Page 9 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
Pavel tapped the door as he entered. ‘Darcy?’
‘Pavel! Sweetheart, what can I do for you?’ The voice that responded was female, enthusiastic and, slightly surprisingly, American.
‘Hi. This is Gemma.’
Gemma. Yep. That was her. Jodie squeezed past Pavel’s sizeable frame. The woman sat at the desk was tall, slim, and had a face that would have given Audrey Hepburn inBreakfast at Tiffany’sa run for her money. She jumped up from behind the desk and enveloped Gemma in a heavily perfumed hug. ‘Welcome to Lowbridge. I have strict instructions not to put you to work yet. Today is for settling in and finding your way around. All of this,’ she waved a vague hand towards the desk and the office as a whole, ‘can wait until tomorrow.’
‘You OK now then?’ Pavel was looking at her sympathetically.
He was pitying her. While Jodie had been fantasising about him kissing her, he’d been assessing her as weak, overemotional and deserving of pity. And he’d been right. Jodie forced down a rising wave of panic. She was not going to lose it again. That was Jodie. This was Gemma. Gemma was strong and calm. ‘I’m fine,’ she insisted.
‘OK. Well, hope you settle in well. See you soon.’
Jodie watched him leave. She’d slipped up already and showed all her Jodie mess on the very first day. She needed to be much more careful from now on.
Chapter Three
Pavel pulled the van onto the gravel outside the house he’d lived in his whole life. Technically he didn’t live in the same house now. His flat over the garage had a separate entrance and was officially number 12A on the street, but the place had been his granddad’s house, and then his mother’s, and it was the only place Pavel had ever called home.
Jill’s car was already on the driveway and she was sitting on the bench that overlooked his mother’s front garden. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Sorry.’ He’d all but forgotten he was supposed to meet Jill. ‘I was picking the new girl at the castle up, and then…’ He shook his head. There was something private about seeing someone lose their grip on themselves. ‘Got caught up talking to Darcy.’
Jill laughed, shaking her mass of curls. ‘And I’m stuck here waiting on the driveway.’
‘You could have gone in,’ he pointed out as they fell into step together.
‘You promised me lunch at the pub. All I’d find in your place would be protein powder and those horrid nut bar things that don’t count as sweets.’
‘I have other food.’ Pavel was still protesting as they reached the pub at the end of the village.
‘No. You don’t, which is why you are going to Bel’s new course next week.’
Pavel pulled a face. ‘Last time I did a cookery school day it didn’t go so well.’
Jill laughed. ‘You were fine. I was the one that ended up in A & E.’
Pavel and Jill had both attended the very first session at Bella’s Highland Cookery School. Jill’s knife skills had proven problematic when she sliced into her finger, and Pavel’s constitution had proven even more difficult when he’d promptly keeled over in a faint at the sight of blood gushing from his friend’s hand.
‘Don’t pretend you couldn’t do with improving your cooking skills.’
He did, when his mum wasn’t around, tend to live on protein shakes and ready meals. It would be good to be able to do better.
‘And then you can cook me dinner rather than have to come to the pub all the time?’ Jill slid her arm through his as they walked towards the door to the pub.
‘But the pub has the best food for a post-sermon come-down.’
Jill laughed. This was their tradition. On Sunday mornings Jill – the Reverend Jill Douglas, to give her her proper Sunday name – preached at least two sermons, sometimes an hour or more’s drive apart across her sprawling rural parish, and then she landed at Pavel’s for a late lazy lunch and debrief and a chance to vent, a little bit, not so much that it would upset any angels, about some of her less easy-going parishioners. ‘Only cos your mum cooks it,’ Jill pointed out. ‘Imagine if you could do that yourself.’
As was usual for a Sunday lunchtime, Pavel’s mum, Nina, was behind the bar. Officially Mrs Taggart owned and ran the pub, but it was increasingly a community endeavour. Nina pointed them to a table in the back corner of the pub. ‘We’ve got beef and chicken left but I think we’re out of pork. The pie’s good though. Game pie. Not mine. Bella’s, but that girl knows her away around a casserole dish.’
They ordered one chicken – Pavel would never turn down his mum’s roast chicken – and one pie and settled back with their drinks to put the world to rights. Pavel enjoyed these Sunday afternoons. He was needed, as a listening ear and a friend. It felt good to be needed.
‘Look,’ Jill took a deep breath, ‘I don’t want to make things awkward but there was something I wanted to ask you.’
Pavel put his glass down and gave Jill his full attention.
‘Do you want to go out with me?’
