Page 20 of The Orchard at Rosevale
‘It’s the only thing that grounds me,’ he murmured, his expression tortured. ‘I hate the thought of not doing it for the next year.’
‘Why don’t you do it here?’
‘Feeding you for a week isn’t exactly the same as running a kitchen at a busy restaurant.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
She had no idea where the idea had come from, but the moment he’d admitted that cooking grounded him, she understood. Taking the perfect shot, creating clever captions and designing brilliant websites did that for her. Work had always been her panacea and if she couldn’t do what she loved for a year, she couldn’t imagine how untethered she’d feel.
‘Why don’t you cook here, for people, like a farm-to-table kind of thing?’ she said, brainstorming. ‘I haven’t seen inside those sheds yet, but you’ve got a lot of them. Maybe you could clear one out and turn it into a pop-up restaurant?’
He gaped at her, shock widening his eyes.
‘As a self-confessed foodie who has eaten her way across Melbourne, I can categorically say your cuisine is the best.’
‘Any idiot can make a club sandwich,’ he muttered, and in an instant, she remembered their passionate make-out session, how damn good his lips had felt plastered against hers.
‘Don’t do that self-deprecating crap,’ she said, pointing at him. ‘I can see a glimmer of excitement in those stormy eyes.’
‘Stormy eyes?’ The corners of his mouth twitched in the first sign of amusement since she’d entered the kitchen. ‘Let me guess. Romance is your go-to genre for movies and books.’
‘Nothing wrong with feel-good fiction.’
‘Didn’t say there was.’
‘You implied it.’
He held up his hands and chuckled. ‘No judgement here. Besides, I’m too stunned by your suggestion.’
‘Is it a good one?’
‘Could be.’
‘Excellent.’ She stood, took her plate and cutlery to the sink and rinsed them before stacking them on the drying rack. ‘I’ll leave you to ponder my brilliance while I go update the farm’s website. Hopefully you can show me around some more later.’
‘Uh-huh,’ he said, staring out the window, his gaze already focussed on the nearby sheds.
With a smug smile, Elora saluted and headed back to the studio, her head filled with ideas of how her week promoting the farm might turn into a bigger job if Cruz opened a restaurant here and needed her marketing expertise.
CHAPTER
12
Ferne’s eyelids snapped open early as usual. She hadn’t needed an alarm for years but as she blinked several times, disoriented, she wished she had the ability to sleep in. Waking in the apartment that had been her husband’s love nest for years didn’t encourage her to leap out of bed as she usually did. Maybe once she unpacked the new decor she’d bought last night and put her touch on the place, she’d feel better.
Though as she glanced at the weird fluorescent glow from the city lights illuminating the slats of the blinds and listened to the sounds of cars and slamming doors of fellow early risers, she doubted anything would improve her mood.
The faster she booked her trip and left this place, the better.
She sat up, going through her routine of stretching—linking hands overhead and reaching for the ceiling; crossing her arms over her chest and twisting side to side; placing her palms on her thighs and sliding towards the floor—while she considered her destination. She’d narrowed it down to four. The South Island of New Zealand, Hawaii, Cyprus or Ireland. For someone who’d never been overseas, she could pretty much go anywhere and it would be an adventure, but being budget conscious, she wanted to stay closer to home for the moment; at least until the farm sold and she had more financial freedom.
‘New Zealand it is,’ she muttered, as she stood and padded towards the living room, where she’d left her laptop along with the rest of her belongings.
Opening the shutters, she admired the pale Melbourne dawn brushing the sky in gold and tipping the rooftops in glimmering saffron. She loved this time of day on the farm, too, though back in Rosevale Grove, she’d be listening to the magpies warbling and the crows cawing rather than the faintest buzz of traffic on a nearby freeway.
Turning away from the stunning vista, she sat at the small dining table and fired up her laptop. She’d already scoured travel websites and knew where she wanted to start. She’d fly into Christchurch and take a few days to look around, before taking a tour to the hot spots on her list: Mount Cook—New Zealand’s highest peak, Abel Tasman National Park, Milford Sound, Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers, and the spectacular Marlborough Sounds.
She’d never skied in her life, but Queenstown looked beautiful, and Dunedin had preserved Edwardian and Victorian heritage, with stunning Gothic-inspired architecture that begged to be explored.
