by Jessica Hart
Good grief, she had to pull herself together. Flora cleared her throat, and made a big deal of searching for some frangipane tarts she had made the day before. The bulk of them were destined for a café in Ayesborough, but she had put aside a few to break the ice with Max.
Although frankly grappling each other naked on the table would be a much better way of warming things up.
Stop it, Flora told herself, horrified by the way her wayward brain had grabbed on to that stupid fantasy and was busily galloping away with it. This was Sir Max Kennard, village squire and Hope’s brother and out of her league on absolutely every count. Quite apart from being very poor fantasy material. I mean, why not pick someone incredibly handsome to fantasize about? And not just handsome. If she was going to have a fantasy, she should make it a good one, about a prince like Hope’s perhaps, or some billionaire businessman relocating to Combe St Philip for some unspecified reason (it was just a fantasy, after all).
She had to spend the next few months with Max. Fantasizing about him was totally inappropriate, not to mention pointless.
She was absolutely not going to do it.
Chapter Two
It was time to get businesslike. “Have a frangipane tart,” Flora offered, hoping that some sugar might sweeten his mood. She pushed the tin across the table towards Max. “What time will the kitchen be free in the mornings?” she asked as he peered in the tin and took one of the dainty confections.
“I’m usually out and about by seven.” Max took a bite of the tartlet and chewed, raising his brows in a gesture of approval. “Good,” he commented, and Flora was absurdly pleased by his praise.
She was less delighted to see him take another tartlet, break it in two and toss half each to the two dogs who had finished shredding newspaper and, scenting treats, were now sitting by his chair, looking alert. One was a shaggy thing with a dopey expression, the other a bristly terrier. They caught the pieces of tart in the air with a snap of their jaws and gulped them down. Flora thought of the exquisitely delicate pastry she had made, the filling of just the right consistency and the almond flavour perfectly balanced, and sighed.
Max was outlining his morning. He had converted one of outbuildings to a studio from which he ran his landscape design business, but first thing every morning he walked the dogs to the great glasshouses beyond the kitchen garden where he ran what Hope said was a surprisingly profitable sideline producing pot plants for hotels and offices.
“I’ll give you a key so that you can let yourself in and out the back door,” Max said now. “You can park by the stables, which will be more convenient than trekking through the great hall every day.”
“I think I’ll walk most days,” said Flora, nobly ignoring the temptation to comment on how thoroughly she had been reduced to servant status. “It’s a lovely walk up from the village. I’m anxious not to get in your way, though.”
“You won’t bother me,” he said brusquely. “I might come in to make the occasional coffee or slap a sandwich together, but that’s all I use the kitchen for.”
“I can tell.” Flora tried not to shudder at the idea of slapping a sandwich together. She wouldn’t be able to watch. “You don’t have what I’d call a well-equipped kitchen.”
“I’ve got everything I need,” he pointed out.
“That would be the can opener?”
Max eyed her severely. “I don’t like a lot of fuss about food, or anything, in fact.”
“Mm. You might have to change your attitude before June. If there’s one thing a wedding means, it’s fuss, and when it comes to a royal wedding, it’ll be fuss multiplied to power of ten.”
“Tell me about it,” sighed Max, thinking of the refurbishments he was already planning. The décor in the manor was very tired and he would have to redecorate at the very least before Hope’s big day. She was planning a marquee in the garden for the reception, but guests would be in and out of the manor itself all day in search of bathrooms and somewhere to leave their coats or freshen their lipstick or whatever else women did when they disappeared at functions.
Apparently the Crown Prince and Princess of San Michele could not be expected to use the same loo as everyone else and he would need to install a brand-new one reserved for their sole use on the day. What about all the other princes and princesses who would be there? Would they expect their own facilities too? And then there would be bridesmaids staying the night before ...
Max’s head started to spin whenever he thought about everything that was involved in the supposedly simple wedding. He didn’t mind the house being shabby, but he didn’t want Hope to feel ashamed of it, and if the royals in San Michele were being sniffy about the wedding being here, the least he could do for his sister was make sure everything was looking its best on her wedding day.
“It’s exciting, though, isn’t it?” Flora smiled encouragingly at him.
“If you like that sort of thing.”
“You mean, like glamour and romance? Royalty, champagne, incredible frocks, handsome men, sparkling jewels? Oh, wait, you’re right, that’s just dull, dull, dull.”
Max was disconcerted by her teasing. Most people were too intimidated by his frown or impressed by his title but Flora seemed to think that he was amusing. He couldn’t decide if he liked it or not.
“It’s all very well to get excited about a wedding,” he said austerely, “but we don’t know much about this Jonas yet, do we? I mean, he’s a prince – fine – but what kind of man is he?” He frowned at Flora. “You’re her friend. You women talk about these things. What do you think about him?”
“I think Hope loves him, and that’s what’s important.”
“But what’s he like?”
“I don’t know him any better than you do, but he must be pretty special to have got her to agree to marry him at all, don’t you think?”
“That’s true.” Max brooded a moment, absently tugging on Bella’s ears. “I just want her to be happy,” he found himself confessing. “She’s had a tough time.”
Flora’s expression softened. “I know,” she said. “But Hope has always known her own mind, and I think she’s marrying Jonas in spite of the fact that he’s a prince, not because of it.”
Max hoped she was right. He’d only met Jonas briefly, and it hadn’t been long enough to really get the measure of him.
“I’m just concerned that they’re rushing into things,” he said. “Once you start talking weddings, everything snowballs, and before you know where you are, it’s out of control and you can’t stop it.”
Flora had been drinking her coffee, but now she put her cup back in its saucer, and studied him with those bright blue eyes. “Is that what happened when you got married?” she asked nosily.
How had he got into this conversation? Max wondered. He never talked about personal matters. Flora might live in the same village, but to all intents and purposes she was a stranger. It was just that when she sat there looking at him with her head slightly tilted and her expression warm and interested, he felt strangely compelled to tell her.
“A bit. Yes, it was. Not that I didn’t want to marry Stella,” he added hastily. “I did. She was – is – beautiful, but we were both very young. I was only twenty-three, and I –”
He stopped. He’d been about to tell Flora Deare of all people that he’d been desperate to believe that somebody loved him. He’d fallen hard for Stella when he met her at university. Max could still see her as she’d been then, with her cloud of dark hair and great pansy eyes, so fragile-looking and sweet. He had hardly been able to believe that she would love him back, so when she started talking about marriage, of course he’d agreed.
He’d assumed that they would be married in a few years’ time, but Stella had been thrilled, and suddenly it was announcements and engagement parties and fevered discussions about dates and dresses and he’d wanted time to breathe, to suggest that they stopped for a while and thought about what they were doing. But Stella had been happy, and he h
adn’t known how to put on the brakes until it was far too late.
Flora was waiting for him to finish. I was young, he would say, but instead when he opened his mouth, something else entirely came out. “I was afraid of losing her,” he said.
“I’m not surprised,” she said. “She’s very beautiful.”
“You know Stella?”
“Hope showed me your wedding photos. I think she was trying to cure me.”
“Cure you?”
“Of my broken heart,” she explained kindly.
Max stared at her. “What?”
“Yep.” Flora nodded. “I had a massive crush on you when I was fifteen. Oh, don’t look so appalled,” she added with a mischievous glint. “I’m over you now, of course, but at the time ... wow, that hurt! I mean, what were you thinking, preferring to marry a gorgeous, slim, charming woman your own age instead of waiting for a fat, awkward adolescent to grow up?”
“Foolish of me,” he said with a sardonic look, and Flora was pleased to see that oddly lost expression as he recalled his marriage vanish into his more customary dourness.
She hadn’t made the crush up. She hadn’t known Hope in those days, and Max was a distant figure. On the rare occasions he came into the shop, he seemed guarded and aloof, but that had only added to his mystique. He was Max Kennard, after all, heir to the baronetcy and beautiful Hasebury Hall.
That had been before the big scandal, when Gerald Kennard and his socialite wife, Georgie, had brought glamour to quiet Combe St Philip, running through the fortune built up by generations of more prudent Kennards.
Max and Hope were packed off to boarding school so that Georgie and Gerald could ski in Gstaad or Aspen in the winter. They spent their summers on yachts in the Caribbean or in villas overlooking the Mediterranean. There was a flat in New York and a house in London. On the rare occasions that they were at home in Combe St Philip, they threw lavish house parties. Celebrity guests roared through the village in their sports cars and took over the pub with their careless, golden arrogance. Sometimes they came into her grandparents’ shop and bought up vast quantities of gin or cigarettes. It was all enormously exciting and livened up the village, which was torn between disapproval and pride.
Max was the opposite of his flamboyant father. As a girl, Flora had found his reserve intriguing, but studying him now across the kitchen table, she wondered how hard it had been to be so obviously out of place in his parents’ jet-set lifestyle.
Max took another tart and inspected it closely, while the dogs quivered in anticipation. “How do you get them so perfect?” he asked.
“Practice,” said Flora, tacitly accepting the change of subject. “I spent two years at Mezzaluna as a pastry chef under Paolo Sparchetti, and I could make them in my sleep by the time I left.”
Even Max had heard of Mezzaluna and Paolo Sparchetti, the famously temperamental chef whose restaurant was showered with accolades and Michelin stars. Personally, he had better things to spend his money on – even without the need to install a new lavatory for royalty – but Flora must be good if she had worked there.
“Hope said you were thinking of opening your own restaurant in London,” he said, and she sighed a little as she pushed her empty coffee cup away.
“That was the plan. I was going to go into partnership with my boyfriend, who’s also a chef, but brilliant, and we were starting to look at properties, but then ... well, Pops was struggling without Granny, and I was worried about him. He was getting more and more confused, so I moved back here to keep an eye on him.”
“Couldn’t your mother have looked after him?”
Flora pulled a face. “She’s been in an ashram in India for the last couple of years. It’s not that she doesn’t care, it’s just ... well, she’s not very practical.”
That was putting it mildly, thought Max. In her own way, Flora’s mother was as notorious in Combe St Philip as his father had been. Christened sensibly Sarah, she had run off to join a cult at eighteen and changed her name to Sky. Periodically, she would return to see her parents, wearing weird and wonderful robes that made the villagers stare and spouting what was generally agreed to be nonsense about whatever religion or cult she happened to be following at the time.
When Hope had had to face down the pointing fingers and the humiliation of being the odd one out, Flora had understood, and they had been friends ever since.
“I’m sorry about your grandfather,” Max said in a rough voice. He remembered finding Norman Deare wandering around the manor gardens in his pyjamas one day. They’d had a long conversation about staking dahlias before Max had been able to guide him home. “He was a good man.”
Flora’s expression softened. “Yes, he was special. Granny, too. I miss them both.”
“I suppose the cottage is yours now?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
Norman Deare had died in the summer, nearly five months ago. The whole village had turned out for his funeral. It was the only time Max had seen Flora in black, and her face had been white and strained, but she had still greeted everyone with a smile – and the wake, he had heard, had been legendary.
“I thought you’d have gone back to London by now.” Max glanced around at the clutter Flora had brought into his kitchen, all in the name of her catering business. “I don’t understand why you’re spending your time making cakes here when it sounds like you’re much more interested in running a fancy restaurant.”
“I am, but unfortunately, the fancy restaurant option fell through with my relationship.” Flora’s smile was a little too bright to be convincing. “Rich – my boyfriend – wasn’t exactly supportive about me coming back to look after Pops. He was furious that I was going just when we were ready to set up a place of our own, and I do see that it was frustrating for him, but he gave me an ultimatum, and there wasn’t a choice as far as I was concerned. Pops had to come first.”
“It must have been tough for you,” Max said.
“Well, I’ve had better years,” she acknowledged, “but I’ll just have to set up my own restaurant. That’s been my dream since I was eight.”
“Eight? That’s early to be dreaming about restaurants, isn’t it?”
“My grandparents took me out for lunch for my birthday that year. It wasn’t long after I came to live with them, and I’d never experienced anything like it.” She smiled at the memory. “It was just an ordinary café, really, but I thought it was wonderful. Everything was pretty and people were enjoying themselves. I felt so grown up to be choosing from a menu, and when the food came, I thought it was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted. I swore there and then I’d have a restaurant of my own one day.
“And I still will,” she said, putting up her chin. “It would have been nice to have done it with Rich, but I don’t need him. I just need to sell the cottage and then move on to the next stage. It’ll need a bit of money to set up because I want to be in London. I’m a city girl now, and for a cutting-edge restaurant, that’s really the only place to be, but you know what London prices are like. I’ll need investors.”
Good luck with that, thought Max, remembering his own financial woes. In his experience, investors were never around when you needed them. But there was no point in bursting Flora’s bubble.
“It’s very good of you to stay until Hope’s wedding in that case,” he said.
“Oh, I’m not staying because of the wedding – of course I would always come back to do that.”
Max was surprised. “Then why are you still here? Are you having problems with probate?”
“No, nothing like that. I can’t sell the cottage yet.”
“Why not?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“Because of Sweetie,” Flora admitted.
There was a pause. “Sweetie?” he echoed tonelessly.
“My grandparents’ cat. It’s an awful name, isn’t it? And totally inappropriate. I’ve never met a cat who was less sweet, but t
hey adored him. Anyway, Sweetie’s very elderly now and Pops was really worried about what would happen to him. I promised that I’d look after him. He’s too old to adjust to a new home or a new owner, so as long as he’s alive, he gets to stay in the cottage, and I have to stay with him. I said you wouldn’t understand,” she finished accusingly, obviously reading Max’s expression without difficulty.
“Dear God,” he said. “You’re putting your life on hold for a cat?”
“I promised,” she said simply. “And don’t tell me you wouldn’t do same for those dogs,” she added, nodding down at Bella, who had abandoned hope of another frangipane tart and was lying in a shaggy heap on the floor, and Ted, still keeping an alert eye on Max.
“Dogs are different,” said Max firmly. “Cats don’t care about anyone but themselves.”
“It’s true that Sweetie isn’t the cuddliest of cats,” Flora admitted. “But he’s very beautiful.”
“Dogs have beautiful souls,” said Max. “Take Bella,” he said. “She was neglected as a puppy and when I took her, her coat was matted and dirty. Look at her now!”
Flora looked. “I can tell she’s got quite a varied ancestry,” she said tactfully.
“She’s mostly bearded collie, I reckon, but with some Labrador and something else.” Probably something brainless. Much as Max loved Bella, even he had to admit that she was stupid. Still, every time she stood still to let him brush her, his throat thickened at her willingness to trust him.
“What about the other one?”
“That’s Ted. I was walking along the lane over the bridge one day when I saw a van slow down and throw something out onto the riverbank. When I got there, I saw it was Ted.” Max reached down to stroke Ted’s bristly head. “The poor chap broke his leg and he still walks with a limp, don’t you? He was badly bruised and cut up.”
“Poor thing,” said Flora. “It was good of you to take him home.”
