Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

Чтение книги онлайн.

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

      FOR the next week, Sabrina was in a complete state of nerves. What on earth did you wear if you were going out for dinner with a prince?

      She rang her mother and explained her predicament.

      ‘Good heavens,’ said her mother faintly. ‘A prince? You’ll never want to come home to Salisbury at this rate!’

      Sabrina winced at how her mother had unerringly hit on the truth. She couldn’t imagine wanting to either, but that had everything to do with Guy and nothing whatsoever to do with a Middle-Eastern potentate.

      ‘What do I wear, Mum?’ she repeated patiently.

      ‘You’ve got lots of lovely clothes! Just be yourself,’ said her mother. ‘My goodness—wait until the neighbours hear about this!’

      ‘Well, I don’t want you to tell them,’ said Sabrina stubbornly. Because however much she wished otherwise, one day soon she was going to have to go back and live at home, and she would do herself no favours whatsoever if she arrived with Guy Masters’s magic dust still clinging to her skin.

      She even tried to quiz Guy about the correct dress code one evening when he arrived home even later than usual and had been in a snarling temper. She produced a huge tureen of soup, and he stared down at the steaming bowlful and suddenly went very quiet.

      ‘You don’t like home-made soup?’ she asked nervously.

      Guy looked up. The soup looked perfect. Damn it—she looked perfect, standing there in a pair of white jeans and a white T-shirt, with her bright hair caught back in a ponytail.

      ‘Haven’t had a lot of experience of it,’ he said shortly. ‘My mother used to open a can.’

      Sabrina pushed some cheese across the table towards him. ‘Wasn’t she keen on cooking, then?’

      It was an such an artless question that Guy found himself uncharacteristically answering it. ‘Not particularly. And we were always…moving,’ he said slowly. ‘So a lot of her time was taken up with settling into new places.’

      ‘You make it sound quite nomadic, Guy.’

      ‘Do I? I suppose it was when you compare it with living in one place all your life.’

      ‘Like me, you mean?’

      He shrugged. ‘Well, you did, didn’t you?’

      ‘Yes,’ she said carefully, as some warning light in his eyes told her to go back to the safer subject of cooking, rather than the potential minefield of childhood.

      She sawed through a crusty loaf and handed him a huge chunk of it. ‘My mother was so busy going out to work that she never had time to cook properly, except at weekends.’

      He nodded, seeing the sudden, defensive set of her face. Despite his reservations, he found himself asking, ‘How old were you when your father left?’

      ‘Eight.’ She pulled a face. ‘He fell in love with my mum’s “best” friend.’

      He winced. ‘That must have been tough.’

      ‘Yes.’ She stared down at the soup without really seeing it. ‘For a while it was dreadful.’ She looked up and gave him a bright smile. ‘But time heals, doesn’t it? Corny, but true.’

      ‘Yeah, but you always get left with a scar.’ He shrugged, but he shook his head at the silent question in her eyes. ‘Tell me more.’

      ‘Just I always vowed that when I grew up I would learn how to cook properly.’

      Unexpectedly, he found the thought of Sabrina as a little girl exquisitely touching. He sipped the soup. ‘Well, you achieved it with honours,’ he murmured.

      She glowed with pleasure. ‘Guy?’

      ‘Mmm?’

      ‘You know this dinner on Saturday night—’

      He put his spoon down. ‘Damn!’

      ‘It’s been cancelled?’ she asked hopefully.

      He shook his head. ‘Nope—but I haven’t organised anything and I’m in Paris all day tomorrow. You’ll have to book the restaurant, Sabrina.’

      ‘Like Where? I don’t really know London at all!’

      He reeled off a list of London’s most famous eating places and Sabrina shook her head doubtfully.

      ‘We’ll never get a table at any of those places this late!’

      He СКАЧАТЬ