“Because she’s prickly, like her owner?” John inquired.
“I am not prickly!” Just rise above him, she thought. You are better than this. “If you must know, it’s because she likes laundry,” Annie continued.
John raised an incredulous eyebrow.
“She likes to sleep on clean washing. When I first got her, I kept finding her in the airing cupboard or in the linen basket. So, you know . . . Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle: the hedgehog who was a washerwoman.”
John nodded sagely.
“Delighted to meet you, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle,” said John.
To Annie’s annoyance, Tiggs padded over to John, sniffed his outstretched hand, and began to rub her head against his knees as he made a fuss of her.
Traitor, Annie thought.
“She seems to like me,” said John, looking up with a smug expression.
“Perhaps you smell like fish,” Annie retorted, narrowing her eyes.
John laughed softly, and the sound was warm and friendly, like a deep purr; Annie pursed her lips.
“Or perhaps it’s my animal magnetism.” He grinned. His Scottish burr added a curling lilt to all his words, which Annie found annoyingly pleasant. Oh my God! Annie thought. Is he flirting with me?
“Maybe you carry catnip around in your pockets in order to ingratiate yourself with lady cat owners,” Annie said, smiling sweetly.
“Have it your way,” John said. “I’m guessing you usually do.”
Annie took a sharp intake of breath but when she looked at John he was still smiling amiably and she decided to let that one pass. She had, after all, just made a rather large hole in his aunt’s ceiling, and he had been surprisingly gracious about it. As though reading her mind, John stood up, leaving Tiggs rubbing herself around his legs. Tart, Annie thought at her cat.
“I’ll get the rest of those boxes down for you and then have a look-see what we’ve got in the cellar to fix that hole,” said John.
He saw Annie looking at him.
“I keep a few things here for maintenance,” he explained.
“You don’t have to do it now.”
“Trust me, you don’t want the north wind blowing through there. It can get pretty feisty down here at this time of year.”
Annie had to admit that she would rather not have wind whistling through a gaping hole in the ceiling. Not to mention the potential for large spiders to extend their creeping grounds down into the flat.
John was surprising her, and she found herself in uncharted territory. He could have been an arsehole about the ceiling, but he hadn’t; quite the opposite in fact. And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle had given him her seldom-offered seal of approval. There was no denying he was handsome. Was Annie warming to John Granger?
Chapter 46
The fixing of the hole took a long time and a lot of sawing, hammering, sanding, and swearing. It was nearly half past six by the time John began to pack his tools back into the large canvas tool bag he had brought up from the cellar. Annie wondered if she ought to offer to cook him some supper. She had supplied him with mugs of tea and biscuits throughout the afternoon, and thankfully his engagement in his ceiling task had prevented the need for any real conversation. This, Annie had decided, was a good thing, since they couldn’t be trusted not to argue if they steered away from the basic niceties. However, an offer of supper would invariably require actual talking. Not only that but, Annie realized, it might be misconstrued as something else.
John came into the sitting room. His hair was gray with dust. He’d removed his jumper and rolled up the sleeves on his shirt but kept it tucked neatly into his jeans. He looked like a lawyer who’d walked through an ash cloud. Annie had been through all the Halloween boxes and decided what she would and wouldn’t use. Then she had made lists of all the things she would use with suggestions of how and where she might display them to their best advantage.
“I can help you with Halloween, if you like,” said John, drying his hands on a tea towel.
Annie frowned. “Really?” The idea pulled her up short.
John shrugged.
“Yeah. I’ve been part of enough of my aunt’s Halloween extravaganzas to know how they work. I mean, I know you’ve got the Saltwater Nook almanac and all,” he said, nodding in the direction of Mari’s notebook on the coffee table. “But maybe some firsthand knowledge would be helpful.”
“I didn’t think you’d . . . Yes, thank you, that would be great!”
“I know what you think of me,” said John.
“Do you?”