‘I can see why you made the switch to farming,’ she said after she finished her sandwich and dusted her hands off. ‘You really were born to do this.’

‘You think?’ he asked, looking at her.

‘I do,’ she said firmly. ‘I think certain things are in your blood and you just know that’s what you’re destined to be.’

‘And what about you? Have you discovered what your destiny is yet?’

‘No, not really,’ Elle said with a small sigh.

‘You don’t think your calling is in art?’

‘I’m not sure it’s something I could make enough to live on,’ she said finally, after mulling the answer over in her mind. Elle hadn’t immediately dismissed the idea as she normally would have, but she was trying to be practical about it. If only her mother could hear her now.

‘It could be,’ Stuart pointed out reasonably. ‘There’s got to be lots of ways you could turn art into some kind of career path.’ This was true, and when Elle had been at uni she had considered all the possible avenues she could take with art in order to find something that might convince her parents that switching to an art degree would be beneficial to a lifelong career. There had been nothing with the kind of job security they would be happy with—not like the good old reliable degrees like accountancy, medicine or law.

‘No, I think art is just my escape, my happy place to go to when I need to get away from everything else for a while.’

‘Maybe,’ Stuart said. ‘Or maybe you’re one of those lucky people who can turn their passion into a job they actually love. Not too many people get a chance to do that.’

His words filled her with a warm glow that rose all the way up into her cheeks. ‘Who knows,’ she said, ducking her head. ‘I never imagined I’d be a farmhand, and look at me now, smelling like sheep and covered in mud.’ She grinned across at him.

‘And it’s a complete turn-on,’ Stuart told her, leaning over and giving her what she suspected was only supposed to be a playful kiss, until it turned into something else. By the time they were done, she’d ended up covered in even more mud, with bits of hay stuck in her hair and down her top.

TWENTY-FIVE

Twenty-five

‘Finally,’ her mother said when she answered the phone.

‘Hi, Mum,’ Elle said dryly. Even this far away she still managed to annoy her mother, it seemed. That afternoon when Elle and Stuart had headed inside, grubby and sweaty and smelling like sheep, her phone began to ping as it connected to the wi-fi, and message after message came through, reminding Elle that she had missed her agreed-upon check-in call.

‘We’ve been trying to call you since last night.’

‘Why? Is everything okay?’