She pulled a smile from the depths of her soul and plastered it on her face.
Nate took a considered look at her, not believing her one bit. ‘Alright then.’
If that’s the game she wanted to play, then that was fine. If she wanted to pretend that the mere mention of Alex causing her to hyperventilate was ‘nothing’, then who was he to argue? If she was upset by Nate being here because of her crush on Alex, then having Alex himself here may just tip her over the edge.
Nate glanced up at the photograph of the three dirty kneed kids in front of the old farmhouse again. How had her brothers Jack and Robin turned out so calm and laid back, relaxed and friendly, and Laurel had turned out to be this highly strung, twitchy, authoritarian? He looked again at Robin’s arms wrapped around fourteen-year-old Laurel’s leg, and Jack’s protective arm over his sister’s shoulder. They were smiling, but it wasn’t the carefree, unfiltered smile of childhood. No, they were forced smiles with tired, worn eyes.
Laurel’s chair wheeled back, and she stood abruptly.
‘I’m going to the kitchen. Do you want a cup of tea? Of course not, you’ve got a cup, well you’ve got two cups,’ she rambled.
‘Yeah.’ He nodded, gesturing at the pair of cups on the table. ‘No more, thanks.’
Laurel shot finger guns at him. Finger guns. ‘Okay, yeah, good. Uh, okay, I’m going. Yeah.’
Nate stared after her in disbelief. What thehelljust happened?
Laurel was so prim one moment and the next she’s shooting finger guns? She was the vanguard, there to protect her family at any cost, but she was also a fuzzy bumblebee just trying to make it to the next flower. Full of contradictions.
Nate found himself grinning as the door closed behind her. She was a breath of fresh buttercup air in his staid and boring little life.
Sharing an office with Laurel Fletcher was going to be interesting.
Chapter Five
Laurel
The end of the week couldn’t come quick enough for Laurel. The bank had said that they would have to further consider her application for more funding for Hibbert’s fields, which would result in her stressing until the answer came through. It was the worst part, being in limbo. She could deal with a ‘no’, so long as she knew.
Laurel strapped the large bowl of rice pudding into the front passenger seat of the car. She was aware that strapping a large bowl of homemade rice pudding into the front passenger seat of a car was not something that was done regularly by people, but she really did not want it all over the upholstery if it tilted a little too far as she was driving the lanes to the farm.
Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to see Nate today. He’d be off doing whatever he did on the weekends. Hiking, saving puppies from burning buildings, reading to sick children. Urgh. It had turned into a game, seeing who could get to her office first. Nate would spend an hour or two ensconced in her office before the lure of the dig called, flashing his obnoxious but thoroughly delightful thighs in shorts and those Timberland boots that all the students seemed to wear like some kind of uniform.
Except on Thursday, when he spent all day reviewing his notes and making sure his funding reports were all present and correct, ready for submission on Friday. Which was horrific because it meant that her office smelled of thunderstorms and autumn nights all frigging day. The flexing of his forearms against his rolled-up shirt sleeves as he typed was immensely distracting.
Discovering that Alex Woollard was Nate’s British Archaeological Society liaison was like thinking you’ve made a massive archaeological discovery, only to realise that it was actually a cesspit. It still needed dealing with, assessing, studying, but it wasn’t remotely fun.
Alex Woollard was the cesspit.
But of course, she couldn’t make a fuss, she had to let it run over her like a Mongol horde. Because she’d put Alex’s part in what had happened behind her. It was not colouring her view anymore. She was being the bigger person and that included giving Cesspit Alex a fair crack at the whip. He could have changed in the last ten years, could have become less of a dick.
Doubtful, but it could have happened.
Regardless, he wasn’t here for another week or so, and today was Sunday. Fletcher Family Sunday Lunch.
There were things to discuss after the roast lamb, and Laurel went over her spiel in the car. It was an uphill struggle trying to get her family to do anything that was in the best interest of the business. They always did in the end, but each time it was a battle. It had been a struggle to open the cafe, open the conference centre, make the lake pretty enough for country walks, and it had been a fight of the most epic proportions to change the name from Fletcher’s Farm to Little Willow Farm.
Laurel was tired. Tired of having to butt heads with her family to get anything done, tired of having to be the bad guy all the time so the farm could make money, and certainly tired of getting absolutely no thanks for any of it.
If this was a normal job, she would have quit.
Laurel bit back that thought. There were times when she felt she was martyring herself, that she was a glutton for punishment, but she really couldn’t see herself doing anything else. Of course, she’d dreamed of using her archaeology degree on a dig site making exotic discoveries, dreamed of living in the south of France running her own vineyard. But everyone had pipe dreams, no one did exactly what they wanted to do, lived their life beholden to no one, did they?
She would never quit. It was her life, her family legacy. Laurel would do anything she had to do, be anyone she had to be, to keep her farm alive, especially in this political and economic climate where farming was way, way, way down on the government’s list of priorities.
Parking on the plot that would be forever reserved for her house, Laurel unstrapped the rice pudding and balanced it on the top of the car while she sorted her bag out. The three houses sat snugly together and she headed for the old, wisteria-covered farmhouse in the middle where she grew up. The thatch nearly needed replacing, but the whitewash was fresh and crisp. Robin’s tiled roof house on the right looked cold and uninviting. He had insisted on having it built when he was eighteen, much to Laurel’s chagrin. He could barely look after himself, let alone a house. She had steadfastly refused to deal with anything to do with it. If he was old enough to live by himself, he was old enough to deal with the bills and insurance and cooking and cleaning and washing his own goddamned bedclothes. Although she suspected her father did more than just help out now and again.
Not that Robinlivedthere. He was mostly in his childhood room at the old farmhouse and used his own house for parties, girls and, well, more girls.
