Page 10 of You Had Me At Pumpkin Patch
No. There would be absolutely no getting settled. She tried not to dwell on the fact that a hunk of 1980s Citroën metal was the only thing that would be missing her. Cassius wouldn’t have told anyone she’d caught him with a sexbot and fled. He’d probably assumed she’d scurried back to the Featherstones, so he’d be happily entertaining Zoe. She was rather bendy, and Rosie definitely couldn’t do the upside-down bicycle forthatlong.
Rosie huffed and stood. Nature called. Must be all that tea. She shuffled around the hut, opening doors – but all she found behind them were cupboards. Where on earth was the bathroom?
She consulted the tatty guidebook, which wasn’t much help. ‘Come to the house and grab food and supplies when you need them,’ Rosie read. ‘Cottage pie available on Wednesdays, and I sometimes do sausage and pumpkin hotpot on a Friday, though don’t count on it. Likely the dogs will beat you to it. Or feel free to forage. No shooting.’ Rosie let out a giggle, imagining Agnes’s no-nonsense voice as she read. ‘Spare toilet roll is kept at the house. And sawdust. Helps with the stink.’
The stink? Rosie sniffed the air. Everything smelt OK to her. Where exactly was she going to put this sawdust anyway? She’d only ever seen it used for guinea pig beds or to cover piles of vomit at primary school. This place got curiouser.
As she peered out of the window wondering if she’d missed something bathroom-like on the way in, she saw Zain darting out of his cabin. Surely he’d be able to explain the facilities? Agnes had suggested he was completely unsociable, but there was something about him that made her story sensors twitch like a mouse’s whiskers. Nobody was hostile for no reason. Maybe he’d be perfectly nice when you got to know him. Not that she’d be sticking around. She craned her neck to get a better look, but he was gone. And for some reason, she couldn’t help getting up to follow.
‘He might be scary, but my eyes can’t possibly witness anything more terrifying than what I’ve already seen today,’ she reasoned. And if he was already starting to inspire a character for her novel, she’d better get out there and poke around. Plus, shereallydid need a wee.
She eased her feet back into her boots and rescued her coat from the floor. It was time to meet her fellow lakeside dweller properly – even if they wouldn’t be sharing a lake for long. He grew and cared for cute mini pumpkins, for goodness’ sake. There was nothing at all to be frightened of.
8
‘Aaaaaaaah!’
Rosie’s hands flew to her mouth, trying to cover her own scream. It wasn’t the first time she’d shrieked at a naked body that day, and perhaps she should have been covering her eyes instead. But somehow, she couldn’t pull her gaze away...
‘Who the hell are you?’ the gruff voice belonging to the well-sculpted, muscular body responded, as he turned towards her.
And perhapsheshould have been covering his private parts. But as rivulets of lingering shower water cascaded down his tanned skin, weaving through his twisting black tattoos and prickling his flesh into goosebumps, he made no attempt to hide his nakedness. He simply wrung out the water from his long dark hair, pulled an elastic from his wrist and wound his locks into a knotted bun. Rosie was vaguely aware she was scrutinising the streams of water that were snaking from his shoulders and making their way down his rippled chest towards his fairly substantial...
She gasped and turned away. Why had it taken her so long?
‘It’s cold,’ the voice huffed again, as though trying to make excuses for the size of things.
From what Rosie had inadvertently seen, no excuses were needed. So this was what Zain Kay looked like close up. She hadn’t meant for hernovel researchto have been quite so thorough.
‘And you’ve had a good stare at everything now. Bit late to look away.’
‘I was not staring.’ Although she probably had been. It didn’t seem like the time to explain she might put him in a book.
Anyway, it was surely impossible not to fully appraise your surroundings. It was basic human nature. You never knew when alpha-male nudity might pop up and pose a threat.
Though the only thing in crisis right then was her wildly beating heart and her red-hot cheeks. Not to mention the sudden influx of cave-woman hormones that seemed to be screechingtake him to your hut.Which was, of course, ridiculous. She’d only ventured out to find a loo.
In her peripheral view she saw Zain reaching for a towel, and she heard the swoosh of it wrapping around his toned body. It seemed she’d stumbled upon him using an open-air shower behind some bushes, which was quite a lot more than she’d bargained for. She certainly hadn’t set out to judge the best sculpted bottom competition. Although if she had...
‘Find what you were looking for?’ His voice interrupted her thoughts, which was probably just as well. ‘You can at least turn and show your face, now you’ve witnessed every inch of me.’
She’d been trying her best not to count the inches. She straightened herself, took a deep breath, and dared to turn around, her boots skidding about in the mud. ‘I was just looking for something. I got lost.’
‘Thought you’d find it inside a running shower?’
‘Well, what kind of person takes a shower in the middle of the day?’ she replied, even though she knew that was none of her business. She had to saysomethingto make herself seem like less of a nosy-eyed voyeur.
‘Someone who has a job that gets them dirty.’
There was a spark of rebellion in his eyes, which were even moredeep, dark woodon closer inspection. They sank into his square, determined face, and she found herself wanting to wander into them, even though nobody got that intrigued about eyes outside the pages of a love story. He could have been a model in some sort of burly farmers’ magazine, all gruff-looking and at one with the land. Despite him now being tightly towelled from the waist down, Rosie decided his face was the safest place to look.
‘We don’t all keep office hours,’ he added wryly.
His visual sweep of her work clothes sent a pang of annoyance through her. Her heels, that were sinking into the earthy ground beneath her feet, weren’t doing her any favours. Why hadn’t she grabbed those spare wellies?
‘I don’t work in an office.’
He grunted, like he didn’t believe her. ‘Then where do you work?’ There was a tinge of suspicion in his voice. ‘Are you trespassing? Because if you are...’
