by Fiona Harper
‘Can’t I just eat out of the carton?’ he asked hopefully.
I shook my head, and he flopped down on the ancient chintz sofa on the other side of our staffroom-slash-office. He held a hand over his eyes in mock despair. ‘You choose. Whichever one you think will dilute my pure masculine appeal the least.’
I snorted. ‘I’m giving you daisies,’ I said, with a wicked glint in my eye.
He just raised his eyebrows a little and smiled even harder. That’s the thing with Adam—he’s impossible to annoy. No matter how OTT I get, he’s always his same laid-back, unruffled self. I used to find it annoying that I couldn’t light his fuse—and, believe me, I spent a few years trying very hard to do just that—but nowadays I’m just grateful for his happy-go-lucky nature. I suppose I’m what some people would call ‘high-maintenance’, and in my quieter moments I know that a friend who’ll put up with me twenty-four-seven is a gift from on high.
We dished out copious amounts of food with pink spoons and started to eat it with pink forks, filling each other in on news of the last month or two. We didn’t usually have such a long gap between seeing each other, but he’d been away on business. More like a boys’ adventure holiday paid for on the company credit card, I thought. I mean, who can claim climbing up trees and messing about with bits of rope and wood a legitimate business expense? Adam does it. And he even fills in his tax form with a straight face.
‘Are you all right?’
I looked up. My fork was lying on my plate, a king prawn still speared on it. I didn’t remember putting it down. ‘I’m fine.’
Adam frowned slightly. ‘It’s just … you’ve been unusually quiet. For you. I’ve been managing to speak in whole sentences without being interrupted. It’s very unnerving. And you keep sighing.’
‘Do I?’ Even to my own ears my voice sounded far-off and a little dazed. I decided to deflect him a little. I wasn’t ready to talk with Adam about what was bugging me.
‘Nan said something to me the other day …’ I picked up my pink fork and doused the prawn on the end in sauce. ‘She told me she thought my biological clock was ticking.’
Adam reacted just as I’d hoped he would. He erupted into fits of laughter.
I crossed my arms. ‘Well, it’s nonsense,’ I said, feigning irritation quite passably and hoping Adam would take my rather distracting bait. ‘Even if I had a clock—which I very much doubt—I can’t hear it, and surely I’m the one who counts in this scenario?’
Adam grabbed the paper bag of sweet-and-sour pork balls off the desk and delved inside. ‘That’ll be the ear muffs,’ he muttered, without looking up. I think he was counting the pork balls to see how many he could filch without me noticing.
I frowned and scanned the office. What on earth was he talking about? I should have been grateful, I supposed. At least it had got him off the subject of my sudden attack of glumness.
And then I spotted some—in a torn cardboard box under the desk, which was full of winter stock I hadn’t cleared away properly yet. I reached forward and hooked them with my finger.
‘What? These ear muffs?’ I asked, holding a fetching baby-blue pair aloft.
Adam looked up, his mouth halfway round a crisp golden ball of batter. He bit into it and chewed slowly, not in the least perturbed by the hurry-up-and-spit-it-out vibes I was sending him. He licked his lips. ‘Not exactly,’ he said, keeping eye contact with me, but dipping his hand into the paper bag again. ‘I was talking more about your metaphorical ear muffs—the ones you wear to stop you hearing anything you don’t want to.’
My fingers tightened around the plastic band joining the two balls of fur together.
Adam just gave me a lazy smile. ‘I believe there’s a matching pair of polka-dotted blinkers too. Silk-lined, of course …’
He had to break off to duck out of the way of a flying pair of ear muffs. I quickly leaned forward and swiped a pork ball out of the bag with my free hand before he could stop me.
After a few seconds he narrowed his eyes. I thought he was reacting to my food-stealing counter-attack, but it turned out it was much worse.
‘Just because you can’t hear it, it doesn’t mean the clock isn’t there … that it isn’t ticking …’ he said.
I’d talked myself into a corner, hadn’t I? Time to end this stupid discussion once and for all. ‘Nan was wrong. My biological clock is not ticking,’ I said emphatically.
‘So you say …’ Adam just smiled serenely at me, and then picked up the ear muffs, which had landed just beside the sofa, and jammed them on his head.
I tried to tell him just how wrong he was about this, about all the reasons why I was still the same never-be-boxed-in, never-get-boring-and-predictable Coreen he’d always known, but he just kept nodding and smiling and mouthing, ‘I can’t hear you!’ while pointing to the ear muffs. I was sorely tempted to rip them off his head and ram them down his throat, but there’s no excuse for ruining perfectly good stock, so I nicked his chow mein instead. That’d teach him.
Eventually he pulled the ear muffs off his head and threw them back to me. The impish grin flattened out slightly. ‘Nah. I’m not buying it,’ he said. ‘Something’s up with you, and it’s got nothing to do with ticking clocks.’
I kept my focus on my plate and said nothing.
There was a deceptive carelessness in Adams’s voice when he tried again. ‘If it was anyone else I’d think it was man trouble. But I have it on good authority that there are men all over London who love nothing better than to follow you ‘round like adoring puppies and scramble over each other to do your bidding every time you snap your fingers.’
I gave Adam what I hoped was a withering look. ‘Good authority?’
I’d hate to think where he got his information about me. Probably some jealous girl running me down. I get that a lot.
‘You, actually. You very proudly announced that to me … oh … about two years ago. That night Dodgy Dave’s van broke down on the way back from one of those vintage fashion shows you do, and we had to wait hours for the tow truck to turn up.’
Okay, that did sound a bit like the sort of thing I’d say when in a particularly full-of-my-own-praises mood, which I might well have been after a successful fashion show. I just hadn’t expected Adam to recite it back to me verbatim a whole two years later.
It was true, though. All I had to do was click my crimson-tipped fingers and a whole herd of ‘puppies’ came running. It was most satisfying. Sometimes I did it just for the joy of seeing all those eager little faces, not because I actually needed anything.
Adam lounged back on the sofa, resting his head in his hands, his elbows out wide, and gave me a searching look, with a glimmer in his eye that was part amusement, part wariness.
‘What?’ I asked crossly.
I should have stopped there, not risen to the bait, but I’m far too nosy to do something so virtuous.
I folded my arms across my chest. ‘Don’t just sit there staring at me!’
‘It’s all become very clear to me …’ he said quietly.
I had the horrible feeling he’d found me out, that he knew exactly what the problem was, but instead of teasing me about it, as I’d have expected him to do, he turned horribly serious. For once, I actually wanted him to laugh at me. I wanted him to try to suppress that wicked smile and deliberately drag his answer out, making me tap the heel of my red stiletto impatiently on the floor. But he didn’t make me wait at all. Didn’t tease me one bit. He just let me have it.
‘Yes,’ he said, nodding in silent agreement with himself, his expression hardening further. ‘You’ve finally encountered a puppy who doesn’t want to clamber over the elaborate assault course you’ve laid out for him.’
CHAPTER TWO
Put Your Head On My Shoulder
Coreen’s Confessions
No.2—You’d have thought I’d have got bored with the effect I have on men by now, but I have to say it’s still as fun as it ever it was. The day it gets
old, I might as well put on a pair of velour jogging bottoms and let myself go.
ADAM stared at the ceiling, his expression still grim. ‘Now you know what it’s like for the rest of us mere mortals.’ And then he started to laugh, shaking his head.
Normally Adam’s laugh makes me feel warm inside, but this time it sounded dry and hollow and made me all jittery and bad-tempered. I decided he was just being superior and glared at him. ‘Look, I don’t need you to start being all … avuncular with me—’
He just started laughing again. Properly this time.
‘What?’ I said, and my voice went all high and scratchy. ‘It’s a real word!’
I stood up. There was I, practically rigid with tension, and Adam had the audacity to sink even further into the couch, not bothered in the slightest that he was winding me up as far as I would go. I really shouldn’t let him do it, but we often start what seems to be a normal conversation and before long one of us is seething and the other is chortling. And it doesn’t take a massive IQ to work out which one is which.
‘You’re totally wrong, anyway,’ I told him as I sat back down and picked up my fork. I was not going to give him the satisfaction of agreeing with him today.
Anyway, nobody could call Nicholas Chatterton-Jones a puppy. He was sleek and dignified, like one of those lean hunting dogs, the ones with silky grey coats and bloodlines going back generations.
I sighed. Just thinking his name made me melt a little bit. He was the sort of man every girl dreamed of—rich, handsome, debonair. And I was suffering from unrequited something for him. Not sure about the ‘L’ word. That seemed a bit dramatic. But if the symptoms were daydreaming incessantly about him and looking him up on Google on an hourly basis, I thought I was probably halfway there.
‘You’re doing it again.’
‘What?’ I hadn’t been doing anything!
But then I realised my ribcage was deflating with the memory of a sigh. I jabbed the captive prawn in Adam’s direction. ‘Just leave it, will you? It’s none of your business.’
I bit the prawn off the fork and glowered at him.
Adam wasn’t a puppy either; he was a mongrel. Fully grown. Shaggy and adorable, true, but he’d probably give you fleas if you got close enough.
And he’d hit a nerve with his stupid comment.
Nicholas’s sister, Isabella—or Izzi, as she insisted being called—was one of the bright young socialites who’d decided that Coreen’s Closet was the Next Big Thing, and she shopped here all the time. She’d left university a few years ago and was still trying to decide what she wanted to do next, which left her plenty of time to lunch and party and go to spas while she told her parents she was chewing over her options. Izzi Chatterton-Jones had a heaving social calendar, and she was always needing a new frock for something or other. And now she was sending her friends along to Coreen’s Closet too. It was fabulous for business, and Izzi and I had struck up a friendship. Of sorts. We were more than mere acquaintances, but weren’t quite at the full-fledged gal pal stage.
But it did mean that Izzi, after being blown away by a vintage cocktail dress I’d found for her in emerald and jet shot silk, had invited me to a couple of her legendary parties, and that was where I’d first clapped eyes on Nicholas.
Just thinking his name caused all the air to leave my body in a breathy rush.
He was tall—well over six foot—had ravenblack hair, and cheekbones to make a girl weep. Like a tall Johnny Depp, minus the Cockney pirate accent. No, when Nicholas talked it was all crisp syllables and long words. I could listen to him all day. In the secrecy of my bedroom I’d tried to mimic that tone, that voice, but I’d been born and bred in south London and my vowels just wouldn’t do whatever his did to make them so smooth and perfect.
He lived in a different world. One I’d decided I belonged in. Right from an early age I’d always dressed as if I was born for a life of beauty and glamour, and it was high time I stopped merely dreaming about it and acquired the lifestyle to match.
And if I ever was going to contemplate a long-term relationship, it couldn’t be with just anyone. I needed a man who’d worship me, yes, but someone who was dashing and exciting too. Someone I could look up to. Someone I wouldn’t get bored with. He’d have to be the man of my dreams, in short, and I thought Nicholas was a pretty good candidate.
We’d met on three occasions now. The first couple of times I’d played it cool. I’d glided around the room, looking aloof and elegant, so he could admire me from afar and ask Izzi who that stunning brunette was. Then last weekend I’d decided it was time to make my move.
I heard a crinkling noise and realised Adam had procured the pork balls again without me noticing. I narrowed my eyes at him, but he just sat there, one hand behind his head, smirking at me as he stole the rest of my share.
Hmph. He seemed to have bounced back to his old self annoyingly quickly.
Okay, so maybe there were two men in the known universe who weren’t inclined to fall at my feet and worship.
But Adam didn’t count. I’d known him since I was eight and he was twelve, and his mother had played badminton with my nan. I leaned forward and snatched the paper bag of pork balls from him before he emptied it, ignoring his grunt of displeasure. Then I picked a warm juicy ball of batter out of the bag—the last one!—and dipped it in the accompanying pot of sauce, before sucking a little bit of the bright orange liquid off and biting into it. Adam, however, didn’t notice, because he had moved on to the sesame prawn toast.
See? Immune.
My lips are my second most frequently stared at body part. They have an almost mesmerising effect on most of the male species. Something I capitalise on, of course. I always paint them red, for maximum visibility and effect. Not that trashy orangey-red. Crimson. The colour of passion and blood. Like the movie queens of old. I’d even seen men dribble watching me eat, and it wasn’t the food they’d been gawping at.
But Adam was unimpressed.
Well, maybe not unimpressed. He was my best friend in the whole universe, so that sounded a little harsh. Maybe unaffected was a better word. Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that he’d known me before I’d discovered my inner vixen, when I’d been flat-chested, with no waist to speak of. I suppose I ought to have been annoyed about his lack of puppyish adoration, but I wasn’t. Although we didn’t manage to see each other nowadays as much as we used to he was still my Best Bud. And every girl needs a Best Bud.
He’d been the one to chase away the bullies who’d teased me because I’d lived with my nan growing up. He’d been the one I’d cried on when my favourite boy band had split up, and again when, aged fifteen, I’d cut my own fringe too short by accident. He was the first person I’d phoned the day Alice and I had got the keys to our new shop, and he’d rushed round with a bottle of champagne and all three of us had sat cross-legged on the floor of what would soon be Coreen’s Closet and toasted each other with paper cups. Adam was my cheerleader and my big brother and my minder all rolled into one, and I suppose I could forgive him his lack of puppyishness for that.
However, thinking about puppies had me dreaming about Nicholas again, and the warm glow I’d generated with my Best Bud thoughts frosted over.
Why didn’t he like me? Why?
Last Saturday night had been my latest attempt to catch his eye. I’d gone all out, wearing a strapless red dress that matched my lips and was usually every bit as effective at making men drool. Nicholas had looked straight through me. And when I’d casually joined the group of people he’d been talking to, and had given him my patented eyelash sweep, he hadn’t even stuttered. What was wrong with the man?
Normally, just five minutes of concentrated Coreen had a bloke eating out of the palm of my hand. I just didn’t get it. What was I doing wrong? It was driving me crazy.
I could probably have coped with the blow to my ego if he wasn’t so gorgeous and so blinking perfect. Adam would say it served me right, but that wasn’t fair. No
body deserved to be this miserable. And I’d felt this way for three whole weeks now. If something didn’t happen to change Nicholas’s mind soon, I’d be ready for those velour jogging bottoms after all!
‘So …’
Adam leaned forward and offered me a conciliatory prawn toast from the foil container he’d had resting on his knee, catching my gaze with his. I ignored the prawn toast and concentrated on those warm brown eyes.
‘Who’s this paragon of manliness that’s got you all tied up in knots?
I recognised the way Adam was looking at me. He was trying to appear all relaxed and jokey, but there was a glint of seriousness at the back of his eyes. Probably worried about me. That was the minder-slash-big-brother side of him coming out. But maybe that was a good thing. Adam’s shoulders, while possibly not as broad and honed as Nicholas’s, were perfect for crying on.
The only problem was, at present Adam didn’t look much as if he wanted to mop up my tears with his shirt. His expression was guarded again, and his flinty eyes felt as if they were boring holes into my forehead. I didn’t have any sassy comebacks left; my store of outrageous comments was worryingly empty. So I just looked back at him with blinking eyes, as close to begging as I ever came.
Adam’s eyes didn’t exactly soften and melt, but he stood up and rubbed my arm. ‘He’s an idiot, whoever he is,’ he said gruffly.
Then he took my hand and led me to the sofa. He even let me sit on the side where the springs weren’t so dodgy. Once I had arranged my skirt and petticoat carefully, he dropped onto the other side and looked at me.
I sighed, and it was long and heartfelt. There was no point trying to hide it now. ‘The idiot in question is Nicholas Chatterton-Jones. He’s the brother of one of my best customers.’
