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The large reception room also now housed a selection of wooden tables and chairs that looked stackable for meetings or for Trudie’s am-dram productions.
‘I hope it’s okay I got started already,’ Emma smiled. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d like refreshment for your meeting, but there’s already a pot of breakfast tea brewing or, I can make coffee, if you prefer.’
‘Tea would be gorgeous. Hi, I’m Juliet,’ Juliet said, reaching over with a warm smile to shake Emma’s hand. ‘Sorry I wasn’t around to meet you when you got here. It’s my cottage you’ve moved into. Did Kate show you where everything was? How it all worked?’
Jake watched the tiniest hesitation hover behind those brunia berry eyes and then Emma was smiling warmly and gushing, ‘Everything is perfect.’
‘You’re sure?’ Juliet queried maybe seeing the merest hesitation as well. ‘Heating’s a bit temperamental and I meant to warn you about the cats.’
‘Ah. I think I met one of them this morning. I woke up with the weirdest feeling like I was being stared at. Turned over, and discovered I was.’
Juliet laughed. ‘If it was a ginger Tom it was probably Aramis getting a quick look to report back how stunning you are. If it was a Persian and staring at you like he’d never met a stupider human, then it was Catty McCatface.’
‘It was definitely the second one.’
‘Sorry about Catty. He knows we’ve moved house, but,’ Juliet sighed, ‘well he’ll do anything to maintain his ornery rep.’
‘I probably shouldn’t try to make friends, then?’
‘God no, it’ll only make him laugh at you more. The best way to win him over is to pretend he doesn’t exist.’
‘Treat him mean, keep him keen, huh?’
Jake watched Emma’s bee-stung lips form a quick smile. It occurred to him that she didn’t look like she had a mean bone in her body, but then looks could be deceiving, couldn’t they?
‘So you two have already met?’ Kate asked looking between Emma and Jake.
‘We certainly have,’ she replied, and then with a huge wink, added, ‘He thinks I’m beautiful.’
‘She prefers to call me, Sir,’ he quipped back.
‘Sir?’ Daniel asked as he walked into the room carrying one small box of lights. ‘That’s a new one. Hi, I’m Daniel,’ he said, offering his hand in introduction to Emma, ‘and I’m pretty sure this one,’ he said with a nod to Jake, ‘actually answers to Oi, You, as well, okay?’
‘Good to know,’ Emma said and looking at him added, ‘I actually tried him out on Eeyore.’
‘Eeyore?’ Daniel threw his head back and laughed. ‘Priceless.’ And then made the mistake of looking at Jake, and correctly interpreting the glint of murderous violence in his gaze, cleared his throat and said, ‘Um … that doesn’t sound like him at all.’
Emma gave Jake a look suggesting she wasn’t often wrong and it annoyed the hell out of him that he should care what she thought. ‘I’ll probably come up with a few other names for him while I’m here,’ she added.
‘Depends how long you’re here for, I suppose,’ Jake replied, and if she wanted to infer from his statement that he didn’t think she’d last five minutes, he had absolutely no problem with that.
‘Unless I decide to bar him on opening night, that is,’ she said with another grin at him.
‘What the hell could you bar me for?’ he asked with a frown.
‘Oh, I don’t know … maybe cruelty to cows?’
He opened his mouth but before he could say anything she turned and asked, ‘Daniel, what’ll you have to drink?’
‘Cappuccino please.’
‘Coming right up.’
‘And I’d like a Cortado, please,’ Jake decided, thinking he might cope better with the bar between them.
‘Sure,’ she said, walking up to the machine that had been installed behind the bar and then busied herself pressing buttons and pulling leavers, giving every impression she was the new Doctor getting the TARDIS started.
With Juliet making a call on her phone and Daniel and Kate talking about the scary non-existence of Christmas lights on the shop shelves, Jake had no choice but to stand at the bar waiting for his coffee.
‘You might want to remove some layers,’ he said, disliking that he’d noticed that the dusky pink wrap gave her skin a warm glow. ‘We have this thing called central heating now.’
‘How modern,’ she threw over her shoulder, before casually unwinding the pashmina to reveal a soft grey v-neck jumper.
She tossed the pashmina at him and he caught it automatically, his hands clenching around the soft wool. He could still feel her body heat. Any moment now he’d sniff it like a horny teenager.
Thank God she was behind the bar so that the glimpse of long legs, despite her height, encased in skinny jeans that had probably once been black but were now so faded and silvery-soft, was mostly barred from his view.
‘Oh, guys,’ Emma said, looking over at Kate and Daniel. ‘Did you get the footstall ordered?’
‘Yep,’ Kate said. ‘It’s out the back in the kitchen.’
‘Great.’ She popped back in front of him to pass him the coffee she’d made for him. ‘It’s such a chore being short,’ she confided.
Jake refused to allow his eyes to wander any lower than hers and took a careful sip from the glass of coffee she’d given him. ‘You’ve done this before,’ he murmured, taking another sip.
She leaned casually on the bar. ‘I thought everyone knew that actress is actually short for barista?’
‘Well, Hollywood, you make a pretty good short barista.’
‘Only pretty good? Hmm. Wait ’til you see my acting,’ she said with a waggle of her eyebrows.
He studied her for a few minutes, before saying quietly, ‘I thought I already was.’
Chapter 10 (#ulink_5c29cdfb-6dbb-5590-92ae-6e17d83ce29d)
Grand Designs (#ulink_5c29cdfb-6dbb-5590-92ae-6e17d83ce29d)
Jake
Jake watched wariness and hurt flood Emma’s eyes before she quickly turned and began efficiently setting out tea on a tray.
Damn.
Briefly, he wondered if there were as many words for ‘idiot’ in Eskimo as there were for ‘snow’ because even though she might be some Hollywood actress who was going to take off the minute it got cold proper, that didn’t mean he had to behave like he was counting down the minutes until she did.
He watched as with practised ease, she shoulder-pressed the heavy round tray with one hand and strode confidently over to one of the largest tables.
If he were the fanciful sort he might think she looked like some Nordic warrior, striding across the room with purpose, her pale gold hair flowing down her back.
Thank God he wasn’t.
And right there he was hit with the realisation of exactly why he’d been behaving like an arse.
Being called Eeyore aside, it was actually because she’d accused him of not having a romantic bone in his body.
Why the hell he should care if she was right, he didn’t know.
Life was altogether a lot more bearable if he didn’t go around acting and feeling like some bloody poet in love.
Been there. Done that. Not to mention been given the billowy shirt by his comedian brothers as a joke.
In his family, when they’d all been vying for roles growing-up, the minute he’d expressed more than a passing interest in the gardens on the estate he’d been labelled ‘The Romantic’ of the family. Ironic, really, considering he’d been the only Knightley not to labour under the idyll that the family money would never run out.
As soon as he’d started adding girls into the mix, his brothers and sisters had absolutely no problem referring to him as the Heathcliff-bloody-Rochester of the Knightley clan.
Actually, that wasn’t technically true. Lately he’d been known as the Uhtred of Bebbanburg-Knightleys’, but that was completely his own fault for not getting his hair cut.
Which reminded him…
‘Hey, Juliet,’ he walked over to the table they were obviously going to hold their meeting at, put down everything he’d brought to pitch his design, and shrugged out of his jacket. ‘I don’t suppose you could cut my hair before you open the salon to the rest of the hordes, could you?’
‘Are you sure?’ Juliet tipped her head to the side as she regarded his ‘do’. ‘The man-bun is definitely working for you. If you’re desperate I could see if Mum’s available?’
Aware that Emma was listening as she fussed a cloth over the pristine bar, he said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll figure something out.’ Juliet’s mother, Cheryl Brown, grew exceptional dahlias and roses and she’d been a hairdresser for as long as Jake had known her. And it was precisely for that reason that he thought he had it in him to wait until Juliet was ready.
‘Right then,’ Daniel said, pulling out a chair at the table, sitting down and reaching for his coffee. ‘Jake, are you all set to pitch to us?’
‘What? Oh, yep. Born ready,’ Jake replied, efficiently setting his laptop up, so they could all see what he was going to be describing.
‘Emma,’ Kate called over to the bar, ‘come and grab a seat and a cuppa, you should be in on this meeting too.’
She should?
Jake busied himself opening his notebook to stare at the loose pitch he’d prepared while she settled herself at the table and poured herself a cup of tea. It was weird, he thought. He wasn’t usually nervous before presenting a new garden design, but what with Hollywood watching…
‘So,’ he began, with a subtle clearing of his throat. ‘There are a couple of options for revamping the courtyard, but I want to start with what I feel follows the brief you provided and then pushes the boundaries a little.’ Jake indicated his laptop screen. ‘If you like what I’ve come up with, I have a quote already drawn up. But this should be a collaborative process, so if we need to adjust for budget, or if there’s something we need to add, we can do that as well.
‘Kate, you mentioned wanting to match what you’ve done inside, but I’ve actually taken inspiration from outside. At the moment when you look out of any window onto the courtyard all you see is patio before your gaze is drawn straight to the moon-gate in the far wall.’
The moon-gate had actually been his starting point, because even though he loved that your eye was drawn straight to it and the romance of it had you wanting to know what was on the other side, with The Clock House opening up as a business, he didn’t think Kate would want people from outside the village, who didn’t know the history to what was on the other side of the moon-gate, to go get curious and start disturbing the beehives that were kept in the wild meadow beyond.
‘I’ve zoned the courtyard to provide each window with a unique vista, creating mini gardens to reflect what you do here. Providing relaxing and enchanting views will add to customer experience. It’ll mean building walls to divide the space but we can match the original brickwork. In each wall I’ve created a round aperture to mimic the moon-gate. It would work really well if we could use the same wrought-iron design work. The round gates also subtly mimic the face of a clock. Planting will be soft to counter the architecture but won’t require a lot of maintenance. I know you’ll be using honey in a lot of your treatments and that got me thinking about planting herbs for you to use in the tearoom and bar as well. I can go into specific planting detail once the design is approved, but take a look at the preliminary sketches,’ he said, moving the laptop to rollout some sketches he’d drawn of the courtyard from different angles. ‘And tell me what you all think?’
Kate, Daniel and Juliet all started talking at once and Jake breathed a quiet sigh of relief at the excited tones of their voices. Right up until he noticed Hollywood frowning down into her mug.
What the hell?
He’d honestly only ever had positive reactions to his designs before.
Probably because he spent time getting inside a client’s head so he could produce something he knew they’d like.
‘Is there a problem, Hollywood?’ he asked.
She looked up. ‘Oh, it’s really not my place,’ she said, bringing her cup of tea to her mouth as if it would help stop her from voicing her opinion.
‘You were invited to sit at the table and participate,’ he said tearing his gaze from hers to stare down at his sketches. He couldn’t see anything wrong with them. He’d created gardens within a garden and different views according to where you were inside The Clock House, each taking into account where the sun rose and fell. He’d designed access paths, chosen an easy-to-maintain planting scheme, and most importantly, the three people he’d come to present to didn’t appear dissatisfied.
In. Any. Way.
Obviously picking up on the growing tension, Kate carefully placed her teacup back in her saucer and said calmly, ‘What did you want to say, Emma?’
‘Well, if you’re sure you’d like the feedback?’ she asked, only she wasn’t looking at Kate, she was staring up at Jake with challenge set on her face.
‘Yes, of course. I’d welcome it,’ he answered uber-politely.
‘You’re sure?’
Impatience sparked. ‘I just said so, didn’t I?’
‘All right, then.’ Her gaze fell on his design as if she was gathering herself and then her gaze bounced back up to his. ‘So what you’ve designed is stunning.’
It was so completely unexpected that Jake felt his chest puff out with pride.
‘It’s sophisticated,’ Emma continued, ‘It’s contemporary…’
When she paused, a pulse ticked in his jaw. ‘And yet?’
‘And yet, well, it’s not very practical, is it?’
‘Practical?’
‘Yes. I know that word is probably a designer’s bugbear. You’ve created a space everyone inside can enjoy, but I imagine, during the spring, summer and autumn months the courtyard will get more footfall. I also imagine that if the tearoom and bar is successful,’ she quickly glanced at Kate in askance, ‘you might want to give customers the option of eating and drinking out there?’
She was right, Jake realised.
Why hadn’t he thought of that?
Why hadn’t they?
Or had they? In a mild panic he started going through the original notes he’d made. He knew he’d been spinning a few too many plates over the last year.
Ever since…
He breathed in sharp.
Had he totally dropped the ball on this one?
‘Jake, I must apologise,’ Kate said, interrupting his search through his notes. ‘I completely missed telling you about this. I’m so sorry. I’ve had so much on.’
