Page 8 of Melting His Grumpy Heart
“A little. Maybe a piece of fruit? I really don’t want to be any more of an inconvenience than I already am.”
“You’ll be even more of one if you flake out on me. Sausage sandwich.”
“What? Ah, I don’t really eat… Erm, yes. Thank you. That’d be good,” Ru said quickly.
Quick food, easy food, but good food. The sausages were organic, from a neighbouring farm, and the bread homemade sourdough from the same place.I don’t really eat…What? Jake’s eyes narrowed.Sorry, hun, there’s not an avocado within fifty miles for you to smash.Jake strode over to the fridge, pulling out what he needed.
“Can I help?”
“No. But thanks,” he added. He’d always been brisk, as he liked to put it, though others wouldn’t always agree with his choice of word. “You could make some coffee. I’ve got a basic cafetière.” He pulled out a bag of good ground coffee from the fridge. The all-singing, all-dancing machine had long since disappeared, along with the top of the range cookware. Jake hadn’t bothered with replacing the machine, and the pots and pans he now possessed had come from a discount homeware shop in Plymouth. They did the job, even if they didn’t have a fancy French name and an even fancier price tag attached.
As they moved around the kitchen, Jake found himself acutely aware of Ru’s presence, of the soft squeak of his rubber soled shoes on the stone floor, the quiet hum he made as he sorted out the coffee, and the way he absently pushed his hair back from his forehead. It had been so long since Jake had shared his home with anyone that he’d forgotten the subtle dance of coexistence, the small adjustments and accommodations that happened automatically when another person entered your orbit. The muscles in his stomach flexed.
Outside, the snow started to fall once more, insulating them from the world beyond the farmhouse walls. The kitchen windows had frosted at the edges, creating a frame of delicate ice crystals around the wintry landscape beyond. The effect was cooly beautiful, like looking at the world through the border of a Christmas card.
Christmas. The thought struck Jake suddenly. It was only days away. He hadn’t made any plans, hadn’t seen the point, not with just him and Monty. The festivities had lost whatever appeal they’d had, with the day itself just another to be got through. But there was another day he marked, the date ringed in red in his big desk diary in his office.
Would Ru still be here? Even if it stopped snowing now, clearing the roads would take time, especially up here on the edge of the moor, and along the remote tracks that led to Bobblecombe. It was entirely possible that his unexpected guest would still be under his roof when Christmas not only arrived, but had departed, too.
The thought should have alarmed him. But what alarmed him more, was that he wasn’t.
The coffee made, the food followed a few minutes after. Taking the plates to the table, Jake pushed one of them across to Ru.
Picking it up, Ru looked at it as if he had no idea what to do with the huge house brick of a sandwich, with bits of sausage poking out the sides. He bit into it, fast and sudden, and closed his eyes as he groaned in sausage induced ecstasy.
He chewed slowly, lost in his own world, his lips slick with melted butter and sausage fat. Jake held his own sandwich, clamped between his hands. He watched, mesmerised as a deer caught in car headlights, as Ru’s mouth worked the food, the tip of his tongue making regular sweeps of his lips.
A sausage fell out of Jake’s sandwich on to his plate.
Fucking hell. Since when was a sausage sandwich a turn on? His dick twitched in his underwear, waking up for the first time since he couldn’t remember when.
This was not what he needed or wanted. No way.
Averting his eyes, he bit into his own sandwich as he sent up a prayer for a sudden break in the weather.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ru’s mouth tingled from the explosion of flavours. The bread was nothing like the sourdough he bought from the supermarket. This was way more substantial, way more chewy, with a crust that crackled when he bit into it.
“This is incredible.” He wiped a smear of butter from his chin. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a sandwich this good. Normally I buy from a place that charges the best part of a tenner for something half this size. Reckon I’ve been ripped off.”
“Make ‘em yourself, they’ll be cheaper and better.”
Ru grimaced. “I always mean to, but I forget because my mind’s forever racing from A to B to Z.” Which was true, but not the whole story. Bread had been banned from the flat, war declared on all that carb heavy goodness, forcing Ru to skulk around, secretly searching out his fix. Not anymore, though. He took a huge, eager bite. “Where do you get it?” he asked, as soon as he’d swallowed. “Can’t imagine there’s a bakery around the corner.”
“My nearest neighbour, Barbara, bakes. She’s got a small farm shop. Her farm’s about seven miles from here.”
Ru stopped chewing and stared up at Jake, his eyes wide. “Your nearest neighbour isseven milesaway? God. Mine’s aboutseven meters, and that’s being generous. I swear I can hear him thinking half the time.”
“That’s cities for you. No space to breathe.”
“It can be like that, I suppose. A bit on the claustrophobic side. Sometimes there’s the need to just… escape.” Ru dropped his gaze back to his sandwich and carried on eating.
The large, hungry bites were replaced with smaller ones, almost nibbles. His chewing slowed as his thoughts left the farm and returned to his small flat on the top floor of a Victorian conversion. Clothes strewn everywhere, the bed unmade, books and magazines in teetering piles in his living room, everything as messy as his life, both of which he’d fled for a few days… a few days which looked like turning into a whole lot longer.
“You eat meat, then? Thought you were going to say you didn’t, that you were a vegan or something. If that were the case, you were looking at slim pickings.”
“What? Vegan? No way. Carbs. I don’t really eat them. You know, bread and stuff.” Ru looked at the sandwich which was only a bite or two away from disappearing. “But I reckon I need to reconsider my life choices.”
