Page 8 of Baby Bump for the Mafia Boss

“Oh.” I gulp and nod. “Do you think they’ll come after us?”

He dumps the wood beside the fireplace and smiles grimly. “Hopefully this, and the snow, has bought us time.”

We manage to light a fire. My boss’ contribution is to look at my carefully built pile of sticks with two firelighters and dump the rest of the firelighters on top. It’s undeniably effective.

He drags down the blankets from the shelf, finds a sheepskin, and dumps them onto the floor.

“Get up,” he orders as I’m tending the fire, and this is the Mr Bridger I know. Sighing inwardly, I rise to my feet, even though I’m only just beginning to thaw.

But then, he lays out the sheepskin carefully, then points down at it.

“But I should try to make some food,” I protest, indicating the tins on the shelf.

He shakes his head abruptly. “Your teeth are chattering. I’ll do it.”

I’m about to say I’m alright, but I really am cold.

“But you never cook. Do you even know how?” This is a man who I book five-star hotels and premium restaurants for. He does not eat from cans.

He barks with laughter. “Miss Oliver, do not mistake disinclination for inability. I was making food when you were in a cradle.”

Right.

Reluctantly, I lower myself to the floor. The sheepskin is undeniably fluffy and warm. My chin snaps up with surprise when Mr Bridger lays a blanket over my shoulders, tucking it around me.

He gives me a half-smile, then turns away.

It feels lazy allowing him to do this on his own, but my shivers become less frequent.

“Our options are limited. Leek and potato soup, or spam.” He’s moving tins on the shelf.

“You have a tin of emails from Nigerian Princes, offering us a lot of money to help them?”

He groans. “You don’t know what original spam is?”

Our gazes meet across the dark room, and I shake my head.

“You are so young, but I’m glad your generation is innocent of this crime against food. It’s the zombie apocalypse in meat form.”

I can’t help but laugh.

“It’s a type of minced meat,” he adds, then whistles. “Ohhhh, you’ll like this. There’s tea.”

That makes me perk up. “Really?”

“I wouldn’t tease you about something so important.” He waves a tin, and a blackened kettle I hadn’t noticed.

It takes us a minute to figure out how to put the kettle over the open fire to heat the water, and we sit in companionable silence as it heats.

With some magic I don’t know how it works, Mr Bridger uses a can opener that looks like it’s from 1932, and opens the selected tins.

When the water boils, he puts in a tea bag, then after a couple of minutes picks it out with his fingers and pours some pale gloopy liquid from one of the cans into a chipped mug passing it to me.

“Spam flavoured tea?” I joke.

“Condensed milk. It’ll be ferociously sweet.”

I take a cautious sip, almost burning my tongue, but then I taste it, and let out a moan of relief. It is exactly as Mr Bridger said. Sweet, and milky. But it’s got a hint of caramel, a bit like the creamer I had in tea when we visited America a few years ago.