Blind-Date Baby

by Fiona Harper

  Sanfrandani: I see.

  Kangagirl: Oh. Hugs, Englishcrumpet.

  Rob had been her other half. How could anyone else take his place? And she didn’t know if she could settle for less. Even if she was lonely sometimes. Even if, secretly, in a dark place where she didn’t even want to admit it to herself, she was a little bit jealous of the easy companionship Daisy had had with her last serious boyfriend.

  Sanfrandani: How about dating with the idea of finding someone to share your life with? Even if it’s not the meant-to-be-in-the-stars kind of love?

  Grace sat back in the sofa and stared at the screen. Sanfrandani had a point. Just because it wasn’t going to be the same as she’d had with Rob, it didn’t mean she couldn’t find a different kind of happiness with someone else. That was what Noah had been talking about, hadn’t he? Could she see herself making that kind of mature, adult decision about a relationship?

  Englishcrumpet: I don’t know. Maybe.

  The Coffee Bean was virtually empty, as it normally was on a Sunday morning before the shoppers were out in full force. It was Grace’s ritual to treat herself to breakfast down here just one day a week—any more than that and she’d be the size of a house. Around ten-thirty, she crawled down the stairs from her flat, propped herself against the counter and yawned so hard she thought her jaw might dislocate.

  Caz was resplendent this morning in a lurid Paisley kaftan, her silver-blonde hair caught into a loose bun that looked as if it might disintegrate under its own weight at any second. The owner truly was as original as her kooky little café.

  Caz looked her up and down. ‘Either you’ve had a really terrible night or a really good one. Which was it?’

  That was the point. Grace wasn’t quite sure. Whichever it had been, insomnia had come as part of the package.

  ‘A tall skinny latte with two shots, please.’

  Caz winked at her. ‘Say no more. Coming right up.’

  Grace yawned again and looked round the café. It was a charming place, full of interesting knick-knacks. Old enamel jugs sat on random tables, filled with daffodils. Old road signs and mirrors covered the walls. Best of all was the ornate Victorian mahogany counter, still with some of the original etched glass, that filled one side of the café and the black and white tiled floor—a reminder of its former life as a butchers. The Coffee Bean always smelled of something comforting. The locals loved it but, with two new coffee houses on the High Street—both international chains—they were feeling the pinch.

  But the buying public obviously were dull enough to enjoy the same old plastic-wrapped nonsense in whatever town they were in. The same menu of coffees. The Coffee Bean was unique, with an ever-changing menu and warm staff who really loved their jobs. But, unfortunately, that didn’t stop the profit margins falling and the costs going up.

  Caroline handed Grace her coffee and returned to frowning over some printed-off spreadsheets.

  ‘How are this week’s figures?’

  Caz shuffled the papers and tucked them under the till.

  ‘Come on, Caz. I’m family. And I’m supposed to be your assistant manageress. Even if you keep the happy, smiley face for the other staff, put me in the picture.’

  The other woman shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter what we do. Java Express is running promotion after promotion.’ She shrugged. ‘If things don’t pick up, we’ll be out of business in three months.’

  Grace put her coffee down, marched around the counter and flung her arms round Caz, ignoring the overpowering scent of lavender and the flakes of dandruff liberally salting her shoulders. There was no way she was going to let The Coffee Bean close. It was like a member of the Marlowe family.

  She’d first met Rob here, when he’d had a Saturday job with his aunt. A couple of years later, when her dad had consented to let her start dating, it had been the venue for her first date. Caz had even made their wedding cake.

  Daisy had slept in her pram near the back door on many occasions as a baby. The customers had spent many an hour when she was a toddler admiring her drawings and sneaking her bits of cake. Later, when she’d been older, she’d done her homework on the little table in the corner every night. The regulars all loved her and had insisted on trying to help her, even if they’d always come up with different answers for her questions and spent more time arguing with each other than actually being any use with equations or the dates of famous battles.

  Too many happy memories. And now Daisy and Rob were gone and The Coffee Bean and her memories were all she had left. She wasn’t going to let them be hoovered up by a big corporation without a fight.

  ‘We’ll find a way. I’ll create a new cake—one so spectacular it’ll stop people in the street and force them to dive in and buy some.’

  Caz patted her on the arm and pulled away. ‘Amazing as your creations are, my flower, I don’t think they’re a match for Java Express’s “buy one get one free”s on just about everything.’ She shook her head. ‘Trouble is, nobody wants to pay for quality any more. They want everything for half the price it was last year.’

  ‘I’ve got my savings. Only a few thousand, but still…’

  Caz folded her arms and shook her head. ‘No way. You’ve been saving for long enough to open your own shop. I can’t take that away from you.’

  ‘But I could be a partner in this shop, couldn’t I? You offered that to me once.’

  Caz’s eyes became glassy. ‘Bless you, Grace, but no. We both know the chance of saving The Coffee Bean is slim, and you might need that money for university fees for Daisy. I can’t let you plug a hole in a sinking ship and lose your nest egg in the process.’

  ‘I want to, Caz. You know how much this place means to me.’

  ‘Sorry, Grace. Can’t let you do it.’

  Grace gave Caz a rueful smile and rubbed her arm. ‘I’ll try to find a way to make you, you know.’

  Caz chuckled. ‘I know you will. But I’ve had a good twenty years longer at perfecting my stubbornness.’

  Grace opened her mouth to argue, but at that moment the old-fashioned bell on the café door jingled and both women turned to look at who had just walked in.

  ‘Oh, my goodness!’ Grace put her hands over her mouth.

  She couldn’t even see the delivery boy behind the largest bunch of flowers in the history of the universe.

  His voice came out muffled from behind all the greenery. ‘Grace Marlowe?’

  Grace let out a squeak.

  ‘Over there,’ Caz said, gesticulating first towards Grace and then to one of the free tables. The boy carefully lowered the bouquet and stumbled free of the foliage.

  Grace couldn’t take her eyes off the huge bunch of flowers as she squiggled her name on the boy’s clipboard. Nothing as unimaginative and predictable as lilies or roses. These were large architectural flowers—some of which she couldn’t even put a name to—framed with angular leaves and rapier-sharp grasses. And the smell…

  ‘Someone really did have a good night last night, didn’t they?’ Caz was standing back behind the counter, her arms folded across her ample chest. ‘Go on, then. Look at the card.’

  Grace didn’t need to look at the card. No one had sent her flowers in a long time. Even Rob had only managed a bunch of petrol station roses on the night he’d proposed. One of the heads had fallen off, but he’d been nineteen and she’d been eighteen and, at the time, they’d been the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. Of course, they paled in comparison to Noah’s bouquet. Somehow, she wished he had sent her lilies. It would have been easier to dismiss them, easier to put Rob’s eleven roses and one sad stalk in first place.

  She scowled as she searched for the card amongst the tissue paper and sharp grasses.

  To Grace,

  Thank you for an unforgettable evening.

  Noah.

  Grace blew out a breath. She didn’t like this warm feeling spreading through her bones. How was she supposed to forget that kiss with these flowers stinking out
her flat for the next week? Two weeks, probably. They came from one of the most expensive florists in town and looked like the sort of blooms that didn’t need gallons of water.

  She picked up the bouquet and rustled over to Caz. ‘Here, you have them,’ she said and dumped them on the counter.

  Caz just folded her arms tighter and shook her head. Grace shoved them an inch or two closer.

  ‘Go on. They’re far too posh for me. They’ll look out of place in my little flat. Have them for the café.’

  Caz just raised her eyebrows.

  ‘You’re impossible,’ Grace said and flounced off to find some scissors and spare jugs. When she returned she hauled the bouquet onto one of the larger tables and set about slicing through the cellophane and trimming the stems.

  ‘Evict the daffodils from my jugs and I’ll dock your pay.’

  Grace turned and stared at Caz open-mouthed. ‘You wouldn’t.’

  Caz just blinked.

  ‘I’ll take you to Industrial Tribunal,’ Grace added, picking up a large green thing and trying to work out if it was a flower or just an ornate leaf.

  ‘Fine,’ came the reply. ‘Do it. But by the time it gets sorted, I’ll probably be out of business and you will get an award of big fat zero.’

  Grace’s eyes became slits. ‘Like I said—impossible!’

  ‘It’s high time you let a man buy you flowers. So, sorry, you’re stuck with them.’

  Well, she’d see about that.

  The computer whirred and, after a few seconds, pinged cheerfully at Noah. He looked up from his Sunday crossword and scanned the list of emails that had just arrived in his inbox.

  A stab of guilt hit him as he spotted one from his mother, inviting him to Sunday lunch the following week. It had been a while since he’d made the trip to the coast. In his opinion, relationships with parents were best conducted from afar—another reason he was pleased his mother was now quite the silver surfer, even if his father refused flatly to go near the PC.

  His fingers hovered over the keyboard as he tried to work out if he had a good excuse to duck out of travelling out of London to Folkstone next weekend. Eventually, he groaned and tapped out an acceptance.

  He loved his parents, of course he did, but the house they’d owned for the last half century always seemed so bleak, despite the old-fashioned, over-cluttered décor. When he pictured that house in his mind’s eye, nothing happened. No memories flooded his head. No jovial family dinners. No warm hugs to match the warm milk at bedtime.

  His mother was one of those jolly-hockey-stick sorts who was much more likely to tell a child to pick himself up and stop making a fuss than kiss it better. But at least he saw a sparkle of warmth in her eyes occasionally. His father had been fossilised at birth.

  Noah had thought that following him into the army might have elicited some longed-for approval. Noah had been wrong. The old man had hardly raised an eyebrow and had huffed something about how it would ‘finally make a man of him’. His current success with his books produced only the odd snort, even though on one visit Noah had found one of his hardbacks hidden under his father’s armchair with a corner folded down to keep his place.

  He sighed. It didn’t take one of his hunches to tell him that Grace wouldn’t ration the affection and fun for her daughter, as if saving them for a rainy day that never came.

  Finding that his hand had automatically returned to his mouse, he made use of it. There were a number of emails from Blinddatebrides.com and he clicked on one, wondering if one was from her.

  Another match suggestion. He tried to get excited about the honey highlights and the perfect smile, about the capable-looking professional woman whose profile seemed to match his every requirement for a wife. But, when he imagined her sitting across the table from him at dinner, she refused to look like her picture. Her hair darkened. Her smile became mischievous. One eyebrow arched high.

  Oh, dear. He knew what this meant.

  He’d learned long ago that he was the sort of person who had hunches. Not just run-of-the-mill inklings, but powerful, knock-the-breath-out-of-you hunches. It had started when he’d been a teenager and had always been able to guess the plot lines of all his favourite TV programmes. Even the fiendishly clever detective shows. Sometimes, with very little visible evidence, he just knew how things were going to turn out—in life and on the screen.

  Over the years, he’d learned to follow his hunches, hone his skills. His agent told him his ability to create rich and twisting plots that surprised and satisfied was the main reason his books were so successful. Sometimes his hunches were so strong, so deep-seated, they dug in and refused to let go, even when those around him questioned his sanity. When his subconscious went all Rottweiler on him, there was normally a good reason for it. He just didn’t always know what that reason was until much, much later.

  And his inner Rottweiler had decided it liked the look of Grace Marlowe.

  Frankly, he couldn’t blame it.

  That was it then. No point in fighting it. He could pretend to himself he would test the waters, see how things went, but if he was brutally honest he knew how this would all end. How it must end.

  Grace Marlowe would be his blind-date bride.

  Shaking his head at how sensible that sounded, how right he felt about it, he flicked down to the next email on the list and opened it up.

  Englishcrumpet has sent you the following message:

  Dear Noah,

  Thank you for the lovely dinner and for the beautiful flowers. I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, but I’m not interested in another date and I want to be clear about that. Right now, friendship is all I’m looking for and all I can offer you.

  Best wishes, Grace.

  Noah folded his arms and stared at Grace’s message. This was going to make the whole ‘getting married to Grace’ thing interesting. He smiled to himself. He liked interesting.

  Friendship? Well, he’d see about that.

  Vinehurst had always been a picturesque corner of London, but it had suffered a difficult period recently, with the small shops like grocers, butchers, ironmongers going out of business as trade moved to the supermarkets and out-of-town retail parks. For a while, many of the little shops on the High Street had been empty, or taken over by cut-price operations selling electrical goods or cheap toys. But in the last ten years the area had undergone a regeneration, with many of the more affluent Londoners looking for more affordable housing away from central London’s rocketing property prices.

  Not surprising, as it had wonderful properties, from charming terraced cottages to grand Victorian villas. He’d seen the potential well before it had become fashionable. That was another hunch that had worked out for him. Friends had told him he was mad to buy the old manor house ‘out in the middle of nowhere’. It was actually right on the edge of the city where it finally ran out of steam and let the fields and woodland remain undeveloped. Those same friends had moaned it was on the ‘wrong’ side of London. Why didn’t he try Buckinghamshire? Or Gloucestershire? The right sort of people lived in Gloucestershire.

  But he hadn’t wanted to try Buckinghamshire. He’d had a ‘feeling’ about Vinehurst. It had excellent transport links to London, an airport nearby for light aircraft and his house had doubled in value in the four years since he’d bought it, thank you very much.

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets and hunched into his collar as he walked up the street. A woman passing in the opposite direction caught his eye. She was young and pretty, with long blonde hair, and was pushing a toddler in a pushchair. But her undoubted prettiness wasn’t what caused him to do a double take. It was the hothouse flower tucked behind her ear. Last night’s rain had left dampness in the air and the wind was slicing its way up the street. He’d be surprised if the bloom didn’t wilt in a matter of seconds.

  He shook his head and carried on striding up the slight hill towards The Coffee Bean. No matter. People could do whatever they liked with their flowers. It
didn’t bother…

  An old man with a flat cap nodded at him as they passed on the narrow pavement. Noah stopped in his tracks and swivelled round to look at him. In the buttonhole of his dirty grey overcoat was the most stunning orchid.

  Something tickled at the back of his brain. There was a connection here. There had to be.

  He was almost at the café now and, as he paused to let a couple of middle-aged women out of the door, he noticed they were also carrying a couple of exotic flowers each. What the…?

  Once inside, he spotted Grace, sitting at a table close to the counter and carefully passing out flowers—his flowers—to every customer as they collected their drinks and wandered off to find a table.

  He walked to the front of the queue and stood there, waiting for her to finish fiddling about with the remains of the bouquet he’d sent her. He knew the exact moment she sensed his presence because she went quite still.

  Noah smoothed his face into the dictionary definition of ‘calm and collected’.

  Grace swore and jumped up.

  ‘Noah! What are you…? I mean, why…?’

  He blinked and nodded towards the foliage in front of her. ‘More to the point, what are you doing?’

  Grace bit her thumbnail. ‘Sharing the love?’ she said hopefully.

  It was impossible to hold his mask of composure in the face of such genuine mortification. He smiled and Grace exhaled visibly.

  She looked quite different from the night before—no dress, no heels, no clipped-up hairdo. Just jeans, a cute little wrap-around jumper in soft, soft blue and her hair swinging loose around her shoulders. She didn’t look at all like the polished woman he’d imagined he’d end up with when he’d signed up to Blinddatebrides.com. She did, however, look completely adorable.

  Grace stood up and hurriedly gathered the left-over bits of stalks and leaves into the tissue and cellophane on the table and threw them in a bin somewhere behind the counter. When she returned, she flicked her hair forward to cover her eyes.