Pippa’s Cornish Dream. Debbie Johnson
“Looking hot today, babe,” Pippa Harte said out loud as she caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror.
If, she thought ruefully, your definition of “hot” ran to electric-shock hair dragged back into an elastic band, smudges of oil as blusher and WD40 as perfume. Not to mention the glamorous accessories – elbow-length green rubber gloves, fresh from the Paris catwalk. Ooh la la!
In her hand she was wielding a toilet brush, the bristles wrapped in a plastic carrier bag from the local supermarket, the handles tied in a dangling bow around the pole.
“Well, here goes nothing…” she muttered, gazing down into the bowl of the loo. The very blocked bowl of the loo. The water was already up to the rim and one more flush was likely to send it over the edge. She’d been there before and knew that this one bit of dodgy plumbing was capable of recreating scenes from the Titanic.
Not, she thought, this time. This time, she would triumph – using her scientific know-how to defeat the Evil Bog of Destiny. She plunged the toilet brush in, shoved it hard and as far into the U-bend as she could. Create a vacuum, she recited in her head, then nature will fill it…
She sent up a quick prayer to the Patron Saint of Holiday Home Owners and tugged the flush handle, simultaneously pulling the wrapped brush out with a flourish. She stood back, prepared to jump aside if the floodgates opened, and looked on with something akin to joy as the water ebbed, flowed and swirled – all the way down the pipes!
“Yay!” she shouted, doing a victory jig around the room and out into the landing of Honeysuckle Cottage, “I did it! I am woman! I created a vacuum! Yay! Thank you YouTube!”
She was so happy, she managed to ignore two things – the tiny drops of toilet water flying from the plastic bag as she danced, and the man who had been standing outside in the hallway watching her. She jigged her way smack bang into him and dropped the brush in shock. It landed with a soggy, plastic plop on his expensive-looking walking boots. Oops!
“Oh!” she said, jumping back in surprise. “I’m so sorry…don’t worry, it was clean water…” she added, using her wellies to toe the offending item away. “Not like last time…that was, well. Yuk. You probably don’t want to know…”
She looked up, a wide grin cracking her oil-smudged face – nothing could bring her down, she decided, not after that minor miracle. And really, nothing she was looking at could dissuade her that the patron saint hadn’t been listening after all – he was gorgeous. Six-two or thereabouts; broad shoulders packed up in a khaki-green Berghaus; long legs in denim; and the deepest, darkest brown eyes she’d ever seen on a human. Really, even the dairy cows she knew up close and personal couldn’t compete. A wide mouth, kissable lips and dark, longish hair drifting over tanned, outdoorsy skin, damp from the drizzle outside. Or possibly the toilet brush, she thought with a twinge of guilt. Welcome to Cornwall.
“Are you Mr Retallick?” she asked, knowing the names of all her guests in advance. This one was early, but she wouldn’t let that sour her mood. Not when the gods of the toilet had smiled upon her so warmly.
“I am – I hope it’s okay to be here a few hours ahead of schedule? You seemed to be having some kind of rave…” he said, gesturing into the bathroom. His voice was deep and sounded like chocolate would if it could talk.
“Yes, that’s what we do for fun around here, bathroom raving – the more the merrier, Mr Retallick, feel free to join in!”
She rubbed her face, realising that using a flirtatious tone with a handsome stranger might work better if she didn’t look like a teenage grease monkey. The dungarees she wore were practical when she was doing her jobs around the farm, but it wasn’t what you’d call chic. Mr Retallick – Ben, if she remembered rightly – looked like money. And style. And sex. He wouldn’t look twice at a girl like her, even if she did have world-class DIY skills.
“I was just celebrating,” she added. “I used my superior intellect to defeat the evil toilet, you see.”
“You’re celebrating the fact that you have a superior intellect to a toilet?” he asked, shrugging off his backpack and raising an amused eyebrow.
“Well, us country girls have to take our victories where we can find them, Mr Retallick…Retallick…that’s a local name, isn’t it?” she asked. It didn’t seem likely that anyone from North Cornwall was coming on holiday to North Cornwall, but stranger things had happened. Maybe his wife had kicked him out, she thought, glancing surreptitiously at his ring finger. His bare ring finger. Not that she cared.
“Yes, I had family here once,” he answered. “Long gone now.”
He was perfectly polite, but something in his voice told her to back off. That was fine by her – she knew enough about families to understand that they were complicated. Her own, for example, was so weird you could make a sitcom about it. A lot of people came to Harte Farm for privacy, peace, seclusion. Which was a good job, as it was perched on top of a windswept hill overlooking the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean – not the place for a buzzing social life. If Mr Retallick wanted to be left alone, she would respect that. Even if he was the hottest thing in hotsville.
“How’s it going in there?” he asked, gesturing towards the bathroom, where her various tools lay scattered on the harlequin-tiled floor. Not the best of first impressions, she thought, gathering them all back 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