(Further adventures of Sam and Kate. My editor thinks that there is too much sex in this story, but after a short argument and some revisions, I won. I think. Please let me have your opinions and I can either take the moral high ground, or ask forgiveness!)
After I had rescued Kate from her car crash and generally saved her life, (or so I kept telling her), we had very quickly become an item and were living together in my old farmhouse on Exmoor. Over the next couple of months and at her suggestion, we made a start on converting some of the other buildings around the farmyard for rental as workshops. Most of the work was down to sorting and clearing the piles of general 'stuff' that was already there when I bought the farm, but that I hadn't bothered to look at until now. Many trailer loads of rubble and general rubbish had been carted away or otherwise disposed of before we could see what was underneath it all. More interestingly, we found a treasure trove of antique farming equipment and other items hidden under years of dust and dirt. Milk churns, buckets, horse tack and loads of small tools were now stacked neatly in a small outhouse at one side of the farmyard for us to deal with at our leisure. I hoped that when all of this was sold, it would provide enough cash to enable more extensive renovation of other parts of farm. I hated to admit it, but there was a lot that needed to be done!
The autumn vanished because of our crazy work schedule and before we knew it, the festive season was upon us! Our first Christmas together was amazing! Kate's immediate family came over from Ireland and some of her friends from Cornwall also descended on us and stayed until the New Year. I had been worried about meeting her Mum and Dad in case there was some animosity due to the speed with which our relationship had developed, but I really shouldn't have been concerned. Kate's Mum turned out to be an older version of her daughter, complete with the same quirky sense of humour, while her Dad was interested in just about everything we were doing. We all got along famously. Kate hadn't seen her parents for ages, so there was a lot of family gossip to catch up on and her two brothers arrived with their wives as well, so our home was full of people and the laughter was indeed merry and bright! Being a big old farmhouse, there was plenty of room for most of the couples to have their own rooms, while Kate's friends slept dormitory style with men in one room and girls in another -- well mostly, anyway!
On Boxing Day, we held our first major party. My friends were mostly local and could make their own way home afterwards, but some wanted to enjoy a drink or two, so decided to stay and join the dormitory arrangements and the fun increased exponentially! New Year's Eve was astonishing, with the full force of an Irish family generating good spirits for the new year. All too soon, it was twelfth night and time to take down all of the decorations and get back to work. We thought life really couldn't get any better as we planned our future together.
Kate and I both worked stupidly long and hard hours now, keeping up with our own work projects as well as the rental workshop renovations. Kate showed an aptitude for most things including handling the local planning department, shifting boards, nailing up cladding and generally making herself useful. We worked so well together that it soon became a standing joke that when one of us had a suggestion, then the other had also thought about it too. Thankfully, the work continued without any major snags and once the barns had been insulated and lined with plasterboard, the electricians we had hired made short work of getting power into the empty spaces and ready to be used.. We fitted small wood burners to each workshop, so they would be very cosy and dry in the winter months and by the middle of February, the bulk of the work was done and we had three new workshops almost ready to rent.
Showing yet another useful talent, Kate set about advertising the facilities straight away. As she travelled all over the moor and the north coast selling her paintings, we agreed that she would put up advertising cards in the galleries she visited. Not only would this save us the cost of using an estate agent, but it would target potential artists who also sold works of art through those galleries and who may be looking for a new workspace.
Sure enough, we soon had a potter, a hurdle maker and a jeweller settling into the workshops we had created. Not only did it bring some other people into our life, but we thought that getting house or cat sitters would now become really easy -- Ozric having been adopted by all and sundry. She got so much attention, we had to insist on a "No Feeding" rule to help keep her fit.
Our -- note that it was now OUR - kitchen was often the scene of gatherings, including all of our resident artists and Ozric's surrogate parents from the farm next door, Laura and Mark. Life now revolved very much around the house and farmyard and I was worried that Kate would get tired of living this way, but if anything she thrived on it. Her paintings were starting to become well known all over the moor and she had an increasing order book of commissions. Landscapes and farm buildings formed the bulk of the work, which luckily she loved to bring to life on the canvas. It was not unusual to find her with paint in her hair, on her face and all over her dungarees, which was her preferred clothing for making a mess in. She did scrub up well after though and I felt like the luckiest man in the world.
In real life, however, things seldom stay the same for long and just a few weeks after our workshops opened, in the March of 2020, the government put the entire country into lockdown due to the Covid pandemic. We all had to isolate and stay at home. Apart from local journeys to buy essential supplies, we were pretty much self sufficient in our little bubble. We could keep busy with our own work, plus projects about the place that had been waiting for some free time to be finished. Our new friends who had rented the farm workshops had to stay clear, but all of them stayed in touch to reassure us that they would be back as soon as they could.
As the weeks of isolation went on, I thought I'd make Kate something as a surprise. While she was painting in her studio, I nipped up to our bedroom and started to lift boxes out of the wardrobe so I could measure it up for a bit of an update -- shoe racks, some shelves and maybe better hangers to make more use of the space. As I lifted the last one from the back, my hand slipped and the contents fell all over the place. I bent to pick it all up and stopped short. Across the floor of the bedroom was an assortment of vibrators, clamps, ropes and belts and at least two pairs of handcuffs too! There was nothing particularly outlandish in the little collection, but I was surprised to see the sheer variety of things that were there. It seemed that Kate might still have a secret or two I didn't know about. I put it all carefully away and went on with my day. My thoughts however, were all over the place!
As we lay in bed that night, I found myself thinking ever more about the box in the wardrobe. Making love -- it had stopped being just sex a while ago -- was a bit lacklustre that night, as my thoughts kept distracting me. Eventually, we cuddled off to sleep together and the night was full of strange and disturbing dreams. Most of them involved Kate and a strange barn full of men suspended from a beam by their wrists! I awoke with an unexpected erection, so took myself off for an early morning shower to calm it down.
The sky was a clear, pale blue and we declared the day to be a holiday. Taking a small pack with some emergency supplies in it, we headed out onto the moor for a walk to blow away a few cobwebs. We never met anybody on our frequent walks, so thought it would be OK to leave the farm and just enjoy the open air. Things were good and the walk did a lot to dispel my thoughts. Upon our return, Ozric was noisy and bossy and wouldn't leave us alone until she had been fed, whereupon she took herself off for a forage and we ate and settled down for the evening.
"Are you OK, Sam?" Kate asked over her book.
"Oh yeah," I replied absently, "Just a bit tired from all the fresh air."
"Well you seem a little pre-occupied to me"
I looked up to see the lovably cocked eyebrow which meant she was worried about me.
"I'm OK. Really!" I insisted.
"Well I'm off to bed," She said, "Are you coming up?"
"I'll be up later, I want to read for a bit more and I'll only disturb you."
"Oh, OK, but don't be too long, eh?" She kissed me on the head and headed up the stairs.
I knew that I was being stupid, but the situation was still bugging me. Did it matter that Kate had a box of sex toys in her wardrobe? It wasn't as if I had never experimented with anything myself. I remembered a particular party organised by the Young Farmers Club that had opened my eyes to a lot of things! My thoughts still went around and around. Was I boring her with my fairly straight sexual advances? Was she wishing that we could be more adventurous in our love making? Despite deciding to put it out of my head, I just couldn't stop thinking... At that moment, Ozric crashed into the window and I went to let her in. Tonight she would sleep in the kitchen, as I didn't want to be disturbed in the morning. I crept up the stairs and got into bed, thinking that Kate would be fast asleep by now.
I snuggled under the quilt.
"I know," she said in a low voice.
"What?" I replied. Not sure what would come next.
"I know you found my box of toys," she murmured. "Is that what's been on your mind all day?"
I winced in the dark and exhaled. "Ahhh. Yes." was all I could think of to say.
"What were you doing in my bit of the wardrobe anyway?" She sounded... what? Hurt? Amused? Embarrassed?
"I was putting a surprise together for you and needed to do some measuring up. It seems that I'm the one who got the surprise."
