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“Um, sure,” Lucy said. She mustn’t sniff him. She mustn’t sniff him . . . she sniffed him. Her stomach gave a little flip as she caught a whiff of citrus and bergamot. Yep, he smelled just as good as she’d suspected he would.

“Are you OK?” Dylan asked.

“Yes, fine,” said Lucy, giving her head a little shake to rid it of its frankly ridiculous thoughts.

“What have I missed? Can you get me caught up?”

“I only started it a couple of minutes ago; why don’t we just restart?”

“Cool,” said Dylan, putting his feet up on the coffee table.

When they turned off the television a couple of episodes later, it was fair to say, Dylan was hooked. “It’s like a soap opera, but set a hundred and whatever years ago. Lady Mary is awesome, and the butler guy? He’s my favourite. If I make you a cup of tea, are you up for another episode?”

“I’m exhausted,” Lucy admitted. “I need to sleep. I mean, you can carry on by yourself if you want?”

“No way,” Dylan said, firmly. “We’re in this together.”

“There are quite a few episodes, I think it’s like five seasons or something, and Christmas episodes.”

“There are Christmas episodes?”

“Yes, but we’re not watching episodes out of order so we might not get to them before Christmas.”

“We can try,” Dylan said.

“Yes,” laughed Lucy. “I suppose we can.”

Chapter 15

The next morning Lucy took full advantage of it being a Sunday to enjoy a lie-in. It really seemed that her body couldn’t get enough sleep. She forced herself out of bed at eleven, definitely feeling better for having over twelve hours in bed.

She pulled on a dressing gown over her pyjamas, very aware that she could bump into her new flatmate as soon as she stepped foot out of her bedroom. She considered getting dressed and tidying herself up a bit, but while they were living together he was bound to see her looking a mess; there was no point in trying to hide it now.

She gingerly opened her bedroom door and peeked out into the hallway. There was no sign of Dylan. Maybe he’d gone out to the gym or something.

Wandering out to the kitchen she put the kettle on. There were some leftover sausages in the fridge that Dylan had cooked up the night before and Lucy helped herself to one. While she waited for the kettle to boil, she wandered over to the window and looked down at the back garden. She did a double take when she spotted Dylan out there with a set of secateurs, surrounded by mounds of cut leaves and branches. What on earth did he think he was doing to her garden?

Abandoning her tea-making plans, Lucy grabbed her Wellington boots from the cupboard in the hallway, and marched downstairs and outside.

“Hey!” she called out crossly as she closed the back door of the coffee shop behind her.

Dylan turned round and gave her a cheerful wave. “Hey, sleepy head. How are you?”

“I’m fine. Um, what are you doing?”

“It’s a gorgeous day,” he replied, indicating the blue sky. “I thought I’d surprise you by making the most of the good weather to make a start out here. You said you hadn’t had a chance to tidy up out here so it can be used for outside seating.”

“I hadn’t,” said Lucy, pulling her dressing gown closer around herself. “But don’t you think you should have checked with me before doing anything.”

“You were asleep,” Dylan pointed out.

“You should have waited so that we could decide together. We’re business partners and this is my home as well as the building that houses the coffee shop.”

“I would have discussed it with you if I was going to be making any proper decisions. Look, I’ve just been cutting some things back so it’s neater and we can see how much space there actually is to work with.”

“Well, I’d appreciate it if you could stop right now,” Lucy said firmly.

“Can I just finish cutting back this dogwood?”