* * *
That night, thanks to jet lag that not even travelling first class could magic away, I lay awake, staring at the red dot of the smoke alarm on the hotel ceiling, thinking about home. It seemed strange that I now thought of the village and the once disaster zone of a house I’d bought as home. Thanks to Jesse and the many favours he’d pulled in from people I was now lucky enough to also call friends, the place was really coming together. Having gone from hating the sight of it, I was now falling in love with it. Just as I’d fallen in love with the village, the landscape and, without doubt, Jesse Woods. Yet here I was, once again, thousands of miles away from all of them.
Neither of us had said the L word yet. Was I holding back, waiting for him to say it, just in case he didn’t feel the same and saying it first might freak him out and scare him off? Not that he was a man that scared easily. Although he’d had a pink fit when he’d come in from the garage a couple of weeks ago when I was home briefly between sojourns abroad and found me balancing on the very top of the ladder to reach the top corner of the wall I was painting.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Jesse had grabbed the ladder with one hand and me with the other and unceremoniously plonked me down on the floor.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Preventing you from breaking your neck! What the hell were you thinking?’
‘It was perfectly safe!’
‘Fliss, when a ladder is tilting at a forty-five-degree angle, it is not “safe”, perfectly or otherwise.’
‘Stop exaggerating.’
‘OK. Thirty-five. I’ve just aged ten years!’
I had shrugged. ‘You look good on it.’
‘Ha ha. I’m serious.’
‘You’re overreacting.’
‘Fliss, you were about to go crashing to the floor!’
Admittedly, it had felt a little wobbly, but ladders never felt that secure, did they?
‘I wasn’t quite tall enough.’
‘Then call me. Do not risk injury or worse by overreaching. Promise me!’ There was no humour in his eyes and his mouth was set in a line.
‘I promise. Sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out.’
‘I’m not freaked out. I’m just… OK, yes. You freaked me out. I don’t want anything to happen to you.’ His hand had cupped my face.
‘I know. I promise I’ll call you next time, or wait.’ I had placed my hand over his and turned my head, kissing his palm.
‘Thank you.’ He had wrapped his hand around my waist and looked around. ‘It’s looking good. You know you didn’t have to do all this though, right? You’ve got more than enough on your plate to then start painting the house.’
‘I know. And if I’m honest, I don’t think I’m going to have time to do the rest. But I’ve never painted my own house. I wanted to do at least one room myself.’
The room I’d chosen was the dining room, which was now a beautifully soft duck-egg blue with white trim and woodwork. I’d been itching to do it as soon as it was ready, but Jesse had explained we needed to give it a few weeks to let the plaster dry out enough. Thankfully, the good weather had helped and then, when it was ready, he’d had the decorators do a mist coat with watered-down white paint to help seal the new plaster. Now that I’d finished my second coat of blue, it looked perfect. New, efficient glazed doors in a period design opened out on the garden. I’d rediscovered some plants now that the brambles were all removed but that was as far as I’d got on that front. However, the vision board I had been pulling together for it, when the time came, was looking fantastic.
But the truth was, I was exhausted and I knew it wasn’t just down to the jet lag. My business had been steadily increasing and then, once Caro had booked me too, I was really running beyond capacity. Her projects alone were more than enough for one person. But I couldn’t say no. And it wasn’t as if I didn’t enjoy the work. I loved it and I was good at it. But the backlog of plans Caro had built up was beyond even my expectations. Jesse had told me I didn’t always have to say yes, but that was what he didn’t get. Ididalways have to say yes. Not just because I loved Caro, but because, right now, I was still too scared to say no.
What if the work just dried up for whatever reason? It could happen. I’d gone from feast to famine once before and had worked my arse off to get a seat back at the feast before chucking it all away again. Had it not been for the kindness and generosity of Jesse and the rest of the village, I could very easily have been in real trouble. So, as tired as I was, as much as I hated being away from home and the man I loved, I couldn’t turn down work. I had to keep building up that financial security so that I would never, ever be in that position again.
I watched the light on the ceiling blink on, off, on, off for another minute or two until it started irritating me. I grabbed one of the spare pillows, stuck it over my face and tried to sleep.
* * *
‘Oh, wow!’ I’d left my luggage at Jesse’s and, despite him suggesting I take a nap after my flight back from New York, I was too excited to see the rooms after he’d told me he’d arranged to have them all painted as a welcome home surprise.
‘What do you think?’
‘I love it! It looks even better than I’d imagined!’ I spun slowly, taking in the evening light as it shimmered and danced off the walls of the main bedroom now painted the colour of fresh cream. The colour gave a clean, crisp look but with a warmth that suited the period character of the original building. Ostensibly it looked the same, only much, much better, from outside, but inside the house was now far more economical to run thanks to the updated heating and a rainwater collection system buried in the ground outside.
