Aidan was waiting at the bottom of the drive for Tori, not wanting her to walk up the bumpy path in the dark on her own. The full moon was shining brightly, stars pin-pricking against a black velvet sky. It was warm, the heat of the day still lingering. The perfect night for picking the heartberries.

He hadn’t slept well that afternoon, his head too full of Tori Graham in her pretty strawberry pyjamas. It was funny, the pyjamas were not what he would class as typically sexy if he’d seen them in a shop, but there was something very sexy about Tori in them, lying in her bed, her hair in scarlet waves over the pillow. That photo had been so innocently taken but it had stirred in him so many emotions.

He saw the flickering torch light coming from Blossom Cottage and, as Tori rounded the corner, he couldn’t help but smile.

She was dressed in little denim shorts, her long legs disappearing into bright purple wellies. She was wearing a baggy red hoodie, her hair swept up into a high ponytail under a tweed flat cap, just like the one he had worn the first day they had met.

She grinned when she saw him waiting for her and then doffed her cap as she did a little bow.

‘My Lord.’

He laughed. ‘My Lady.’

She did a little twirl. ‘Will I pass muster? I saw the cap in the village and thought if I’m going to be a fruit farmer for a few weeks, then I needed the right uniform.’

God, she was so lovely.

‘You more than pass muster,’ Aidan said, softly.

He offered out his hand and she smiled and then took it.

‘How was your nap?’ he asked as they walked back up the drive towards the farm.

‘I had wonderful dreams,’ she said, looking up at him.

Aidan hoped those dreams were about him.

‘So, we’ve got time to look through your ideas for the advert. The lantern ceremony won’t be starting for a while yet.’

‘The what?’

‘Many of the villagers will bring lanterns and candles down to the field to help light it up for the heartberry-picking.’

‘You don’t have floodlights or something a bit more… modern to light the fields?’

‘Yes, of course but this is all part of the celebrations. It’s how it was done hundreds of years ago. So, we still do it today. Well, only for tonight, we have proper lighting for the rest of the time.’

‘Oh, that’s really sweet,’ Tori said. ‘And when does the naked dancing start?’

He laughed. ‘Any time you want.’

They walked in silence for a while as Tori looked up at the moon and the stars.

‘Are you going to Matthew’s memorial thing tomorrow?’ Tori asked.

‘Yes, I wasn’t sure if you were going, what with Melody and Isla not knowing about the two of you.’

‘They know now. Elliot kind of outed me this afternoon. Apparently Matthew talked about me a lot with him. I’m relieved more than anything. I’ve been wanting to tell them for a while and the longer I left it the harder it was.’

Aidan thought about Matthew and wondered what his friend would make of this tentative relationship between himself and Tori. He looked down at Tori who was frowning slightly as she was clearly deep in thought. Was she thinking the same thing? Was it too soon for her to be moving on? It had been nearly a year, but she had loved Matthew and that was difficult to get over, if she ever could. Her relationship with Matthew had been a strange one – one weekend, a few months of phone calls – but he was sure that her feelings for Matthew didn’t run any less deep just because they hadn’t been together in the conventional sense.

‘Is this weird?’ Tori said.

‘What?’

‘Talking about Matthew when we’re…’ she trailed off, clearly not really knowing how to describe what she had with Aidan. She gestured to their joined hands to sum it up.

‘When we’re… something?’ he supplied, rather unhelpfully.

‘Yes. If you were talking about your ex all the time, it would be weird.’

‘It’s different with Matthew. You didn’t split up, he died,’ Aidan said. ‘I know you pushed him away, but in my mind that was a bump in the road more than anything. And you’re not talking about him all the time. Matthew was my friend, it’s only natural that you would want to talk about him with someone who knew him. I suppose my only concern is you and whether you’re ready for… something with someone else.’

She didn’t answer at first and he patiently waited, running his thumb over the back of her hand as they walked along. She had made it clear from the first time they met that she wasn’t interested in a relationship, but now they were embarking on some kind of fling. Had that been mainly to do with him? Had he pushed her into this?

‘I loved him, and I do miss talking to him every day. I regret that I never really gave our relationship a chance but who knows what would have happened if we had, whether it would have worked. And you’re right, it’s different when your ex dies to just splitting up. My love for Luc ended the second I found out he had cheated on me. I hated him for doing that to me. I loved Matthew long after he had died. So, I don’t know when the right time is to move on with someone else after a loved one dies but I do know that this… thing between us feels right. Whatever it is, whether it lasts a few days or a few weeks or it lasts a hell of a lot longer, it feels right. I never want to look back on these few weeks and regret the things we didn’t do, and I certainly don’t think I’d ever regret the things we did do.’

Aidan nodded as they approached the back door of the farmhouse. He wasn’t going to regret it either.

‘And what is it you think we’re going to do?’ he teased.

‘Well you’ve already shown me your elbows, multiple times. It’s just a slippery slope from here on in.’

He laughed. She was quick, and he liked that about her. He glanced down at her beautiful smile filling her face. There was a lot that he liked about Tori Graham.

He let her into the kitchen and the bright lights made him blink for a few seconds as he closed the door behind them. He turned back to find that Tori was already unpacking her sketchbook, notebook and a small box from her bag. Her hair shone in the glow of the light in the kitchen and he wanted to run his hand through it. She smiled at him, filling him with feelings he hadn’t experienced in a long time. It had been years since he’d had anybody mooching about in his kitchen, but she looked comfortable here and he wondered vaguely what it would be like if she was here all the time. He quickly pushed that thought away. She was leaving in a few weeks. Whatever happened between them, it would probably never go beyond the few weeks that she was here. He stepped closer to her, inhaling her wonderful scent. But he was damned well going to enjoy himself while she was here.

‘So, I have drawn out a selection of five heartberry characters for you to choose from,’ she said, laying out five sheets of paper. ‘He needs to be cute if we are going to go down the merchandising route, something that might appeal to children too, so I kept that in mind while I was designing them.’

He forced his eyes away from the beautiful woman in front of him to look at the drawings. They were so detailed, shaded and coloured to look 3D, almost popping from the page.

‘These are amazing,’ Aidan said. ‘You have such a talent for this.’

‘Which one do you like the best?’

All the berry characters were cute and appealing, but he loved the one with the twinkle in his eye, wearing a flat cap.

‘I like this one,’ he said, touching the page.

Tori grinned. ‘I’m so pleased you chose him, he’s my favourite too. This is Max. We can come up with different names for the berries if you don’t like Max, but naming them helped the characters to become more real in my head. And… I’ve already made a rough model of him.’

She opened the box and pulled him out carefully, placing him on the table.

‘Oh, he’s brilliant, can I touch him?’

Tori nodded, and he picked up the berry character and held him in his hands. It was quite a bit heavier than he thought it would be as he turned it round in his hands.

‘You’ve captured the shape of the heartberry perfectly and made him come to life,’ Aidan said. ‘He looks cheeky and friendly and endearing.’

‘Oh, I’m so happy you like him. So, I’ve been thinking about the story for the advert. I thought it could be a bit of a love story as the heartberry is famous for bringing people together. So maybe our Max could be looking for love.’

‘I like that.’

She picked up a stack of paper with drawings in little boxes, kind of like a comic book.

‘These are storyboards which will help to give you a visual for the story. It’s a bit of a work in progress at the moment, but I thought it could be a bit like the Ugly Duckling, in that Max doesn’t know he’s a heartberry and he knows he doesn’t belong with the other fruit.’ She pointed out the relevant drawings for that part of the story and then moved on to the other drawings. ‘He tries to find friends with the strawberries, the raspberries and apples but they know he isn’t one of them. The heartberry is so unique he can’t find any fruit that is even similar to him. He travels far and wide and eventually comes to Heartberry Farm where he finds lots of berries just like him and even a female berry called Jenny, who he falls in love with.’

He smiled at the last few pictures of Max, holding Jenny in one of those classic romantic dip poses and then winking at the camera and throwing his cap over the lens. It was fun and catchy and her enthusiasm for the project shone through it.

‘I love it,’ Aidan said.

‘Really?’ Her face lit up.

‘Yes, I really do, it’s perfect. I think people will really like it.’

‘Well, we can do some fantastic merchandising with it too. Make cuddly Max and Jenny toys. I can put you in contact with some great merchandising companies who will make all this stuff for you. It’s tricky because you don’t want to spend thousands on merchandise if no one buys it, but equally you want to have some stuff available to buy straight away if the advert proves a success. We can get the companies to provide some samples of a few popular products, like soft toys or t-shirts and mugs, and have them on your website to start off. If we start getting orders in for them, we can look at ordering more merchandise.’

‘Sounds like a great plan,’ Aidan said.

Tori clapped her hands together excitedly. ‘I’m so happy you like it. Is there anything you want to change? I can make changes to Max or the story or—’

‘It’s perfect.’

She smiled, and Aidan loved the way it filled her whole face. ‘Are you sure?’

He glanced down at her purple wellies.

‘Maybe Max or Jenny could wear purple wellies.’

Tori grinned. ‘I love it. I can do that, no problem. I can’t wait to get started on this. You’ll have to come round to Blossom Cottage when I start and see me shooting it. It gets a bit dull as we only make very tiny movements on the models. There are twenty-four frames in a second and we normally make around twenty-four to thirty frames a day, so it won’t look like the berries are moving at all, but you can at least pop by for a little while and see how it’s all done.’

‘I’d really like that.’ He glanced across at the clock and realised they needed to go down to the field. He sighed reluctantly. He could have sat and talked to her all night. ‘We better go, the villagers will be waiting.’

‘OK, no problem.’ She packed away her drawings and carefully put Max back in his box. ‘Let’s go, boss.’

---

Tori watched as Aidan put a Thermos flask and a blanket into a large rucksack which was already half filled with Tupperware boxes and foil parcels.

‘Are we having a moonlight picnic?’ she asked, excitedly. The thought of it was so romantic, lying on a blanket under the stars surrounded by candles. Maybe they might even share their first kiss.

He paused for a moment. ‘I’d like to say I’d planned a nice romantic midnight picnic for us, but actually I was just bringing some snacks for later when we have a break.’

Her little romantic bubble popped. She had to stop herself getting carried away.

He must have seen her disappointment. ‘I mean, it is sort of a picnic, there’s a blanket and food…’ he trailed off. ‘I’m rubbish at romance stuff.’

‘A sort of picnic sounds lovely.’

He swung the rucksack onto his back, grabbed his torch and took her hand again as he led her back out of the farmhouse. She smiled at how right it felt to be holding hands with him. He was doing just fine on the romance side of things.

‘The heartberry field is right down by the coast so we’ll take the jeep. That way we can load all our berries into the back when we’re done. It will be quite a big harvest as the fruit we get tonight will be used for the heartberry festival at the weekend, for the famous heartberry cake, jams, biscuits and other desserts. So tomorrow I’ll drive the berries round to all the local businesses and I expect I’ll sell out in a few hours. Many places have already put in a big order.’

He opened the car door for her and she swung herself up into the seat, then he walked round to the other side and got in. He started the engine with a roar and they bumped down the track towards the moonlit sea.

As they rounded the corner, a large field opened out in front of them filled with hundreds of lanterns glowing gold in the darkness.

‘Oh,’ Tori said, taking in the beauty of the night. ‘It’s a bit like Tangled.’

He suddenly started singing, launching into, ‘I See the Light’, the big romantic number from the Disney film.

She stared at him listening to his beautiful voice as he sang every word perfectly.

‘You know the songs from Tangled?’ Tori asked, in surprise, when he stopped.

‘The hazards of having a five-year-old niece. Marigold has made me watch it a hundred times.’

There was something so lovely about the thought of this big man watching Disney films with his niece.

Aidan pulled up to the field and Tori was surprised by the number of people standing around the edge.

‘OK, the way this ceremony works is that we will have to wait until midnight to pick the first berry. I’ll taste it and tell everybody how great it is and then they will all leave. We can both start picking berries then but, whatever you do, don’t eat any.’

‘I can’t try one?’ After hearing so much about the heartberries she was keen to sample them herself.

‘Of course, you can but not while anybody is there. The magic of the heartberries is supposed to be most potent at midnight on the first full moon, which is why the fruit we pick tonight will be used in the famous cake for the big festival at the weekend. If we tried them together I have no doubt that the whole village would be planning our wedding before sunrise. Just wait until they’ve all gone and then we can regroup and taste them together.’

‘Oh OK, we don’t want to give Agatha any more fuel,’ Tori said.

‘No, definitely not. She doesn’t need any more encouragement. So, we both have trolleys and I’ve already left stacks of empty punnets on them. Simply fill each punnet, put the lid on and put it on the trolley. When the trolley is full, load it into the car, and take a new stack of punnets.’

‘Sounds easy enough. What about this special picking method that you were going to show me?’

‘Yes, I can show you that, it’s very easy.’

He got out and Tori climbed down into the field too. She followed him to the first row and smiled as he exchanged pleasantries with everyone that he passed. Several people gave her winks or nudged each other and smiled as they walked past, clearly having decided that they were already together or that the heartberries would work their magic over them. A few were a lot more blatant, asking Aidan if she was his girlfriend, which he politely smiled at but didn’t answer.

Aidan stood by the first bush and in the light of the lanterns she could see little gleaming red berries. The bushes were waist height which Tori was thankful for as it meant that she wouldn’t have to bend down a lot like she would if she was picking strawberries.

She looked up at Aidan. ‘So, we just wait?’

‘Just another minute,’ Aidan said quietly, as he checked his watch.

‘Shall I start doing the naked dancing to entertain the troops?’

Aidan laughed. ‘I’m sure they would appreciate that.’

Down in the village, Tori heard the clock strike midnight and it seemed the villagers held their breath in anticipation of the first berry being picked.

As the last chime of the bell rang out into the darkness, Aidan picked a berry off the bush and popped it in his mouth.

‘Tastes amazing,’ Aidan called out to the waiting villagers. ‘Even better than last year.’

There were claps and cheers of approval from the crowd and then they placed their lanterns on the ground and slowly dispersed, disappearing off back in the direction of the village.

As the villagers walked away, Aidan turned to Tori. ‘I say that every year. So, you don’t pull the berry off from the middle of the fruit, you put your fingers near the stem and gently tug it away from the stalk like this.’

She watched him tease the berry off the bush.

‘Why don’t you have a go,’ Aidan said.

He took her hand and with his fingers over hers he showed her the amount of pressure to apply to the berry. Her breath caught in her throat. She had never thought of berry-picking as something that was sexy before, but with his hand on hers, standing alone with him in the velvet darkness, it suddenly really was.

She popped the berry off the stalk and held it in her hand.

‘Taste it,’ Aidan said softly.

She checked the field and saw that they were now completely alone. She put the berry in her mouth, biting it and letting the juice slide over her tongue. Aidan was watching her the whole time, and for some reason it was sexy as hell.

‘Well, what do you think?’

She had been so distracted by him watching her intently that she hadn’t really processed what it tasted like but now she could appreciate it. It was sweet and tangy and fresh and not like anything she had ever tasted before. She swallowed.

‘It’s wonderful,’ she said, unable to take her eyes from his. ‘So, if this berry is so magical, what happens now? We kiss and fall head over heels in love?’

He didn’t say anything for a moment then he smiled. ‘Let’s see, shall we.’

He bent his head and kissed her.