Jack frowned, and she tapped the newspaper in front of him. Lost in his thoughts over work, he’d been staring unseeing at a breathless article about the Lavender Bay bowls team’s nail-biting victory over their fiercest rivals from the next town over. His eyes lifted back up to find Eliza still leaning over the bar.
This close, her freckles stood out clearly against her milk-pale skin. The pretty mint-green dress she wore drew attention to the deeper green of her eyes. He tried not to think about touching the pad of his thumb to the dimple next to her rose-red lips. Rose-red lips? He’d clearly spent too long in the sun earlier and it’d cooked his brain. Shoving away the fanciful notions of her beauty, he cleared his throat. ‘Bowls isn’t really my thing. I was miles away.’
Eliza tilted her head, causing the wild curls of her hair to tumble over one shoulder, leaving the other one bare. Her motion drew his eyes lower to a scatter of darker freckles just below her collarbone. Their arrangement held him captive, reminding him of a constellation. He couldn’t tear his eyes away, as though if he stared long enough the pattern would reveal a secret about his future the way the stars spoke to astrologers. Bloody hell, the sun hadn’t just cooked his brain, it’d melted it into mush.
Knowing it had been too long since he’d spoken, Jack wet his lips. ‘I…I was thinking about my tractor.’ Smooth, mate.
She quirked an eyebrow at him, those pretty red lips pursing in amusement.
‘It broke down earlier, after we…ah, met.’ He scrubbed at the stubble on his chin wondering what the hell was wrong with him. He’d never been so tongue-tied in his life. ‘I decided it was probably karma catching up with me.’
Her laugh rippled through him like an electric current. Jack grabbed for his pint and drained most of what remained in the glass. Perhaps he should’ve just upended it over his head because he was acting like some stupid boy with a crush. Yes, he’d come to the pub with half a mind to meet a willing woman for a little fun, but Sam’s sister didn’t strike him as the kind of girl you fooled around with.
No time. No room for this, think about Noah. The reminder doused the embers of attraction before they had chance to do much more than smoulder. The poor kid didn’t know if he was coming or going as it was and needed all the stability Jack and his mum could give him. Introducing a woman into the mix would only cause further confusion to the already vulnerable boy—especially considering the way Noah’s own mother had behaved towards him. Apart from cards at Christmas and his birthday and the odd guilty present in the post, Lydia had remained resolutely absent from Noah’s life since he’d been a baby. Jack would cut his own arm off before he’d bring another woman into his life only to have her walk away when things didn’t work out.
Needing to draw a physical as well as mental line, Jack took a step backwards, disturbing Bastian in the process. The Labrador rose to his feet with a grumbling whine, but soon perked up when he noticed his new favourite person. Installing himself behind the bar, the dog nudged at Eliza’s hand until she began to stroke his ears. ‘Sebastian!’ Jack might as well be talking to himself for all the notice the bloody mutt took of him.
‘He’s all right,’ Eliza crooned. ‘Aren’t you, gorgeous?’
Feeling like whining himself, Jack drained the rest of his beer. ‘Well, I suppose we should be heading back.’
She glanced up at him, then over her shoulder at the clock on the wall. ‘It’s only just after eight, are you sure you don’t want another drink?’ Was she keen to get him to stay, or merely being a practical landlady with one eye on her profits? Either way, it was enough to make him hesitate. ‘Unless you need to go? I suppose you farmers have an early start.’
It would take him quarter of an hour to walk home—less if he was brisk. Even if he stayed for another drink he could still be back by nine. He was doing the school run tomorrow because his mum was heading into Truro to meet an old friend for coffee, so he’d planned to stay close to home doing chores—and trying to sort out the tractor now, of course. There would be hours for any alcohol to clear his system, but after Jason’s accident, Jack was paranoid about anything to do with driving. ‘I don’t have to rush off, but I’ll have a soft drink this time, please.’
‘Coke? Lemonade?’
Craning his neck to study the contents of the low fridge behind her, Jack shook his head. ‘Nothing too sweet…’
Eliza nudged a panting Bastian back to the public side of the bar with her knee, then washed her hands at the sink below the bar. ‘Hmm…we’ve got a nice tonic water with a hint of lime. It’s lovely and refreshing.’
‘Sounds great, thank you.’ Jack tried, and failed, not to notice the way the short skirt of her dress pulled tight around her curvy rear as Eliza bent to retrieve a glass bottle from the fridge. She added ice to a tall, slender glass, poured over half the water and placed it and the bottle on the mat in front of him. He fished a note out of his wallet and accepted the change with a smile. ‘Cheers.’ He took a mouthful and closed his eyes in appreciation at the bitter, fruity tang of his drink.
When he opened them, she was grinning at him. ‘Good, huh?’ She pointed to a cluster of men sitting at a table in the corner. ‘My dad’s a whizz when it comes to anything mechanical. I’m sure he’d be happy to take a look at your tractor if you want a second opinion.’
Caught off guard by the comment, Jack’s immediate reaction was to refuse. As though sensing it, Eliza hurried on quickly. ‘He’s not been well lately, if it wouldn’t be too much inconvenience to you I think it would do him a power of good to feel useful again.’ A hint of worry clouded her pretty eyes.
He still owed her for his earlier rudeness, and to be honest it would be good to get another opinion. He and Jason had always bounced things off each other, and although his mum knew everything when it came to cultivating their crop, she’d always left the machinery maintenance to her husband and then her sons. He knew Paul Barnes well enough to say hello to, having been served plenty of times by him over the years, and he’d always seemed a decent enough guy. What harm could it do? ‘Sure,’ he found himself saying. ‘Why not?’
Eliza wasn’t sure why she’d offered up her dad to try and help Jack out. When she’d left the farm that morning, embarrassed and more than a little upset by his rudeness, she would’ve been happy never to set eyes on him again. He was lucky he had such a gorgeous dog otherwise she wouldn’t have given him the time of day. There was something about him that spoke to her—a hint of vulnerability lurking behind the sharp words. She didn’t remember much about him from the past. He and his brother hadn’t gone to the local school for some reason she couldn’t quite recall. They’d come around the pub once they were old enough, but they’d not mixed much that she remembered, and she’d not had eyes for anyone other than Martin. Trying to recall them now, it was Jason she had the most distinct memory of, with his big booming laugh and ready smile. Jack had been his shadow.
Once they’d started chatting this evening, he’d opened up a little bit. And when he’d gifted her with a sunny smile which lifted the shadows around his eyes, she’d found there was a very different person lurking behind those walls of arrogance. Teasing him had come as easily to her as breathing, and who would’ve thought it would be so easy to make a burly farmer blush? Add in the terrible accident in which he’d lost his brother and she had no chance. Always a sucker for a lost cause, Eliza found herself wanting to reach out and help him.
Wondering if she was setting herself up for another fall, especially given his ability to blow hot and cold, trepidation set in as she wound her way through the scattered tables towards where her dad sat with Pops and a few of his