Matilda Next Door - Kelly Hunter Page 0,46
bag goes on a tray in a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree oven for twenty minutes, and then you take it out and pierce the bag and leave it for another ten. What does your grandfather still have left in his garden? Any snap peas?’
It was as if she was talking a different language. ‘There’s a few striped tomatoes left.’
‘Perfect. Put them in the oven, on a tray, as soon as you take the meat out. Salt and pepper them first. And by that I mean get the grinders out and don’t be stingy.’
‘Lacking grinders,’ he confessed.
She added nearby salt and pepper grinders to his growing pile. ‘The things I do to make sure romance blossoms.’
‘You’re a saint.’
‘You’re going to need something green on that plate.’ She added asparagus, and then looked at him and took them straight back. ‘No, we’re going to go with shelled peas.’ A ziplock bag of fresh peas appeared. ‘Boil them for a minimum of five minutes. The mushier you like them the longer you boil them.’
‘I’m on it,’ he said. Confidence was his friend. ‘Tilly said you had wine here.’
‘You are pushing our friendship.’
‘We have a friendship?’ He was beginning to like this woman with the girlish face and the razor-sharp tongue. ‘I thought at this point it was my limitless credit card and your fondness for Matilda that was making you so helpful, but my bad.’
‘No, I’m doing it for you, Henry Church, because I remember you from the bus and you never made fun of my stockings and shiny shoes or the fact that no one was ever there to pick me up. Again.’
Why the hell would he make fun of that?
‘That look there,’ she murmured. ‘That’s why I’m helping you woo my fabulous sous chef.’
‘She’ll tell you she’s just a cooker of cakes. Nothing special.’
‘And every last soul who’s ever tasted one of those cakes knows better.’
‘You’re quite the authoritarian.’
‘It’s this job. Running a destination wedding venue is not for the faint of heart. Would you like a Cadillac with that? Because we have one out the back.’
‘I’m a little bit scared of you. Just so you know.’ Truth and nothing but.
Maggie smiled and it made her beautiful. ‘She’s going to love whatever you serve up.’
She took him and Rowan down into the hidden cellar beneath the homestead and started pulling dusty wine from racks and standing them on a scarred and spotlessly clean bar.
‘You are so full of surprises.’
‘I know.’
‘Who collected all this wine?’
‘Best guess, my great-grandfather, and some of it’s no good anymore so I suggest we open a bottle and try it before you take it home. It can breathe on the way. And hand over that fancy credit card, Londoner. I’ll not charge you for the food, but the wine is worth a small fortune.’
‘You can have the keys to my London apartment if you want.’
‘The one that has babies turning up on the doorstep? No, thanks.’
He handed over his credit card, tasted wine with Maggie until he found a winner, and couldn’t ever remember Wirralong being so cosmopolitan. New blood in town, with money, vision and goodwill. Creating opportunities for people, ways to make them shine. Who’d have thought it of the tired little country town he’d lit out of all those years ago?
It made him start wondering what he could give back and whether think tank face-to-face thrashing sessions had to take place in London. They often lasted a week or more. People rarely saw anything but four walls, computer screens and takeaway containers. What if he could get a crew to work, sleep and feed at Wirra Station? ‘They’d never go for it,’ he told his daughter as he hauled her and all the fixings for dinner into his grandmother’s kitchen. ‘I’d have to bribe them.’
He was tracking okay on the cooking front by the time Matilda arrived. She wore a pretty yellow sleeveless dress with wide straps, and tan leather sandals. She had a dash of lipstick on. Little bit of eye make-up too, just enough to make her remarkable eyes glow silver in the right light. Pretty woman with her flawless skin and ready smile that widened as she saw the meal fixings on the bench.
‘You had help.’
He was ready for her. ‘No idea what you’re talking about.’
She pointed towards the open wine bottle.
‘A fine drop. Want some?’
She took a glass from him and sipped and shrugged. ‘You kept good wine in your London place too. I went to replace the bottle I drank, and it