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‘It means...well, I guess you must have talked to Rufus, to set all this up. Right? The owner? Well, he kind of got stuck in the snow and showed up here dying of hypothermia, and now...well, we’re both pretty much stranded here.’
‘Right.’ The shocked silence at Lara’s end of the phone was so out of character that Jess felt compelled to rush and fill it.
‘And he’s not wearing any trousers.’
Of course, that was the moment that Rufus chose to return. He had ab
andoned his coat and blankets wherever he had gone off to search for his camera, and had returned wearing jogging pants and a thick woolly jumper. More than one, in fact, by the looks of it.
‘Actually, that data point appears to be incorrect,’ she said into the phone, face in flames again. Was Lara going to speak again? ‘Um...anyway, given that this whole arrangement was between you and Rufus, I guess you need to speak to one another to sort it out.’
She looked up at Rufus as she handed over the phone and he simply raised one eyebrow at her before saying ‘Hi, Lara’ as if the woman currently standing in front of him in the achingly sensual bedroom hadn’t just commented on his state of undress.
Aside from the occasional hmm and grunt, the conversation with Lara seemed to be entirely one-sided.
‘I think we can manage that,’ Rufus said at last, before handing the phone back to Jess. She looked at the screen to see that Jess had already hung up.
‘Are you going to tell me what that was all about?’ Jess asked.
‘Lara said we need to take photos. She’s refunding me her fee but said she’d be happy to share anything we can send her, and I really need this exposure. She suggested we make the most of you being here—apparently her followers like you making a cameo on her feed. It’s not as good for the business as if she were here, of course, but it’s better than doing nothing. Are you okay with that? The photos, I mean.’
When your best friend is an Instagram celebrity, you learned pretty early on not to mind too much having your photo taken. But surely the point here was to promote Upton Manor. Not her.
‘I guess it’s okay, if that’s what Lara thinks will work. Are you happy? I guess you have a lot riding on Lara’s promotion.’
Rufus rubbed a hand over his forehead. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure. There’s nothing we can do about the snow, so we just have to make the best of it.’
But he looked decidedly troubled at the thought. When he’d said earlier that the estate was in trouble, she guessed he’d really meant it.
‘Got my phone,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘It was in my jacket pocket all along. I can sync it to Lara’s account so we can upload stuff to her cloud. Lara said to get plenty of the room before you unpack. Apparently you’ll make a mess.’
‘Oh, that is so...’ True, actually. Though entirely unfair for Lara to tell a stranger that. She took a few shots of the bed on his phone, knowing that they wouldn’t come out well, with the light in front of them, but sometimes Lara like to use some imperfect shots in her stories—all the better for appearing hashtag-authentic, she knew.
‘I found trousers,’ Rufus said behind her, so out of the blue that she found herself genuinely blinking in surprise.
‘Um... I noticed,’ she replied, not sure what the least inappropriate response was to that statement.
‘You told Lara I hadn’t, and I know this is awkward. I wanted you to know I found some. We left some stuff in storage up in the attic.’
‘Well, great.’ What, suddenly he was the chatty one and she was all monosyllabic?
It was just... It was hard to talk. Or think. Or breathe, now that he had drawn her attention to the trousers he had found. She wasn’t sure if he was aware, but the soft jersey fabric was leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination. She could see...well. Everything. She turned away, knowing that rational thought wasn’t going to return until she did. Except everywhere she looked, she saw sex and romance. This entire room had been designed to do that. She shut her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. She needed to think of something that would make it impossible for her to be turned on at the fact that she was snowed in at a secluded romantic break with a stranger wearing trousers that perfectly outlined his...everything.
She squeezed her eyes tight shut.
‘My mother!’ she said suddenly, striking gold. ‘I have to call my mother and tell her I’m not going to be home for Christmas. She’ll be devastated.’
‘Which is a good thing?’
‘Congratulations, you correctly interpreted a human facial expression.’
Good, she had her snark back. She knew what she was doing with snark. And Rufus had turned slightly, angling his body away from hers into lighting that was far less distracting.
‘You don’t like to go home for Christmas,’ he stated, and she had to give him credit. Though it was hardly a huge leap from what she’d already told him.
‘It’s complicated,’ she said, the adrenaline leaving her body as she started to really think how upset her mum was going to be. How sad and quiet the next few days would be for her parents without her there for them to focus on. To remind them of why they were still in a relationship that had stopped making either of them happy a long time ago. She had tried to tell them, as gently as she could, over the years that she would rather they were happy apart than miserable together, but they seemed to be determined to hold themselves to their wedding vows long after anything resembling love had left the building.
‘I should leave you to it,’ he said, walking towards the door. ‘Call me if you need anything.’
