Page 95 of A Recipe for Love
‘I can’t do that cee-haitch sound.’
‘Well that’s being English for you.’
‘Shut up. Right. So I’ll need to get ingredients in and,’ she frowned. ‘Baking trays. Cupcake trays. I wonder how many we have? I might have to borrow stuff.’ She was pulling her mobile out of her pocket. ‘If I ring Anna now she might be able to get everything ready to just pick up in the morning.’ She stopped. ‘Oh. The riding lesson.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You’re busy.’ And it was for the estate. It was good, Adam reminded himself. ‘Can I help with anything?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s fine. I’m on it.’
She kissed him on the top of the head before she rushed away. Adam leaned back in his chair. He could still go for a ride. He hadn’t ridden regularly for years but he could ask Darcy and maybe take a trot around the paddock to get back in the groove. Or just for a walk out along the cliff. He wasn’t helping here, so why shouldn’t he get out of the office?
‘What on earth have you done?’ His grandmother’s voice cut through the remaining embers of his earlier relaxation and sent him right back to feeling wedged into an entirely wrong-shaped hole.
‘What?’
‘I just had Pavel Stone on the phone. Apparently we sent him over six thousand pounds.’
Adam frowned. ‘Did we?’
‘Well I didn’t, and Darcy said you were in here doing goodness knows what.’
‘I paid his invoice.’
‘For how much?’
Adam rifled through the pile of papers in front of him and held it up.
Veronica took the sheet from his hand. ‘Sixty-six pounds and ninety-four pence.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Apparently Mr Stone received six thousand six hundred and ninety-four pounds.’
Adam closed his eyes. ‘Sorry.’
‘Sorry doesn’t really help. That will have sent us right to the limit of our overdraft.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s only thanks to Bella that it didn’t put it past that.’
‘Sorry.’
‘And thank goodness it was Mr Stone who will, he assures me, pay it straight back. Otherwise that money could simply be gone forever.’
‘Sorry.’ Adam could hear the petulance in his own tone.
Veronica nodded. ‘As you keep saying.’
Darcy bounced in from the hallway, with Bella a second behind her. ‘Oh, what about some shots of the laird at his desk?’ She paused for a second, her face uncertain, before she nodded brightly. ‘Sorry. Still a bit odd coming in here and not seeing Alexander.’
‘I know.’ Adam really did know. This was his father’s place, not his. His father had understood all of this, all of the tiny cogs that kept a place like Lowbridge going. He should be sitting in this chair, not Adam. He looked up into his fiancée’s face. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Taking photos. For publicity, for the cookery school.’ She shrugged. ‘And anything else.’
‘Right. Maybe later.’ He couldn’t sit here and pretend to be the perfect laird. He looked around the office, grasping for a reason. ‘We should probably tidy up a bit first.’
Bella nodded. ‘And we should concentrate on outside while it’s sunny.’
