The next week flew by, and before Sophie knew it Saturday morning came around again. She’d been particularly busy as the first of the Eloise crops would be off the trees in mid August, which would mark the beginning of the picking and pressing season for Carter’s. The honey rich scent of the sweetest apples in the orchard as they were washed and then gradually pressed would infuse the air, gently at odds with the alcoholic kick that the finished Eloise cider would have. Sophie loved seeing them coming in, beginning their journey from tree to bottle. She’d tried not to wax too lyrical about it to Alex, for fear that he might think her some apple obsessed weirdo, but it was definitely the marker of her favourite time of year. Eloise was unusual in that it ripened in the late summer rather than autumn, but this meant that it was out of the way before the heavier, denser apples came in from September onwards.
As was her usual routine, but mindful that she might be invading Alex’s space now that he was residing with Lily, Sophie dropped in on Lily that morning with a couple of cream cakes from Bird’s Bakery. Lily was fond of a strong morning coffee to counteract the effects of her habitual Benedictine nightcap, and was of the age where ‘none of this dieting makes a scrap of difference, anyway, darling,’ so cake was always welcome. Lily opened the door with her usual smile, and when she’d finished making the coffee, from a coffee pot she’d had since the 1970s – ‘No new fangled machines and pods for me,’ – they settled themselves in the front room, sipping the coffee and munching contentedly on the vanilla slices Sophie had chosen this week.
‘Best cakes in the county,’ Lily said, stabbing the pastry base with her cake fork. As she finished her mouthful, she topped up Sophie’s cup with coffee and cream and passed it back to her. ‘So, what’s new with you then, love?’
‘Not a lot,’ Sophie said. ‘And I’m sure Alex has filled you in on most of the comings and goings at work, and there’s really not a great deal else gone on this week.’ Alex had checked out of Brenda’s B & B and moved into Lily’s spare room the previous Sunday evening, where he was proving himself to be the model house guest. Sophie had smiled when her grandmother had texted her on Tuesday morning to extoll the good manners of her new resident, who had insisted on taking Barney for a walk before work, and unloading the dishwasher when he’d come back that evening.
‘What about this job offer from Martingtons Cider? Have you made a decision yet?’
‘Not yet,’ Sophie hedged. ‘But I’ve scheduled a meeting with them for late October, when the picking season’s well and truly over.’
‘It sounds like a good opportunity,’ Lily said. ‘I’m beginning to wonder what’s keeping you from saying yes here and now.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Gran,’ Sophie said, rising from the far too comfortable armchair in her grandmother’s parlour. ‘I honestly don’t know which way to jump. Martingtons have made me a brilliant offer, and I might not get another one like it, but I’m just not sure it’s what I truly want.’ She crossed the parlour to take her grandmother’s coffee cup back to the kitchen. ‘Shall I put another coffee on?’
‘No, thank you, my love, but could you just dash upstairs and get my reading glasses? I left them on my bedside table last night when I was proofreading on the Kindle and forgot to bring them down with me this morning.’ Lily was in the late stages of completing her current romance novel and since she’d discovered the Kindle, she’d taken to reading her manuscripts on there, as it made errors easier to spot.
‘Sure,’ Sophie called over her shoulder. She could hear the water running as she padded up the winding staircase to the landing. Alex must have come back from his run before she’d popped in. He’d told her that he’d taken to jogging around the perimeter of the village before work during the week; he’d obviously taken to doing it at weekends, too. As she got to the top of the stairs and turned right onto the landing she glanced down at her phone, which she’d been checking on the way up. Her grandmother always complained if she checked it too regularly in her presence, so she was just scrolling down her Instagram feed as she passed the door to the guest bathroom. Not looking where she was going, she ran slap into Alex, who was coming out of it, dropping her phone, hands going up to block the collision and landing on some very warm, very wet, bare flesh.
‘Whoa!’ Alex laughed. ‘Too much traffic this morning. Excuse me.’
Dropping her hands immediately, mortified, Sophie found herself nose to chiselled jaw with Alex, who was wearing nothing but one of her grandmother’s fluffy white towels slung low on his hips. His body still wet from the shower, hair slicked back from his face, she immediately noticed the toned torso, the towel so low that she could make out the top of a faded appendix scar running over his abdomen towards his hip, the long limbs and the fine dark hair that dusted his chest, thickened and then disappeared tantalisingly below the line of the towel. Immediately, her face felt hot. This was not going to help her caution about socialising with him one little bit. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, taking a step back. ‘I wasn’t looking where I was going. I just came up to get Gran’s glasses.’
‘No problem.’ This time, Alex’s laugh was a little nervous. ‘Here, let me get that for you.’ He knelt down and picked up Sophie’s phone from where it had fallen onto the carpet. Sophie immediately found herself willing his towel to slip, and then started thinking even more unsuitable thoughts as his sleek, dark head raised and he looked up at her, all damp tendrils of hair and melting dark brown eyes as he handed her back her phone. As he stood back up, they were still a little too close to each other to be comfortable. Sophie took a step one way, dragging her eyes away from Alex’s near naked body and up to his face, but as she did so, Alex stepped the same way and they ended up close together again. Sophie could feel the heat emanating from Alex and had to fight the urge to reach out a hand and trace a line over that tantalising curved scar on his abdomen.
‘Sorry. I’ll just, er… I’ll see you downstairs, OK?’ she said, finally getting a hold of herself. She turned back to the stairs and away from Alex.
‘Sophie?’ Alex’s voice held a trace of amusement.
‘Yes?’
‘Hadn’t you better go and get your grandmother’s glasses first?’
‘Bugger. Yes, of course.’ Face flaming again, Sophie scuttled past Alex, eyes down this time, and into her gran’s room. As she turned to close the door behind her, she caught sight of Alex disappearing into his room, and her heart flipped at the sight of his muscular back. She let out a deep breath. She already knew that she fancied Alex; it was hard not to when she spent so much time with him at work, and, after all, he was incredibly good looking. However, coming so close to him had really jolted her. Her heart was hammering so violently in her chest, she was surprised it hadn’t echoed off the stone walls of the landing, and she couldn’t get the image of Alex, clad only in that towel, out of her mind. Not to mention what was hidden by the towel. To make it worse, her phone had obviously snapped a shot of him as it had fallen, and a rather blurry image of his chest now took its place as the most recent photo. She really should get rid of it, she thought. Then didn’t.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ Too late, she realised she’d said it out loud. She hoped Alex had closed his door behind him; she’d have trouble explaining that it was thoughts of him that caused the outburst, rather than struggling to find her grandmother’s glasses, which were, unsurprisingly, exactly where she’d said they would be. Grabbing them off the bedside table, Sophie hurried out of the bedroom door, back across the landing and then down the stairs before she could encounter Alex again. She definitely needed to compose herself before that happened.
‘Everything all right?’ Lily asked as Sophie came back into the parlour. ‘You look a little flushed.’
‘Fine,’ Sophie replied shortly. The last thing she wanted was to give her grandmother any more ammunition. ‘Here are your glasses.’
Lily took them with a smile, and then glanced down at her feet, where Barney the Weimaraner had crashed out. ‘He’s not used to quite so much exercise as Alex keeps giving him,’ she said wryly. ‘But I’m sure it’s good for him. He’s a fine specimen.’
Sophie wondered for a moment whether Lily was talking about Alex or the dog, but was deflected from asking the question by the former’s appearance in the parlour. He was more suitably clad in tan cargo shorts and a black T-shirt now, but his hair was still wet from the shower. Sophie felt her face flaming again as she remembered their encounter in the upstairs hallway.
‘Did you have a good run, dear?’ Lily asked.
‘Yeah, thanks.’ Alex smiled at the two women.
Please don’t smile like that, Sophie found herself thinking. He was heartbreaking when he did.
‘Any plans for this afternoon?’ Lily stroked Barney’s silky grey head, which had snaked its way up to her lap.
‘I thought I might head into Bristol and see some sights,’ Alex replied. ‘There’s a bus on the hour from High Street, isn’t there?’
‘Oh, yes, you mentioned something about that last weekend, if I remember correctly,’ Lily replied. She glanced at her granddaughter. ‘Do you have any plans for the afternoon, love?’
Sophie bit her lip, vaguely irritated with her grandmother for calling attention to her. ‘No, not really,’ she conceded. She supposed sitting in the garden and sunbathing didn’t really count.
‘Why don’t you and Alex go into town together, then? I’m sure you’d make a good tour guide. You said the other day you’d been meaning to go in and take a look at the new exhibition in the Bristol Museum.’
‘I’m sure Alex has seen quite enough of me at work this week as it is!’ Sophie replied, giving a nervous laugh. She glanced at him. Was that merely a polite smile, or was he mortified about being put in this position by Lily? Perhaps, because he hadn’t mentioned getting together for a drink again, he’d changed his mind and was embarrassed?
‘Not at all,’ Alex said, still smiling. ‘Although I’ll understand if you feel that way. It can’t be much fun answering my questions all the time.’
‘Well, you do have a lot of them!’ Sophie replied. ‘But I like teaching you.’
Alex laughed. ‘That’s a relief! So, do you want to come with me this afternoon?’
Sophie felt herself blushing, both because of the prospect of spending the afternoon with Alex and because she was a bit gutted she didn’t have anything else to do, and she felt like quite the saddo for it. Much as she hated to admit it, her social life had taken a dive since she’d split with Mark. Lots of their friends were in couples, and inevitably had not quite known what to say when the relationship ended. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said eventually. ‘Gran’s right, I have been meaning to go to the museum for a while, and it would be nice to get out of the village for a bit.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’ll just nip home and get my handbag. Shall I meet you at the bus stop?’
‘Yeah, sure,’ Alex replied. ‘I look forward to it.’
‘You kids have fun,’ Lily said as Sophie kissed her goodbye. If Alex hadn’t been standing there, she’d have chided her gran for the knowing look she gave her, but this time she decided to let it slide. There was nothing wrong with spending an afternoon with a work colleague, after all, was there?