City Girl in Training. Liz Fielding

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      ‘On the contrary, I hailed it before you even saw it,’ he said, giving me the briefest of glances. Brief was apparently all it took. After a moment’s astonished gaze, he muttered something beneath his breath that I didn’t quite catch—but didn’t for a moment believe was complimentary—and, with a look of resignation that suggested he was being a fool to himself, he stood back and gestured at the open door. ‘Take it. Before you drown.’

      Oh, no. This was bad. I could be mad at a man who nicked my cab, but I couldn’t take it if it was rightfully his, even if my need was clearly the greater.

      He did, after all, have an umbrella.

      But I was already so wet that no amount of rain would make any difference. As I dithered on the kerb, he was rapidly getting the same way. But it had only taken a moment’s reflection, a pause long enough for my brain to override my mouth, for me to realise that I had in fact seen him standing at the edge of the pavement in that moment when I’d looked up from the A-Z. That my own efforts to attract the driver’s attention from the back of the pavement had gone unheeded. Feeling very stupid, the tiger in me morphed back into mouse.

      ‘No, really,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry…’

      ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ He seized the handle of my suitcase, crammed with everything I might need for the next six months and weighing a ton, and tossed it into the cab without noticeable effort. ‘Stop wittering and get in.’

      ‘Would one of you get in?’ the driver demanded testily. ‘I’ve got a living to make.’

      ‘Maybe we could share,’ I said, scrambling in after my suitcase. My irritable knight errant paused in the act of closing the door behind me. ‘I’m not going far and you could…um…we could…’ He waited for me to finish. ‘At least you’d be in the dry.’

      Oh, heck. This wasn’t like the quiz at all. I wasn’t supposed to do the asking. But then the quiz wasn’t real life.

      In my real life I didn’t offer to share taxis with tall, dark and handsome strangers. In my real life Friday evenings were spent handing Don his spanners as he talked endlessly about the intricacies of the internal combustion engine; a well-drilled theatre nurse to his mechanical surgeon. Comfortable. Familiar. Safe. Nothing to get the heart racing. Not the way mine was racing now.

      ‘Where are you going?’

      I told him and he raised his brows a fraction.

      ‘Is that on your way?’ I asked.

      After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded, told the driver where to go, then climbed in and pulled down the jump seat opposite me, sitting sideways, his legs stretched across the width of the cab, so that his knees and feet wouldn’t intrude on my space.

      He had the biggest feet I’d ever seen and as I stared at them I found myself wondering if it was true about the size of a man’s feet indicating the size of, well, other extremities…

      ‘You’re new in London aren’t you?’ he said, and I looked up. The corner of his mouth had kinked up in a knowing smile and I blushed, certain that he could read my mind.

      ‘Just this minute arrived.’ There was no point in pretending otherwise. I’d dressed for warmth and comfort rather than style. With nothing more glamorous than baby cream on my face—I’d chewed off my lipstick in the tussle with the underground—and my hair neon-red candyfloss from the damp, I was never going to pass as a sophisticated City-girl. ‘I suppose the suitcase is a dead giveaway,’ I said, wishing I’d taken a lot more trouble over my appearance.

      A tiger, according to my magazine, would always leave the house prepared to meet the man of her dreams. But how often did that happen? Besides, I’d left the man of my dreams in Maybridge. Hadn’t I?

      ‘And the A-Z,’ I added, stuffing it into my shoulder bag, alongside the treacherous magazine.

      ‘Not the suitcase,’ he replied. ‘It was your willingness to surrender a taxi at this time of day that betrayed you. You won’t do it twice.’

      ‘I won’t?’

      ‘They’re rarer than hen’s teeth.’

      Hen’s teeth? ‘Are they rare?’ I asked, confused. It seemed unlikely. Hens weren’t on any endangered list…

      ‘I’ve never seen one.’ Oh, stocking tops! The rain was dripping from my hair and trickling icily down the back of my neck. I suspected that it had seeped right into my brain. ‘But then I’ve never felt any desire to look into a hen’s beak,’ he added.

      ‘No one ever does,’ I replied. ‘Big mistake.’ And he was kind enough to smile, giving me ample opportunity to see for myself that his own teeth left nothing to be desired.

      In the dark and wet of the pavement I hadn’t noticed much more than the fact that my ‘tall, dark stranger’ was the requisite ‘tall’. Of course, when describing yourself as one point six metres was pure vanity, everyone seemed tall. But he was really, really tall. Several inches taller than Don, who was my personal yardstick for tall.

      And his voice. I’d noticed that, too.

      Low and gravelly, it was the voice of a man you just knew it wouldn’t be wise to mess with. Yet his impatience was softened by velvet undertones. Sort of like Sean Connery, but without the Scottish accent.

      Now I was sitting opposite him I could see that the ‘dark’ bit fitted him, too. I sat mesmerised as a drop of rainwater gathered and slid down the jet curve of an untidy curl before dropping into the turned-up collar of his overcoat. And I shivered.

      Tall and dark. His skin so deeply tanned that he looked Italian, or possibly Greek.

      But he struck out on handsome.

      There was nothing smooth or playboy pretty about his features. His cheekbones were too prominent, his nose less than straight and there was a jagged scar just above his right eyebrow, giving the overall impression of a man who met life head-on and occasionally came off worst.

      That was okay. There was something about a cliché that was so off-putting. Two out of three was just about right. Tall, dark and dangerous was more like it, because his eyes more than made up for any lack of symmetry. They were sea-green, deep enough to drown in and left me with the heart-racing impression that until now I might have been dreaming in sepia.

      ‘Have you come far?’ he asked, in an attempt to engage me in conversation. Presumably to stop me from staring.

      I was jerked back to reality. ‘Oh…um …no. Not really. From Maybridge. It’s near…er…’ I struggled for a coherent response. I was used to having to explain exactly where Maybridge was. People constantly confused it with Maidenhead, Maidstone and a dozen other towns that began with the same sound, but my mind refused to co-operate.

      ‘I know where Maybridge is,’ he said, rescuing me from my pitiful lapse of memory. ‘I have friends who live in Upper Haughton.’

      ‘Upper Haughton!’ I exclaimed, clutching at geographical straws. Upper Haughton was a picture-perfect village a few miles outside Maybridge that had outgrown its agricultural past and was now the province of the seriously rich. ‘Yes, that’s it. It’s near СКАЧАТЬ