‘You know her?’
‘Oh, yes, we’re neighbours—well, sort of,’ she rushed on. ‘It’s quite a distance, though, a good two miles, and in this snow and the dark—no, darling, it’s not safe; you stay there with Jemima. Perhaps you can give her a hand—she’s on her own and with the power out she’ll have to milk by hand—she could probably use your muscles to help with the other chores.’
He heard his grandfather snort in the background, and could have groaned aloud. Help her—in this? He hated the cold, and most particularly he hated cows. He looked down at his socks and trousers, covered at the ankle with a malodorous plastering of dark green, courtesy of one of the aforementioned, and sighed. He could just see the look he’d get at the dry cleaners!
‘I’m sure she can cope—’
‘Oh, Sam! She’s on her own and she’s a tiny slip of a thing. You can’t abandon her!’
He crumbled. ‘OK, Grannie,’ he surrendered. He knew when he was beaten, and if there was one thing his grandmother had always been able to do, it was to sort out his priorities. That, after all, was why he was coming to see her now.
‘Will you be all right?’ he asked belatedly.
‘Oh, yes. We’ve got a lovely warm house, and lots of wood inside the porch. We’ll be fine—after all, we’ve got no animals to worry about now apart from the dogs and cats. We’ll just wait it out. You just look after Jemima, and keep in touch. Give her our love.’
He said goodbye and cradled the phone thoughtfully. Look after Jemima, eh? From the brief glimpse he’d had of her that wouldn’t be necessary—she seemed more than capable of looking after herself, tiny though she might be. He went back into the kitchen and set the lamp down, just as she poured the tea.
‘All right?’ she asked brightly, and turned round.
The lamplight caught her eyes, golden brown and mellow with a hint of mischief, matching the smile on her chapped lips and the chaotic tumble of curls that rioted around her head. She looked young and vulnerable and incredibly lovely, and he had a sudden shaft of suspicion about his grandmother’s motives.
‘My grandparents send their love,’ he said, watching her closely. ‘Dick and Mary King.’
Her eyes widened. ‘You’re their grandson?’
‘Yes. I was on my way to stay with them, only it’s apparently too far to walk, my grandmother said. She suggested I should stay here and help you—if you really did mean it when you offered me a bed for the night?’
Jemima looked hard, but she couldn’t see a thing where his halo ought to be. It must be on Mary’s head, she thought, and stifled a smile. It was barely three hundred yards over the fields to Dick and Mary’s little farmhouse, and Mary knew it. So would Sam, when he realised where he was, and who she was.
Help her, eh?
She eyed her captive farmhand with interest. Six foot, at least, and well muscled under the sweater. He’d grown up nicely...
Yes, he’d do. A bit soft, of course, but he was proud enough to work through that. All she had to do was appeal to his ego.
Bless Mary. What a regular sweetheart!
‘Thanks—that would be great,’ she agreed, and smiled the first genuine smile since he’d arrived.
‘I’ll pay you for the accommodation, of course,’ he said quickly—doing things correctly again, of course. Her smile widened.
‘That’s OK—I’ll take payment in kind.’ She ran her eyes over his body, openly assessing him, and to her delight he coloured. He really hadn’t changed much at all. ‘You look fairly useful,’ she went on, a smile teasing round her lips. ‘Have you got stamina?’
‘I’m sure I can keep up with you,’ he said blandly, recovering his composure. His lips twitched, and her eyes were drawn to the fine sculpted lines of his mouth. Not too full, but not skimpy, either. She’d lay odds he’d learned to kiss—
‘I’d better find you something to wear—unless you’ve got anything you want to get from the car?’ she said hastily, backing off from this banter before she talked herself into more trouble than she could handle. After all, they were trapped alone together. Just because he’d been a nice boy didn’t mean he was a reliable adult He could be a serial killer, or a rapist—! ‘Perhaps some jeans?’
‘I’ve got some—thank God. I can just see me squeezed into a pair of your tiny little jeans. Yet another assault on the family jewels,’ he said drily.
She blushed, ignoring his remark, or at least the last part of it. ‘I was going to offer you something of my uncle’s, but if you’ve got things in the car we might as well get them before it gets worse.’
He looked at the snow swirling up against the window and his face was a picture. He obviously didn’t relish going out in it any more than she did, but the difference was she had to and he didn’t.
She had a sudden pang of conscience, and stifled it. He was big enough and ugly enough to look after himself, she decided, and anyway, they were his clothes. Whether he would help with the cows had yet to be seen.
‘Well?’
‘I wonder if it might make more sense to do it in the morning?’
‘You might not find the car in the morning,’ she pointed out in fairness, and then added, ‘I don’t suppose you thought to tie anything on the aerial?’
‘Like what?’ he said wryly. ‘Party balloons? Anyway, it doesn’t have an aerial.’
‘Oh.’ Funny, with those expensive-looking clothes she would have thought he could have afforded a car with a radio, but whatever. ‘We ought to mark it with something red, so a snow plough doesn’t come along and upend it into the hedge. It’s been done before.’
He went pale, poor love. ‘Oh,’ he said tightly. ‘I haven’t marked it. Do you have anything red?’
She thought, and the only thing that came to mind was a bra—a lacy confection that she didn’t wear any longer. After all the cows didn’t give a tinker’s cuss if she wore sexy undies, and frankly the plain cotton croptop style bras were more comfortable when she was working.
Still, she wasn’t sure she was ready to let him tie it to his car!
‘Maybe,’ she conceded. ‘I’ll have to look. We’ll tie it to a stick and shove it in the drift. If it’s attached to the car it might get covered.’
‘Covered?’ he exclaimed.
She shrugged. ‘Whatever, we need to get your gear out. I think there might still be a pair of boots here your sort of size—here, try these.’
She turned them upside down and banged them, and a huge spider fell out and ran across the floor.
‘What the hell was that?’ he yelled, backing up into the kitchen. The collie chased the spider and cornered it, then barked at it.
‘Just a spider—Jess, stop it! You’re daft. Here, try them on.’
He took the boots suspiciously. ‘Any cousins down there?’ he asked, peering down the tops.
‘Possibly. Tuck your trousers into your socks, just in case. Is that the best coat you’ve got?’
He pushed his feet into the wellies with a shudder and stood up. ‘Yes. Why?’
‘Because apart from the fact that it’ll get filthy, it’s not waterproof, and when the snow melts on you, you’ll get soaked and freeze. ,
‘I can hardly wait,’ he muttered.
Jemima took pity on him and banged out an old waxed jacket, checking