Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1) - Alexis Hall Page 0,77

Grey, and Assam but no English breakfast didn’t exactly speak to her status as a woman of the people. She decided that Assam was the closest to regular tea that she had and made two cups of that, one black and slightly less infused, and one full of milk and sugar.

She found Harry sitting at the top of the stairs. “So I’ve checked the hall sockets,” he whispered, “and it’s none of them. Which leaves your room and Amelie’s room. You want to do yours first? That way we might not have to wake her up.”

Rosaline didn’t wholly want to invite Harry into her bedroom—but she suspected that said more about her than it did about him. “Can you give me two minutes to . . . you know. Make it presentable.”

“Got three sisters, mate. Ain’t nothing I ain’t seen before. But go ahead. I’ll have my tea.”

She slipped inside and hastily stashed away her pants, bras, and vibrators—not that any of these things were particularly visible or shameful, but she felt they were best witnessed by choice, rather than by accident. When she was done, she opened the door and Harry, who’d made surprisingly rapid progress on his tea, came in and had a quick look round.

“We might need to move the bed.” He struck the universal tradesman pose of mild consternation. “I’ll check the others, but I reckon there’s a socket back there.”

There was, though Rosaline hadn’t thought of it since she’d moved in. But as fate would have it, she needed to think of it now because the other sockets were fine.

“Which end do you want?” asked Harry.

Did it matter? “I’ll take the footboard.”

“All right. Bend from your knees. Keep your back straight. On three.”

Fortunately, the only bed she’d been able to afford was made from MDF and held together with glue and hope so it moved fairly easily. Underneath, of course, was a warren of dust bunnies that appeared to have taken half her socks hostage.

Harry bent down—she wasn’t looking, she wasn’t looking—and poked his machine into the socket. There was a beep. “This’ll be the one.”

Pulling a screwdriver from his back pocket, he opened the panel and then, pulling a different screwdriver from a different pocket, did something Rosaline would never have been able to replicate with the tangle of wires.

“Here we go.” He stood and passed her the detached plug socket. “That there”—he pointed at a brownish-yellow stain running between two of the terminals on one side—“is where some damp’s got in and it’s built a connection from the live to the earth. And that’s what’s setting your switch off. I’ll go get another one out the van and we’ll be sorted.”

It took less than twenty minutes in the end, and that included getting the bed back into position as carefully and quietly as possible. And then they were standing awkwardly in the front hall, Harry holding a mug in one hand and his toolbox in the other.

“Well,” he said. “Better be leaving you to it.”

That just felt bad. Hi, drive for an hour at no notice, fix my house, refuse payment and then fuck off immediately. Although maybe he wanted to go. Maybe he had a hot date to get back to. Or, if nothing else, a self-saucing pudding. “You . . . you don’t have to. If you wanted to hang around and have another cup of tea or something.”

They eyed each other uncertainly. Then he shrugged. “Up to you, mate. Don’t want to wear out my welcome.”

“No, please. It’s fine.”

“Yeah, but”—his feet shuffled against the threadbare carpet—“it’s late and you’ve probably got stuff in the morning.”

“Well, I don’t want to make you stay if you’ve got to rush off. But you’ve come a long way and done me a favour, so I don’t want to chuck you out.”

He frowned. “Mate. You don’t owe me nothing. I said I’d give you a hand if you needed it and I have. I’m happy to stay if you fancy a natter, but just ’cos I like you and you’re pretty—which I know I shouldn’t be saying—don’t mean you gotta give me the time of day for a plug socket.”

“Um,” she said.

Truthfully, she wasn’t sure how to take this. She’d been raised with a very strong sense of social obligation, and the idea of being given a choice about it was on the edge of disorienting. Besides, she did sort of . . . actually want Harry to stick around for a bit, although she