Page 81 of The Sugar and Spice Bookshop Bakery

Louise opens the door and climbs out, so that Maddie can get out too.

‘I can manage this one on my own,’ Maddie says. ‘You can stay in the van with Jack.’

Just as Louise thought; her stepdaughter is deliberately engineering things so that she and Jack spend time on their own. She climbs back into the van.

‘Do you think she’ll be long?’ Jack says.

‘I hope not.’ Louise can’t even look at him. If she looks at him, she wants to kiss him. And if she kisses him, she wants to…

I spy with my little eye,’ he says.

Louise smiles, remembering their previous road trip together. ‘Something beginning with…?’

‘H.’ He turns to look at her, a somewhat smug expression on his face.

Louise holds his gaze for a second then stares out of the window. ‘Is it inside the car? Or outside?’

‘No clues yet. You haven’t even had one guess.’

‘Hill,’ she says.

‘Nope. Too easy.’

‘Hawk?’

‘You can see a hawk?’

‘Well, no. But there might have been a sparrowhawk.’

The back of the van opens and Maddie shoves something inside then slams it again, before coming round and opening the passenger door. ‘Budge up, Lou.’

Louise climbs out, so that Maddie has to sit in the middle again.

‘Hedge,’ Louise says, as she gets back in.

‘Nope.’

‘Are you playing I Spy?’ Maddie pulls on her seatbelt. ‘I know. Herdwick.’

‘Herdwick?’ says Louise.

‘It’s a type of sheep,’ says Jack. ‘There’s a flock of Herdwicks in that field over there.’

‘Since when do you know what a Herdwick is, Maddie? Or you, Jack?’ Louise shakes her head.

‘It was a wild guess,’ says Maddie. ‘I don’t know one sheep from another.’

‘I do,’ says Jack. ‘I was advised that I had to learn all the different types of sheep.’

Louise leans forward a little so she can see him. He catches her looking at him, his chestnut eyes twinkling. Damn it, he does have gorgeous eyes.

‘Okay, our next destination is…’ Maddie taps her phone, entering a postcode into Google maps. ‘Thirty-two minutes away. Left out of here, and back the way we came, please, Jack. Then right at the crossroads.’

Jack follows her instructions and soon they’re on their way again.

‘I can’t believe we’re almost there with the bookshop bakery,’ Maddie says. ‘We’ll be opening properly soon. Louise has ordered the books, haven’t you?’

Louise nods. ‘I’ve got quite a lot already, and the rest should be arriving in a day or two. And then I’ve got the hard job: sorting them out and stocking the shelves.’