Page 45 of A Recipe for Romance in Brambleton

Shortly after Marc had sorted out his own breakfast, Noah walked into the kitchen. His brother took a seat at Marc’s kitchen table. ‘Thanks for letting Bella and me stay over last night. It was lovely not to have to drive home!’

‘You’re always welcome,’ Marc replied warmly. They’d talked long into the night, the three brothers, and it felt as though it had done them all good. He busied himself with making them a coffee. Joel was still in bed, and Bella had nipped out early to feed the cats at Purrfect Paws, as Mollie Wakefield had gone away for a couple of days. When he returned to the table, Noah had an uncharacteristically pensive look on his face.

‘Something on your mind?’

Noah started, caught out. ‘Well, since you ask, I wanted to run something past you while Bella was out looking after the mogs. She seemed to think it’d be better coming from me.’

‘Sure,’ Marc replied, smiling at his brother. ‘Although, to be honest, I’m more likely to say yes to Bella than you – you owe me too many favours from childhood!’

‘I did try to tell her that, but she insisted I talk to you first.’ He wrapped a hand around the mug of coffee that Marc gave him. ‘If you’re going to allow people over your threshold, you should probably get that sodding heating sorted out. It’s Arctic in here!’

‘It’s on my list for the New Year.’ Marc had to concede though that his brother was right. He hadn’t been completely sure whether it was the weight he lost in the wake of Tessa’s death that made him feel the cold so much more or whether it was the antiquated central heating system in the lake house, but in late December there was no doubt that the house was not as warm as it needed to be, especially now the fire had gone out in the living room.

‘I’m sure I could hook you up with a decent engineer, and if I could sweeten the deal, he’d probably be in before the end of January.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

The two brothers sat in silence, sipping their coffee. Marc’s curiosity, however, was piqued. ‘You don’t want to talk about the temperature of my house, though, do you?’

Noah gave another grin. ‘You’ve got me.’

Marc sat back in his chair, which gave a slightly ominous creak. Used to the drier climate of southern France, a lot of his furniture was having trouble adapting to the cooler, wetter conditions of the Somerset countryside. ‘Hit me, then, bro.’

‘Now, feel free to say no if you’d rather not,’ Noah began. ‘But you know how much Bella loves this place, right?’

‘The way she was talking about my living room last night, I wondered if you’d taken her on as a sales executive!’

Noah laughed. ‘I know! If she hadn’t fallen so hopelessly in love with me, she’d probably be making a play for you, just to spend more time in your house!’

‘Yeah, right,’ Marc snorted. ‘Bella doesn’t strike me as the shallow type.’

‘Okay, maybe not, but all the same, she loves this place, and the views across the lake.’

‘Well, she’s welcome to come and hang out any time,’ Marc sipped his coffee. ‘And I’ll even throw in a couple of feral twin boys for her to wrangle.’

‘The thing is…’ Noah shifted in his seat; he seemed for Noah, uncharacteristically nervous. ‘After we spent went to bed last night, she had an idea.’

‘What, she wants to be my lodger?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Come on, Noah, just spit it out.’

‘Well, it’s like this. Bella’s written this amazing song for her new album. It’s quite a departure from the stuff she was doing ten years ago, with a whole lot more folk and country influences. It’s got this Taylor Swift Folklore vibe that her producer reckons will be a good fit for her target audience.’

‘That’s great.’ Marc was pleased that, after a decade’s hiatus, Bella’s music career was beginning to go places again, and on her terms, too. ‘But what does this have to do with me?’

‘The record company wants her to shoot a video,’ Noah continued. ‘They’ve been looking at locations all around here, including Roseford, but Roseford was a little bit too curated, a bit too “National Trust” for Bella’s image. They want something a bit more, er, rustic.’

Marc rolled his eyes. ‘That’s one way of putting it. This place is definitely not curated!’

‘Well, Bella happened to mention the lake house, and, having looked online at the pictures I put up when the house first came onto the market, the record company want to suss it out, and maybe to use it as a location.’

‘And did Bella not think to run it past me before them?’ Marc put his coffee cup down. ‘I mean, it’s only my house she’s volunteering!’

‘To be fair, this was sometime before you put an offer in on the place,’ Noah replied. ‘And it had gone quiet until last week, when the record company got in touch again. Bella was a bit nervous about broaching it with you straight off the bat, so I said I’d see how the land lies about the reps from the record company coming to do a recce. They’d pay you for the inconvenience, obviously.’

‘I don’t know,’ Marc said dubiously. ‘We’ve only just got settled in. I’m not sure I want a bunch of strangers tramping all over my house, judging everything and getting in my way.’