Out in the Country Read Online Free PDF Page B

bones,” Jess agreed, gazing around the big, roomy kitchen with its Welsh dresser and wide pine table.
    “You sound like Adam,” Lynne said with a little laugh. “He was always talking about buildings like they were people.”
    “They certainly have personalities,” Jess said. She took a sip of her own coffee, her gaze light and mischievous over the rim of her mug. “I’d say this house is a cozy old aunt, finally ready to put on her dancing shoes.”
    Lynne laughed at the image. “And a tiara,” she added with a conspiratorial grin. “She’s going out on the town!”
    “Does that mean you’re going to do it?” Jess asked more seriously.
    Lynne shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s easy enough to get excited about something like this, but the reality is always far more taxing. I’m sure there’s a host of complications with turning this place into an inn... disabled accessibility, bathrooms, fire safety... I don’t even know the half of it.”
    “That’s true,” Jess agreed, “but lots of people do it. It’s possible.”
    “You have the expertise,” Lynne said, smiling. She poured herself another coffee and went searching in the fridge for some eggs and bacon. “Of course, the sensible thing to do would be for you to go in with me.”
    Lynne turned around, her arms full of cartons of eggs and packages of bacon, and saw Jessica still. “Do you mean that?” she asked quietly, and Lynne realised with a jolt that her friend’s confidence must have truly been shaken by her fiancé’s defection if she could ask such a question now.
    “Of course I do! We’re partners, Jess... at least we were going to be. It makes sense to be partners now--if we do this at all. Frankly, I can’t imagine doing it without you.”
    “You’d be fine,” Jessica told her. “I can cook and plan menus and tell a good restaurant from a bad one, but when it comes to the actual day to day...” She shook her head, biting her lip. “Maybe it’s better the way things turned out.”
    “You don’t mean that," Lynne countered robustly. "Jess, you could have run that hotel with one hand tied behind your back.” She saw her friend’s face start to crumple, and quickly she added, “but we don’t need to dwell on that. Let’s think about this one. There’s a future here, Jess. For you, for me, for the house itself.”
    Jessica sniffed loudly as she bustled behind the kitchen’s wooden slab work top and began organising the eggs and bacon Lynne had got out of the fridge. “I don’t know why I’m falling apart now,” she said with a shaky laugh as she deftly cracked six eggs one-handed into a bowl. “I’ve held it together so far.”
    “Maybe that’s why,” Lynne replied quietly. “You don’t need to hold it together for my sake.”
    “I’m holding it together for my own,” Jess told her frankly, her eyes on the frothy yellow mixture she was stirring. “I’m afraid if I fall apart, I may not come together again.”
    “Oh, Jess.” Lynne laid a hand on her friend’s arm, so Jessica was forced to still. “I know how that feels. It’s how I felt when Adam died."
    "I'm not grieving like you were."
    "Yes, you are. You're grieving the death of a relationship. And I know how that feels." She paused, remembering those first terrible days after Adam's death. "It's so sudden, and you can’t even get your head round it at first. It’s like you’ve been looking at a map for so long, you know all the destinations and landmarks, and then someone switches it on you, and you don’t know where you are. Everything is so terribly strange.”
    “Yes,” Jess agreed quietly, her voice holding a telltale wobble, her eyes still on the eggs, “and the truth is I don’t much care for the map I’ve got.”
    Lynne squeezed Jess’s arm. “Then let’s throw it out and draw ourselves a new one.” She dropped her hand from Jess to sweep it in a grand gesture encompassing the cozy kitchen, the entire house, the inn she