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‘I don’t know about that. My sister was up there with us. They’re still bedrooms—you can take a look if you want.’
‘I’d like that, maybe once the house warms up a bit. I’m not sure that I want to leave the fire. And you should sit, Rufus, if you want. You have more right to be here than I do. It’s not fair that you should feel uncomfortable.’
‘You’re a guest,’ he said.
‘Well, and so are you, sort of, if it makes you feel better. I dragged you in from the cold and saved your life, which means I get to decide what to do with it. And right now I really think you should relax.’
‘Is that what you and Lara were planning on doing?’
She nodded. ‘Yep. Our plan for the weekend was pyjamas, movies, Scrabble.’
‘Scrabble?’
‘Lara’s a fiend.’
‘How about you? Maybe I’ll let you beat me later.’
‘Let me?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Wow. You don’t know who you’re messing with.’
The buzz of her phone in her pocket stopped that intense look from becoming uncomfortably long, and she tapped on Lara’s message. She’d cropped one of the mirror shots, and Jess realised for the first time that she had captured Rufus in the glass behind her, and he was looking at her with an expression she could only describe as heated. She zoomed in on his face a little further, and then nearly dropped her phone in panic as he came to stand beside her.
> ‘More from Lara?’
‘Uh, yeah. She’s happy with the shots from in here.’
‘Can I see?’
If she could have thought of a single good reason to say no, she would have done. But these photos were the key to saving his family home and his business. They were the whole reason that she was here, and she couldn’t think how to avoid him seeing them. She handed the phone over, surreptitiously tapping the back key so that he couldn’t see how close a close-up she’d made it.
‘Oh,’ he said, his eyebrows furrowing together. ‘I didn’t realise you’d taken that.’
‘I didn’t realise you were in it,’ she told him honestly.
And then, just as they were both staring at the phone, a message popped up from Lara. Three flame emojis. Which everyone knew translated as Oh, my goodness, check out the scorching sexual chemistry. Jess rolled her eyes. Lara’s timing was impossibly, perfectly terrible.
She wrote back.
You’re right. The log fires are our only source of heat. Well spotted.
And then she pocketed her phone before her friend could heap any more embarrassment on her.
‘Does she want us to take any more tonight?’ Rufus asked.
Jess made an executive decision.
‘Probably best to wait for natural light. These are good for now for her stories, but she’ll want them better lit for the main grid. So I’m going to say we’re off duty.’
‘In that case...are you hungry?’
She tried to think back to the last time that she had eaten and could only think of the nondescript beige food that she’d found at the hotel’s continental breakfast buffet. And suddenly she was ravenous.
‘I’m starving. Shall we raid the fridge?’
‘Did Lara mention that catering is...kind of my thing? I’m a chef, and the food’s included in the weekend. In fact, we should probably get some pictures of that too.’
Rufus pulled a giant tray of lasagne from the fridge and stuck it in the Aga, then dug around in the fridge for salad and olives and other things to pick at while they waited for it to warm up.
‘What would you be doing, if you weren’t here?’ she asked on a whim, thinking about her parents, wondering whether they were home alone together on a Saturday night, sitting silently in front of the television and wishing they were anywhere else.
