Chapter Five
Laurel
The end of the week couldn’t come quick enough for Laurel. The bank had said that they would have to further consider her application for more funding for Hibbert’s fields, which would result in her stressing until the answer came through. It was the worst part, being in limbo. She could deal with a ‘no’, so long as she knew.
Laurel strapped the large bowl of rice pudding into the front passenger seat of the car. She was aware that strapping a large bowl of homemade rice pudding into the front passenger seat of a car was not something that was done regularly by people, but she really did not want it all over the upholstery if it tilted a little too far as she was driving the lanes to the farm.
Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to see Nate today. He’d be off doing whatever he did on the weekends. Hiking, saving puppies from burning buildings, reading to sick children. Urgh. It had turned into a game, seeing who could get to her office first. Nate would spend an hour or two ensconced in her office before the lure of the dig called, flashing his obnoxious but thoroughly delightful thighs in shorts and those Timberland boots that all the students seemed to wear like some kind of uniform.
Except on Thursday, when he spent all day reviewing his notes and making sure his funding reports were all present and correct, ready for submission on Friday. Which was horrific because it meant that her office smelled of thunderstorms and autumn nights all frigging day. The flexing of his forearms against his rolled-up shirt sleeves as he typed was immensely distracting.
Discovering that Alex Woollard was Nate’s British Archaeological Society liaison was like thinking you’ve made a massive archaeological discovery, only to realise that it was actually a cesspit. It still needed dealing with, assessing, studying, but it wasn’t remotely fun.
Alex Woollard was the cesspit.
But of course, she couldn’t make a fuss, she had to let it run over her like a Mongol horde. Because she’d put Alex’s part in what had happened behind her. It was not colouring her view anymore. She was being the bigger person and that included giving Cesspit Alex a fair crack at the whip. He could have changed in the last ten years, could have become less of a dick.
Doubtful, but it could have happened.
Regardless, he wasn’t here for another week or so, and today was Sunday. Fletcher Family Sunday Lunch.
There were things to discuss after the roast lamb, and Laurel went over her spiel in the car. It was an uphill struggle trying to get her family to do anything that was in the best interest of the business. They always did in the end, but each time it was a battle. It had been a struggle to open the cafe, open the conference centre, make the lake pretty enough for country walks, and it had been a fight of the most epic proportions to change the name from Fletcher’s Farm to Little Willow Farm.
Laurel was tired. Tired of having to butt heads with her family to get anything done, tired of having to be the bad guy all the time so the farm could make money, and certainly tired of getting absolutely no thanks for any of it.
If this was a normal job, she would have quit.
Laurel bit back that thought. There were times when she felt she was martyring herself, that she was a glutton for punishment, but she really couldn’t see herself doing anything else. Of course, she’d dreamed of using her archaeology degree on a dig site making exotic discoveries, dreamed of living in the south of France running her own vineyard. But everyone had pipe dreams, no one did exactly what they wanted to do, lived their life beholden to no one, did they?
She would never quit. It was her life, her family legacy. Laurel would do anything she had to do, be anyone she had to be, to keep her farm alive, especially in this political and economic climate where farming was way, way, way down on the government’s list of priorities.
Parking on the plot that would be forever reserved for her house, Laurel unstrapped the rice pudding and balanced it on the top of the car while she sorted her bag out.
The three houses sat snugly together and she headed for the old, wisteria-covered farmhouse in the middle where she grew up.
The thatch nearly needed replacing, but the whitewash was fresh and crisp.
Robin’s tiled roof house on the right looked cold and uninviting.
He had insisted on having it built when he was eighteen, much to Laurel’s chagrin.
He could barely look after himself, let alone a house.
She had steadfastly refused to deal with anything to do with it.
If he was old enough to live by himself, he was old enough to deal with the bills and insurance and cooking and cleaning and washing his own goddamned bedclothes.
Although she suspected her father did more than just help out now and again.
Not that Robin lived there. He was mostly in his childhood room at the old farmhouse and used his own house for parties, girls and, well, more girls.
Rebecca and Jack’s was much more inviting, with neatly trimmed hedgerows and wildflowers that Jack had cultivated so it matched the garden that their mother had planted next door all those years ago.
‘Hey, I’m here,’ Laurel called as she opened the door to her dad’s house. Like all old farmhouses, the front door opened into the main room. If you were coming from the farm, you went around the back, via the mud room.
‘Laurel, my girl!’
Rebecca appeared from the kitchen, looking the perfect wife in a breton top and jeans. Designer, but not pretentious.
‘Where do you want this?’ Laurel said, holding out her offering. ‘Don’t say in the bin. You know it’s Dad’s favourite.’
It was her mother’s recipe, although Laurel couldn’t quite get it right.
Rebecca rolled her eyes good naturedly.
‘Give it to me. Here, this is for you.’ She held out a large wine glass to Laurel, who swapped it for rice pudding.
‘Where are my favourite niece and nephew?’ Laurel called, and was rewarded by a thunder of feet on the stairs.
‘Laurel, Laurel,’ six-year-old Lila shouted as she raced down the stairs. ‘We’re showing him your room! He’s seen Daddy’s!’
She laughed, setting her glass down on the mantelpiece. ‘Showing who?’
The question died on her lips as little Lila, the image of Rebecca, appeared from stairwell, tugging a very abashed Nate by the hand. Micah, the image of Jack, appeared behind them, his hand tight in Nate’s other.
Nate Daley. In her childhood house. For Fletcher Family Sunday Dinner.
What. The. Fuck.
Nate curved his lips apologetically, his eyebrows creasing slightly and goddamn it, she found him hot even when she was annoyed by him literally going through her childhood stuff.
Good lord, her dolls. The pink floral wallpaper. The My Little Ponies that she would never throw away because she’d brushed their manes with her mum when she was dying.
Laurel pushed down a cringe.
‘And where are my cuddles?’ She crouched and opened her arms.
The kids rushed her, Nate forgotten, and she stumbled backwards a little. ‘Gosh, you guys are super strong. Must be all the vegetables your mum feeds you.’ She planted a kiss on each of their heads. ‘But...’ Lowering her voice to a whisper because Rebecca had supersonic hearing, Laurel reached into her handbag and withdrew two chocolate bars. ‘Shh, don’t tell Mum and Dad.’
Micah squeaked in delight. Lila gave Laurel a long-suffering look borrowed straight from Rebecca. As if summoned like a creature from the deep, Rebecca called from the kitchen, ‘Don’t you eat that, kids. In fact, bring it to me. Now.’
You didn’t argue with that tone, and the kids shuffled off, leaving Laurel with Nate. Deliberately not meeting his eyes, she reached for her wine. Only when she’d fortified herself with a gulp did she smile at him, keeping a blush down by sheer force of will.
‘What?’
Why was he looking at her like that? All soft around his stupid blue eyes. It was the first time she’d seen him in casual clothes. Dig clothes didn’t count; they were messy clothes, and he’d been dressed up (kind of) when he’d arrived. Her eyes wandered of their own accord over his chest; the duck egg blue shirt accentuating the muscular curve of his shoulders, sleeves rolled up to show sun-browned forearms.
So annoying.
He was watching her when she dragged her traitorous eyes up to his face again. Not that his face was any less annoying. ‘Nothing, just,’ he hesitated, ‘you’re really good with them.’ He gestured to the kitchen, meaning Lila and Micah.
‘Yeah, ’course I am,’ she said, crossing her arms and tilting her head. ‘I helped the twins come out of Rebecca’s vagina.’
Nate had the good grace to cough slightly and he looked away, pink embarrassment shining on his neck.
‘It’s just...’ he obviously didn’t know when to quit, ‘you’re so different at work.’
Laurel raised an eyebrow. This could go one of two ways. She could be insulted and ruin family dinner, or she could shrug, sip her wine and think ‘fuck you Nate Daley, you don’t get a rise out of me’.
‘Work is work. This isn’t work.’
Laurel settled for something in the middle. Nate narrowed his eyes at her, dropping his chin slightly in what she was coming to know as his ‘thinking stance’. Although what there was to think about, she had no idea. This wasn’t work, so of course she wouldn’t behave like she was at work.
‘Do you have a drink?’ she asked, politely.
Nate glanced around the well-worn and loved living room.
‘Somewhere,’ he muttered.
‘I’ll get you one.’ Any excuse to go and see her ‘best friend’ and thank her for the heads up that Nate fucking Daley was joining them for Fletcher Family Sunday Dinner.
‘Oh and,’ he said, and she turned back to look at him. ‘I’m sorry about your mum.’
Huh. The kids must have told him about the Grandma Helena they’d never met. He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.
‘Okay.’ She nodded, a little taken aback at his oddly intimate comment.
Nate
Nate groaned internally. Was it weird that he brought up her dead mother? Or would it have been weird if he didn’t bring it up, given that he had just been in her childhood bedroom with the picture of her mum on the bedside table and My Little Ponies standing neatly on the shelves.
But when he’d seen the picture of the woman who was an older version of Laurel, he’d had to ask the twins who she was. They told him that Grandma Helena had died when Daddy (Jack) was sixteen, which would have made Laurel fourteen and Robin around four.
It all fell into place.
Laurel must have taken on her mother’s role in looking after Robin, ensuring they had clean clothes, making meals. Jack would have been on the farm with his dad and Robin, well, Robin would only have hazy memories of his mum. Laurel would have been the only mother figure he would have ever known.
Farming is a hard life, long hours, no holiday, no break. People did it because they loved it, because it was in their blood, and certainly not because it made a lot of money.
The passion and drive to make the farm a success made sense. Really, Laurel and Jack were an excellent team.
Of course, Bill, their father, was still around and it was easy to see where the boys got their Fletcher looks from, but Jack obviously did most of the heavy lifting around the place now. Besides, Bill had two gorgeous little monster grandchildren to enjoy.
Nate felt like a pink fluffy cushion on a tractor (i.e. completely useless) standing in the living room by himself, so he followed Laurel into the kitchen, all cream painted wood and scuffed slate floors. It was a huge room, taking up the entire rear of the house. French doors to the garden stood open by the laid dining table, and the kitchen area filled the other side of the room.
Laurel was hissing at Rebecca in one corner, no doubt about having him there. The kids were shrieking outside as Robin squirted them with a water pistol, Jack and Bill looking on indulgently with bottles of beer in their hands.
‘Sorry, I just...’ Nate started, gesturing to where the Fletcher men stood.
Rebecca turned a smile on him that must have made teenage Jack’s heart skitter.
‘Nate, here you are.’ She pulled the bottle of beer that Laurel had clenched in her hands and handed it to him.
‘I’m going t—’ Rebecca became distracted by something. ‘Robin, no, don’t,’ she called, as though Robin could hear her from the other end of the carefully curated wild garden.
Rebecca dashed out of the back door.
‘Jack asked me the other day,’ he blurted. ‘I assumed someone would have mentioned it.’ Perhaps he should have mentioned it.
He had really, really, wanted to be involved in a proper big, cosy, family dinner and didn’t want Laurel to put an abrupt end to that dream. The bunkhouse was awful and lonely on the weekends. The students had their own lives and he didn’t fancy hanging out with them. Not that he’d expected to be invited to spend the weekend with his students. Besides, Jack had told him that Rebecca’s lamb gave life meaning, so he couldn’t pass up that.
‘Yeah, well, Fletchers aren’t known for their communication,’ she muttered, lifting saucepan lids off to check whatever was bubbling away on the hob.
No shit.
He thought he’d been getting on a somewhat friendly keel with Laurel, but maybe not. Nate scowled at her. Laurel Fletcher was hard frigging work sometimes.
Rebecca reappeared, dusting her hands together.
‘Can someone get the extra chair from the cupboard under the stairs please,’ she said, peeling back the tin foil on the resting lamb.
Nate’s mouth watered. Jack was absolutely right. If it tasted half as good as it smelled, then it would indeed give his life at Little Willow Farm meaning. It had been so long since he’d had a home cooked, family meal and certainly not with a tight-knit, loving family like this.
‘Yep.’ Laurel brushed past him and he dumped his beer on the side, following her through to the cupboard under the stairs.
‘I’ll help,’ he said.
‘I can do it, I know where it is,’ Laurel threw over her shoulder. Yes, he knew that she didn’t need any help, that she was self-sufficient, but still. He wanted to help.
‘I know, I’m just helping.’ He grinned as she flitted her eyes at him.
It wasn’t so much a cupboard under the stairs but next to the stairs, and it was packed to the literal rafters with boxes, including an ancient version of Monopoly, and small pieces of furniture that were obviously too precious to throw away but weren’t quite right in the house. Laurel reached up to take down a box that rested on the seat of a dining chair, which in turn had its front legs precariously balanced on the arm of a comfy chair and its back legs on a higher small cupboard.
Laurel edged the box forward and it tilted dangerously, starting to fall. She stretched to her full height with a grunt, smacking her hands flat against it as it teetered on the edge of the seat. The thin fabric of her top rose up around her waist, showing a delicious strip of milky skin above her skirt.
‘Are you just going to stand there? You could help,’ she said, trying to look over her shoulder but afraid that everything would fall if she moved too much.
‘Thought you didn’t need help,’ he couldn’t stop himself saying.
‘Shut up, Nate, and just help me,’ Laurel snapped. ‘It’s going to fall.’
Nate stepped towards her. Sure, he didn’t have to press his chest to her back and follow the line of her arms with his as he reached for the box above her. He didn’t have to take slightly too long in securing the box in his hands, but why not? She was attractive, and she was obviously attracted to him by the way her eyes had skimmed over his chest earlier, so why not flirt a little?
Laurel’s breath hitched in her throat, and the tips of her ears turned pink. She held herself entirely still as he pressed against her, making awkward and difficult work of gripping the box. He traced her pinking neck with his eyes and grinned at the hitch in her breath. What would her skin taste like? How would her legs feel wrapped around his waist?
The tension ratcheted up intensely.
‘Okay, have you got it?’ she asked, lifting her hands and shuffling away from him as best she could in the tight space.
‘Yeah,’ he said, lifting the box and setting it down somewhere less precarious. His voice was rough.
Laurel let out a breath and her throat bobbed in a swallow.
‘Okay.’
Grabbing the legs of the chair, Laurel angled herself towards the door. Nate took hold of the other side.
‘I’ve got it,’ she said, still flushed.
‘I know, one of the legs is caught.’ Nate tilted the chair this way and that, but it wasn’t shifting.
‘Can you just,’ she started, ‘if you pull it towards you,’
Nate frowned. She was wrong.
‘No, it needs to go backward.’
‘I can see where it is, Nate, you need to pull it towards you, then twist it left.’
She was agitated but whether it was because of the chair, or because the air was still thick with the memory of her back against his chest, he didn’t know.
‘No,’ he argued, ‘it’s just, hold on.’
The frustration fizzed up in her face like a shaken bottle of pop, and she pulled the chair as hard as she could, Nate pulling in the other direction. The wood creaked and cracked, and Nate stumbled backward as the backrest of the chair came off in one devastating popping, crunching sound.
Laurel fell against the door frame, mouth open.
‘What have you done?’ she hissed at him, shooting her eyes around to see if anyone was coming.
‘What have I done? You’re the one who wouldn’t listen, this wouldn’t have happened if you had just done what I said.’
‘If you had done what I had said, then we wouldn’t be in this mess.’
Nate sighed and looked around the cramped cupboard for a solution. ‘Is there another one?’
‘No,’ she sighed. ‘Give it to me, perhaps we can put it back together.’
Between them, they managed to balance the spindles back in their holes. It was rickety, but it would pass muster. If people were careful with it.
‘Come on guys, it’s on the table,’ Rebecca called.
Laurel assessed their work.
‘It’ll hold until I find some wood glue after lunch,’ she said as he reached to pick it up. ‘Just be careful with it.’
Nate glared at her. He wasn’t an idiot, and it wasn’t like he didn’t know what to do with a wooden chair that could fall apart at any minute.
‘What?’ he said, as Laurel’s lips pressed together, mirth crinkling her eyes.
‘You look like you’re carrying a baby duck,’ she said, letting that smile split her face. Nate watched the pulse jump against her neck for two heartbeats.
‘Well, I happen to think baby ducks are cute and deserve a lot of gentle carrying,’ he said flippantly, leading her back into the heart of the family. He glanced over his shoulder to check that Laurel was following and caught her assessing his arse.
Nate raised an amused eyebrow at her, and she scowled back.
Laurel
Rebecca had outdone herself. Really, the lamb was one of the best, the roast potatoes were crispy and fluffy, the carrots and parsnips just the right side of honey glazed. Nate had seconds. Not just a bit extra, but actually two dinners. How in the name of all that was holy did he keep himself looking like that if he could eat two dinners without batting an eyelid? When he had pressed up against her to rescue the box from on top of the chair, she felt every inch of him.
Every. Single. Inch.
Her mouth had run dry. It had been a while since she had been that close to a man, and certainly a man with a body like that.
The plates had been cleared, the kids sent to play outside, disappointed because Nate had remained at the table. Robin had moaned at the rice pudding but helped himself to an extra-large second serving.
Laurel sat on the broken chair, not leaning back, not daring to put any weight against the precariously balanced wood. Nate laid his arm behind her, holding the chair in place. She got why, and it was a sound decision to ensure that the chair didn’t explode. But he was close, and he smelled so good, and if she did happen to lean any further back, then his skin would be on hers. Again. And she did not need her traitorous body to react as it had in the cupboard again, certainly not in front of her family.
Laurel kept her elbows on the table.
‘Rebecca.’ Dad leaned back in his chair, folding his hands over his belly. ‘That was so good. Nearly as good as Helena’s.’ He tilted his wine glass towards her in celebration.
‘Thanks, Bill.’ Rebecca smiled, settling into Jack’s side.
‘So, Nate, tell us about what you’ve found in our field,’ Bill said, turning shrewd eyes on their guest.
‘Actually,’ Laurel said, placing a hand on his thigh to stop him from talking.
Oh god, why had she done that? Because it was so tempting to run her palm up and down the length of his leg, his very warm, very muscular leg. This was definitely not the right place, or time, or pretty much anything. Suggestive amusement flitted across Nate’s face when she glanced at him to see if he, what? Noticed? Minded? Thought it was really, very weird? Or all of the above. Laurel snatched her hand back and cleared her throat. ‘Before Nate gets into that, I’ve got something I want to discuss.’
Robin groaned.
‘We’re having a nice dinner, and you have to go and ruin it every time,’ he grumbled.
Laurel shot him a look but carried on regardless.
‘I want to discuss what could happen if the dig team find what I hope they will find.’
Jack’s shoulders visibly sagged, and Dad sighed softly. ‘Okay, Laurel, what scheme have you got this time?’
She bristled at that, because her ‘schemes’ were what had saved this place. When she’d come back from university, Fletcher’s Farm wasn’t even covering costs. It was a dying farm, and her ‘schemes’ had turned it around. Sometimes she really wished her family would just see how hard she worked. Just because it wasn’t physical work, she wasn’t up at the crack of dawn milking, and wasn’t checking the sheep on the common every day, didn’t mean that what she was doing wasn’t work. Because it was. Damned hard work. Laurel pushed that well-worn argument way down into her stomach.
‘So, if it is,’ she glanced at Nate, ‘an Anglo-Saxon burial, then English Heritage is going to want to be involved.’ She didn’t miss the apprehensive glance between Jack and their father. ‘That would mean that we could get funding from them to build a visitor centre, and we would become a Protected Heritage Site. Meaning,’ she took a breath, because this was her trump card, ‘that we wouldn’t have to do anymore. We wouldn’t have to scrimp and borrow funds for Hibbert’s fields, we wouldn’t have to pray that we have a good Pick Your Own season or that we get five weddings in the summer. We would have English Heritage funding, and English Heritage visitors.’
Jack and Dad looked at each other again, unspoken words passing between them. Dad had Jack helping on the farm way before their mother had died, they all had, but it was Jack who had really taken to it. It was Jack who had done the milking when their dad had been grieving and couldn’t get out of bed, and Jack who had negotiated the sale of cattle to ensure that they could afford the electricity throughout the winter that year.
Whilst the farm would go to the three of them equally when Dad died, they all knew it would be Jack managing it.
‘What’s the likelihood of finding a burial like that? Big enough that English Heritage would be interested?’ Dad asked.
‘Well, Bill,’ Nate said. ‘It’s looking promising, but we won’t know for certain until deeper trenches are dug. We’ve found coins, we’ve found metal, a possible shield boss, but no bones yet.’
‘For what it’s worth,’ Rebecca said, as family solicitor, ‘English Heritage are a national charity, it would be a massive deal for Little Willow to be associated with them. Free advertising, practically guaranteeing visitors.’ She took a sip of her wine. ‘Everyone could relax a bit.’
The unspoken words were ‘Laurel could relax a bit’.
She looked down at her hands folded neatly on the table.
‘Well,’ Bill said, ‘let’s hope it is then.’ He tilted his glass to Nate, smiling, but not convinced.
‘Jack?’ Laurel asked. Jack gave a brusque nod.
‘Robin?’
Robin sat back in his chair, fingers linked behind his head.
‘So, you’re saying you’ll stop with all this shit around our home if there’s some old bones in that field?’
‘It’s not shit,’ Laurel mumbled, pursing her lips. ‘But essentially, yeah.’
‘And you’re not saying this because you fancy him?’ Robin nodded to Nate, sarcastic grin on his face.
It fell silent, and she could feel her family’s eyes crawling over her skin. Nate lifted his wine glass and took a sip, studiously ignoring this family bicker. Laurel’s face flushed, hard. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the tips of Nate’s ears turn scarlet. Embarrassed, either for her, or for him. Whichever, it clearly indicated that any attraction that Laurel may, or may not, feel towards him was completely and utterly unrequited. Besides, it was just a hangover from university, surely.
Jack lurched forward, because knowing Rebecca, she had just booted him in the shin. ‘Who wouldn’t fancy him? I mean, look at him. Even I fancy him.’
Rebecca snorted her wine, Bill chuckled, and Robin glared.
‘You’re a dick, Robin,’ Laurel said, grabbing her wine and pushing the chair away from the table as hard as she dared. She’d made it to the back door to check on the kids when she heard Nate clear his throat.
‘What is it you do on the farm, Robin?’
Laurel turned and leaned on the door frame, uncertain how this would unfold. Nate was looking earnestly at Robin, leaning forward, genuinely interested.
‘What?’ Robin said, petulant scowl on his face.
‘I mean, I know what Laurel does, and I know what Jack and Bill do, but what’s your role? What’s your job here?’ Nate leaned back in his seat and lay his arm across the back of Laurel’s empty, rickety chair, tensing as he pushed down to make sure the back was as secure as it was going to be.
‘I do loads, and I don’t have to explain myself to you.’
If Robin pouted any harder, he would be mistaken for a trout. Oh, could they do trout fishing in the lake?
‘Robin,’ the three adult kids jumped at Bill’s harsh voice, ‘Nate is our guest.’
‘But he—’
‘Asked your role on the farm, and I don’t think it’s an unreasonable question. You were late milking the other day when Jack asked you to cover for him because he was lambing on the common. Laurel had to check for pregnancies. The pig shelter needs re-felting, the henhouse needs a good clean and the fencing around the Pick Your Own needs looking at.’ The room was still. Dad pointed at Robin across the table, angling his face so his good eye held Robin’s gaze. ‘These are all your jobs, Robin.’
Against the door frame, Laurel was speechless. Their father didn’t often shout, wasn’t often firm, not really since their mother had died, and certainly never with the favourite, the surprise, the get-away-with-anything, baby of the family.
Rebecca’s mouth dropped open, volleying between the eldest and youngest Fletcher men. Jack watched the tablecloth intently.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…’ Nate coughed slightly to hide his discomfort.
‘Not at all, Nate.’ Bill turned to the archaeologist. ‘Not at all.’