CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The ginger cake woman thanked me and walked away.
Bewildered, I turned to find a towering, dark-haired hulk of a man grinning down at me.
What on earth . . .?
I was about to start explaining that this was our designated plot, when something about the thick, bushy eyebrows dislodged a memory.
Oh, hell, it’s him!
Bulldozer Man.
I didn’t even recognise him without his threatening scowl.
I frowned up at him. ‘Ha ha, very funny. But strangely enough, I’m really not that amused.’
He adopted a comical pleading expression. ‘You’re not going to forgive me, then?’
‘Not sure you deserve it, really,’ I snapped. ‘I almost missed my flight to New York because of your thuggish behaviour that day.’
‘You tell him!’ said someone else, and when I looked around, there was the other ‘comedian’ – the eco builder, standing with his arms folded. ‘I think an apology might be in order, don’t you, Ivan?’
Ivan?
Ivan the Terrible zipped into my mind, a memory from school history lessons. If I remembered rightly, he was a Russian tsar, full of aggression. I glanced at his namesake here with scathing disbelief. He certainly seemed to be following in the Russian tyrant’s footsteps, if his behaviour towards us that day was anything to go by. He was never going to apologise.
But to my surprise, Ivan hung his head like a puppy who’d just ravaged the new rug while his owner was out. ‘Okay. I’m really, really sorry I almost made you miss your flight.’
I gave him my frostiest look and his eyes twinkled with suppressed humour.
‘The thing is, I’m not sure you are sorry.’
‘But I am .’ His face protested his innocence.
I shook my head. ‘I have a feeling you’re the sort of man who uses his physical presence to frighten people into getting your own way. Let’s face it, prehistoric caveman had nothing on you that day, and now of course you’re trying to wriggle out of it with “humour”. A typical man, in other words.’
‘He is sorry, though,’ said the other guy seriously.
I looked over, not sure if he was joking or not. The March sun was right behind him, glinting on the chestnut strands in his dark brown hair and I squinted a little, trying to judge if he was being serious. Annoyingly, the sun was shining right in my eyes.
He shrugged. ‘He told me afterwards he felt really bad about blocking you when it was your right of way.’
‘Well, that’s good to know.’ I eyed the foreman doubtfully. He was shorter than Ivan. Mind you, everyone was shorter than Ivan. But he had an air of authority about him that Ivan definitely didn’t have. He was the boss, of course.
‘I’m Caleb. And you’ve already met Ivan the Terrible.’ He delivered this line with a totally straight face and I almost laughed. ‘If he says he’s sorry, he means it. He’s not great at hiding his feelings.’
Ivan shrugged. ‘It’s true. I was having a proper mare that day. My lottery numbers had come up and –’
‘Yes, yes, I’ve heard the story,’ I snapped. ‘Your wife forgot to get a ticket.’
‘My soon to be ex -wife, actually. She did it deliberately to annoy me. The only upside was seeing karma bite her well and truly on the bum.’ He grinned. ‘She’d have had two grand or so to spend on her toy boy if she hadn’t decided she’d like to piss me off.’
‘Oh, so you weren’t going to win millions, then?’
‘No, no. Just short of five grand.’
‘Oh, well, in that case, there was even less reason than I thought for you to be so horrible to us that day.’
I turned to Ellie and shook my head in disgust, and she gave me a bewildered smile as if to say, I’m staying out of it!
I felt my face redden. It wasn’t like me to be so openly argumentative, but these two clowns were just really rubbing me up the wrong way. It was probably a bit unfair of me, though, to label Ivan a ‘typical man’, as if all men were idiots.
It was no doubt Richard’s cheating, scumbag behaviour that had given me this temporary prejudice against the entire male sex.
When I looked back, they’d disappeared and I heaved a sigh of relief and went to serve a couple who bought two chocolate brownies and then ate them right there on the spot.
‘Delicious.’ The man gave us a thumbs-up.
‘Will this be a regular thing?’ asked the woman, casting her eye over the van and its contents with a hopeful look.
‘Yes, it will be.’ Ellie smiled at them. ‘We’re from the Little Duck Pond Café in Sunnybrook? And the Brambleberry Manor Café? So glad you like the brownies.’
‘They’re gorgeous. See you next week, then.’ She turned to go. ‘Oh, what lovely flowers!’
I turned and Ivan was standing there, holding a bunch of carnations he’d clearly just bought from the stall next door.
He handed them to me with a rueful smile. ‘Sorry,’ he said, and this time, his apology seemed real. ‘Can we start again? I’m Ivan. And you are?’
‘Katja.’ Feeling slightly overwhelmed, I took the flowers, shook his oversize hand and said in a rather stilted manner, ‘Thank you. They’re... um... very nice.’ Actually, they were a bit wilted. But it was the thought that counted.
Ivan’s boss was standing there, coolly observing us, and I suddenly wondered if maybe he’d been the one to suggest Ivan apologise with a handy floral tribute. It was such a corny gesture, though! Cheated on your wife? Give the little woman flowers and everything will be okay!
At least my ex didn’t send me ‘guilt flowers’ after I caught him with Emily at the top of the Empire State building. Not that this was a surprise. Richard had become a real tight wad!
‘Glad you like them.’ Ivan glanced over at the cakes in our van. ‘Now, how about we get down to the serious business of the day. Food. I’m starving.’ He winked at me, his eyes sliding briefly to my ample cleavage in the low-cut top. ‘Hey, is it me or are the stall-holders at this market getting more attractive all the time? What do you think, boss?’
I wasn’t going to wait around to see his boss’s reaction. I needed to put this ‘apology’ bouquet in the van. So as Ellie served him, I pulled up the zip of my jacket as far as it would go and hurried away.
‘Great pair of doughnuts!’ said Ivan.
His remark stopped me abruptly in my tracks. ‘I beg your pardon?’ I spun round, ready to show my complete disgust at such a puerile and really very sexist comment.
But Ivan had his back to me and was pointing at the jam-filled sweet treats in Fen’s bakery tray. ‘I’ll take them both, please. I’m a hungry lad and my meat and potato pie will barely touch the sides.’
‘Certainly,’ said Ellie, popping the doughnuts into a bag for him. She smiled at Caleb. ‘I saw you interviewed on the local news about this eco homes project of yours. It sounds amazing.’
‘Thanks. I can show you around one of the houses if you like. Next time you’re here, maybe?’
They continued chatting away, completely oblivious of me standing there, feeling like a complete pillock for having jumped to the wrong conclusion. I scurried off and hid behind the van. On reflection, I doubted even Ivan would be so crass as to judge my ‘doughnuts’ in public!
As my face furnace gradually cooled down, I dumped the carnations on the passenger seat and comforted myself with the fact that they clearly hadn’t heard my embarrassing exclamation of disgust.
Back at the serving end of the van, Ivan had gone but Caleb was still droning on about his eco project. Was Ellie really interested? Or was she only being polite to a customer? I just wished she would stop encouraging him, then hopefully he might go away.
‘Right, thanks for these.’ He smiled warmly at Ellie, holding up his bag of goodies. ‘I’ll leave you to your other customers.’
His smile froze slightly as he turned to me. ‘Sorry about Ivan. He’s got a good heart but he doesn’t have much of a filter.’
‘That’s okay.’
His lips twitched suspiciously. ‘He’s right about your doughnuts, though.’
With that, he turned and strolled off, giving a nearby stall-holder a friendly wave and a hello.
Ugh, so he had heard my reaction to the doughnuts comment!
I stared after him, my cheeks glowing with a mixture of annoyance and humiliation. Why did everything about that Caleb person and his prehistoric sidekick make me feel so... rattled!