A PIECE OF CAKE. Trisha Ashley

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      ‘Have you?’ I said, trying to sound casual, though I admit my heart did a little flip and I was probably blushing. I’d forgotten quite how attractive he was …

      But then I remembered all those photos I’d seen of him at parties, draped in stick-thin blondes, and got a grip on myself. ‘I thought you’d be too busy playing with your friends, on and off the field,’ I said, making it sound as if he was ten and playing tag with his gang until his mum called him in for tea.

      ‘I work hard, but I don’t play hard. I’m not a party animal.’

      ‘Really? That’s odd, because I saw some recent Hello! magazine pictures of you in a nightclub, with a lot of girls. You looked as if you were having a good time.’

      ‘I didn’t have you down as a Hello! reader, somehow,’ he said pensively.

      ‘I’m not, but it’s my hairdresser’s favourite magazine, so the only thing to read when I’m there. You seem to feature a lot.’

      ‘Well, that one was a teammate’s birthday bash. I only showed my face for half an hour and I’ve no idea who the girls were,’ he said. ‘Things aren’t always as they appear in the press.’

      ‘I suppose not,’ I conceded.

      ‘Look Kate, I know we got off on the wrong foot right from the start, so I’m not surprised you’ve got the wrong impression of me, but you never really gave me the chance to say sorry about what happened at the reception. It was just one of those stupid things. None of us appreciated how much time and effort it had taken you to make all those little cakes. When Laura explained, I could see why you’d had a severe sense of humour failure.’

      ‘I’ve got a perfectly good sense of humour,’ I said with dignity. ‘But I thought you all behaved like a gang of idiotic adolescents and it was a waste of good food, so there was nothing funny about it that I could see.’

      ‘Of course not,’ he said quickly and was so contrite that by the time we’d stowed the cake away in my van, which is a small white one with ‘Kate’s Cakes’ lettered up the side in gold, and I’d driven him to the reception venue, we were chatting in a much friendlier way.

      I left the cake in the careful hands of the staff and then, since the country house hotel was advertising afternoon teas (though goodness knows who to, other than the guests staying there, because it was so out of the way there couldn’t have been much passing trade!), we gave in to temptation. He suggested it, but I was ravenous by then, having worked right through lunch.

      It was a proper tea, too, with a three-tiered china stand groaning under the weight of finger sandwiches, scones, meringues and tiny cakes.

      There were little pots of jam, pats of dewy cold butter and dishes of whipped cream. It was a glutton’s delight.

      While we ate our way through this feast, we talked about all kinds of things, but especially his plans to move to the country.

      ‘I’ve got two dogs from a rescue home and they could do with a decent garden.’

      ‘Oh? What are they like?’ I asked, interested and he got out some snaps.

      ‘Here we are. This is Mitzi on the left and she’s part spaniel, you can see by the floppy ears. And the other is Minty, who I think is mostly bearded collie.’

      I admired the two happy-looking dogs and then showed him the faded snap of my beloved old dachshund, Snoopy, that I always kept in the back of my purse.

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