Page 52 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
‘I promise not to turn any lights on.’
She was right in front of him now. He was physically blocking her path. If she took another step forward they’d be touching. That thought sat in his head for a moment. Pavel stood aside, and let her squeeze past.
She made her way straight through the first door on the ground floor, and into a half-painted bathroom. She stopped. ‘I didn’t think they were doing any work out here.’
Pavel ran through his options. He could lie, pretend that there was some sort of stealth decorator working on the coach house that none of them knew anything about. That sounded ridiculous, and also, he realised, wasn’t even a lie. Honesty then. ‘They don’t know I am.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Adam and Bel can’t afford the work, so I’m doing what I can myself. As a surprise for them.’
Jodie didn’t know how to respond. ‘That’s… that’s so kind.’
‘It’s fine. I like being useful.’
‘That must be a good feeling.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I just tend to cause problems.’
Pavel looked at her for a moment, long enough that she had to pull her gaze away. ‘I don’t think that’s true.’
‘I…’ What was she thinking? She wasn’t. That was the problem. She wasn’t thinking like Gemma. She needed to keep her guard up, especially, it seemed, around Pavel Stone. ‘I just meant you’re useful with practical stuff, aren’t you? What I do’s more…’ What was the word? Probably if she had a clearer idea of what it was Gemma supposedly did, she’d be able to describe it more clearly. ‘Anyway. I should get back.’
‘Don’t tell them, will you?’ Pavel asked. ‘About the work. I don’t want a big fuss, especially now they’ve got a baby to think about as well.’
‘Won’t they notice your van’s still here at some point?’
Pavel nodded in acknowledgement. ‘Yeah. I guess I’ll get what I need out, drive it home and walk back over. I hadn’t thought of that.’
She grinned. ‘Clearly subterfuge is not in your blood.’
‘But it is in yours?’
‘What? No. I’m not… I didn’t… Straight as a die, me. Is that the phrase?’ It didn’t sound right. A die was cubed, not a straight line. ‘Dead honest and everything.’ Finally she caught his expression, the little half-smile that pulled at his lips and broke the tough-guy exterior. ‘Fine,’ she muttered. ‘I won’t say anything. If there’s anything I can do to help though?’
‘If I need any more advice on the cloak-and-dagger stuff you’re the first person I’ll call.’
She headed out of the coach house and back to the castle. She definitely had an ongoing urge to lick one of his forearms, but it was getting harder to pretend that was all it was. The beautiful beefcake had the audacity to be amazingly kind as well.
But he was dating the friendly vicar, and Jodie couldn’t tangle the web she was weaving any further than she already had. The only approach to Pavel Stone was to keep a distance. And the best way to do that was to fill her racing brain with something else. Instead of heading back to the yellow room, or into the kitchen – where she guessed everyone would be gathered – she made her way down the side corridor and towards the door to the ballroom.
This was the job she’d been putting off. This was her white whale. This was the broken shower curtain in her flat in Reading that she’d ignored for a year but on a grand, grand scale. The mistake she was making was to think about sorting out the ballroom like a Jodie rather than like a Gemma. Gemma would not be freaked out by the scale of the task. Gemma would power in there, get everyone on side and have the place shipshape in no time. She’d probably even sing a cheerful song while she was doing it. Jodie’s imaginary Gemma was morphing day by day into a Julie Andrews character. Maybe she could skip the cheerful song.
Jodie pushed open the door. The key, her mother used to say, was to break things down into little jobs. Rather than try to eat the whole elephant you focused on just the trunk. Like with a roast dinner – carrots first, then half a Yorkshire pudding, then peas, then meat and stuffing, and then the rest of the Yorkshire pudding. One thing at a time so you knew where you were.
She looked around the ballroom. She could picture what it could be. You’d put the band at the end nearest where she was standing, and open up the double doors at the other end that led to where exactly? Although she understood the basic shape of the courtyard and the outbuildings, the precise geography of the interior of the castle still eluded Jodie.
She collected her notebook from the kitchen and drew a square to represent the basic layout of the main building around the courtyard, and marked the kitchen where she was standing, and the hallway that led to the small dining room, the main stairwell and then on towards the yellow and blue rooms and the estate office. By that point she could already see the problem. There was no way on earth her plan was going to be big enough.
That was OK. She knew exactly where to look for a suitably massive piece of paper. There was decorating stuff in the small hall. Now where on earth was the small hall? Flinty bustled into the kitchen at the right moment. ‘Cup of tea, love?’
‘No thank you. Erm, do you know where the small hall is?’
‘Past the ballroom, same side of the corridor.’
The room, which judging from the stack of paint cans and folded ladder in the corner was the small hall, would have challenged anybody’s understanding of the word small. It was smaller than the ballroom, but it was like describing the Earth as ‘just a small planet’. Possibly true by comparison with the rest of the universe, but only really a useful description for people who’d grown up on Jupiter.
