up and stowing them in her dad’s old metal box. But then again, that’s what you got when you turned up two hours before check-in. Behind the exterior of every chocolate-box-perfect holiday cottage lies a potential plumbing disaster – one she couldn’t afford to pay a professional to deal with.
“Fine and dandy, I assure you,” she replied, wiping her oil-smeared hands down on her dungarees.
“I’m Pippa Harte, welcome to our farm,” she said. “I’d offer you my hand but – ”
“I don’t know where it’s been?” he finished, his face deadpan but his tone amused. He was one of those chaps, she thought. Not one for belly laughs and grin-fests, but dry and witty. She liked those chaps. Or she used to, back in the day when she had anything to do with chaps at all.
“Well, I think you know exactly where it’s been – that’s the problem! You’re staying for a week aren’t you, Mr Retallick? Lovely weather you have for it!”
As the skies had been lashing a steady drizzle for the last two days, slanted almost horizontal by the gale-force winds, she was obviously joking. A lot of guests would have complained – city types in particular seemed to think the countryside should come with guaranteed sunshine whenever they visited – but he just shrugged those actually-now-you-mention-it-pretty-awesome shoulders and made a “them’s the breaks” comment.
Pippa stared at him as he unzipped his coat, wondering if they’d met before. It wasn’t just the Cornish name – it was the face. The eyes in particular. They were pretty spectacular eyes, after all, and she had the uncanny feeling she’d looked into them before.
“Have we met?” she asked. “You look really familiar…”
His face changed as fast as a storm raging in from the sea, the already dark eyes shading even deeper, a frown marring the skin of his fine, strong forehead. She felt a rebuff coming on and prepared to handle it. She’d been running this holiday business practically single-handed for three years now and had learned to deal with all kinds of strange visitors and their foibles.
As he opened his mouth to speak, the front door flew open and Daisy ran in, blonde curls swirling in a wild, tangled halo around her face. Predictably enough Lily followed, hot on her heels and just as flustered.
Daisy screeched, “SpongeBob’s escaped again! She’s –” “– pooing all over the courtyard!” finished Lily. They were identical twins, nine years old, and never seemed to be able to complete a sentence without each other’s help. Which was at least an improvement on the secret language they’d used exclusively until they were seven. Pippa had been on the verge of calling in an exorcist when they suddenly stopped, although she still occasionally heard them gibbering together at night in their bedroom. Still, as long as their heads weren’t spinning round, she was happy.
“Oh…sausages!” said Pippa, vaulting over Mr Retallick’s rucksack and sprinting out and around the back to the courtyard. Sure enough, there was SpongeBob – that’s what happens when you let kids name cows – munching away on the hydrangeas. She looked up as Pippa approached, her wide mouth sliding slowly from side to side as she chewed, her long-lashed eyes placid. At least to the untrained eye. Pippa had tangled with SpongeBob one too many times to be tricked.
“Daisy, Lily! One to the left, one to the right!” she shouted. “Scotty – I know you’re out there somewhere – get the gate open!”
On cue, a little boy of about four, with the same long, wild blonde hair, appeared from behind the decorative water trough and ran over to a broad metal gate, reaching up on tiptoes to unhook the blue nylon string that tied it closed.
Pippa advanced steadily, hopping over the steaming gifts that SpongeBob had deposited on the cobbles, muttering the fake swear words she used in front of the kids – variations of “sugar”, “broomsticks”, “rubber ducks” and her personal favourite, “molluscs!” She noticed Mr Retallick coming closer from the corner of her eye and shouted out to him, “Don’t be fooled! I know she looks like a pin-up, but this is the Osama bin Laden of cows! Best stay away!”
He nodded and instead headed towards the metal feed bucket that had been abandoned next to the gate. He picked it up and banged it with his fist so the contents rattled. SpongeBob looked up and over, her broad head turning towards the noise. Her eyes narrowed – Pippa swore they did – as she thought about it. Weighed up the pros and cons in her big cow brain.
Mr Retallick shook the feed bucket some more and walked through the gate towards the barn. Pippa walked closer to the cow, making gentle shooing gestures with her hands. Daisy and Lily edged in nearer on either side and Pippa could see their tiny blonde heads reflected in SpongeBob’s huge, liquid brown pupils. They patted her on the side and Pippa gave a delicate shove from the rear, careful to avoid clomping hooves and swishing tails that could catch you in the eye if the animal got her dander up.
Finally, the combination of carrot and stick worked and she lumbered slowly towards the gate, after one final defiant munch of bright-purple hydrangea petals. She still had one dangling from her mouth as she walked.
“Into the barn!” shouted Pippa, watching as her early guest nodded and strode forward, angling long legs over the muddy puddles, leading the evil cow genius right inside. He smacked her on the behind as she wandered through and SpongeBob turned to give him the evil-cow genius eye. He gave her the eye back before shutting and latching the barn door.
Then he stood, hands on hips, threw his head back and laughed. Laughed long and hard, and loud. Pippa looked on in fascination, drinking in the sight of this stunning male specimen standing in her farmyard in the rain. Drizzle dripped from his soaked hair, over his forehead, along the slightly aquiline ridge of his nose, down to the sensual curve of his wide mouth. He really was drop-dead gorgeous. And even better, seemed to know his way around a cow. Wow! The perfect man. Now, if he could iron school uniforms and turn into a pizza after sex, even better.
The children scurried closer, looking at him with similar curiosity, Scotty clutching onto her hand for security. The twins were fearless, but her baby? He always needed an extra layer of security. Which was fine by her – as long as he still wasn’t climbing into bed for cuddles when he was 16, she would always be available for hand-holding. She gave his fingers a little squeeze of reassurance.
“Thank you, Mr Retallick,” she said. “ I see you’ve spent some time in the company of cows before?”
“There are many answers to that, Miss Harte, but I’ll restrain myself – and it was my pleasure. Been a while since I was at the business end of a Friesian. This used to be a dairy farm, didn’t it?”
“Yes. 500 head. But my parents…aren’t here any more. It’s just us. So we converted to holiday lets. A working farm is – well, a lot of work. Too much for this gang of troublemakers, anyway.”
“By ‘us’, you mean…” he cast his spookily sexy brown eyes over the gathered crowd, which now numbered Pippa, Daisy, Lily, Scotty, a nanny goat called Ben Ten and a pair of Muscovy ducks known as Phineas and Ferb. In fact, Pippa thought, there was only one person missing. As usual.
“Yes. Us. These are my brothers and sisters, and our animal friends,” she said, introducing them all individually. “And there’s one missing. Patrick. He’s seventeen, and he’ll be the one hiding somewhere after leaving the barn door open.”
“Again!” said Lily and Daisy in unison, rolling their eyes in a way that spoke volumes about Patrick and his various misdemeanours.
“You
