Mediterranean Mavericks: Greeks. Кейт Хьюит

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СКАЧАТЬ he had also confided, on the way over in the taxi, lowering his voice, as if the cab driver could care less, that his inclinations were not entirely of the straight variety.

      Of course, he adored women, but…

      Rose had nodded and resigned herself to an evening of listening to Ted’s anecdotes and looking at her watch.

      At least the place was big so that they could manage to avoid a falsely intimate setting, and once or twice, as she nibbled at her pizza and salad, she actually found herself laughing at some of the wild things he had to say.

      Apparently he found her cool and refreshing because she was such a good listener.

      ‘If you were a guy,’ he paid the highest compliment, ‘then I’d be wining and dining you and inviting you back to my place to…’

      ‘Look at your etchings?’

      Which brought them right back to square one, the main subject for the evening, Ted himself, and his trials and tribulations as an artist before he had discovered his true calling behind the lens of a camera.

      It was a little after ten by the time Ted asked for the bill.

      ‘Been a bit of a waste for you, hasn’t it?’ he said sheepishly. ‘I should have let you know…told you where my preferences lay…’

      Rose laughed and impulsively reached across the table and held both his hands in hers. ‘I just don’t understand why you don’t come out of the closet. It’s the twenty-first century, after all, and you work in a world where it’s pretty much the norm, anyway.’

      ‘Oh, it’s my mum, babe. Don’t think she’d be too hip to the idea and, well…she’s getting on a bit…Gotta play the respect card, man, gotta play the respect card.’

      ‘Well, if this helps at all, I was playing a part that night as well.’

      ‘You mean…’

      ‘Oh, no! Not that.’ Rose threw back her head and laughed, then she leaned forward and whispered confidentially, ‘I’m actually a closet introvert. But last Saturday, I dressed to impress and played the part.’

      ‘Well, now we know each other’s wicked secrets, I think we’re going to be friends for life.’

      It was turning out to be an okay evening after all, Rose considered as they stood up, and when he slipped his arm around her waist she was quite happy to nestle against him and not at all offended when they parted company on the pavement outside, after promising that they would meet up again, maybe in a couple of months time, because Ted’s schedule was ‘like hectic, man’.

      She washed her face, kicked off the high shoes and changed into her very un-wild gear of grey track-suit jogging bottoms and a sloppy tee shirt with a faded picture of Minnie Mouse on the front.

      Heartbreak had, at least, had one good side effect. Her eating habits had changed. She had lost her appetite and it had conveniently failed to return so as she sat down to finish what remained of the evening in front of a bowl of carrot sticks and some low-fat dip she rested safe in the knowledge that the pizza was not going to be accompanied by a great slab of comfort-eating chocolate.

      It took her fifteen minutes of surfing the channels before she landed on one that was watchable.

      It would pass the rest of the evening, she supposed. No point heading up to bed because she knew that she would be unable to sleep. It had been the same for ages. She would close her eyes, will herself to think of something mundane, like what Annie at work had done with the reports she had laboriously redone three days ago, or what would be the next stage in her programming to update the Accounts Receivables department, and then she would think of him.

      He sprang into her head like sweet temptation and forbidden fruit wrapped up in one agonisingly dangerous package. And he would always be laughing at her. Mostly, he would be laughing at her while rolling around in the bed with the redhead.

      She was sipping some of the green tea with lemon that she had made to drink with her carrots and dip when the doorbell rang. She consulted her watch and frowned—nearly eleven-thirty on a Saturday evening.

      Much as she had ended up enjoying her evening out with Ted, she hoped it wasn’t him. She was certain that she would see him again because, as she wryly acknowledged, he enjoyed talking and in the field in which he worked so did nearly everyone else, she suspected, so a good listener was a valuable find. He had also shared a major confidence with her and that, in itself, would be a strong bond between them. All very nice, but she was looking forward to an hour or so of mindless television, drifting in and out of thoughts of Nick.

      She tried to wipe the disgruntled expression from her face as she went to open the front door. She was pretty much prepared to give Ted one cup of coffee, but really nothing else. His urge to confide would have to wait for a more convenient hour.

      But when she pulled open the door, it wasn’t Ted hovering on her doorstep. It was Nick. Rose was so startled that she remained speechless for a few heart-stopping seconds. It seemed that he made a habit of appearing on her doorstep and sending her into a state of paralysing confusion.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded coldly. ‘You can’t keep just turning up on my doorstep, Nick.’

      ‘Are you going to invite me in?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘Because I have better things to do than talk to you.’

      ‘Aren’t you dressed in the wrong clothes for the better things you have in mind?’ Wrong approach. This wasn’t how things were meant to develop, not that he knew quite how things were meant to develop. He had just known, when he had seen them walking out of the restaurant, wrapped around each other like a couple on the way to the altar, that he had to do something. He couldn’t just turn his back and walk away because he would be haunted by her for the rest of his life and that was a consequence he had no intention of accepting. He needed to get her out of his system and he wasn’t going to achieve that by antagonising her.

      ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Rose informed him, her voice cooling by several degrees. ‘And I don’t like your attitude.’

      ‘I apologise.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘I apologise. I can see your point of view. I show up here, uninvited and unannounced, without so much as a bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates…’

      Rose felt the colour crawl into her skin. She didn’t know what was going on but there was a lazy warmth in his eyes that made her shiver with a horrible excitement, which she tried valiantly to slap down.

      ‘What’s going on, Nick? Why would you bring me flowers or chocolate?’

      ‘Let me in, Rose. Give me a chance to explain.’ It was an effort keeping his voice smooth and even and controlled because his only thought was that Ted the reformed producer was lurking somewhere inside her house, probably in her bedroom. True, women on the threshold of a rampant affair didn’t usually deck themselves out in track suit bottoms and what looked like an ancient tee shirt from when she was a kid, but who was he to tell? The woman was a law unto herself.

      Poor, СКАЧАТЬ