Chapter 14
In the last week, Casey had not simply been out of her comfort zone, she had been shot out of a cannon, leaving her comfort zone in the far distance.
Her usually sedate working hours had been hijacked by a spirit with aristocratic socialite tendencies and now she was experiencing further proximity to a man she was trying very hard not to fancy.
They’d already had a breakfast together and now were about to share an impromptu dinner as well.
This was more time than she’d spent with any dateable man for nearly three years.
Conner was outside with Ms. Marcasite, Ajay and Nate were helping with the pizzas, while Ellory—her arm in a sling after a bad tumble at gymnastics club—had opted to stay in and play Mario Kart with Nigel and Jared.
Ellory had been regarding Jared suspiciously ever since they’d arrived, and when Casey came in to check on the sitting room gang—as an excuse to remove herself from Ajay’s orbit for a while—she found her niece staring intently at him, her controller hanging loosely from her hands while Princess Peach idled on the TV screen.
“Everything all right in here?” Casey asked as she set about collecting up their empty hot chocolate mugs.
Jared grunted something unintelligible, moving his whole body to the side as his character swerved around Bowser and a mushroom. Ellory didn’t reply at all, fixated as she was on Jared.
“All good,” said Nigel. “Although I’m a little rusty at Mario Kart; video games are more Vern’s domain than mine.”
At a trumpeting sound from the speakers, Jared punched the air, whisper shouting “Yes!” as Yoshi slid past Luigi to take second place. Nigel’s Donkey Kong character came in last.
Ellory meanwhile hadn’t noticed the race ending. She narrowed her eyes at Jared’s profile and asked, “How old are you?”
Jared looked around as though she might be addressing someone else and then replied, “Fifteen,” like he was laying down a challenge.
Ellory leaned in closer to him. “Is that a mustache?” she asked with such incredulity that Casey had to sniff to cover a snigger.
“Err, yeah, kind of,” Jared replied, touching his forefinger to the line of dark fluff on his top lip.
“Is Ajay your dad?”
“No, he’s my uncle.”
“Where’s your mum?”
“London. Where’s yours?”
Casey’s heart juddered and Nigel’s eyes went wide, but Ellory seemed completely unperturbed as she replied, “Dead. A car hit her really hard.”
Jared went a little gray around the gills. “Oh,” he said, looking between Casey and Nigel for help, but Ellory wasn’t done yet.
“Why is your mum in London?” she asked. “Does she know the King?”
Jared’s mouth quirked into a small smile, and he answered her with a patience that Casey hadn’t expected. “No, she doesn’t know the King. I usually live with her in London, but I’m staying with my uncle for a while.” And then to Casey’s surprise he added, “I miss her, though. Do you miss your mum?”
Ellory pursed her lips as she considered. “I don’t know. I think I do. Sometimes my dad gets sad, but he says he isn’t sad, and I don’t know why he lies about it when we’re not supposed to lie.”
“I guess adults say things to protect us because they don’t want us to worry,” said Jared, carefully, and Casey could’ve hugged him if she wasn’t certain that such a display of affection would cause him to shrivel up with cringe.
“Where’s your dad?” asked Ellory.
“I don’t know.”
“Is he dead?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Do you want to say hello to the goats?”
He pondered for a moment and then said, “Yeah, all right.” He looked at Nigel. “Is that okay?”
“Be my guest,” said Nigel. “I think I’m all gamed out for the time being.”
Ellory held out her good hand, and Jared hesitated for only a second before he took it. “We better put coats on, or we’ll catch a chill,” she said. Jared looked back at Casey and Nigel and shrugged as if to say I don’t know what’s happening right now before pulling the door closed behind him.
“I think that might be the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” Casey said to Nigel.
“I think you might be right.” He chuckled. “Could you do me a favor?”
“Name it,” Casey replied.
“Would you mind feeding the animals while Vernita’s being the hostess with the mostess? It’ll save them a job later.”
“Of course.” Casey smiled. “I’ll do it now.”
“You could ask Ajay to help you.” Nigel grinned, and Casey rolled her eyes before leaving him to his crosswords.
—
“Kids fall over, that’s what they do,” said Ms. Marcasite as she scooped an uncooked pizza onto her pizza peel.
Nate stood behind her and held her hair back off her face as she deposited the pizza into the woodfired oven in the back garden.
“They bounce when they’re Ellory’s age. It’s when you get to my age that you’ve got to worry. ”
“Maybe you’re right,” said Nate.
“Hey,” said Casey, “anything I can do?”
Ajay was stood beside a brick-built worktop, tossing a bowl of salad.
At the sound of her voice, he looked up and smiled at her, and a kaleidoscope of butterflies rose up and began to flutter around her rib cage.
As she had begun to know a little of the man behind the searching eyes and heart-stopper smile, her attraction to him had skyrocketed.
He was the kind of man who could tempt her to break her abstinence.
But allowing a person to get close, even someone as nice as Ajay appeared to be, required a certain willingness to trust, and she wasn’t sure if she had trust to spare.
“All under control,” Ms. Marcasite replied, her cheeks red from the heat of the fire despite the cold.
“Conner is quite the budding chef.” Conner gave her a grin and went back to arranging cherry tomatoes on the rolled-out pizza dough.
“And Nate is proficient at preventing my wig from catching fire.”
“Where’s your tiara gone?”
“Where do you think?” Ms. Marcasite gave a nod toward an arbor wound round with the crispy tangle of naked clematis twigs, where Ellory—one gloved hand filled with grain, from which goats Clara and Mildred were enthusiastically nibbling, the other tucked inside her sling—was giving Jared a crash course in the art of pygmy goat care.
Ms. Marcasite’s tiara was firmly placed upon her head.
Casey laughed. “Of course. Okay, well, Nigel asked me to put the animals to bed, so if you don’t need me, I’ll crack on.”
“Thank you, darling, much appreciated. Could you check the gate to the kitchen garden for me while you’re at it? I can’t remember if I closed it when I checked on the parsnips earlier.”
“Will do.”
“You’re a star. I’ll save you the biggest pizza.
” She mopped her brow and shifted the first pizza to the side of the oven to make room for the next one.
Conner finished blobbing torn mozzarella onto a pizza dotted with black olives and capers and finished with a flourish of basil leaves.
Ms. Marcasite looked from him to Casey and said, “I told you, born chef.” She then added slyly, “Why don’t you take young Ajay with you to feed the animals, it’ll be quicker with two of you,” and gave her an exaggerated wink, long false eyelashes fanning out against her cheekbones.
Casey narrowed her eyes at the drag queen. What was it with these two? They knew her reticence about relationships and why.
Ajay either didn’t pick up on Ms. Marcasite’s meddling or didn’t care, because he put down the knife he was using to chop marinated peppers and said, “I’d love to help.”
They started with the sheep. Away from the warm glow of the house, it was already full dark, and they used torches to light their way up to the field.
The town below was full of tiny dots of lights that seemed to dance as the wind blew the skeletal branches of the trees marking the boundary back and forth across the scene.
Above them, the sky was an explosion of stars unhindered by cloud; its vastness was overwhelming, even terrifying if one were to ponder too long on the wonder of it all.
Casey’s ears ached, and the relentless chill burned her fingers through her gloves.
They climbed over the stile into the sheep field, and Casey flicked on the light hanging outside a large storage container.
She pulled open the door and the sweet grassy smell of fresh hay wafted over her.
The sheep, who knew exactly where their food was kept, began to surround them and bleat loudly.
“Is this normal?” Ajay asked, nervously throwing clumps of hay at them to distract them.
She laughed as she spread more hay over the frozen ground and blocked the paths of two sheep who tried to get into the hay store. “Oh no you don’t,” she said, and they baaed indignantly at her.
Ajay gave a nervous squeak as one of them headbutted him. “They won’t hurt you,” she assured him. “They’re only interested in you because you’re offering them dinner.”
“Sounds like some of the women I’ve dated,” he said, stumbling a little as a particularly bossy sheep nudged him hard from behind.
“Are you sure that’s all they wanted you for?” she asked, and then instantly regretted being so flirty. She hoped the light was dim enough to hide her blushing.
He gave a little half chuckle and said, “No, not all,” in a way that was all kinds of seductive.
She flushed harder. Oh dear lord, wasn’t the cold supposed to deter these kinds of knicker-warming sensations?
They cracked the ice that was forming on top of the sheep trough, and Casey rooted around in the grass until she found the tennis ball that was meant to be floating in the water to prevent the ice forming and dropped it back in.
As she locked the storage container back up, she decided, once and for all, to stop flirting with the handsome policeman, but, honestly, he wasn’t making it easy.