Chapter Sixteen
T he morning after their trek through the rain was…
uncomfortable. Eleanor had woken up early, but not so early that she should have expected Danni to be anywhere but out on the farm.
Unfortunately, it seemed that Danni had woken up even earlier and was now back in the kitchen having her morning caffeine infusion.
Instant coffee mixed with the bare minimum of water so that it looked like quicksand.
“Morning,” Eleanor said.
She was feeling guilty. Guilty that she’d walked off into the rain, guilty that she hadn’t thought to call AA earlier in proceedings, and guilty that she’d shook Danni’s arm from around her shoulders when the woman was just trying to be nice.
It hadn’t been her fault, though. Not really. She’d been in a strange mood ever since seeing Danni dancing with Indi and… And that was no excuse.
“Morning,” Danni said, peering at her over her mug.
“Tea?” Eleanor offered, far too stiffly. She moved toward the kettle, keeping a careful distance. She needed a good cup of tea. Strong tea. Immediately.
“Got coffee,” said Danni. She sipped and stretched. “Wouldn’t mind another, though.” She got up.
But as Eleanor reached for the kettle to fill it, Danni did exactly the same thing. Their hands brushed. Eleanor froze. So did Danni. The briefest touch, almost nothing, but it sent a strange, tingling awareness through Eleanor’s skin.
Danni pulled back first. “Need a butler to help you with that?”
“I’m perfectly capable of boiling a kettle,” Eleanor snapped. She filled it from the tap and put it back on its stand.
“Of course you are, Princess,” Danni said. She put her cup on the draining board. “Changed my mind. I’d better get back to it.”
She walked out of the kitchen and Eleanor found that she felt both better and worse that she was gone.
BY MIDDAY, ELEANOR had grown weary of reading through spec sheets and notes from Samson, so she decided to check in on Sam. The stables were one of the few places on the farm where she felt truly competent.
But when she got out there, she found Danni stacking hay bales. Eleanor stopped. Danni had removed her flannel shirt, and was wearing a white tank, sweat glistening on her skin as she tossed bale after bale. Eleanor’s mouth grew ridiculously dry.
Suddenly, Danni looked up. “What are you doing here?”
“I can’t check on Sam?” Eleanor challenged.
Danni wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, leaving a streak of dirt across it. “Sunday. Right. I forgot.” She sniffed. “You can check on him as long as you’re willing to be put to work. There are no free-loaders on a farm.”
“I’m not a free-loader,” Eleanor said, stung.
“Best get to work then,” said Danni. “You know where the pitchfork is.”
“I know how to handle a stable.”
Danni grinned. “Go on then.”
Eleanor stopped in her tracks. “Go on then, what?”
Danni nodded to the stack of hay bales. “If you’re so competent in the stable, show me how you throw a hay bale. Just one. Take your pitchfork and toss this bale onto the top of the stack. Go on.”
For an instant, Eleanor froze, then she shrugged. How hard could it be? It was only a bale of hay, after all. She stalked over to where Danni was standing, planted her fork in the middle of the bale, and strained her muscles to lift and swing.
The bale was deceptively heavy. Far heavier than she’d expected. She did manage to lift it, but in doing so she swung it approximately a meter off the ground and promptly fell on her behind.
She prepared herself for Danni’s taunts, but when she looked up, Danni looked impressed.
“Haven’t seen anyone lift a bale on the first try,” Danni said. “You’re not bad. It’s all in the shoulders though. You’ll have to practice. You need to get it higher than that. Still, you actually lifted it.”
“Was that a compliment?” Eleanor asked.
“Maybe.”
Their eyes met, and for the first time, neither of them looked away immediately. The moment stretched just a little too long before Eleanor turned to get back to her feet, pretending that her heartbeat wasn’t hammering in her ears.
Eleanor worked cleaning out the stall and then pottered around the barn, feeling Danni’s eyes on her, but saying nothing, until she really had run out of things to do.
“I’d better, um…” she began, not sure how to finish that sentence.
“Better what?”
“Start on dinner,” she said finally.
“Alright then,” Danni said, turning to get back to her work.
It was another hour before Danni came back to the farmhouse kitchen, and by then Eleanor was stirring a sauce that was dangerously close to boiling over.
She wasn’t cooking to impress Danni, she told herself.
This had nothing to do with the approving look that Danni had given her after tossing a hay bale. Not a thing.
No, she just wanted a decent meal. That was all.
“Well, look at you, domestic goddess,” Danni said as she kicked off her boots .
Eleanor didn’t dignify that with a response. Danni came over and sniffed at the saucepan. Eleanor reached for a spice jar, but Danni was suddenly there, reaching for the same jar at the same time. Their fingers brushed again.
They both stilled.
Eleanor felt her breath catch. The kitchen felt suddenly too small, too warm. Danni’s gaze flicked to hers before she cleared her throat and stepped back.
“Smelled like it needed more thyme,” she said.
“Mmm,” was all Eleanor managed to get out.
“You, uh, need help with anything?” Danni asked, rubbing the back of her neck.
“No,” said Eleanor, a little too quickly.
“Well, I’ll go and shower then. Stay out of your way.”
“Right.”
DINNER WAS A silent and awkward affair. Eleanor pretended to be engrossed in her notebook, whilst Danni flicked through her mail and ate with her fork in her right hand. And once the dishes were done and the plates in the dishwasher, Eleanor found that she couldn’t do this anymore.
She needed some space.
Some space and some familiarity.
And a drink.
Which led to her sitting in the half-constructed ruins of her future home an hour later, candles flickering on the kitchen table, a bottle of wine from the cellar already opened.
“Hello?” shouted a voice.
“Down here,” Eleanor called back.
She’d texted Elizabeth because drinking alone was rarely a good idea. And because she wanted the company, she wanted to be with someone that understood her, someone that she didn’t have to walk on eggshells around.
Elizabeth walked into the kitchen, took one look at Eleanor’s expression, the layer of brick dust covering the floor, the dust sheet over the kitchen table, and sighed. “Darling, this is a disaster.”
Eleanor groaned. “I know. And you don’t know the half of it.”
Pouring herself a glass of wine, Elizabeth pulled out a chair and sat down. “Darling, construction is always a bear. It won’t last forever, even though it might feel like it.”
Taking a deep breath, Eleanor decided to be honest. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe she was just tired of dealing with things alone. “It’s not the renovations,” she said. “At least, it’s not only the renovations.”
“No?”
Puffing out a breath, Eleanor said, “You’ll think me foolish.”
“Never, I swear,” Elizabeth said. She smiled gently. “Danni?”
Eleanor bit her lip. “I think… Damn it.” She took a gulp of wine.
“You think you might have real feelings?” asked Elizabeth.
“How do you know that?” Eleanor asked, looking up.
“My love, I think at this point, you might be the only one that doesn’t know,” said Elizabeth. “The tension between the two of you is electric. Any idiot could see it. The real question is, what do you intend to do about it?”
“This wasn’t supposed to be real,” Eleanor said. “It didn’t start real. I don’t know what happened.”
“You’re two attractive women living in close proximity,” said Elizabeth. “It would be odd if one of you didn’t have at least a stray thought about the other. How does young Danni feel about this?”
“Not a clue. I haven’t asked her and I don’t intend to.”
“Why on earth not?” Elizabeth picked up the bottle and topped up Eleanor’s glass.
“Because she’s young, relatively carefree, and because she didn’t get into this arrangement for feelings. It would be unfair of me to burden her like that.”
“I would agree, unless she happens to have feelings of her own.”
Eleanor snorted. “Even if she did, what of it? We’re completely different, we both have a life that we like, and we have a business arrangement.”
“She’s only a few years younger than you,” Elizabeth said.
“Not the point.” Eleanor drank, the wine dark and sticky in her throat.
“So you’re going to mope around like Viola after Duke Orsino?”
“I am not,” said Eleanor, sitting up straighter. “I don’t mope. And there’s no point thinking that way. Nothing can come of this. It’s not part of the arrangement.”
“Arrangements can change.”
“No,” Eleanor said firmly. “The best I can do is attempt to leave Danni a little better off than when I found her. She got me this house, my house, the least I will do is ensure that her life has improved by the time we divorce.”
Elizabeth sighed, but Eleanor ignored her. She knew that she was right. She had to do something useful for Danni. Something that meant Danni would have the life she wanted, or at least a decent shot at it.
“Nor, you’re being a fool.”
“I don’t wish to discuss this any further,” Eleanor said. “Now, do we open another bottle, or are we going to be sensible and just finish this one?”
Elizabeth grinned. “Sensible? You? Never.”
Eleanor had to laugh. “Fine. I’ll take a candle and go down for another.”
But as she came back up from the dusty cellar with a bottle in her hands, she couldn’t help but wish that it was Danni waiting for her in the kitchen.