‘There you are.’ The minute Izzy stepped out of the little study she’d appropriated, Xanthe pounced on her, as if she’d been lying in wait for her to emerge. In truth, Izzy had been in hiding for most of the morning. She looked down at her phone, which had just buzzed with a response to her last message to the Killorgally Cookery group.I’ve got a ton of carrots. Any recipe suggestions?
Fliss:Here’s a carrot and ginger soup recipe. Perfect for an autumn day.
Izzy couldn’t wait to get back in the kitchen.
‘I’ve decided to start on the morning room, guests will need more than one sitting room,’ Xanthe announced, as if making a great proclamation to an audience in a packed auditorium rather than to her daughter in a corridor. ‘And I’ve decided which room can be the master bedroom for the Carter-Joneses.’
‘Great,’ said Izzy, not really paying attention; she was still thinking about food.
Following Fliss’s recipe, she selected a handful of carrots to make soup. There wasn’t time to make proper stock so a vegetable stock cube would have to suffice until she’d got herself more organised. The easy to make carrot and ginger soup would be warming and go well with the bread she’d made the day before. She still couldn’t get over how easy bread was to make from scratch. Before going on the cookery course, it had been something that came from the supermarket. Home-made bread tasted so much better and she was going to buy some different flours to experiment with. When the hotel was open, she planned to offer a seasonal soup of the day along with home-made bread and local cheese for the guests’ lunch or provide packed lunches for hikers going out for the day.
Putting on the radio, she hummed along to a Proclaimers song about walking five hundred miles as she peeled and chopped carrots, inhaling the fragrant, herby scent of the stock cube she’d poured boiling water over.
Lost in her thoughts, she pottered around the kitchen, moving easily around the big, scrubbed pine table that took up one half of the room.
‘Something smells good.’
Izzy whirled around; she’d not heard anyone come in.
‘Professor Strathallan,’ she said with a reserved nod of her head, not sure how to treat him after this morning’s grumpy encounter. He was a paying guest so – unfortunately – she couldn’t be rude to him. Not when she needed his money so badly.
He winced. ‘It’s Ross. “Professor Strathallan” sounds like a relic from the Victorian age.’
‘As you wish,’ she said, she too sounding horribly like a servant inDownton Abbey. She’d never said, ‘as you wish’ before in her life!
Ross raised that expressive eyebrow of his. ‘That’s very formal.’
‘No more formal thanMs McBride.’
‘Ah, yes. You wanted to talk to me earlier.’
Izzy turned her back on him, pretending to stir the soup mix while she tried to gather her thoughts. Being sensible, there was no way she could ask him to leave because she needed his money, but she was finding it very hard to be civil to him. She took a deep breath and plastered a smile on her face.
‘Actually,Iwanted to apologise for yesterday. Xanthe hadn’t told me that she’d let a room to anyone. I had no idea who you were.’
‘Ah, that explains things, Ms McBride.’
She glared at him and once again her tongue tangled as she tried to correct her name. ‘It’s McBride … it’s McBride, Izzy. I mean Izzy McBride.’ Why did he have this effect on her?
‘Okay, McBride Izzy. I’ll accept you didn’t know who I was or what I was doing in your kitchen.’
Izzy held back the words, ‘big of you,’ as he continued.
‘Xanthe strikes me as an impulsive lady.’
‘Mmm, you could say that.’ Izzy pursed her lips at his circumspect observation. She was supposed to be trying to get on his good side and regain control here. ‘Look, I wondered if you’d like food preparing now that I’m back. I’ll have to cook each day anyway and’ – she paused and shot him a quick forced smile – ‘my repertoire is a slight step up from baked beans on toast.’
‘That is not difficult. No offence but I don’t want to dance to someone else’s timetable. I came here to work so I don’t want to have to break off at specific times for meals.’ His smile was equally forced. ‘But I am very grateful for the offer. Eating spaghetti hoops and baked beans is a bit too much of a return to student days for my liking but they’re quick and easy.’
‘I noticed there were a few tins in the recycling bin.’
He grimaced and shrugged.
Izzy frowned. Although he was fairly unobtrusive and tidied up after himself, it didn’t sit right with her that he was eating such basics when she could cook and needed to practise her skills.
‘Okay,’ said Izzy. ‘How about I leave you things you can help yourself to when it suits you? There’ll be a pot of soup on the Rayburn for lunch, which I’m making anyway, and you can help yourself to that and bread. And for dinner, I’ll leave you something to reheat in the microwave or in the Rayburn.’
‘Now you’re talking.’
