Page 26 of A Very Crumbleton Christmas
‘Well… I happened to spot your frankly monstrous bathtub while I was gathering up the scripts earlier,’ she said.
Jack nodded as his brain scrambled to catch up with what she was saying. His mind had been wandering off in unexpected directions. He blinked hard, focussing on her lips and forcing himself to listen to what she was actually saying.
‘Would it be incredibly cheeky… I mean, as I’m stuck here anyway?’
He’d definitely missed a bit of that sentence. ‘Erm… you fancy a dip?’ he hazarded a guess.
‘Only if you don’t mind?’ she said quickly. ‘My place has just got this incredibly pathetic shower. It’s like standing under a dripping tap! You can barely turn around in it, and if you drop the soap, you’ve got to open the door to give yourself enough room to pick it up again and then the whole room fills with steam and—’
‘It’s fine!’ he said, his voice coming out in a kind of high-pitched squeak as he did his best not to picture Caroline reaching for a bar of soap in a steamy bathroom. ‘Sure… have a dip… of course!’
‘You certain?’ said Caroline, raising one eyebrow at him. ‘Sure it’s not… weird?’
Jack did his best to arrange his face into something natural while he dragged his thoughts firmly back out of the gutter. ‘Of course not. Go for it.’
If nothing else, it would give him the chance to get his head back on straight.
‘Thank you!’ she said, hopping to her feet and following him out into the hallway.
‘Oh – erm… towels,’ he said, doing his best not to think too hard about the fact that Caroline would be lounging in his bath before too long. ‘There’s a cupboard just to the left when you go into the bathroom – there’s a stack in there.’
‘Non-sandy ones?’ she said.
‘With any luck!’ said Jack. ‘Enjoy. I’ll rustle us up something to eat while you’re in there.’
‘Yay, even better,’ said Caroline. ‘You know… this is a pretty good hotel!’
Jack grinned at her and watched as she climbed up to the first floor. He couldn’t help himself – it was like he was rooted to the spot.
The minute Caroline disappeared around the corner, Jack gave himself a little shake and made a dash for the kitchen. He was sure he had plenty of time, but he wanted to pull together something a bit more impressive than his usual sandwich in front of the wood burner!
‘Thank heavens for Brian!’ he murmured, heading over to the fridge and opening the door.
It was packed to the gunnels with enough goodies to feed a family of five for the whole of Christmas. Brian had done a big enough shop that he could go to ground until the New Year if he wanted to…
‘Right, let’s see…’ he said, rooting around on the shelves.
There must besomethinghe could cook using this lot that would impress Caroline.Notthat he was trying to impress her, of course. This wasn’t a date, after all.
Or was it?!
Nope – definitely not a date.
‘Stop being an idiot, man!’ he huffed.
Jack had pretty much forgotten what it was like to go on a date… which was a bit weird considering the number of times over the last few years he’d had to pretend to be in love with various people in front of the camera. He hadn’t even liked some of them!
He’d always been careful to keep the line drawn between work and real life. As much as it was his job to make things look as real as possible on set, he’d never played the flirting game with his co-stars… not like some of them did for the publicity. They played up to the media for all they were worth, and Jack knew for a fact that several of them tipped the paps off themselves when they wanted some decent headlines in the celebrity rags.
Jack had never craved the attention that went with the job. That was why he’d bought this house in Crumbleton Sands. It was his safe haven. Whenever he wanted peace and quiet and a dose of reality, it was good to know he could come here and decompress from the madness. Here, he could swim in the sea looking like a tadpole wearing a Santa hat, and it wouldn’t be splashed all over the internet within seconds.
But… maybe he’d taken the whole isolation thing a little bit too far. It was one thing keeping his job and his private life separate, but it was another thing to completely cut himself off from the world to the point that loneliness had started to creep in like a bitter ache.
Caroline had turned up on his doorstep unannounced… and he’d let her in because – well – he’d simply been craving some human company.
Shock horror!
On top of that… she was even prettier in real life than she was in the photographs he’d seen online. He’d been intrigued to find out more about the funny, witty woman whose writing he’d been enjoying so much.
