For a Rainy Afternoon

By RJ Scott

Maybe it’s not just Robbie and Jason that can have the greatest love story ever told.

Robbie runs a small Post Office made from a converted Station House in a village northwest of London, England. He is stunned when a close friend dies and leaves him half of her estate. The only proviso is that it is to be shared equally with an American stranger, Jason, who has recently moved to the village.

The sealed box that they jointly inherit includes several rare first editions and an old cookery book. Only when the secrets of the ingredients in a particular recipe are finally revealed does everything begin to make sense... and a love story that began seventy years ago can finally be celebrated.

• Language: English
• Publisher: RJ Scott
• Release date: Jun 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781785641824

RJ Scott

RJ Scott is the author of the best selling Male/Male romances The Christmas Throwaway, The Heart Of Texas and the Sanctuary Series of books.She writes romances between two strong men and always gives them the happy ever after they deserve.

Book preview

Chapter One

A t least you tried, Robbie. Doris patted my hand gently in her usual reassuring way.

I didn’t need reassurance. I needed the damn cake to bloody work. I mean, how difficult could it be to not fuck up something when I had the recipe sitting in front of me?

I poked what was left of the applesauce cake with a fork. The mess let out an audible bleurgh as it collapsed in on itself around the massive hole that had somehow appeared during the cooking of it.

I followed the recipe. And I had followed it, to the letter. Every single cup of flour and tablespoon of butter, every teaspoon of nutmeg, and I’d even performed algebra to work out what two-thirds of a cup was compared to a whole cup. Doris patted my hand again and nodded in her most reassuring fashion.

Maggie made this cake for nearly ninety years. You’re not supposed to be able to get it right the first time. With a shrug and another smile she left but not before the casual use of Maggie’s name made my chest tighten in grief.

Maggie Simmons had been the reason I’d stayed in this village. When all my friends had left for the city or even the next town over, I was the one who had come home with a degree in art and no idea what to do with it, then stayed. Three years of study and a first in my degree and I was lost. Maggie had cornered me by the phone box one Monday morning, talking at me about her cairn terrier who had curled in and out of my legs as Maggie spoke, the leather of the lead wrapping around my legs. I can remember that day so clearly as the single moment when my life changed:

I’ve bought the old station house, she’d explained that day. I must have said something very polite in return. I was always polite, and I liked Maggie. After all, not only was she a fixture in Burton Hartshorn, she was also an indomitable force of nature and had a mean throwing arm. If I was honest, she’d scared me just a little bit. I remember getting rotten fruit thrown at me with pinpoint accuracy when she caught me and two friends trying to steal apples from her small orchard. The phantom ache of an apple to the face had me pressing my fingers on my cheekbone and wincing inwardly.

Great, I said, because she was evidently waiting for an answer and I didn’t know what else to say.

I’m building a library, she added.

Where? Surely not here in Burton Hartshorn, population three hundred and off the beaten track? Why would we need a library when we could just as well get over to Buckingham to use the library there? I remembered the excitement of the library trip out with my dad in his shiny Ford Mondeo. Libraries are big sprawling rows of shelves of every conceivable book possible; they’re not tiny places in the back end of nowhere.

Not really a library, she confided to me on that summer’s day. We could move the post office, and there would be tables, with tea and coffee from a small counter, and a reading area with big comfy sofas. We could run a book-swap program and maybe advertise with the local school. I recall the wistful expression on her face. Even then, ten years back, she was old. Well, as old as any person in their seventies and eighties appears to someone fresh out of university.

Sounds lovely. I felt then that I was damning her with faint praise, and maybe I was. What she proposed did sound lovely. I was never happier than with my nose in a book, tea next to me, and maybe a couple of chocolate chip cookies on a plate. Add in rain against the window and I was in heaven. Of course a boyfriend next to me, with his head in my lap, would be the icing on the cake. Abruptly whatever Maggie was saying to me mixed in with a recent break up of a university romance.

Well, I wanted to talk to you, she continued and punctuated each word with a tug on her dog’s leash until the tangling around my legs was enough so I would never be able to move. You’re back now, and I need someone to run this place. Not much money, mind you, but there’s rooms on the top floor, and you could do what you wanted with them.

Pardon me? I asked, stupefied.

I like your mother, she said, slightly impatient. She said to me you were rootless, and that building something around books and history and family would be an excellent idea. She suggested a small gallery area for your paintings, which I think is a lovely idea.

I wish I could have concentrated on the good parts in that sentence, but at the time all I could think was that I was angry my mum thought I was rootless. Just because I was lying longer in bed in the mornings and was becoming obsessed with daytime TV didn’t mean I was rootless. Just because I wasn’t painting at the moment didn’t mean I couldn’t if I wanted to. Right?

With a final tug of the leash, I was free from the leather confines, but I didn’t move. Maggie was teasing me about a job. She had to be. I glanced around me to see if anyone was watching. My gaze caught on the beautiful old station house. L-shaped, it sat close to the deep cutting where the Great Central Main Line used to run steam trains from London to Manchester. Mothballed in the sixties, the station house had fallen into disrepair until a brewery tried to turn it into a pub. How in the hell they thought they would have anything in the way of clientele given the Red Lion was at the other end of the village, I don’t know. It didn’t last long, and for the last ten years or so, the station house had been a rental property with a high turnover.

It’s a beautiful place. Maggie sounded wistful.

The thatched roof needed fixing, the white windows lacked new paint, and the dark blue door was three different shades in peeled-off layers. And the garden was wild. Not just wild with weeds, but with a glorious display of autumn greens and golds that never failed to make me stop and look. Not that I am into flowers so much, but the whole effect, with the thatch and the small leaded windows and the general air of neglect, somehow captured my imagination.

Very beautiful.

So, I inherited money and I bought it. You should know that. It’s mine, permanent, some small place that you could make a home. She spoke so carefully and stared right at me with determination in her expression.

You want me to run the post office? Real life caught up with my wild imaginings in which I single-handedly restored the former station house into exactly what Maggie wanted. Large oaks shaded the garden to the rear, and ivy spread from the main house to