Page 108 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
Bella frowned, but stepped through the coach house door into the hallway. She stopped, dashed down the corridor, opened one door and then another and ran back out to them. ‘It’s all…’ She pointed at the coach house. ‘It’s all done up!’
‘What?’ Adam and Darcy made their own way inside, reappearing a few moments later.
‘How?’ Bella stared at her fiancé. ‘Did you…?’
Adam shook his head. ‘All Pav, I’m guessing.’
Bella threw her arms around Pavel’s middle. ‘Thank you!’
Pavel nodded. He was pleased she was happy. That was what he wanted – to make things right and make the people he cared about happy.
‘But no.’ Bella’s face fell. ‘We really can’t afford to pay you.’
‘I don’t expect you to. It’s a gift. Strach helped and I paid him out of the money I got for working at McKenzie.’
‘Yeah, but who paid you?’
Pavel shook his head. ‘It’s fine. I don’t have expensive tastes and it was only a few weeks’ work here and there.’
‘That’s so generous.’ Bella rubbed a hand under her eye. ‘Thank you so much.’ She turned to her fiancé. ‘This is great. We can start advertising residential schools or just B & B in the spring and summer. You could do gardening courses, or we could do pony trek weekends and…’
She clapped her hands together as she and Darcy headed back over to the kitchen full of new excitement and plans.
That left Pavel and Adam alone outside the courtyard. His mate looked over at him. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘It’s not nothing.’ Adam took a deep breath in. ‘You remember you asked about me leaving?’
That felt like a lifetime ago. Pavel nodded.
‘Leaving wasn’t brave. You staying here was brave. I was terrified of living up to my dad’s legacy. Becoming the laird, all of that, but you’ve been here doing it the whole time.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Picking up where your granddad left off. Being the person Lowbridge needs. It’s a lot.’
‘I never thought about doing anything else.’ That wasn’t true any more. ‘Until…’
‘Jodie?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Wanna talk about it?’
‘No. Thank you.’
Adam nodded. ‘Want to get a beer later and not talk about it?’
‘Yeah. You can tell me how badly you need this Hogmanay thing to work out.’
Adam pulled his phone from his pocket, opened his email and handed it to Pavel. ‘The vultures are still circling.’
Pavel scanned the email on the screen.
From: John McKenzie
To: Adam Lowbridge
