Page 39 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
Gemma moved away, placing her glass down next to her unfinished dessert. ‘I should go and see if Bella needs me to do anything.’
He watched her retreat. And it was a retreat, wasn’t it? She’d left like a person who’d stood too close to something dangerous, not like a dutiful employee who had places to be. Pavel took a sip of his water, and told himself he was imagining it. Like he was imagining that his arm still tingled where she’d touched him.
Across the table, Strach stood up and swayed slightly.
‘How many have you had?’ Old Man Strachan asked.
‘Three or four.’
‘Oh.’ Old Man Strachan looked from his son to his grandson and then to his own empty glass. ‘We never said who was driving home, did we? Guess it’s a long walk back for us then.’
Pavel checked his watch. He’d promised his mum he’d be down at the pub in time to help with closing, but that would be fine. He could make it back to the village before chucking-out time. ‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘I’ll drive you.’
Three tipsy Strachans was a problem he could fix.
Jodie, Bella and Adam saw the students out, all full of steak and chips and pavlovas of varying degrees of messiness. As they came back into the kitchen she retrieved her pudding from where she’d abandoned it in her haste to get away from the pure temptation of Pavel Stone’s ridiculously chiselled body. That was all it was, right? The body. This feeling was pure – and entirely understandable – lust.
Which was very Jodie and, in the olden days, would have been very likely to lead to some very unwise life choices. Fortunately, Gemma would never act on such a base instinct, especially not towards a man who was a) apparently not single, and b) not single WITH A VICAR. Which was the most morally superior form of not single a person could be.
‘Thanks for your help today.’ Bella squeezed Jodie’s shoulder as she sat down next to her. ‘You were great.’
Jodie shook her head. She was not, and never had been, great at any job. Sometimes she managed to fake it well enough to get by for a few weeks, but ultimately she always messed up. ‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘No. You took loads of pictures, and you charmed the pants off the Strachans.’
Adam looked impressed. ‘Wow. Old Man Strachan’s a tough nut to crack.’
‘He was sweet.’ In her red-wine-fuelled fug, Jodie thought all the students had been lovely. ‘And he recorded a great little interview for our socials.’ As soon as it popped into her head, Jodie pulled out her phone and started uploading. Instagram and Facebook. ‘Are we on TikTok?’
Adam shook his head. ‘Feel free to set it up though.’
‘Seriously, this is great. You are great.’ Bella beamed. ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’
Jodie swallowed an unexpected lump in her throat. ‘I’m glad to be here.’
After the afternoon in the kitchen and the hour spent after dinner cleaning up and clearing away, Jodie hoped that sleep would come easy when she returned to the Dower House. She felt tired in her bones and her eyelids were heavy long before she climbed into bed.
But Bella’s voice was stuck in her head. They were grateful to Jodie, glad she was here, and, more than that, there were pinning their hopes for the development of Lowbridge Castle on Jodie. All their grand ideas for events, and accommodation and residential cookery schools rested on Gemma’s grand plan for a Hogmanay extravaganza. Which Jodie couldn’t deliver.
She lay under the weird shiny counterpane and found she had no more ways of distracting her brain from the reality of what she was doing here. Bella and Adam and Darcy weren’t just her ticket out of a crisis any more. They were real people, real people who’d welcomed her into their business, and into their home. And asking herself what Gemma would do wasn’t going to help her out of this mess, because Gemma would never have got herself into this position to start with.
And the vultures were already swirling. She’d got through the day without anyone else asking about her NI number, but that was a temporary reprieve. Veronica wouldn’t let it go, and if she did then Jodie wouldn’t be getting paid so the whole plan of earning some money to get herself back on track would be useless anyway. She was going to get found out, and all that faith that Bella had in her was going to evaporate. She’d be just another person Jodie had let down. This was an absolutely gold-standard Jodie Simpson cock-up.
By morning she was resolved. There was no choice. She couldn’t do what they thought she’d promised them. And every time she thought about running away, she saw stupid Pavel’s stupid face in her mind making her promise to tell them before she tried to do a bunk. For the first time in her life she was down to breakfast early, pent up with nervous energy for what she knew she had to do next.
Bella appeared in the kitchen a few minutes after Jodie. ‘You’re up early. Tea?’
‘Thanks.’ What was she saying? She didn’t like tea. ‘No. Sorry. No thank you. Actually, I need to talk to you about something.’
Bella turned, frowning. ‘What’s up?’
‘Right. Well.’ She’d rehearsed a hundred forms of words for this in her head while she lay in bed staring at the ceiling through the night. None of them were good enough. ‘It’s a bit complicated, and I need to say first that I’m really, really…’
‘Babe!’ Adam’s voice cut through her build-up from the hallway.
‘In the kitchen!’ Bella shouted back.
Adam barrelled in, laptop balanced on his arm in front of him. ‘Have you seen this?’ He turned the laptop towards them. It was open on Facebook. ‘It’s shown me this about four times already this morning.’ Old Man Strachan stared out at them. Adam scrolled through the comments. ‘Basically the internet is in love with him.He’s so sweet. He must have loved his wife so much. Love seeing older people still learning…He’s a megastar.’
