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And so much for him not being able to afford a car with a radio, she thought, eyeing the BMW logo on the boot lid with jaundice. It probably had a gadget to pick up radio waves by telepathy!
‘I’d better lock it,’ he muttered, pointing the remote control at the car, and Jemima stifled a laugh. City types, she thought, and tried to forget that until just under a year ago she’d been one too.
‘I’ll put these sticks up,’ she told him, and, rummaging in her pocket, she pulled out the underwear, tied it to the sticks and then took one to the front, ramming it in by the side of the bumper where it would stay up and show.
She struggled back past the car, grabbed the other stick and was pushing it into place when Sam took the torch from her hand and pointed it at her ‘flags’.
‘What the—?’
‘Don’t you dare laugh,’ she warned him, but it was too much.
A chuckle rose in his throat, and without thinking she scooped up a handful of snow and shoved it down his miserable neck.
He let out a yell that would have woken the dead and returned the favour, and a huge glob of snow slid down her front and lodged in her bra.
‘Touché!’ she said with a laugh, and backed off, pulling her clothes away from her chest and shaking the snow out.
‘Pax?’ he asked warily, hefting a fresh snowball just in case.
She considered revenge, and then decided she’d get her own back on him in the next few hours anyway—in spades!
‘Absolutely,’ she agreed. ‘I’m cold enough without snow in my underwear. You can drop that.’
‘Not yet—just look on it as insurance,’ he told her, and she flashed the torch at him and caught a lingering smile that transformed his face and did odd things to her insides.
They headed back down the lane, bent over to shelter from the driving blizzard, and made it back to the cottage without incident.
‘I should change into jeans,’ she advised as they shed their outer gear and went back into the lamp-lit kitchen. ‘It can get mucky in the barn.’
‘Mucky?’ he said with suspicion, and she smiled.
‘That’s the one,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I should change in here—I’ll go and dig out some sheets and make up your bed while you do that.’
She pulled off her hat, shook the snow off her hair and ran upstairs with the torch, her socks soundless on the threadbare carpet. She decided to put him in the room over the parlour. After hers, which was over the kitchen, it was the warmest.
It was also right beside hers, which might not be such a good move. She eyed the doors of the other rooms, but they were small, cold and full of boxes that she still had to sort out.
She’d have to put up with his proximity, and not get into any more playful snowball fights with him that might lead on to other things. She was finished with all of that. She didn’t need it—or rangy, sexy men with wicked smiles and attitude. She made the bed up and tried not to think about what he was doing downstairs with those incredible long legs of his.
She tugged the quilt straight, patted the pillows and went back down, taking the torch with her. Again, her socks made no sound, and she arrived in the kitchen to find him crouched down in his designer jeans, scratching the dogs behind their ears.
Amazing.
‘I should watch Jess, she doesn’t like men much,’ she warned.
‘Jess?’
The collie pricked her ears and looked longingly at him.
‘Short for Jezebel,’ she muttered. Faithless mutt. Apart from Sam’s grandfather she’d bitten every other man who’d crossed the threshold since Uncle Tom had died!
‘Come on, let’s go and get this milking started. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll finish. Ever milked a cow before?’
He shuddered. Not a good sign. ‘No, thank God.’ ‘Oh. Oh, well, you’ll learn, I suppose. I wonder how long this power cut will last?’
‘Phone the electricity board. They usually have an idea.’
Stupid. She should have thought of that. If she hadn’t been so distracted by him, she probably would have done it ages ago. She took the torch into the parlour and rang up. It did nothing for her mood.
‘Unknown fault,’ she told him disgustedly. ‘Could be hours—it sounds like a huge area’s out. I thought it was my tree.’
‘Shorting out the whole of Dorset? It must be a hell of a tree.’
She laughed. ‘In its day, maybe. Now it’s just a pain. Come on, let’s turn you into a country boy. Ever seen the film City Slickers?’
He gave her a dirty look. She deserved it. It was a cheap shot.
‘Come on, townie,’ she said more kindly. ‘Let’s see what you’re made of. I’m sure I can find you something safe to do.’
She grabbed her coat, shoved her feet into her boots and picked up the lantern. ‘OK, cowpoke. Let’s be having you.’
He met her eyes without a word, and she saw him pick up her challenge like a gauntlet. Oh, lawks. She was in way over her head.
She tugged her hat down hard and went out into the blizzard...
CHAPTER TWO
HER revenge for the snowball came sooner than she expected. It took Daisy ten seconds to check Sam out and decide he needed butting in the ribs, and he leapt backwards with a grunt and smacked into the wall.
‘Daisy, that’s not nice,’ Jemima chided, and turned her attention to her crippled farmhand. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked, eyeing his pinched mouth and closed eyes with concern. After all, it would be such a waste of all that God-sent muscle if he was really injured—
‘Oh, I’m fine, just peachy,’ he wheezed, and his eyes flickered open and speared her. ‘Can’t you—tie her up, or something? In fact, can’t you tie them all up?’
‘I don’t need to. It’s milking time. If I feed them they’ll go and stand in their stalls ready.’
‘Well, feed them then, for heaven’s sake!’ he pleaded, and levered himself off the wall, feeling his ribs cautiously.
Jemima gave a little shrug and grabbed a pitchfork, then started forking silage into the trough in front of each cow. They knew the routine, and lined up patiently waiting as she worked her way down each side of the barn.
‘Can I do that for you?’ he offered, eyeing her safe position on the other side of the barrier.
He certainly could. She handed him the fork, took another one and cleared away the straw under each animal’s udder, ready for milking. Now all she needed was the hot water. She handed Sam a bucket.
‘Could you go into the house and bring some hot water, please? Not too hot—it’s to wash their udders.’
His eyes widened, but he took the bucket and the torch and headed for the door. ‘I am going out—I may be some time,’ he murmured theatrically, and then the door opened and the Arctic screamed in on a frigid blast. He ducked his head, shot out and slid the door back into place, shutting out the blizzard.
Jemima grinned and set up the milking stool and bucket, then looked round the barn and lost her smile. She’d have to muck out in the morning, so she hoped the power would be back on because milking by hand took so long she’d be hardly finished before she had to start again, and she didn’t think for a moment that her intrepid explorer was going to make much of a milkman.
He reappeared, hair on end again, a steaming bucket in his hand and Jess by his side. ‘She was desperate to come—is that all right?’
‘Sure.’ She smiled and held out her hand, and Jess came running up for a quick pat before finding a cosy corner and flopping down, one watchful eye open. Jemima took the bucket and the old flannel she used to wash them, and started on the first udder.
Normally she’d connect them up to the old Fulwood milking plant Uncle Tom had bought in 1949 and never got round to changing, but without power she had no option but to crouch on the little stool by each cow in turn, and strip the milk out of all four quarters by hand. It was a slow process, and she could see Sam was bored, so she cocked her head round towards him and grinned.
‘So, what do you usually do for entertainment on a Friday night?’ .
.He laughed and hunkered down beside her, watching. ‘Oh, this and that. Murder a few grannies, rob the odd bank—nothing special.’
‘There’s a picture of you in the police station—or was that Buffalo Bill?’
‘Probably—we’re very alike,’ he said, absolutely deadpan.
‘Mmm—except he can milk cows, of course.’
A brow arched—just ever so slightly—and she wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been taking such a close interest in his features. However, she had noticed. Was it a challenge? She wasn’t sure, but she stood up anyway and gave him the stool.
‘Come on, Buffalo Bill, your turn.’
He folded himself up onto the stool and gave her a steady look that spoke volumes. Her estimation of him went up a notch, and she folded her arms and propped herself on Bluebell’s nicely rounded rump.
He reached for the udder tentatively, and Bluebell turned her large, gentle head and eyed him in surprise. It was odd enough being milked by hand, something that happened very rarely, but this stiff, taut man—well!
‘Rest your head on her flank,’ Jemima instructed, and he gave her an old-fashioned look.
‘Rest my head?’ he said, as if she’d suggested he should put it in a lion’s mouth. She stifled a laugh.
‘Yes—you know, lean on her.’
He arched an eyebrow disbelievingly, and allowed his head to touch her side. ‘Now what?’
‘Pull the teat down, and then close your fingers from the top down to the bottom, as if you’re squeezing the milk out like toothpaste—that’s it!’
A little squirt of milk shot out of the teat and splashed on his jeans.
‘Now try and get it in the bucket.’
He gave her a dirty look, shook his head despairingly and carried on. He was doing really quite well until Bluebell moved and knocked the bucket over.
‘Hell!’
He leapt to his feet, ducking out of the way of the flying milk and startling Bluebell, who shot across the barn towards Jemima, rolling her eyes and snorting softly.
‘It’s all right, sweetheart, he’s just a city boy,’ she crooned comfortingly, squashing her laughter. ‘Come on, my love.’
‘Come on my love, nothing,’ he muttered, watching her balefully as she led the anxious cow back across the barn to her stall and gave her more silage. ‘Why did she do that?’
‘I expect you tickled her—they’re very sensitive.’
‘Sensitive!’ he exclaimed. ‘They’re a bunch of loonies!’
‘Just ignore him, darlings,’ she told the cows. ‘He’s only a man; he can’t be expected to understand.’
One of them lowed at her, a warm, soft sound of agreement, and Sam snorted in disgust. Smiling, Jemima went back to her place beside Bluebell, quickly finished off and moved on to the next cow.
‘Why do you wash the udders?’ he asked, following her but standing safely out of range. ‘They don’t look dirty.’
To clean them, of course, just in case, but also because it helps the let-down.’
‘Let-down?’
She smiled into Ruby’s side. ‘They have to give you the milk. If it was just a tank it would run out. You have to persuade the udder to relax—’
‘Right.’
He didn’t sound convinced. Ruby understood the system, though, and was easy to milk, but then she’d had mastitis quite recently and had had to be hand-milked for some time. There were others who were much harder to do.
‘What happens to the milk once you collect it?’
‘It gets filtered and poured into the cooling tank—oh, no!’
‘What?’
‘No power! The cooler won’t be working, and the paddles won’t be stirring, so the milk will separate and go off—not that they’ll be able to collect it anyway...’
‘And?’
‘And so I won’t get paid for it, and I’ll lose money.’
‘Much?’
She thought of the useless tractor, the state of her car and the even more precarious state of her bank balance.
‘More than enough,’ she said grimly.
‘Is there anything you can do about that?’
She straightened up, looking at the placid cows waiting patiently for her attention. It would take for ever to milk them all, and it would all have to go down the drain—
‘I need to put the fresh calvers back with their calves. That will feed the calves, stop me having to milk their mums until the power’s back on and save the wasted milk until the tanker can get through again.’
‘How many are fresh calvers?’
She sighed. ‘Only ten.’
‘So you’ve got—what, twenty more?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Twenty-one, in fact. We ought to sort them out now; they’re getting uncomfortable because I’m late.’
