A French Affair (14 page)

Movement caught Gina’s attention. Someone was about to open the door of the centre. ‘Typical! Visitors and the floor is covered in crumbs.’

She ran for the vacuum while Matthew did his usual welcoming speech, which amounted to ‘do feel free to look around and ask for help if you need it’.

When she’d done the floor she moved her laptop to the office. Matthew could watch for visitors if it all went quiet again and she could work in private.

She and Matthew met again in the little kitchen, both needing coffee. It was early afternoon and they’d been surprisingly busy and – on behalf of the absent dealers – sold a respectable number of items. Gina had even managed to sell a couple of the items she had bought from Bill.

‘We were just lucky those people had moved into an empty house and needed furniture,’ said Matthew before Gina could say anything.

‘They were lucky we were open. Otherwise they’d have had to go to Ikea,’ she retorted instantly. Then she smiled.

For a split second they shared a moment of delight, smiling at each other. A part of Gina she had smothered for months reminded her it was there. She put the mental cushion back firmly. There was no point in having feelings – anything beyond friendship – for Matthew. That flutter of excitement was just a blip. She would ignore it.

At the end of the day, once they had locked up, Gina ran round with the vacuum again – glad to be doing something she understood at last – while Matthew did the paperwork.

‘Would you like to come up for something to eat?’ he said when they’d both finished. ‘I know it’s still early but I’m starving.’

‘
You don’t have to invite me for supper just because you’re hungry,’ she said.

‘No, but I owe you something, even if it’s just cheese on toast. I see now Sunday opening is a very good thing.’

Gina chuckled, as pleased by his approval as she was about being right. ‘OK.’

His flat was very much as she would have imagined it – a lot of dark furniture, leather sofas, ancient Persian rugs – but what did surprise her was that it was well lit. There were no bright lights but nor were there dingy corners. She went to the window and saw his view over the town. ‘It’s nice up here,’ she said.

‘Not too ye olde worlde for you?’ he asked with that dry humour that he usually hid so successfully.

‘Well, it is full of old things, as my sister would say, but it’s comfortable and stylish.’

‘Thank you. Now sit down and relax. Read the paper. I’ll just feed Oscar and then get started on the meal.’

‘I thought we were having cheese on toast?’

He shook his head. ‘I think I can do a bit better than that.’

He handed her a glass of wine before getting out bags of dog food for Oscar. Gina settled herself in the tatty but very comfortable leather sofa. She picked up a magazine about antiques and adjusted a cushion. Eventually she called, ‘Need any help?’

‘No thanks. There’s only room for one of us in here.’

As she settled back down with the magazine, she reflected that Egan had never done much cooking. If he’d felt obliged to for any reason he’d just send out for a pizza or Chinese.

The kitchen smelt wonderfully of frying garlic when
Matthew came out a little later with some knives and forks. He cleared a space for the two of them at the old gate-leg table.

‘Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?’ she said. ‘I feel lazy not helping at all.’

‘You’re all right,’ he said. ‘Have some more wine.’

Gina had already decided to call a taxi. Even one glass of wine on an empty stomach after a long day had gone to her head. She accepted another glass.

‘This tastes as good as it smelt when you were cooking it!’ she said a few mouthfuls in. ‘What is it?’

‘Just a version of a carbonara. It’s a bit variable. Sometimes it’s nicer than others.’

‘Well, this is really nice. So, did you do any good business today? I saw a woman very interested in that gorgeous little table you’ve got. Is it French? And did she buy it?’

‘Yes to both. And well done for spotting it was French.’

Gina felt pleased. ‘You were right when you said you had to do it to learn it – the antiques business, I mean. I feel I’m just beginning to get my eye in. It’s not that I think I know anything but I can imagine that one day I might.’

He smiled. ‘Like when you’re learning to ride a bicycle and you first push the second pedal. You fall off but, just for a minute, you had the feeling.’

‘It’s exactly like that! I know it’ll take years – far longer even than it took me to learn to ride a bike – but that does describe it.’

He laughed softly. ‘I’ve got pudding.’

‘Now I’m really impressed.’

‘And so you should be, but we’ll have some cheese to finish our wine off first.’

He came back with some soft blue cheese Gina didn’t recognise and a packet of water biscuits. ‘This goes very well with this wine,’ he said, putting down his burdens.

It did, Gina found, and when Matthew got up to open another bottle she found herself having a wild fantasy where, emboldened by more wine, she and Matthew found themselves entwined on the sofa. That must definitely not happen, she told herself.

‘No more wine for me,’ she said, ‘or I’ll have a thick head in the morning.’

‘Fair enough. I’ll get the pudding.’

The pudding turned out to be a pair of Magnums. ‘My favourite,’ said Gina, forgetting to be cool and off-putting. ‘I
love
them.’

‘Go and sit down and be comfortable,’ he said when they’d finished eating. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. Would you like tea or coffee?’

Gina was about to say, ‘Ooh, cup of tea please,’ when she realised if she wasn’t careful, in about five minutes she’d be snuggled up on the sofa with Matthew watching the
Antiques Roadshow
.

No! She mustn’t do that. It would too awkward, too intimate. She might doze off and wake to find her head on his shoulder with her mouth open.

‘Actually, I think I’d better ring for a taxi. Busy day tomorrow and all that. But thank you very much for a lovely meal.’

Just for a moment she waited for him to press her to stay: it was still early, there was no real reason why she should get home before eight o’clock; but he didn’t.

She should have been relieved and not disappointed.

‘I’ll call you a cab,’ he said.

On the way home in the taxi Gina examined her conflicting feelings over and over again without managing to resolve them. It was an argument of head versus heart. Or maybe – she reluctantly acknowledged – head versus a healthy woman’s need for physical affection. Which was another way of saying she was sex-starved, a very worrying conclusion.

She didn’t want to have a thing with Matthew. For a zillion reasons, the most important being it would make things impossible at the centre if it all went wrong. And her recent experience didn’t make her optimistic. Egan had been a disaster.

She sighed. She’d felt all this before she got involved with the antiques centre. That was another reason not to lose focus. To have feelings – and she couldn’t really bring herself to decide what these were – for Matthew made the whole thing even more insane.

Then a moment later she forgot this sensible reasoning and accepted there was something about Matthew – in a purely physical sense – that she found very attractive. She wanted to feel his arms around her. She wanted to bury her face in his neck and inhale his scent. She wanted to have his mouth on hers, so hard their teeth clashed. She also wanted him to pull off her clothes and make love to her.

It’s just a physical thing, she thought, and then worried
she might have actually said it out loud. As the driver of the cab – mercifully taciturn – didn’t comment or move, she assumed her private thoughts were still private.

It’s just because you haven’t had sex for ages. And he’s not a bad-looking bloke – it’s no great surprise you fancy him a bit. And he’d probably be horrified if he even knew you were having these thoughts.

She asked the cabbie for a card so she could get him back if she needed him.

THE TROUBLE WITH
working on a Sunday meant you felt you hadn’t really had a proper weekend, Gina thought as she yawned and made herself a cup of tea, ready to start Monday morning in earnest. She was just settling down to some emailing when the phone went. It was Sally.

‘Hi, hon. What are you up to?’ her sister said.

‘Well, bits and pieces, you know.’ Gina felt that Sally had never quite got the concept of working from home.

‘Any chance we could meet up? The girls are in nursery and we haven’t had a catch-up for ages.’

‘Actually, we should do that. I’ve got loads to tell you.’ Gina realised she hadn’t told Sally about the shop or about seeing Egan and her sister always got dreadfully huffy if Gina hadn’t told her something she felt she should know. ‘Would you like to come here?’

‘Actually, I’d like to go to the centre. I haven’t been for a while. Meet me there?’

‘Could you pick me up from here then? I left my car there.’

‘Why?’ Sally demanded.

Gina took a breath. She might as well tell Sally now – any prevarication and Sally would make even more of it than she would anyway. ‘I had a meal with Matthew. He came to do the Sunday opening with me and we were both starving. I felt I deserved a couple of glasses of wine so I cabbed it home.’

There was an ominous silence while Sally kept everything Gina knew she was thinking to herself. ‘Fine. I’ll be right over.’

Matthew rang soon afterwards. ‘I was wondering about how to get your car to you. I could drive it over with Jenny driving my car if you’d like.’

Gina was extremely touched and surprised. Her recent experience of men hadn’t led her to expect such thoughtfulness. ‘That’s terribly kind but there’s no need to do that. Sally’s coming over. She can drive me into town so I can pick up my car after we’ve had a chat.’

‘Oh good.’ He paused as if he was going to say something else but he obviously changed his mind. ‘I’ll let you get on then.’

‘Thank you very much for the thought though. I appreciate it.’

‘That’s fine. Goodbye.’

When he’d disconnected she went upstairs and put some make-up on. She needed to give herself a bit of a talking-to. The self-lecturing that had gone on the previous evening had done nothing to quash the little crush that had been forming recently. When she’d heard Matthew’s voice on the phone she’d found herself getting all fluttery. If Sally found out about it her life wouldn’t be worth living. She’d be arranging for his car to run out of petrol so they were stranded by darling little boutique hotels
and had to stay the night. She knew her sister. Sally was relentless when she got the bit between her teeth. She was also very good at spotting when Gina was trying to keep anything from her.

‘Hello, darling!’ said Sally when Gina opened the door shortly afterwards. ‘Oh, going to a meeting? You’ve got your corporate look on again.’

Gina’s black trousers and white shirt ensemble was her pulling-herself-together outfit, as well as her one for meetings. ‘I’ve got nothing booked apart from you, but I was thinking of calling in on someone later, when I’ve got my car. I want to check out a venue for my client. The do isn’t for ages but I like to see as many places as possible for him.’

‘Oh.’ Sally had never quite got what Gina’s job entailed. ‘So, kettle on? Bickies out? Then tell me about how the Sunday opening went.’

Sally’s desire to go to the centre wasn’t that pressing then. Gina filled the kettle. ‘It was brilliant but there’s something much more interesting than that! Carmella is fitting out her shop. And you will never, in a million years, guess who I saw in there.’ Describing it like this to Sally made seeing Egan fun and not the ghastly shock it had seemed at the time.

‘Who?’

‘Egan.’

Sally was suitably awed. ‘
No!
I can’t believe it. What was he doing there?’

‘No idea. I was peeking between the sheets of paper they’d put over the windows to stop people looking in—’

‘They should have put that white stuff—’

‘I just wanted to see if they had any stock yet, to see if
your lamps would work for them. They didn’t, before you interrupt me again: they’re just decorating. But there was Egan.’

‘Did he see you?’

‘Yes! I legged it. I absolutely didn’t want to talk to him and I fled up to the French House as fast as I could in case he was following me.’

‘And was he?’

Gina shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t think so actually, which made me feel a bit silly. But I met a lovely man called Bill Morrison who was obviously big friends with Rainey because he’d bought us a box of stuff from an auction. For only ten pounds. Which I thought was really sweet of him. And he’s keen to do events.’

As Gina had intended, this distracted Sally from thoughts of Egan. Gina didn’t want to go through the how-do-you-feel-about-him-now conversation which Sally was prone to having.

‘Like the Christmas one?’ said Sally.

‘Yup. And I thought we could have a meet-the-expert thing. Matthew’s not keen of course but he did give me the name of an auctioneer whom we could invite too.’

‘I really don’t think we’ve got time to fit it in before Christmas if we do the Christmas thing,’ said Sally.

‘We haven’t, but I thought we could combine them.’

‘What: “Sell your tat and buy a nice Christmas present with the money”? Catchy.’

‘People do clear out their houses at this time of year. They want to put up the fairy lights and get out the baubles, and they want to get rid of the junk first. And everyone needs money at Christmas, especially if it’s for something they don’t want.’

‘“Sell your tat and buy something nice for the kids”.’

Gina giggled. ‘What about “Tat for Turkey! Make the swap now! You know you want to!” We could have a big banner made and hang it in front of the French House.’

‘Not even I would go that far,’ said Sally. ‘But I do think we could do it at the same time, and if it seems popular, we could do it again in the New Year – same message only not the turkey bit. “Overspent over Christmas? Make some money back now!”’