All Bets Are On (9 page)

‘We were much more fun,’ he said, slipping an arm around her shoulders and noticing that she didn’t make a move to pull away. Maybe the past surreal hour had been worth it.

‘Lunch?’ he asked.

She nodded and smiled.

At a traditional-style pub in Wimbledon Village they found a cosy corner table and ordered baguettes and a joint side of fries.

His eyes were drawn to her face again and again. She’d taken the glitzy ribbon out of her hair and now it fell in soft waves to her shoulders. The only fairy evidence left were a few specks of glitter clinging to her lower lip, pulling his eyes in and inviting him to kiss them off. The image of her giggling next to him on the grass lingered in his mind. That funny, undone, enthusiastic girl was nothing like the starchy woman he knew from the office.

Of course he was just being sucked in because she was turning out to be such an off-the-wall foil to what had begun to feel like an endless cycle of predictable dating. He hadn’t even realised he was in a rut until these last few days, but now he could see that his cut-to-the-chase game plan, storming in to get to first base as quickly as possible then ending the relationship before it really took hold, inevitably meant that things were always pretty superficial.

Using his cut-to-the-chase policy on Alice would have been an instant failure, so he’d been forced for a change to go softly-softly, get to know her, break down her defences. He hadn’t really banked on any of that being such a laugh. He liked the way she threw herself into everything one hundred and ten per cent. Not enough for her to turn up and cover for Tilly in jeans and T-shirt, she’d gone for fancy dress. She’d joined in with the ball game with the same enthusiasm. In everything she went that step further than she needed to. He wondered with a rush of heat what that trait might mean when he finally took her to bed.

She took a sip of her drink.

‘How did I do, then?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘That had to be some kind of payback for yesterday—right? I mean, please. Face-painting and a gang of kids?’

‘If anyone got payback it was me,’ she said. ‘Those kids ran rings round me.’

‘Ah, and did it put you off?’

‘What?’

‘Your ticking biological clock.’

So he hadn’t forgotten her wailing meltdown at work last week.

She shook her head.

‘No. Although based on today I might have to take parenting classes.’

He grinned. ‘I don’t know. I thought we made a crack team.’

‘We did,’ she said. ‘You made up for my failings.’

‘Rubbish. I just played good cop to your bad cop. Teamwork. That’s the way it’s meant to be with parenting.’ He took a sip of his drink, thought twice about that comment. ‘When it works right,’ he added.

‘I’ll expect to see you settled down with a tribe of your own one day, then,’ she said. ‘When you eventually meet the right woman.’ She pulled a sceptical face. ‘Not that you’ll know her when you do because you bail out almost as soon as you learn their name. The countdown to self-destruct pretty much starts the moment you ask them out, doesn’t it?’

He toyed with his drink.

‘Don’t count on it.’

She sat back in her chair and looked at him, her eyes narrowed a little, as if she were trying to see inside him.

‘I don’t understand your aversion to kids. Not when something obviously comes so naturally to you. And you didn’t exactly
look
like you hated every second of it.’

‘It’s different when they’re not your own kids. You can walk away.’

‘You make it sound like you’ve got a secret kid of your own stashed away somewhere.’

She said it with a jokey tone but she was looking at him intently.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

He spoke more sharply than he meant to and saw her recoil a little.

‘Not exactly a kid of my own,’ he said, not wanting to lose the ground he’d made with her. They’d made some kind of connection, a definite step forward. Giving her a bit of background could only take that further.

‘Let’s just say I have a good idea of what it’s like to parent an under-ten. And I also know a bit about bailing out an unruly teen.’

She was watching him expectantly.

He shrugged.

‘I’ve got a younger sister. I spent a lot of time looking out for her when she was small.’

He didn’t make a habit of talking family. His life here in London was geared so much to living in the moment that he hadn’t got to know anyone well enough to want to talk about his past. It was a novelty even to think back.

‘When you say “looking out for her” you mean more than just the usual big-brother stuff? What about your mum and dad—weren’t they around?’

The waitress appeared with their food and he waited until she left before speaking.

‘My father left us when Susie was very young,’ he said. ‘I was about fourteen at the time.’

Alice sliced her baguette in half and added some fries to her plate. She was listening casually to him, grazing at her food, her easy interest encouraging him to go on.

‘What about your mum?’

He sighed.

‘She was there. Some of the time.’

He knew he was being cryptic. So many years of resentment of his mother made it seem unnatural to describe her in a positive way.

He took a deep breath.

‘My mother suffers from mood swings. Dark periods where she’s down to the point where she takes to her bed. Interspersed by other times where she pings to the other side of the spectrum and becomes the life and soul of the party, out every night. Sometimes she’d disappear for days.’

Her face was sympathetic.

‘That kind of instability must be difficult for a small child. Was it a medical problem?’

‘With hindsight I think it was—maybe it could have been controlled. But she would never admit to that, never see a doctor. Eventually my father met someone else and bailed.’

‘What about you?’

‘Susie is ten years younger than me. I ended up stepping in a lot with her. Taking her to school, picking her up, cooking for her, playing with her. Making sure she wasn’t home alone.’

She was watching him, the expression in her eyes soft.

‘You sound like a fantastic big brother.’

‘I wasn’t,’ he said. He stared up at the ceiling briefly, the old pang of guilt smarting because that wasn’t the way he would have had his life, given the choice. ‘Please don’t talk like that, like you’re impressed. There were times when I resented Susie, really
blamed
her for being so damned needy. Like when I was in my late teens and she was about eight, being difficult, being stubborn. I was at home with her when I wanted to be out with my mates and hating every second of it. So don’t think it was some unselfish act on my part. It wasn’t. My father made a swift exit and I sometimes wished I had too.’

He glanced down in surprise as her hand crept unexpectedly across the table to touch his own.

‘You still stayed though, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘That’s the point. Whether you were glad to or not, you took responsibility. You should be proud of that instead of feeling bad because maybe you would have liked things to pan out a different way.’ She paused. ‘We all have times in our lives when we wish for that.’

He took a long draught of his drink.

‘Family ties,’ he sighed. ‘I decided a long time ago they weren’t for me. I knew when Susie was old enough to manage by herself I’d be free. No one to rely on me or tie me down. Hold me back. The only person I have to worry about these days is me, and that’s the way I want it.’

He picked at the fries on his plate, not really wanting them. She watched him in silence.

‘What about you?’ he asked.

‘I don’t really have family ties like that,’ she said and took a bite of her baguette.

Funny how she’d always wanted them though. Wanted to be needed by her family, indispensable, never thinking of the flipside of it, the responsibility that Harry had experienced. But then she’d never had a sibling.

At least not one to stay for.

‘My family are...’ She searched for the right words.
A complete shambles
hovered on her lips.

‘Very self-sufficient,’ she said finally. ‘I don’t see much of them.’

‘Do they live in London?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘My father lives in Kent. My mother is near the south coast.’

‘They split up?’

‘When I was thirteen.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘I still saw them both, though. Not like you.’

She’d been passed between them like some commodity, not feeling wanted by either. It had felt as if they were arguing over who didn’t have her, not over who did.

‘I’m really sorry,’ he said, meaning it.

She shook her head.

‘Don’t be. It was a long time ago and it was over pretty quickly. My parents never did any long-term thrashing out. My father just left at the first sign of trouble and my mother seemed glad to see the back of him. I never thought that was something to be grateful for at the time. At thirteen you just want them to stay together and keep trying. But in hindsight it was good that it didn’t drag on. Neither of them was happy.’

‘And are they happy now?’

Her mind flashed on her mother, a cougar with a taste for short-term flings, and twenty-something Alejandro, her most recent squeeze. The beauty of living away meant not being introduced to the hideous torrent of unsuitable men. At least her father was doing respectability, although why he couldn’t have tried harder to do it with her and her mother she really didn’t know.

She smiled brightly.

‘My mother is a free spirit. She seems happy enough. My father very quickly found someone else, got married again, had another child.’ Her mouth didn’t even flinch as she added, ‘A daughter.’ She was long beyond the teenage feelings of being replaced because she wasn’t somehow good enough. She was an adult now and she recognised those thoughts as childish. She’d built her own life instead where regard and respect were earned, not taken for granted, and where relationships were worked at.

He didn’t leap in with a rush of sympathy and for that she was grateful.

‘Even after all that, you still want a family of your own.’

She smiled at him.

‘Absolutely. At least I know I can’t make as bad a cock-up as they have.’

And the desire to belong with someone, to be a valued part of a family, had never left her.

‘Of course, the beauty of the short-term no-strings fling is that you never reach the point of cock-up,’ he said. ‘You’re not together long enough to hate one another or be cheated on.’

‘But there has to come a point when short term isn’t enough, doesn’t there?’

‘I don’t see why. It works for me.’ He raised his glass. ‘To the short-term fling,’ he said.

Alice clinked his glass with her own, shaking her head with an I-give-up smile on her lips. With his free hand he reached out and touched hers. Her pulse fluttered in response.

There was more to him than she’d guessed when she’d watched him pick up girls and put them down. Could she really blame him for not getting serious with that kind of childhood behind him? It had obviously left him with a dislike of responsibility for others. This time now was his respite.

As they finished their meal and Harry paid the bill she realised she hadn’t thought about her player-list for ages. Her experiment relied squarely on the premise that she didn’t trust him and she wasn’t about to let go of that. But for the first time it struck her that she might actually
like
him. Of course she was attracted to him, any woman in her right mind would be, but she hadn’t realised they might have any common ground. In her head they had been poles apart. Now she found she liked the way he related to her, liked the way he seemed to wing it in life, and she could sympathise with his background. She knew better than anyone what it felt like to cope with upheaval in your teens.

As he pressed a hand to the small of her back, walking her out to his car, she ignored the zippy jolts it sent up her spine and fixed her mind back on her experiment, on keeping control. Liking him might be an option, but falling for him definitely wasn’t.

* * *

As Harry pulled the car up outside her house all the feelings of nervous anticipation from their previous date recurred one by one. Fluttering stomach—
check.
Thundery heartbeat—
check.
Internal debate with self over whether he would kiss her—
check.

OK, so she might have taken her eye off the ball a bit over lunch but only because she was thrown by the unexpected glimpse of his background. She was still under no illusions about the kind of character he was right now, in this moment. He was an avoid-at-all-costs player and it really shouldn’t matter how or why he’d ended up that way.

Her hyped-up mind noted immediately that this time he switched off the engine. He turned to look at her, holding her gaze in his. Her heartbeat stepped up another notch and she wet her lips instinctively. How long had it been since she’d kissed a man? Three years? Longer? She wondered if that kind of ability had to be relearned or if you got straight back into it, like swimming or riding a bike.

‘Thanks for lunch,’ she said, because he’d insisted on picking up the tab again despite her protestations. She wondered if that policy might change if he got her into bed and clapped an instant lid on that thought.

He smiled, his eyes creasing gorgeously at the corners, and opened his door. ‘I’ll walk you to the door,’ he said. ‘And then of course I’ll see you tomorrow at work.’

After what had happened the last time he dropped her home, this was a sure sign that he intended to play things differently now. Wasn’t it? Filled with apprehension, she got out of the car too and walked down the path, aware of him close behind her.

At the door he was near enough for her to pick up the deep woody scent of his aftershave. The shadows were long, late afternoon giving way to evening now. Her stomach was a tight knot of tension. She had no clue if the next moment would have him walking away or closing the gap between them and the anticipation took her breath away.

‘Are you going to kiss me this time?’ she blurted out suddenly. ‘Because if you’re not, I’d rather skip all this small talk. I can do without all the angsty wondering if and when you’re ever likely to call. Just get it over with and I can—’