We crossed the lawn and let ourselves into the forest through the back gate. The May sunshine was warm and hazy, the leaves above our heads dappling the dirt footpath as we wound our way through the trees. I sucked in a few lungfuls of air, tangy with earth, pine and hawthorn blossom, and had to admit that Steph was right. Here, in the quiet of the forest, my fraught muscles began to unwind as my thoughts settled.
Apart from a squirrel, and a couple of tiny, roly-poly brown birds, we didn’t spot another living creature, until suddenly, turning past a particularly large tree trunk, we found ourselves at the edge of a clearing carpeted with bluebells.
‘I can’t believe that this is basically your new back gard—’ Steph stopped, mid-word, and turned to me, eyes round and jaw hanging open. In the split second before I had a chance to respond, the surprise morphed into a wicked glint, causing my own eyes to widen in alarm as I mouthed, ‘Don’t you dare!’
She shrugged, pressing one hand to her chest with a puzzled,who me?expression that made me want to scuttle back behind the tree. Especially when I grabbed her arm and turned to go, and instead of moving with me she took a big step into the open.
‘Helloooo!’ she called out as my stomach plummeted into the dirt.
The man on the other side of the clearing lowered the chainsaw in his hand and turned to see who’d yelled like a teenager trying to get a selfie with her favourite boyband. His broad chest was bare, faded jeans riding low on his hips. When I tried to swallow, it appeared as though every drop of moisture in my mouth had evaporated along with Steph’s sense of shame.
The man placed the chainsaw on the ground and quickly shrugged into a checked shirt, which only made me feel even more embarrassed. He had the type of physique earnt through a lifestyle of hard work, rather than pumping away in a gym, and the way the shirt hung slightly open to reveal the tiniest smattering of hair on a solid chest seemed almost worse than when he’d been half naked.
Crap, Ollie. Don’t eventhinkwords like ‘naked’ right now.My current train of thought might not have been in breach of the No-Man Mandate, but I was pretty sure it should be.
Then he pulled off the orange hard-hat with the face visor, and at least I stopped thinking about his chest. Running a hand through mussed-up, light brown hair streaked with natural highlights, he offered us a slightly awkward, yet utterly dazzling grin.
Oh my.
Steph’s laughing eyes flickered to mine. ‘Now if this doesn’t get you packing your bags and whizzing through that boring old list, I don’t know what will,’ she muttered out of the side of her mouth.
‘Can I help you?’ the man asked. His voice was warm and deep and matched the rest of him perfectly.
‘I hope so!’ Steph said, moving closer. It was only when he flicked one hand in astaygesture that I spotted two collies lying in the shade of an oak tree.
‘We’re new here. Well, my friend Ollie here is new. She’s just bought a cottage that backs right onto the forest.’
He nodded in recognition. I sent up a silent, desperate prayer that she’d stop short of giving him the address along with my phone number.
‘So, yeah, anyway, we’ve sort of lost our sense of direction. Do you know the best way to the road?’
‘Hatherstone Lane? Where it meets the village?’
‘Yes! That’s it. End Cottage.’
‘If you take that path, and follow it round, it’s maybe fifteen minutes.’ He paused, turning to look at me, still hovering in the shadows like Steph’s socially awkward sidekick. ‘Twenty. Depending on how used you are to walking.’
‘Oh, we’re very used to it. Ollie here walks all the time, don’t you, Ollie?’
He quirked one eyebrow up, still smiling as he waited for me to confirm this untruth.
‘Well. Um. Yes. But I mean, that’s more like walking in the city. On the pavement. I don’t really… I haven’t much… anyway, thanks for your help!’
Then I turned and started hurrying down the path he’d pointed at without even checking if Steph was coming with me.
‘Oh my,’ she gloated, once she’d caught up with my frantic strides and managed to stop giggling. ‘You totally love the hot man of the woods.’
‘Excuse me?’ I huffed with the tiny amount of breath I had left. ‘I wasn’t the one shamelessly flirting.’
‘Well, perhaps you should have been!’ she crowed back. ‘I deliberately left flirting out of the No-Man Mandate because you need the practice. And you never blushed like this over Mark.’
‘I’m not blushing, I’m warm from the exertion of trying to get away from a totally embarrassing situation!’
‘Oh, chill out. I was only asking him for directions.’
I didn’t bother replying to that, instead tramping along in silence until we saw the cottages up ahead.
‘He was pretty damn gorgeous, though, you have to admit,’ Steph said eventually. ‘For a second there I thought we’d stumbled across the May photo shoot for a Mr Forest Ranger charity calendar.’
