Christmas at the Little Clock House on the Green. Eve Devon

Would Bridget Jones Do for a more kick-ass What Would JLaw Do? She licked her lips and stared again at the cow. ‘So … just sort of … hit it?’

      ‘Sometime today would be appreciated.’

      ‘And you know to hit it because?’

      ‘It’s Gertrude.’

      ‘Well.’ Emma folded her arms. ‘I have to tell you that I am none the wiser.’

      ‘But you are getting older. And so am I.’

      A head popped around the rear of the cow and to Emma’s surprise it had a face belonging to it that stopped the breath in her lungs.

      Maybe it was the fact that she faced imminent death by cow, but Emma’s powers of observation all narrowed down to one impressive: Valhalla-lujah.

      The man was all dark and dangerous with Viking hair and beard and eyes the colour of the pints of Guinness that Bar Brand served up on Paddy’s night.

      Eyes that, despite being framed by lashes that could compete with Gertrude’s, she could see were now drawn into a deep scowl.

      ‘For heaven’s sake,’ he said. ‘Hold these will you and I’ll move her on.’

      Without thinking, Emma held open her arms and allowed Mr Heart-Wrecking Handsome to deposit a weighty pile of magazines, what looked like rolled-up plans, a laptop and a tape-measure the size of a dinner plate in them.

      The next thing she knew she was staggering against the sudden weight, her feet sliding across the ice in opposite and modesty-mocking directions.

      She hit the ground with an audible bump.

      Oh, my, God.

      Years of yoga, Pilates and dance and who knew all it was going to take for her to finally be able to do the splits was a British country lane, a cow, and a Viking!

      She blew a strand of blonde hair out of her eyes and looked up just in time to watch Gertrude walking off down the road, bovine hips swinging like Jessica Rabbit.

      ‘Sorry. Are you all right? Here, let me help you up.’

      Emma righted her beanie so that she could get an even better look at the Viking. ‘Oh, I think you’ve done more than enough under the circumstances,’ she harrumphed and then thought that on the bright side at least the heat in her face was bound to trickle down to her toes.

      ‘It’s not often these days that a man gets to rescue a woman from the perils of nature.’

      Was he kidding?

      ‘It’s not often these days that a man expects a woman to hold his papers for him while he wades into danger,’ she muttered.

      ‘Quite. Well,’ he muttered all very Mark Darcy. ‘As it happens they’re important papers and I didn’t see you getting it done.’

      Emma felt her bottom lip protrude. ‘So I did a little cow-ering. Excuse me for being surprised to find I was trapped in my own home by the bovine beast of Whispers Wood. I’m sure I’d have worked out how to get her to move—’

      ‘Eventually,’ he replied with a slight twitch of his lips.

      Her gaze stalled on his lips. Until she saw him notice. Then, with another rush of red to her head, she glanced at her watch and stammered, ‘Oh. Help me up will you, I need to get to The Clock House.’

      ‘The Clock House? Really?’ He hauled her to her feet as if she was as light as a leaf floating in the breeze and she tried unsuccessfully not to be impressed.

      ‘Yes. Really.’

      ‘That’s where I’m off to. We might as well walk together, I suppose.’

      Don’t do me any favours, she thought and then tried to remember how to get to the village green. As compasses went, she had an excellent moral one. As for working out which direction to take to get, well, anywhere … not so much.

      ‘So you must be the famous Holly Wood,’ came the rich dark-roasted coffee voice.

      ‘Huh? Oh. No, my name is Emma Danes.’

      ‘Not Holly Wood? I could have sworn—’

      ‘No. I’m over from Hollywood, and I’m definitely not famous,’ she replied feeling a little funny that she might have been talked about before she had even landed. ‘I’m here to help Kate open Cocktails & Chai @ The Clock House. And you must be… ?’ Apart from a rural Viking God with super-sexy British accent, appearing out of nowhere to save me from cows named, Gertrude, that was.

      For one awkie mo she worried she’d said rural Viking God with super-sexy British accent out loud because there was another quirk of his lips into a smile that made her heart sort of descend into her stomach like someone had snapped its strings.

      And then he was introducing himself Bond-style, with a, ‘My name is Knightley. Jake Knightley.’

       Chapter 8

       The Art of Conversation

       Emma

      ‘So if your name’s Knightley, have you come from Knightley Hall, then?’ Emma said, as she set off down the country lane beside him.

      When he didn’t answer she thought he hadn’t heard her all the way up there where the tall people hung out, so she said a little louder, ‘That huge black and white building surrounded by all that precision-cut hedging on the other side of the village?’

      ‘Topiary,’ he murmured.

      ‘Huh?’

      ‘The hedging you’re referring to is called topiary,’ he corrected helpfully.

      Ignoring the dictionary lesson, she said, ‘I thought it said it was called Knightley Hall when I passed it yesterday on my walk. That’s where you live?’

      ‘I do.’ He increased his speed as if he hoped she wouldn’t have enough breath left to chat.

      Which bugged her because it was him who’d invited her along on the journey, not the other way around. ‘And your name is Knightley?’ she asked, trying to keep pace with him in boots that were at least two sizes too big for her.

      ‘It is.’

      ‘But your first name is Jake, not—’ Oh, God, don’t say George, Emma. Or My Mister Knightley. He probably gets that all the time. ‘Not … George, then?’ Damn, she’d said it.

      ‘George was my ancestor.’

      ‘Well, of course he was,’ she answered as if that made the most perfect sense in the world.

      They walked together in silence until she decided that the best way to take her mind off the nerves that had reappeared was to engage in chit-chat, and the only person around to do that with was him, her reluctant Knight-ley. ‘With a name like Knightley, I’m guessing someone was a real Jane Austen fan, huh?’

      ‘Or Jane Austen was a real Knightley, fan,’ he answered.

      Ha. Cute.

      ‘So, what are you, like, the owner of that huge estate?’

      This time when he shot her a quick look she swore she could see the edge of caution in his frown. ‘I am,’ he stated.

      ‘But you’re quite sure you’re not Succinct of the world-renowned Succincts?’ she asked, puffing out a breath.

      Jake turned to look at her again and then shrugged. ‘I talk. When it’s warranted.’

      ‘But do you make conversation?’