Forty Things to Do Before You're Forty by Alice Ross Page A

one step when the dog began howling.
    â€˜Heavens, I’ve never known him do that before,’ gasped Mrs Mackenzie, scurrying over to the dog and bundling him up in her arms. ‘I’ll give him a biscuit. That’ll sort him out.’
    Jake flashed a grateful smile before leaving the cottage and heading back across the dividing lawn.
    â€˜Goodness,’ puffed Mrs Mackenzie when Annie arrived back home from work later that afternoon. ‘That’s a very nice young man you’ve got staying in the manor there. Now if I was thirty years younger…’
    Annie’s stomach lurched. Jake Sinclair appeared to be charming every woman in the village. Thanks to Lydia’s introductions, every one of her female customers that day had passed some comment on how gorgeous, or charming, or handsome he was. And now he’d even worked his magic on Mrs Mackenzie.
    â€˜Wh-what was he doing here?’ she asked, hoping her voice didn’t sound quite as panicky as she felt.
    â€˜That boiler is playing up again and the poor love couldn’t find it. Hardly surprising in a place that size.’
    Annie sighed. If the boiler wasn’t working she’d have to call out a plumber and the chances of finding a willing one at this time on a Saturday evening were slim. She ran a hand over her face. She was bone-tired. Saturdays were always hectic in the shop and today she’d spent two hours with a particularly demanding bride, confirming the details of a wedding cake. A frisson of excitement shot through her. Now that the girl had finally made up her mind, Annie knew the cake would be spectacular. So spectacular, she could hardly wait to start work on it. But first, she had the very unspectacular matter of Buttersley Manor’s boiler to resolve.
    There was no sign of Jake when Annie entered the manor. She called his name several times. No reply. He must have gone out, she concluded. Lydia, as magnanimous as ever, had probably offered him the use of
her
shower. Annie quickly quashed the image that sprang into her mind at that thought. Still, now she was here, she might as well take a look at the boiler and see if there was anything obvious wrong with it.
    She climbed the stairs to the first floor and made her way to the lilac room. No sooner had she opened the door to the cupboard in which the machine resided, than she realised she was wasting her time. Not only was the contraption ridiculously large, but its complicated arrangement of knobs, dials, gauges and buttons would not have looked out of a place on a 1960s flight deck.
    â€˜Oh. Hello.’
    Annie spun around to find Jake standing in the doorway, dripping wet with a towel around his waist.
    â€˜I didn’t hear you come in,’ he said.
    Annie couldn’t reply. Her breath hitched in her throat and her head began to spin. Her gaze adhered itself to Jake’s impressive torso, which was golden brown, lean and sprinkled with a smattering of fine dark hair. Little rivulets of water wound their way down it in such a sensual manner that she had to bite back a whimper. Never, in her entire life, had she wanted to be a little rivulet of water more than at that particular moment.
    â€˜I fixed it,’ he said.
    Fixed it? Fixed what? She stared at him nonplussed.
    â€˜The boiler.’
    Annie’s eyes grew wide. Oh my God. Not only was he devastatingly sexy, but he could fix a boiler.
    â€˜You-you fixed it? How?’
    He winked at her. ‘By-product of a misspent youth. Strange how some things stay with you.’
    Like the image of him standing there, dripping-wet, dressed only in a towel. Annie could imagine that image staying with her for a
very
long time.
    â€˜It wasn’t too complicated really,’ he continued, striding over to the cupboard. ‘Look, this button controls the…’
    Annie didn’t hear a word. He was so close to her she could smell his citrusy shower gel again. Her head went fuzzy