‘Not the way I’d put it, but I suppose you’re right. Thanks to you and Daniel, and I suppose Etna, manual labour is keeping me busy – and this, well, it’s good to be out and about with people my own age. I’m feeling better than I have in a long while.’ His emotions had taken a battering over the years and he’d always found it hard to take time to focus on that side of things. Strength had only ever made sense to him in a physical realm, not any other.
‘And thanks to you,’ said Harvey, ‘the bakery is looking grand. The girls can’t wait to start getting it ready for opening.’
‘Talking of girl trouble,’ said Daniel to Linc, ‘I hear you might have clashed with Jade again.’
‘You heard about that?’ He hadn’t seen Jade since he wrecked her cake. She’d avoided him as much as possible and he’d been far too busy to stop, let alone be sidetracked by a beautiful woman.
‘Yeah,’ Daniel grinned, ‘and don’t look now but she just walked in.’
Linc didn’t dare turn around. He had his back to the door, so could avoid her at least. The last thing he wanted was her having a go at him in a pub full of people.
Harvey was laughing. ‘Celeste told us you’d been filling your face with the wedding cake prototype she’d slaved over all day and you were sitting there in the garden enjoying it until she found you.’ Daniel and Linc couldn’t help but smile either. ‘Did it at least taste good?’
‘It did until she yelled at me.’
Harvey checked his wallet for cash. ‘I could do with a bowl of chips. Interested?’
Linc nodded and stayed where he was while Harvey made for the bar and Daniel went to use the bathroom.
He didn’t have to wonder long whether Jade would spot him because the others had only just left him and there she was, sitting in the seat next to him, looking stunning in a simple pair of slim jeans with a loose cream shirt, slightly sheer, enough that he could make out a lacy camisole beneath. His eyes were drawn to her neck and the delicate silver chain with a cupcake decoration on it.
‘Come to yell at me some more?’ he asked before she could get a word in. He loved how she scrunched up her nose and the row of freckles went out of shape when he asked the question.
‘I’ve come to apologise for overreacting.’
‘I deserved it. You’d spent all that time and effort on something that I have to say was amazing in both taste and appearance. And I’m not saying that to get you on side either. I’m sorry I stuffed my face before I thought to check it was OK to dive into a cake that, to be fair, didn’t look anything like leftovers or something someone might have whipped up to share around. In my defence, I was salivating when I saw it.’
His description got her grinning. ‘Say more things like that and I’ll go easy on you from now on.’ Before he could add anything else, she said, ‘Etna told me how much help you’ve been to her and that you’d been working flat out all day.’
‘Don’t let me off the hook because you feel sorry for me. I don’t need pity.’
‘Celeste neatened the cake up and I took it over to Barney’s place anyway – that’s when I saw Etna. Both he and Lois were thrilled with the results, so no harm done.’
‘I tell you what. If I’m ever offered cake again, I’ll check I’m hacking into the right one before I help myself.’
‘Deal.’
Melissa and Lucy pulled over another table to join theirs as Harvey and Daniel returned, Celeste grabbed some more chairs and soon the group were all sitting together and talking as though they’d known one another for years. They demolished a couple of bowls of chips between them, drinks flowed and conversation soon turned to the bakery after Lucy arrived to join them.
‘I hear you chose a name,’ said Lucy after she’d kissed Daniel hello.
‘We did,’ Jade smiled. ‘And the sign is finished, it looks amazing – dark-wood edges, a cream background with a type of cracked effect to make it look old like so many of the homes and businesses in the Cove, and they’ve added in an illustration at the bottom.’
‘I’m glad you’re keeping the frontage the way it’s always been,’ said Lucy. ‘It’s a bit like why I kept some of the things the same at my place. I kept the solid fuel forge in my workshop because I didn’t want to strip out all the character from a place that had been around for so long, but at the same time I made it my own with my work on the shelves and the new sign out front. People like some change, but you need to hold on to what’s special.’
‘Lucy’s Blacksmithing is a real part of the Cove,’ Jade told Linc, prompting Lucy to tell him a bit about the business, how she wasn’t a farrier but wanted to keep the wordblacksmithas part of the business name, to maintain tradition.
‘Did you make the sign yourself?’ Linc had seen it when he first arrived and Etna gave him the low-down on the local businesses and residents. Lucy’s Blacksmithing, on the opposite side of the bend to the Heritage Inn when you came into the Cove from one direction, had a sign swinging from two chains attached to a bracket that was fixed to the workshop. The flat above could be accessed from steps leading up from The Street, or by going through the workshop, but the blacksmith’s business itself had the one entrance door, to one side of the sign.
‘I sure did. And I also made the trellis for the pub.’
‘I’m impressed.’ He’d seen that too, the intricate work that had gone into something that all the locals now got to admire with its clambering purple and white flowers. ‘I’m feeling like the odd one out now though.’
‘Why?’ Melissa pondered.
‘You all have your own businesses – waffles, blacksmithing, a bakery…’ he pointed to Harvey next, ‘and you’re in the home-renovations business. I’m not sure I’ll fit in unless I start something myself. Even Melissa is giving up her job to go into business with Harvey, I hear.’
‘She’s got an eye for it,’ Lucy claimed. ‘She helped me choose colours for my flat, which hadn’t stood the test of time at all. Even the ugly gas heater in the lounge went and instead I have a beautiful log burner with a gorgeous varnished shelf above that Melissa found for me online.’
