Page 4 of A Recipe for Romance in Brambleton

‘A latte for me, please, and two small hot chocolates.’ The man glanced up from the menu and gave her a brief smile, but it seemed to vanish as quickly as it had arrived on his lips.

‘Anything else?’

‘Cookies!’ The boys spoke as a duo, and Lauren realised, as she looked at them fully for the first time, that they were identical twins.

‘And would that be two double chocolate chip cookies, or would you like different ones?’

The boys looked at each other and then one of them spoke. ‘Same, please.’

Lauren’s eyes shifted to the man again. ‘Am I okay to take that as an order?’ She gave him another smile.

The man nodded. ‘Sure. But make it three. My brother says the cookies from here are really good.’

‘That’s great to know.’ Lauren’s smile grew a little wider at the compliment. ‘It’s my mum’s family recipe.’

A slight shadow passed across the man’s features at her words, and Lauren wondered if she’d said something wrong. ‘Um, is that all for now?’

‘Yeah. Thanks.’ He turned his attention back to the boys at the table who, judging by their dark eyes and dark hair, were his sons.

Lauren swiftly prepared the drinks and used the tongs to put three cookies out on matching blue and white china dessert plates. As she did so, she glanced back at the customer and his sons. The kids were chatting away to each other, and the man seemed content to let them. Part-time dad? Divorced fathers often popped into the café with their offspring after a walk around the lake.

When she was satisfied that she’d made the perfect hot chocolates, complete with whipped cream, marshmallows and Flake sprinkles, she carefully carried the tray back to her customers.

‘Here you go.’

‘Thanks.’ The man gave her another smile as she placed the drinks and cookies in front of them.

‘So, what brings you to Hope’s Café? Are you here on holiday?’ Lauren had crafted a careful list of small-talk questions in the year she’d run the café. A natural introvert, chatting to strangers didn’t come easily to her, but she knew she had to try to make people feel as welcome as possible.

‘Er, no.’ The man reached for his coffee. He didn’t look as though he was going to elaborate. Lauren took the hint, but as she was about to turn back to the counter, one of the boys chimed in.

‘We live in the house on the lake,’ he said, before reaching for one of the cookies and stuffing it into his mouth.

A shiver of surprise caught Lauren off guard. Thanks to Mollie, she knew the house had recently been sold, but it seemed like the last place anyone with young children would want to live. Achingly remote, removed as it was from the centre of the village, she couldn’t remember the last time anyone had lived there.

‘Well, welcome to Lower Brambleton!’ She forced a note of jollity into her tone. ‘I hope you like living here.’

He nodded but didn’t reply. Lauren melted back to the counter but glanced over to the table from time to time. There was something familiar about the guy, and those two little boys were adorable.

‘Lauren, when you’ve got a sec, could you do me another cappuccino?’ The voice of another customer, local novelist Sam Parker, who lived in the nearby village of Everscombe, broke into her reverie. Sam spent a lot of time in the café, but he did at least pay for the free Wi-Fi in coffee.

‘Sure thing, Sam, coming right up.’ Lauren busied herself with the cappuccino, adding one of her trademark designs, this time a festive holly leaf and berries silhouette, to the top. She brought the cup over to Sam’s table, which was the closest to the counter.

‘I hear that poor man lost his wife,’ Sam murmured quietly. ‘Imagine… being left with two boys and buying that place by the lake. That’s a tragic story in the making right there.’

Fortunately, the conversation from the other occupied tables in the café drowned out Sam’s imaginative ramblings. Lauren might have been thinking the same thing about the lake house, but she wasn’t comfortable voicing it. Sam, it seemed, had no such reservations.

‘Who told you that?’ she asked in an undertone.

‘My next-door neighbour. She heard it from Mollie Wakefield the last time she popped into the shop. Apparently, his brother is the owner of the estate agent’s a couple of doors down from here, you know, Noah Hathaway?’

‘Large Americano, hot milk added after?’

Sam looked quizzical.

‘Sorry – I remember coffee orders better than names!’

‘Now there’s an idea for a novel. Mister Americano meets Miss Latte on a park bench in Leicester Square after mistakenly mixing up their backpacks in the local café. Hmmm…’