Page 50 of The Sugar and Spice Bookshop Bakery

‘Avian satnav?’

‘Satnav!’ He slaps her arm playfully. ‘Don’t be daft! Although I do remember somewhere – a nature documentary or something – I think they do have some kind of inbuilt sense of navigation. Or something.’

‘Don’t you hate the cold?’ she says. ‘I mean, Italy’s such a lovely warm country. And Yorkshire…’

‘It’s years since I lived in Italy, and it can get chilly there too in winter. But yeah, Yorkshire’s cold. Colder than London. But you know the good thing about that?’

‘There’s a good thing?’

‘Yes, there is. If you get cold, it feels fantastic getting warm again. And you know, I can think of the perfect way for us to warm up right now.’

Her mind instantly flashes to an image of her and Jack, snuggling under a duvet, their bodies entwined. ‘You can?’ Her voice comes out in a whimper.

‘Yeah, how about you fire up that coffee machine? And is there any cake?’

‘Cake? You want coffee and cake!’

‘Well, you know what they say. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. And your baking is…’ he makes a chef’s kiss gesture, ‘perfetta.’

‘And the way to a woman’s heart?’

With a flourish, Jack puts his fingers under his chin in a classic ‘thinking’ pose. ‘I’ll get back to you on that one, Luisa. I’ll get back to you.’

*

Louise’s predictions are correct. Maddie is elated after that phone call from Theo, but then ten whole days go by and she doesn’t hear from him again, except for the occasional text. Ten whole days in which a mini-digger moves into the back garden of the bakery, and scrapes rectangular patches of ground away, and two lads appear with a mixer and pour thick concrete into those rectangles, all under the watchful eye of Jack. Ten days in which the riverside garden is transformed from a patch of grass into a muddy building site, and Louise thinks anxiously for the umpteenth time that there’s no going back now.

When the concrete is dry and the mini-digger and mixer have been loaded onto the back of a truck and the lads have driven away, it’s just Jack standing in the garden, with a workbench and a pile of wood and a huge collection of tools.

And a plan.

Which hopefully isn’t upside down this time.

‘That’s quite a look,’ Maddie says, standing in the kitchen window peering down at him. ‘Sexy. For an older man. Not that I’m, you know, encroaching on your turf.’

‘What?’ Louise looks up from googling cake recipes on her phone.

‘I said, he’s rather sexy, but too old for me. And anyway, I have Theo. The lovely Jack is all yours.’

‘Don’t be silly, he isn’t interested in me,’ Louise says, but secretly she’s pleased that Maddie thinks there could be something between her and Jack. She puts her phone down on the kitchen table, stands up and wanders over to the window.

Jack is bending over the workbench, sawing a piece of wood in almost exactly the same way as she’d imagined him that evening they’d had dinner in the pub. Except he’s clad in a pair of old jeans and a dark blue T-shirt rather than a pair of dungarees.

‘Why wouldn’t he be interested in you? You’re smart, you’re funny, you’re kind. You make great cakes…’

‘And I’m his employer. Well, sort of. His client.’

‘Ideal!’ says Maddie. ‘Forced proximity. You bond as you create the bookshop bakery together.’

‘Real life doesn’t work like novels.’

‘And there’s your problem.’

Louise frowns at Maddie. She wasn’t aware she had a problem. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘I can understand you being wary. You know, after Dad. But it’s been years, and you haven’t even dated anyone, have you?’

‘Well, there’s been one or two…’