Page 13 of Falling in Love at Pennycress Inn

Pausing, he turned around again. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Nothing.’ Shaking her head, she sighed as a huge raindrop fell square in the middle of her forehead. Typical. There wasn’t anything like a torrential downpour to make a bike ride more exciting.

‘No, you said something. What did you say?’ He stuffed his hands in his pockets and met her gaze, his piercing blue eyes boring into hers.

She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t keep her cool. Not with someone like him. She could feel the anger inside her building as she let her bike drop against the fence again, the metal against metal clattering, and took two steps towards the gate. Holding her head up high, she stared right back at him, unable to suppress how she was feeling any longer. ‘If you must know, I said that you are all the same. All of you men. You think you can walk all over everyone else. You think that just because someone is asking something of you, asking you to uphold an agreement, that you can drop your responsibilities just like that…’

‘What responsibilities?’ He had the decency to frown.

‘All of them. Anything.’ She shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter what it is. You have the audacity to go back on your word and pretend it wasn’t something you agreed to in the first place. You think you can change your mind and you don’t give a second thought to anyone who might be affected.’

‘Hey.’ He held his hands up, palms forward. ‘I didn’t agree to this. Not once have I agreed to this. I didn’t even know places like this still had carnivals.’

Places like this? What did he mean by that? She shook her head. It didn’t matter. ‘Fine, you might not have agreed to helping with the carnival, but you have taken over your uncle’s farm and you should continue his good work, his generosity. It’s not fair that you just take, take, take and you don’t care about what he worked for, what he stood for.’

Firmly crossing his arms, he sighed. ‘I didn’t choose to take over the farm and if you’re a typical citizen of Meadowfield, then the sooner the damn thing sells and I can go back to my old life, the better.’

Just as she was about to start telling him exactly what she thought of him, his words sank in and she blinked, the anger dissipating as quickly as it had risen. ‘You’re selling Little Mead?’

‘Not that it has anything to do with you, your stupid carnival or the rest of the village, but yes.’

‘But—’

‘Goodbye.’ Turning on his heels, he strode away into the barn without a second glance.

Little Mead Farm was being sold? It had been there forever. Nicola remembered Farmer Williams himself telling her and Jill that farming was in his family bloodline. They’d asked him why he’d chosen to buy the farm and he’d set them straight, explained he’d inherited it and he’d always known he’d be a farmer, ‘born into it’, he’d said.

But if Little Mead was sold, anything could happen to it. Developers could buy it and build a huge housing estate on the land. Anything. Nicola picked up her bike again as the rain grew heavier.

7

Come on, Nicola. Just a little further.Leaning forward on the bike, her chest almost touching the handlebars, Nicola willed herself to find some more strength. She pushed heavily against the pedals as she tried to cycle up the hill in the driving rain. Where had it even come from? It was supposed to be summer. The height of summer, even.

Clenching her hands against the brakes, she slowed to a stop. She just needed two minutes to catch her breath. Two minutes and then she’d force herself to make the rest of the journey home. She really didn’t have much further, a mile maybe? Once she reached the brow of this hill, she’d be able to see the village below. It really wasn’t far.

Gripping the bike with one hand, she reached up and scrunched her hair with the other, squeezing out rainwater before it was quickly replaced. She was soaked through. Literally.

She shrugged. Who was she kidding? If it hadn’t rained, then she’d still be soaked through, just from sweat instead. At least the rain made the journey a little cooler.

She should just get back on the bike and get home as quickly as she could. Her PJs were calling her. And Trixie. She wouldn’t have been at all surprised if she’d been able to hear Trixie from here. It was way past her dinner time. She should have fed her before she’d left. Why hadn’t she?

Just one more minute. One more minute of rest. When had cycling become so difficult anyway? Probably when she’d stopped cycling as a teen and started driving. But now of course that wasn’t an option, thanks to Nathan. Reaching into her handbag, Nicola pulled out her mobile and, using one hand to shield the screen from the rain, she checked to see if she’d had any missed calls or messages.

Nothing. So, Nathan wasn’t going to go back on his decision to effectively steal her money then? If he’d thought one iota about what she’d told him over the phone, then he would have rung, or at least messaged, apologised and promised to fix things. But he hadn’t. Great. So now she’d be stuck riding this thing until she could save up enough money to buy a cheap run-around.

Hefting herself back onto the saddle, Nicola hooked her handbag over the handlebar again and pushed forward. One more mile. One more.

Finally reaching the brow of the hill, she blinked as a pair of bright lights sped towards her; the rain distorting the light beams as they came closer and closer. It took her a few seconds to realise they belonged to a car, and it was literally speeding towards her.

Veering to the side quickly, she managed to let the car pass, suffering with only a splattering of water from a puddle they’d driven through. Disorientated, she clutched the brakes again, trying to slow down, but instead of slowing, the bike continued to gain momentum as it careened down the hill. She pumped the brakes again, hoping desperately that they’d work, that she’d perhaps just held them wrong, applied the pressure in the wrong place or at the wrong angle.

But no, they weren’t working at all and with the hill laid out in front of her; she knew she had to somehow stop before she picked up too much speed and she was eventually thrown over the handlebars or ended up coming face to face with another car.

Just as she was trying the brakes again whilst wracking her brains of any way of stopping without them, she felt the bike jerk beneath her as the front tyre hit a rock. She screamed and threw out her hands in front of her as she was thrown forward before landing in a heap at the side of the road.

Gingerly sitting up, she felt the sting of pain surging through her leg and across her palms as adrenaline coursed through her body. Tilting her face up to the sky, she let out a loud sob. This was a fitting end to a rubbish evening, wasn’t it? First Nathan, then Farmer Grumpy and now this.

Drawing her legs up to her chest, she lowered her head into the crook of her arms and cried. She cried for losing her car; she cried for failing one of her closet friends, Jill; but she cried the hardest because she felt as though she didn’t have anyone in her corner. Without Nathan, she didn’t have anyone to watch her back. Yes, she had her dear mum, and she knew without a single doubt in the world that her mum would do anything she could for her, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same as having her person, her soulmate. She knew now, after that phone call with Nathan, that she meant nothing to him. Less than nothing. She couldn’t even view him as someone who she could turn to in a crisis. Heck, he’d been the catalyst for this particular crisis.

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