily embrace an awkward naked hop to get to her cup of tea.
Veronica appeared to have other plans. She clasped her hands together. ‘I thought this would give us an opportunity to have a little talk.’
Why did that sound like a threat?
