AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Why do you keep refusing to come over?” She sits up too and shifts so she’s facing me.
“It wouldn’t be right, or respectful to your grandfather.”
“Liar.” She nudges me with her foot. “You just don’t want to meet Hedge LeFevre in case he turns out to be the monster you imagine.”
“I just don’t want to,” I repeat the first part of her sentence. “Spoil our nights with the various disputes between our families.”
“So, what are we going to do about the land dispute?” she asks. “I’ve been thinking about that. I’m sure we can compromise.”
I shake my head. “In my experience, compromises are just resentments in development.”
“What a lot of big words.” She smiles, folding her arms above her head.
The sheet falls from her, and she pulls it up covering herself. Part of me is grateful.
“Any compromises we make in the warm glow of love-making are bound to be unfair.” I pull her closer to me and tug the sheet down, making the other part of me much more grateful. “Eventually, we’ll notice that,in our eagerness to please each other,” I kiss her quickly, “we’ve made too many concessions. It’ll begin to grate and …” I shrug. “Later, these compromises will come back and cause painful arguments.”
“Tell me something,” she says. “Is your glass always half empty?”
“My glass is completely empty.” I hold up my wine bottle. This has become a new tradition between us, wine in bed after sex. “You drank it all, which is how you seduced me, you siren.” I drop a kiss on the bridge of her nose.
She rolls out of bed, grabs my T-shirt, and slips it on. “Come on I’ll try and work your magic kettle and make you a cup of tea.”
“Do I get honey and bread, too?” It’s another thing I’ve learnt to like.
Five minutes later, we move to the sofa, and she sits with her knees up under her chin, hands wrapped around her mug of tea. “So, what are your thoughts?”
“That I pay your grandfather compensation for the beehives that have to be moved off my land.”
It’s the best solution I can find.
“That wouldn’t answer the environmental question. It wasn’t just a ploy to stop you. The plants are important and irreplaceable.”
The pod only has one sofa, so I sit beside her and balance my plate of bread on my knee. “Could they be dug up and replanted?”
She shakes her head. “You’ve been down the hill, you’ve seen how old some of them are, they’ll have roots that go very deep, it’s impossible to dig them up.”
We eat and drink in silence, both of us thinking.
“Tell me,” She finally asks. “What is it you want to do with your gardens?”
“First of all, the hill, at least my side of it, needs to be terraced because otherwise the incline is too steep, so there’ll be a sequence of wide plateaus to use as alfresco picnic areas, a hot-tub deck, maybe a romantic seating area with loveseats under trellises. All of them overlooking the sea. And, if the cottages prove successful, I want to buy more of these camping pods. We’re not allowed to build on the land, but I can set up non-permanent structures down the hill.”
“Is there much of a market for accommodation where you have to sit on the loo to wash your hair?”
I aim a mock punch at her, and she leans away, spilling some of her tea. “See what I mean, you couldn’t swing a fist in this place.”
“They won’t all be like this. I needed somewhere to sleep that didn’t cost much. But you can get luxury glamping pods that have a lot more room. And” – I give her a slow meaningful smile – “they’ll complement the original cottages up here.”
“Then I suggest you stop calling them cottages, every country holiday place is called a cottage. You need to be different. Your designs are modern.”
“What do you want me to call them. Space shuttles?”
“Chalets.” she says as if the name only just occurred to her. But her next sentence tells me she’s been thinking about this a lot. “And maybe name them after trees since they are built around and through trees.”
“I can’t call them all Cedar.”
“No-o-o,” she drags out the vowel. “But other names of trees native to La Canette. Rowan, Holly, Willow… that kind of thing.”
