Chapter Three
Coffee. Yeah, that would help matters.
Zane flicked on the kettle and leaned back against the worktop of his cottage, eyeing the mountain of paperwork covering the dining table, waiting for him. Outside, the sun was shining, the wind light. Perfect weather to be out trekking or climbing. And what was he doing? Boring paperwork. Again.
Still, it would all be worth it when the legalities were sorted and the Carrdale Outdoor Activity Centre was his. Well, half-his. He was picking Matt up at the airport in a couple of days. And once he’d shown him where the spare room was, Zane was looking forward to dumping some of the paperwork in his arms and letting him sort it out for once. It was only fair, wasn’t it?
Matt had been in Austria doing some business research for the Centre. He’d been sorting out some private matters as well, but, you could bet, he’d have been making the most of the landscape and the opportunities whilst he was there – climbing, glacier skiing, abseiling. In the meantime Zane had been drowning in paperwork and trying to get the Centre ready for its grand re-opening – as well as organising, at very short notice, an entire outdoor adventure festival.
Though the festival was, he was surprised to admit, coming together quite nicely. Largely thanks to Faith. She’d been beyond great, giving him loads of contacts for everything from marquee hire to musicians. She’d called him earlier to say she’d managed to organise an extra meeting of the local tourism group for a few days’ time, so that he and Matt could do their presentation about the festival. They’d discussed holding a dance in the marquee on the evening of the middle day of the weekend festival as well. There was still a fair bit to organise, but he was extremely grateful to Faith for all she’d done to help him out.
The kettle built itself up to a bubbling frenzy before it clicked off, and Zane thought back to his night at the pub with Faith. He’s had a great time at the Poachers, and the fact that he’d enjoyed his first proper meal in ages had only a little bit to do with it. The reason he’d had such a good time was Faith. He enjoyed her company. She was intelligent, funny, and, of course, gorgeous.
She reminded him a bit of the actress Emily Blunt: long dark hair, pale skin, big blue eyes all teamed with a mischievous smile. He’d found himself thinking about Faith far too often since their first meeting at the Coffee Pot. The afternoon shopping trip and the evening in the pub had just made matters worse; now he was thinking about her even more frequently and it was doing nothing for his concentration levels. He’d come to Carleton intent on making Carrdale one of the best outdoor activity centres in the Peaks. A relationship had definitely not been on his to-do list. Still, as he well knew, life rarely turned out how you planned it.
He knew Faith wasn’t involved with anyone at the moment. He’d called into the Coffee Pot one day to get a take-away drink and sandwich, hoping to see her at the same time but she hadn’t been there. Instead Sophie had served him and she’d started chatting away about Faith, making it pretty clear that she’d wanted him to know Faith was young, free and single. Sophie had then proceeded to give him the third degree about his own relationship status. He had assumed Sophie would be feeding this information back to Faith as soon as she saw her.
Sophie was clearly the matchmaker of Carleton. The fact Sophie had asked him those questions suggested to him that Faith hadn’t told her how he and Faith had kind of skirted around the whole are-you-single stuff on that first afternoon on the way to the cash-and-carry. So Faith hadn’t been talking about him. He wondered if that was significant.
Anyway, it looked as though they were both free agents and they liked each other. So why hadn’t things gone any further that night after the Poachers? Why hadn’t he asked her out on a proper date, rather than just dishing out some vague invitation to cook her a meal sometime?
Zane groaned as he made his coffee and headed for the paperwork mountain in the dining room. Why hadn’t he even kissed her properly? Yeah, well, he knew the answer to that question well enough. When they’d arrived back at her place he’d thanked her for a lovely evening, politely refused her offer of a coffee, saying it was late, and had kissed her on the cheek before turning on his heels and trudging up the hill back to his cottage.
Was he completely useless when it came to women? It certainly felt like that at the moment. Plus, he had to ask himself, did he want to risk getting involved in another relationship? Things hadn’t turned out so well the last time he’d been down that route, had they?
Picking up the nearest folder, he knew there was a further complication as well. He couldn’t help feeling Faith was holding back, putting up some kind of barrier around herself. Every so often she let the barrier down enough to relax, and then he’d say or do something and the barrier would be back up again in an instant. It was almost as though certain things triggered some unhappy memories in her, and then she closed herself off from him again.
He had a pretty good idea something – or someone – had hurt Faith badly in the past He recognised the signs.
The problem was that for the first time in quite a while, he really liked someone. He was drawn to Faith and wanted to get to know her better, despite his own concerns about getting involved again.
Anyway, for now, he should put all thoughts of Faith from his mind and set to on the contracts and legal stuff. Great. He hated this side of things. But, he sighed, turning over the first page of the first bit of paperwork in the folder, you didn’t get where you wanted to go in life without learning to take the rough with the smooth. You had to tackle the things you hated as well as the things you loved.
And he needed to get through a good chunk of this stuff before he picked Matt up in a few days. When they’d spoken earlier Matt had said he’d “just about got things finalised in Austria” – who knew what that meant in the circumstances, but Zane hadn’t felt like asking – and he should be on the first flight out of Vienna on Friday.
As expected he was planning to stay in the cottage with Zane for now. OK, so the spare room was only tiny, but, besides the little office he’d set up in there, the place had been part-furnished and there was the sofa-bed. Probably a really uncomfortable one, but Matt wouldn’t mind. He’d slept on plastic sheets on rock-hard ground many a time; a saggy sofa-bed shouldn’t be a problem to him.
Zane sipped his coffee as he tried, once again, to focus on the legal-speak in the contracts. Soon there would be two of them to wade through the ever-expanding admin relating to buying the Carrdale Outdoor Activity Centre. About time too.
He just hoped trouble wouldn’t follow Matt to Carleton. They were good friends and got on well, but when it came to women their tastes couldn’t have been more different. Matt, he knew, was the kind of guy about whom the old saying about locking up your daughters to keep them safe might have been created. As Zane buried himself in paperwork, he couldn’t help wondering if Matt’s arrival was going to help matters or complicate them.