A Funny Thing Happened...

by Caroline Anderson

  She swung the torch round and hunted for the lantern and matches, then fiddled for ages trying to light it while he stood waiting in the shabby kitchen, frustration coming off him in tangible waves.

  Thank God it was dark, she thought. Maybe by lamplight the tired room would look cosy and romantic—and maybe she’d look a bit more presentable and less as if she’d been tumbled in the haybarn, but it was unlikely. She finally got the wick to burn, and trimmed it and put the glass globe back. The flame spluttered and steadied, and she held it up and looked up at him—and up, and up...

  ‘You’re tiny,’ he said accusingly, as if it were a fault in her that she should have tried to overcome.

  ‘Sorry, but the best things come in little packages,’ she quipped, and tried to ignore the race of her pulse. ‘Now, why don’t you go in the parlour and ring the rescue people before it’s so bad they won’t come out?’

  She handed him the lantern and pushed him towards the parlour door. ‘Phone’s in there.’

  ‘Where am I? I need to tell them how to get here.’

  She met his eyes and knew this was going to be embarrassing. It had seemed fun at the time when she’d changed the name, but now—

  ‘Puddleduck Farm,’ she told him, and felt her chin rise challengingly.

  ‘Pu—right,’ he said, letting out his breath. Humour danced in his midnight eyes, but to his credit he kept it in—to a point. Then he blew it. ‘Don’t tell me—your name’s Jemima.’

  She breathed in and drew herself up to her full five feet nothing. ‘That’s right,’ she told him, and dared him to comment

  His mouth twitched but he said not another word. ‘Nice to meet you, Jemima,’ he said with a courtly, mocking little bow. ‘Samuel Bradley. At your service.’

  ‘I thought I was at yours,’ she said drily.

  His mouth twisted in a wry smile, and her heart did a crazy hiccup. ‘You are—and I’m very grateful. I’ll ring them.’

  She left him to it and went back into the kitchen, filling the kettle and standing it on the hob by torchlight. She could hear his voice rising, but she guessed it was fruitless. Against the window she could see the swirling snow, bright in the torchlight, falling now in great fat flakes that would cut them off without doubt She threw the dirty crockery into the sink and ran hot water over it, trying to hide it.

  Hopeless. She needed to spend hours in here, but there just wasn’t the time in the day, and by the evening she was bushed—

  He stomped into the kitchen, a look of disgust on his face, and set the lantern down with a little smack. The flame flickered and steadied.

  ‘Problems?’ she said mildly. She knew there would be.

  ‘They can’t come,’ he growled. ‘They’re flooded with calls and they can’t do anything until tomorrow.’ He glanced at his watch, a thin flat disc of gold on a plain leather strap, simple and tasteful—and why was she even noticing?

  ‘Mind if I ring the people I’m going to? They’ll be expecting me and I don’t want them to worry.’

  ‘Of course. Be my guest. You can stay the night, if you like.’

  ‘Oh, that won’t be necessary. I’m sure I can walk to them from here; it can’t be far.’

  ‘In this?’ She shone the torch at the window again and he swore. He was doing that rather a lot. Obviously a man who liked things his own way. He’d better not take up farming, then, she thought with an inward sigh. She’d got thirty cows out there to milk without power, not to mention the calves to feed and water to fetch and eggs to collect, and it was going to be hell—starting shortly.

  ‘I’ll ring them,’ he muttered, and went back into the parlour with the lantern.

  ‘Hi, Gramps, it’s Sam. Look, I’ve had a minor hiccup. I’ve got the car stuck in a drift at Puddleduck Farm. How far is that from you? Can I walk?’

  ‘Puddleduck? Oh, that’s only—’

  ‘Puddleduck?’ his grandmother said in the background. ‘Give that to me. Hello, Sam?’

  ‘Hello, Grannie. I was just telling Gramps I’m at Puddleduck Farm. The car’s stuck in a drift, so I was going to walk—’

  ‘Oh, no, not in this! It’s much too far! You stay there, Jemima will look after you—’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘Oh, yes, we’re neighbours—well, sort of,’ she rushed on. ‘It’s quite a distance, though, a good two miles, and in this snow and the dark—no, darling, it’s not safe; you stay there with Jemima. Perhaps you can give her a hand—she’s on her own and with the power out she’ll have to milk by hand—she could probably use your muscles to help with the other chores.’

  He heard his grandfather snort in the background, and could have groaned aloud. Help her—in this? He hated the cold, and most particularly he hated cows. He looked down at his socks and trousers, covered at the ankle with a malodorous plastering of dark green, courtesy of one of the aforementioned, and sighed. He could just see the look he’d get at the dry cleaners!

  ‘I’m sure she can cope—’

  ‘Oh, Sam! She’s on her own and she’s a tiny slip of a thing. You can’t abandon her!’

  He crumbled. ‘OK, Grannie,’ he surrendered. He knew when he was beaten, and if there was one thing his grandmother had always been able to do, it was to sort out his priorities. That, after all, was why he was coming to see her now.

  ‘Will you be all right?’ he asked belatedly.

  ‘Oh, yes. We’ve got a lovely warm house, and lots of wood inside the porch. We’ll be fine—after all, we’ve got no animals to worry about now apart from the dogs and cats. We’ll just wait it out. You just look after Jemima, and keep in touch. Give her our love.’

  He said goodbye and cradled the phone thoughtfully. Look after Jemima, eh? From the brief glimpse he’d had of her that wouldn’t be necessary—she seemed more than capable of looking after herself, tiny though she might be. He went back into the kitchen and set the lamp down, just as she poured the tea.

  ‘All right?’ she asked brightly, and turned round.

  The lamplight caught her eyes, golden brown and mellow with a hint of mischief, matching the smile on her chapped lips and the chaotic tumble of curls that rioted around her head. She looked young and vulnerable and incredibly lovely, and he had a sudden shaft of suspicion about his grandmother’s motives.

  ‘My grandparents send their love,’ he said, watching her closely. ‘Dick and Mary King.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘You’re their grandson?’

  ‘Yes. I was on my way to stay with them, only it’s apparently too far to walk, my grandmother said. She suggested I should stay here and help you—if you really did mean it when you offered me a bed for the night?’

  Jemima looked hard, but she couldn’t see a thing where his halo ought to be. It must be on Mary’s head, she thought, and stifled a smile. It was barely three hundred yards over the fields to Dick and Mary’s little farmhouse, and Mary knew it. So would Sam, when he realised where he was, and who she was.

  Help her, eh?

  She eyed her captive farmhand with interest. Six foot, at least, and well muscled under the sweater. He’d grown up nicely...

  Yes, he’d do. A bit soft, of course, but he was proud enough to work through that. All she had to do was appeal to his ego.

  Bless Mary. What a regular sweetheart!

  ‘Thanks—that would be great,’ she agreed, and smiled the first genuine smile since he’d arrived.

  ‘I’ll pay you for the accommodation, of course,’ he said quickly—doing things correctly again, of course. Her smile widened.

  ‘That’s OK—I’ll take payment in kind.’ She ran her eyes over his body, openly assessing him, and to her delight he coloured. He really hadn’t changed much at all. ‘You look fairly useful,’ she went on, a smile teasing round her lips. ‘Have you got stamina?’

  ‘I’m sure I can keep up with you,’ he said blandly, recovering his composure. His lips twitched, and her eyes were drawn to the fine sculpted lines of his mouth. Not too
full, but not skimpy, either. She’d lay odds he’d learned to kiss—

  ‘I’d better find you something to wear—unless you’ve got anything you want to get from the car?’ she said hastily, backing off from this banter before she talked herself into more trouble than she could handle. After all, they were trapped alone together. Just because he’d been a nice boy didn’t mean he was a reliable adult He could be a serial killer, or a rapist—! ‘Perhaps some jeans?’

  ‘I’ve got some—thank God. I can just see me squeezed into a pair of your tiny little jeans. Yet another assault on the family jewels,’ he said drily.

  She blushed, ignoring his remark, or at least the last part of it. ‘I was going to offer you something of my uncle’s, but if you’ve got things in the car we might as well get them before it gets worse.’

  He looked at the snow swirling up against the window and his face was a picture. He obviously didn’t relish going out in it any more than she did, but the difference was she had to and he didn’t.

  She had a sudden pang of conscience, and stifled it. He was big enough and ugly enough to look after himself, she decided, and anyway, they were his clothes. Whether he would help with the cows had yet to be seen.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I wonder if it might make more sense to do it in the morning?’

  ‘You might not find the car in the morning,’ she pointed out in fairness, and then added, ‘I don’t suppose you thought to tie anything on the aerial?’

  ‘Like what?’ he said wryly. ‘Party balloons? Anyway, it doesn’t have an aerial.’

  ‘Oh.’ Funny, with those expensive-looking clothes she would have thought he could have afforded a car with a radio, but whatever. ‘We ought to mark it with something red, so a snow plough doesn’t come along and upend it into the hedge. It’s been done before.’

  He went pale, poor love. ‘Oh,’ he said tightly. ‘I haven’t marked it. Do you have anything red?’

  She thought, and the only thing that came to mind was a bra—a lacy confection that she didn’t wear any longer. After all the cows didn’t give a tinker’s cuss if she wore sexy undies, and frankly the plain cotton croptop style bras were more comfortable when she was working.

  Still, she wasn’t sure she was ready to let him tie it to his car!

  ‘Maybe,’ she conceded. ‘I’ll have to look. We’ll tie it to a stick and shove it in the drift. If it’s attached to the car it might get covered.’

  ‘Covered?’ he exclaimed.

  She shrugged. ‘Whatever, we need to get your gear out. I think there might still be a pair of boots here your sort of size—here, try these.’

  She turned them upside down and banged them, and a huge spider fell out and ran across the floor.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ he yelled, backing up into the kitchen. The collie chased the spider and cornered it, then barked at it.

  ‘Just a spider—Jess, stop it! You’re daft. Here, try them on.’

  He took the boots suspiciously. ‘Any cousins down there?’ he asked, peering down the tops.

  ‘Possibly. Tuck your trousers into your socks, just in case. Is that the best coat you’ve got?’

  He pushed his feet into the wellies with a shudder and stood up. ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Because apart from the fact that it’ll get filthy, it’s not waterproof, and when the snow melts on you, you’ll get soaked and freeze. ,

  ‘I can hardly wait,’ he muttered.

  Jemima took pity on him and banged out an old waxed jacket, checking the sleeves for spiders before handing it over. ‘Here, try this.’

  He pulled it on and looked instantly more like a farmer and less like a townie. Amazing what the right uniform could do to a man. He almost looked as if he could cope with a cow—except for the fine wool trousers that were going to get hopelessly ruined unless he changed.

  ‘What about the red thing to tie to a stick?’

  ‘Ah.’ She ran upstairs, found the red bra and a matching suspender belt, and stuffed them into a pocket. She’d tie them on when he wasn’t looking...

  ‘Let’s go and get your gear,’ she said, arriving back in the kitchen and pulling on her own coat and boots. She told the dogs to stay and headed out into the blizzard, torch in hand. She picked up a couple of stakes from the corner by the shed, and headed across the yard towards the lane.

  He followed her, not more than a few inches away all the way to the car, and so she heard his muttered exclamation when they found it almost totally buried under the snow drift.

  ‘Where’s the case?’ she asked.

  ‘In the boot.’ He eyed the smothered boot with jaundice. ‘I suppose I’d better brush the snow off first.’

  ‘Probably,’ she agreed, and held the torch while he swiped at the light powdery heaps. It reminded her of why you couldn’t make a decent sandcastle with dry sand—it just kept on pouring down. In the end he swore in exasperation and just opened the boot, hauled out a smart garment bag and a monogrammed leather sports bag, and slammed the lid before the entire snow drift slid inside.

  And so much for him not being able to afford a car with a radio, she thought, eyeing the BMW logo on the boot lid with jaundice. It probably had a gadget to pick up radio waves by telepathy!

  ‘I’d better lock it,’ he muttered, pointing the remote control at the car, and Jemima stifled a laugh. City types, she thought, and tried to forget that until just under a year ago she’d been one too.

  ‘I’ll put these sticks up,’ she told him, and, rummaging in her pocket, she pulled out the underwear, tied it to the sticks and then took one to the front, ramming it in by the side of the bumper where it would stay up and show.

  She struggled back past the car, grabbed the other stick and was pushing it into place when Sam took the torch from her hand and pointed it at her ‘flags’.

  ‘What the—?’

  ‘Don’t you dare laugh,’ she warned him, but it was too much.

  A chuckle rose in his throat, and without thinking she scooped up a handful of snow and shoved it down his miserable neck.

  He let out a yell that would have woken the dead and returned the favour, and a huge glob of snow slid down her front and lodged in her bra.

  ‘Touché!’ she said with a laugh, and backed off, pulling her clothes away from her chest and shaking the snow out.

  ‘Pax?’ he asked warily, hefting a fresh snowball just in case.

  She considered revenge, and then decided she’d get her own back on him in the next few hours anyway—in spades!

  ‘Absolutely,’ she agreed. ‘I’m cold enough without snow in my underwear. You can drop that.’

  ‘Not yet—just look on it as insurance,’ he told her, and she flashed the torch at him and caught a lingering smile that transformed his face and did odd things to her insides.

  They headed back down the lane, bent over to shelter from the driving blizzard, and made it back to the cottage without incident.

  ‘I should change into jeans,’ she advised as they shed their outer gear and went back into the lamp-lit kitchen. ‘It can get mucky in the barn.’

  ‘Mucky?’ he said with suspicion, and she smiled.

  ‘That’s the one,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I should change in here—I’ll go and dig out some sheets and make up your bed while you do that.’

  She pulled off her hat, shook the snow off her hair and ran upstairs with the torch, her socks soundless on the threadbare carpet. She decided to put him in the room over the parlour. After hers, which was over the kitchen, it was the warmest.

  It was also right beside hers, which might not be such a good move. She eyed the doors of the other rooms, but they were small, cold and full of boxes that she still had to sort out.

  She’d have to put up with his proximity, and not get into any more playful snowball fights with him that might lead on to other things. She was finished with all of that. She didn’t need it—or rangy, sexy men with wicked smiles and attitude. She made the bed up and trie
d not to think about what he was doing downstairs with those incredible long legs of his.

  She tugged the quilt straight, patted the pillows and went back down, taking the torch with her. Again, her socks made no sound, and she arrived in the kitchen to find him crouched down in his designer jeans, scratching the dogs behind their ears.

  Amazing.

  ‘I should watch Jess, she doesn’t like men much,’ she warned.

  ‘Jess?’

  The collie pricked her ears and looked longingly at him.

  ‘Short for Jezebel,’ she muttered. Faithless mutt. Apart from Sam’s grandfather she’d bitten every other man who’d crossed the threshold since Uncle Tom had died!

  ‘Come on, let’s go and get this milking started. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll finish. Ever milked a cow before?’

  He shuddered. Not a good sign. ‘No, thank God.’ ‘Oh. Oh, well, you’ll learn, I suppose. I wonder how long this power cut will last?’

  ‘Phone the electricity board. They usually have an idea.’

  Stupid. She should have thought of that. If she hadn’t been so distracted by him, she probably would have done it ages ago. She took the torch into the parlour and rang up. It did nothing for her mood.

  ‘Unknown fault,’ she told him disgustedly. ‘Could be hours—it sounds like a huge area’s out. I thought it was my tree.’

  ‘Shorting out the whole of Dorset? It must be a hell of a tree.’

  She laughed. ‘In its day, maybe. Now it’s just a pain. Come on, let’s turn you into a country boy. Ever seen the film City Slickers?’

  He gave her a dirty look. She deserved it. It was a cheap shot.

  ‘Come on, townie,’ she said more kindly. ‘Let’s see what you’re made of. I’m sure I can find you something safe to do.’

  She grabbed her coat, shoved her feet into her boots and picked up the lantern. ‘OK, cowpoke. Let’s be having you.’

  He met her eyes without a word, and she saw him pick up her challenge like a gauntlet. Oh, lawks. She was in way over her head.