‘He’s Sparks now,’ Roz relayed to this second woman, the one with silvery hair and an apron embroidered with the name Senga.
‘Oh aye?’ this Senga was saying with a smirk. ‘You’ve really been making sparks fly, I hear.’
Yep, this had to be the old gossip his grandad had warned him about.
‘Had a spot of bother at the school the other day? Flooded oot the kitchens.’
Senga needn’t look so pleased about it.
Roz McIntyre shooshed the baker into silence and McIntyre hurriedly told him to ‘come away inside’.
Euan stepped into the glow from the pink neon ‘Cairn Dhu Community Repair Shop and Café’ sign on the wall, feeling drenched in regret and with all eyes upon him. Well, almost all eyes.
A pretty woman stood in the middle of the room, about his age, he reckoned, with bright pink hair. Her attention seemed absorbed in sorting clothes on a hanging rail.
Euan Sparks had never seen a more enchanting sight in all of his twenty-five years. Or he thought he hadn’t, until the fellow he recognised as the local carpenter, Cary, flipped a switch on a spotlight and illuminated the girl in a halo of dust-mote-sparkling light.
‘Woah!’ The word escaped his mouth on an airy breath entirely of its own volition.
The glow seemed to give the girl’s pink hair and the make-up on her white skin a luminosity reserved usually for movie stars and models. Her peachy lip gloss sparkled in a sheeny way that drew his eyes all the more. She had thin parrot-blue graphic pen lines over her eyelids in a butterfly-wing shape – a kind of arty eyeliner he’d never seen on anyone before, not being much interested in anything to do with trending make-up looks. She was utterly arresting, and what was she wearing!
Another surreptitious look confirmed it was some sort of white, floaty angel dress with sparkly bits of metallic thread shot through it. The spotlight lit the layers of fabric, hinting at her soft roundness underneath. Her black boots, somehow the perfect thing to team with the gossamer clothing, gleamed with polish. He thought dimly that he must have seen paintings of women like this before, but he didn’t know the names of any of the old masters or their goddesses she seemed to have brought to life.
He gulped hard. It would be easier to tear his eyes away if it wasn’t for that corset thing she was wearing over the dress. It looked like white leather, all embroidered and covered in straps, and it was tight over her ribcage and cut in curves beneath her breasts in a way that told him he really should look away right this second because the way his body responded to her was straying from reverent admiration into something that made him suddenly self-conscious.
That was the moment when her eyes seemed tugged towards his, as though suddenly sentient of the heat coming from him. She raised a hand to shield her face from the spotlight, and for the briefest of moments their eyes met.
Then two things happened, horribly abruptly, to pull him from his daze and send the girl scarpering.
McIntyre, sidling up to him, asked what it was that he’d come in for, and a split second later there was a loud bang like a thundercrack accompanied by a blinding flash of light. The room fell gloomy again and the spotlight fizzled out.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll change the bulb,’ Cary said, a hand held to his chest after the fright.
The girl reappeared from behind her clothes rail, seemingly having forgotten Euan’s existence. She was asking Cary if he was OK.
McIntyre persisted by his side. ‘You needed something?’ he asked again.
Euan tried to gather himself. ‘Well, um…’
But there was someone else nearby and intent on butting in. ‘I hope he’s no volunteerin’ his electrician skills for repair Saturdays!’ Senga was saying with a hearty chuckle as she buttoned her coat.
Euan hid a heavy sigh. He might as well have worn a sandwich board that saidI’m that Euan Sparks, newbie electrician and threat to school freezers everywhere. Do not hire me.
He peered round McIntyre, hoping Senga’s sniping hadn’t reached the girl’s ears. She was talking on her phone, thankfully.
The old gossip was leaving the shed now anyway, accompanied by a woman Euan guessed had to be her sister, they were so alike.
‘Nothing wrong with your grandad, is there?’ asked this other woman as she passed by.
‘Naw, he’s fine, ta.’
Clyde had been involved in the community gardening project in the grounds of the repair shop since January, and he’d been a pretty regular visitor to the shed’s café too. It was nice they were worried about him.
‘Let the poor lad say what he’s come for,’ said Sachin from where he switched off the neon sign by the door.
‘Right, uh, thanks.’ He addressed McIntyre. ‘It’s just, I have this motorbike, you see?’ He hiked a thumb backwards to the shed doors where the café women were departing. ‘A vintage bike. It’s Grandad’s actually.’
This news had McIntyre hooked. In fact, he was already motioning for Euan to lead the way outside to take a look at the thing.
