City Girl in Training

by Liz Fielding

Wearing it was rather like eating an egg and bacon sandwich. A ‘comfort’ thing. Only to be indulged in when there was no chance of anyone seeing you.

  Not, of course, that Cal would have been in the slightest bit interested in the unfettered acres of thigh I was displaying. But I was still mortified and I gave a startled groan, jerked my hand from his grasp and shut the door.

  If it hadn’t been aching quite so much, I would have banged my head against it.

  There was a moment of silence before the lightest of taps on the other side informed me that Cal was still there.

  I didn’t believe there was any chance of him disappearing in a puff of smoke, no matter how hard I wished. And he was going out of his way to be a kind, caring neighbour. So I opened it again, just a crack, keeping my body tucked behind it.

  ‘Bastard,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’ His look of injured innocence didn’t fool me for a moment. ‘Go and put on that coffee you’re torturing me with while I make myself decent.’

  ‘I’ll leave the door on the latch. Just come in when you’re ready.’ He half turned, then looked back. ‘We’ll get breakfast out.’ He didn’t wait for my answer, which was probably just as well.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Due to an unfortunate series of mishaps, the totally gorgeous man you’ve just met believes you’re a total idiot. You want to show him that, contrary to appearances, you’ve got a brain and know how to use it. Do you:

  a. do nothing? Once he gets to know you better he’ll realise his mistake and you can both laugh about it.

  b. swap your contact lenses for those big-frame specs you swore you’d die rather than wear again? They made you look like a geek—but an intelligent geek.

  c. invite him into your office so that you can sort out his pension plan and investments? That’ll show him.

  d. ask yourself if you really want to impress a man who thinks you’re an idiot based on such a brief acquaintance? Nothing that happened was really your fault.

  e. realise that, since he isn’t avoiding you, he must actually like stupid women, and dump him?

  I STOOD under the shower and let the hot water and shampoo sluice away the wish-I-hadn’t-drunk-that feeling. It was a new day. The first day of my new life as a tiger. Yesterday didn’t count. Yesterday it had been raining and my life had been out of my control.

  I wanted to forget most of yesterday. Apart from sharing a pizza with Cal, it had been a disaster from start to finish.

  He had been the one bright spark in the gloom, although today hadn’t got off to such a great start, either. He might have thought it was amusing that I’d opened the door wearing nothing but a shrunken rugby shirt. It wasn’t my mission in life to make him laugh. Not at me, anyway.

  I’d correct his impression that I was a clown if it was the last thing I did and the first line of attack had to be clothes. I wrapped a towel around me and considered my limited wardrobe.

  He’d been wearing jeans, making it easy for me. It was, after all, Saturday and we were going to browse at a flea market, so jeans were good. But this time they’d be a pair that hadn’t been abandoned by one of my older siblings, but a pair that I’d bought for myself.

  True, they didn’t have the kind of label you wore on the outside to tell the world just how expensive they were. They were the kind you cut the label out of so no one would see where you’d bought them. But they were boot-cut to ride over my favourite Chelseas and they fitted me like a glove. A rather tight glove, admittedly. Misery loved chocolate and I’d been very miserable for the last couple of weeks.

  I breathed in hard. Button and buttonhole finally connected and I slotted a woven leather belt through the loops as a safety precaution, regarding the finished effect with a certain amount of satisfaction. The heavy cream silk shirt I was wearing might have come from the charity shop where my mother helped out two mornings a week, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. And my mother was out of the country.

  I added a tweed sports jacket that had been around the house for so long I couldn’t remember who it had belonged to originally. I’d grabbed it from the coat rack when I’d been in a hurry one day and, since no one had cried foul, I’d kept it. With the addition of a long silk scarf that had belonged to my sister looped around my neck I liked to kid myself that it passed for casual chic. It might have worked if I’d had smooth, sleek hair that flowed down my back.

  What I’d got looked more like ginger stuffing that had exploded from a mattress. But a liberal helping of conditioner had tamed the worst excesses of frizz. Of course, it wasn’t dry yet. No electricity, no hair-dryer.

  I glossed my lips, glanced at my back view in the truly scary full-length mirror and sighed. Kidding myself was right.

  I checked on the electrician and flinched at the sight of the cooker in pieces. ‘I’ll, um, be next door if you need me,’ I said.

  That earned me a look that suggested I was kidding myself again and I beat a hasty retreat.

  Cal’s door was on the latch. I opened it and heard the sound of voices. I’d assumed he lived alone, but my assumptions had got me in a lot of trouble lately.

  ‘Er, hello,’ I called out.

  ‘We’re in the kitchen,’ Cal replied.

  We? I almost heard my heart hit my boots, but it was too late to change my mind now. If I hadn’t thrown a paddy over being seen in my unconventional night attire and allowed him to give me coffee and aspirin when he’d wanted to, I could have made an excuse and ducked out of the expedition to Portobello Road. But I was dressed and ready to go. If I backed out now, he’d know why.

  So I put on my bright and happy face—I’d been practising for years on Don’s mother so I was really good at this—and headed for the kitchen. Cal turned as I walked in and his brows rose slightly, apparently startled by this total change in demeanour.

  ‘Headache gone?’ he asked.

  ‘Washed away under the shower,’ I said, brightly, in my best have-a-nice-day manner. He gave me no argument, just handed me a glass of orange juice before making a gesture in the direction of his companion, while continuing to look at me. ‘Jay, this is Philly Gresham,’ he said, in the briefest of introductions. Adding with a slightly wry smile, ‘The girl I was telling you about.’

  I got a slight lift of his eyebrows from Jay, which made me wonder what exactly Cal had been saying about me.

  ‘Philly, this is Jay Watson.’

  ‘Hello, Jay.’

  ‘Make it goodbye,’ Cal said. ‘He’s just leaving.’

  Jay was indeed wearing an overcoat, but unbuttoned, as if he’d been hoping for an invitation to stay that had never materialised.

  ‘Goodbye, Jay,’ I said. Perhaps I should have sounded sorrier to see him go, because he put down the coffee-cup with all the grace of a two-year-old in a sulk, giving me a reproachful look as he headed for the door.

  ‘One o’clock, Cal,’ he said. ‘Time’s short so don’t be late.’

  I forced down the orange juice and attempted casual sophistication. ‘I’m sorry, I seem to have upset your, um…’ My brain shrivelled at the thought of what he might be and my mouth dried in sympathy. Cal, pouring coffee into a large bowl-shaped breakfast cup, glanced sideways at me with those unsettling eyes but didn’t help me out. ‘Partner,’ I mumbled.

  He retrieved the empty glass and replaced it with the cup of strong black coffee he’d poured. ‘Sugar?’ he asked, neither confirming nor denying it.

  He was looking down at me. His mouth wasn’t smiling, but his eyes were creased at the corners as if he found something deeply amusing. I suspected it was me. And my mind went blank. What was it about this man? He could steal my wits, reduce my calm centre to quivering mush with a look.

  Taking my silence as ‘no’, he said, ‘Milk?’

  I shook my head. And then, just to prove to myself that I remembered how, I said, ‘No, thanks. This will be fine.’

  To be honest, while I could take or leave milk, I yearned for sugar. I’d been trying to
give it up, without any noticeable success, for ages. With my jeans already cutting uncomfortably into my waist, I took this timely loss of my vocal cords as a sign that I’d procrastinated for far too long and I sipped the coffee, making a brave effort not to shudder at the bitterness.

  ‘Look,’ I said, making a real effort to get a grip of myself. ‘If you’re busy I can find my own way to Portobello Road. Despite all appearances to the contrary, I do have two brain cells to rub together.’

  ‘I haven’t got a thing to do this morning except replace Jay’s precious umbrella.’ Which suggested one of two things. He was kind. Or he wasn’t convinced by my protestations of mental competence. Maybe he was right to be sceptical. Under the circumstances, only an idiot’s heart would be pounding in such an out-of-control way.

  Then his words—I’d been overdosing on the gravel-wrapped-in-velvet sound of his voice rather than listening to what he’d said—finally sunk in. ‘It was Jay’s umbrella?’ I said, and I didn’t have to pretend to be horrified.

  I was quite prepared to dig into my saving-up-to-get-married nest egg to replace Cal’s property. He’d been kind. He’d come to my rescue when I was being drenched by the rain. When I’d screamed in the dark.

  He’d shared his pizza, for heaven’s sake.

  I did not feel quite so generous towards Jay. I was still feeling that look he’d given me. It was like a dagger in my back.

  The feeling was mutual.

  ‘He insisted on loaning it to me yesterday when I left his place in that downpour despite my protests that I’d probably leave it on the underground. It was, as I’ve just been told at length, infinitely precious to him and he is not amused by my carelessness.’

  I made a determined effort to ignore the stupid niggle of jealousy provoked by that ‘when I left his place’—Cal’s private life was nothing to do with me—and concentrated on the real issue. ‘It wasn’t your carelessness. It was mine,’ I said. ‘No wonder the guy had looked at me as if I was something nasty he’d stepped in.’

  Cal didn’t give me an argument about that. ‘I’m sorry about that. I’d hoped that by telling him the whole story, he might just see the funny side of it.’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘My mistake.’

  I could see how telling your lover you’d loaned his precious umbrella to some woman might not be the greatest move. My only surprise was that he hadn’t realised that for himself. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  Cal smiled. ‘Don’t be. Just help me choose a peace-offering. There’s bound to be a dealer in the Portobello Market and, with luck, we’ll find him a suitably precious replacement.’

  ‘Oh, great,’ I said. Oh, knickers, I thought. A dealer wouldn’t be selling made-in-China knock-offs. He was going to be selling the real thing. Handmade in silk with a gold ferrule and seriously expensive. ‘Can we stop by a cash machine on the way?’ I asked.

  It looked as if I was going to need every penny of my daily limit.

  ‘Notting Hill?’ I’d been so impressed by the ease with which Cal negotiated the underground system, causing him considerable amusement as I’d related my own problems the day before, that I hadn’t even thought about where we were going. I’d been to London before—shopping, sightseeing, on school trips—but a glimpse of Buckingham Palace from an open-topped bus couldn’t compare with the movie-lent glamour of Notting Hill.

  ‘It’s the nearest stop,’ he said, getting up as the train slid into the station. And I blushed at my open-mouthed excitement to be visiting the real-life film set of one of my favourite films, sincerely glad that Cal had his back to me and was oblivious to my awed excitement.

  ‘Which way?’ I asked, looking around me, as we reached street-level.

  Cal glanced down at me. ‘That depends.’

  ‘What on?’

  ‘Whether you want to buy a book.’ And he grinned.

  Not oblivious, then. I don’t suppose he needed to look at me to know how I was reacting.

  ‘Bother,’ I said. ‘I was hoping you hadn’t noticed my hick-from-the-sticks act.’

  ‘Such a tourist,’ he teased.

  ‘Only for the weekend. Next week it gets real.’ Then, because I couldn’t help myself, ‘Is there really a bookstore? Like in the movie?’

  ‘There’s a bookstore, but not at all like the one in the movie. It’s well run, for one thing. And it specialises in travel books so you wouldn’t be interested, would you?’

  ‘A book might inspire me,’ I said. And flapped my arms as I grinned right back.

  We sat at a corner table in a crowded café in the middle of the antiques market and ordered the kind of traditional, cholesterol-laden breakfast that would strain my waist button to the limit.

  The waitress brought us coffee to be going on with. Cal ignored it. He just sat back in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him, regarding me as if I were some objet de vertu like those I’d seen in the crowded antique shops we’d passed. One he was seriously considering having wrapped up to take home with him.

  Just a product of my fevered imagination, of course. Heightened by a slow perusal of bookshelves crammed with travellers’ tales with Cal at my back, hand on my shoulder as he’d reached up for a book that had been out of my reach. With Cal buying a book of photographs of the Serengeti and having it gift-wrapped before putting it in my hands with the words, ‘Be inspired.’

  And then, his arm around my shoulder, keeping me close in the Saturday-morning crowd as we walked through The Lane, cheerful with Christmas lights and the sound of a brass band playing carols, until we reached the café.

  Now he was looking at me in a way that Don had never done and, imagination or not, my body was responding eagerly. Yearning to be unwrapped, looked at with pleasure. Touched possessively.

  I felt heat spreading through my body in a manner that was shockingly different from the effect caused by my weekly aerobics class. It was a languorous heat. Slow and pleasurable, filling my breasts, stealing through my abdomen…

  One new experience every day.

  I knew what I’d choose.

  ‘So,’ I said abruptly, sitting bolt upright, shocked by the direction my mind had taken. As for the feelings… ‘What are you planning to film next?’ I asked briskly. ‘The fascinating world of the earthworm in a suburban garden? The private life of a rattler in the Arizona desert?’ He said nothing, as if he knew exactly what I was doing. ‘The nesting habits of the crested newt,’ I pressed, a little desperately, determined to get my mind focussed on something that didn’t make me want to rip my clothes off.

  He took his time about answering, as if his mind were somewhere else. ‘Nesting, yes. Newts, no. We’re negotiating with one of the networks to film the life cycle of the leatherback turtle,’ he said finally, sitting up, letting go of whatever had been holding his thoughts. He spooned sugar into his coffee, stirring it with a lot more concentration than it warranted. ‘The cheetah film should help. If Jay ever edits it to his satisfaction.’

  ‘He’s a film editor?’

  ‘A brilliant film editor. He takes my films and turns them into art.’

  ‘Well, great.’ I should have sounded more enthusiastic, I realised. ‘I mean that’s good, isn’t it?’

  ‘The downside of perfectionism is that he’s never satisfied. If I don’t stand behind him and push, the final cut won’t be delivered on time. So that’s my afternoon taken care of. And probably most of the evening.’

  If I believed that Jay had an entirely different reason for wanting Cal close at hand, I kept it to myself. It was, I reminded myself, absolutely none of my business. Besides, I was sure he could work that out for himself. He didn’t need any help from me.

  The little heart-leap of pleasure I felt at his fairly obvious lack of reciprocal enthusiasm was just plain foolishness.

  Cal didn’t need anything from me.

  He was just a friend. He wasn’t wafting pheromones in my direction, at least not intentio
nally, and my reaction to him had nothing to do with sex.

  I was simply drawn by his air of sophistication and worldliness. His charm. Those eyes that never seemed to leave my face. The pure novelty of having a man actually giving me his undivided attention.

  Heady stuff when I’d spent all my teenage years and my early twenties competing for notice with a long string of broken-down transportation, culminating in Don’s drooling obsession with an eighty-year-old car.

  ‘We’d better not waste time,’ I said as breakfast—the old-fashioned kind involving eggs, bacon, sausages and huge black field mushrooms—arrived to distract me. ‘You were told not to be late.’ And I stared at my plate, wondering how on earth I was going to eat when my appetite had suddenly deserted me.

  I jumped as he touched the back of my hand to attract my attention and, startled out of my reverie, I looked up. For a moment he said nothing. Just left his hand on mine, his touch sparking through me like an electric current.

  Then he said, ‘Will you pass the salt, please?’

  Had he asked before and, lost in my own thoughts, I hadn’t heard him?

  ‘Too much salt is bad for you,’ I said, not moving, not wanting to lose the warmth of his hand against mine.

  He looked at the artery-hardening food on his plate and then back to me. ‘How much worse can it get?’ he asked, his sudden laughter taking me by surprise and breaking the spell. But it was infectious and I found myself grinning back.

  ‘You get the salt,’ I said, ‘but you have to promise to do something healthy afterwards.’

  ‘Something energetic?’

  Energetic suggested images I wasn’t prepared to confront. ‘A walk would do it,’ I said, wishing I’d kept quiet. Then, because that was feeble, ‘A brisk walk.’

  ‘In Kensington Gardens?’

  ‘I leave the venue to you.’

  ‘I wasn’t asking your opinion, I was asking you to join me. To make sure I do as I’m told.’