Page 19 of All We Want for Christmas
‘Think I’ll have a mocha, please. Best of both worlds: chocolate and caffeine.’
Flynn caught Molly’s attention and she took their order but didn’t linger this time, with her boss looking over her shoulder.
‘Shopping go well?’ he asked, still tongue-tied at having Lara sitting opposite him, not for any work-relatedreason but purely because she, presumably, wanted to be with him.
‘As well as shopping can. I picked up some supplies from the farm shop.’
‘I didn’t know there was one nearby. I thought I’d have to go miles for my groceries. Sounds like I need to pick your brains about the local area.’ He had a sense of being outside himself: going through the motions of polite chit-chat while fighting a powerful urge to take her in his arms and kiss her in front of everyone in the tea shop.
‘If I’d known you were taking the job, I could have sent you a welcome info pack,’ Lara said with a wry smile.
‘Yeah …’ he said, returning her smile with his own sheepish grimace. ‘I definitely haven’t had much chance to explore yet, and I’ll need to visit the bank and dentist. And I don’t want to live on take-outs from the Castle Café, no matter how good the food is. Talking of which, shall we grab some lunch while we have the chance?’
‘Good idea.’ Lara picked up a menu. ‘I hear their avo and poached egg on sourdough is good.’
‘I might take the hint. My diet consists of Cumberland sausage and bacon at the moment.’
Away from the pressures of work, she was definitely more relaxed. Flynn certainly wasn’t going to sour the moment by mentioning any recent unfortunate incidents or waste their time talking about work.
Over lunch, they chatted about the area, with Lara reeling off a list of places he could get stuff, from bike parts to a haircut.
‘Not that you need a haircut,’ she added hastily.
‘Oh, I do. I don’t want to end up with a man bun.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Yeah, not sure I want to see that.’ She seemed to regret such a personal remark and changed the subject. ‘Anything else you want to know about the area? Best walks? Good pubs?’
‘Both of those. You obviously know the place inside out. How long have you been working here?’
‘Not that long, really. Not compared to some of the staff. I joined last autumn.’
‘Wow. I thought you’d been here a few years at least.’
‘It’s a small community so there aren’t many places to get to know – not in terms of shops and pubs. The fells are vast, of course. You could live here all your life and never try all the walks and hills.’
He smiled. ‘I’d like to explore. It’s very beautiful. Did you once tell me you used to work at a house in Warwickshire? Was it National Trust or private?’
‘Private. Same as Ravendale but I worked for the Trust when I was younger.’ Staring intently into her coffee, she said, ‘The time was right for a change. I don’t think it’s good to stay in one place too long.’
‘Maybe … but you seem very happy at Ravendale.’
‘I was. I am. It’s a dream place to work.’ She looked at him very directly. ‘How about you? Do you miss Cornwall? Have you left family behind?’
‘I haven’t had time to miss Cornwall yet and I do have some family there. My parents live in Falmouth and I have a brother who’s a plumber – he moved to Walthamstow. Ihave mates back there too, but they understand that I need to travel for work. Two of them worked with me at Kernow Park, but in our line of work you get used to moving around and settling in different communities. As you know, I was going travelling solo anyway.’
‘You do a lot of things solo?’ she asked, resting her chin on her hand.
Such directness.
‘If you mean do I like being independent, I guess so. Like I said, it goes with the territory.’
‘Never been tempted to put down roots?’
He smiled. ‘Tempted, yes. A couple of times. But it didn’t work out.’
‘But you wanted it to?’ Lara asked.
‘Yeah. I wanted it to. Once, I wanted it very badly.’
