Harlequin E New Adult Romance Box Set Volume 1: Burning Moon\Girls' Guide to Getting It Together\Rookie in Love (36 page)

When the food arrives, Tim takes a mouthful and instantly reaches for his drink, gulping it down and refilling it straight from the bottle.

“Are you okay?” I watch him sweat as he takes another bite.

“Water!” Tim bangs his fist against the table as a waiter comes past.

The waiter hurries off to fetch us a jug and I touch Tim’s arm cautiously. “Does this normally happen?”

He removes his glasses and wipes at his streaming eyes. “Well, actually, no. It’s not a usual occurrence.”

A jug of water appears on the table and Tim pours it straight into his champagne glass, drinking it all. He reaches for the jug again, and I look on in horror as the glass handle slips from his sweaty grasp and water gushes out. It soaks the tablecloth and drips on the floor, where it splashes against my feet.

“Oh!” Tim dabs at a pool of water with his napkin, still looking like steam is about to come out of his ears.

Another couple is staring at us, watching Tim as he flails his arms around trying to soak up the damage.

I can hear them laughing from here, and I feel the embarrassment burn in my cheeks. Tim and I probably look like a pair of bloody lobsters.

“I think we should go.” I push my half-eaten curry away. “I’ve had enough, anyway.”

“You’re full?” He glances down at his own barely touched food. “Well, if you’re sure. I’ll get the bill.”

A waiter arrives and starts mopping the floor. I don’t say anything as I pull my coat on so that I’m ready to leave as soon as Tim gets back.

“Megan?”

I turn to see Helen standing behind me wearing an orange maxi dress.

She walks from her table to mine. “What are you doing here? Are you on a date?” She narrows her eyes and scans the large restaurant.

My eyes fall on Tim, handing over his credit card at the little desk near the entrance.

If I play this right, she’ll never find out about him.

“I was waiting for someone, but I’m leaving now.” I stand up, gripping my handbag straps. “I guess I’ll see you at work on Monday.”

“Guess what! I booked that holiday to Benidorm.”

“Great.” I smile at her. “Who are you going with?”

“Myself. I’ll have more fun that way.” She winks.

“I’m sure you will.”

Her eyes land on the soggy table behind me as the waiter clears the mess. “Why are there two plates on your table? Did somebody spill something?” She peers suspiciously at the evidence of my date.

“Uh…so, who are you here with?” I grab her arm and steer her towards her hunky companion. “Is this Brad?”

“No, silly!” She laughs as we reach her table. “Megan, this is Alistair, my personal trainer.”

“Oh, right. Alistair.” I nod as though I have the faintest idea who he is, or that Helen even
has
a personal trainer.

“Ali, this is Megan from work,” Helen explains.

He looks up at me, a brief smile on his sculpted face.

“Well, I’ll see you later, Helen.”

“Aren’t you staying for a drink with us?” Helen pouts. “Here! Have a read of the cocktail menu.”

In my peripheral vision, I can see Tim walking towards me. “No, thanks.” I decline her offer. “Got to shoot off. Nice to meet you, Alistair.”

I dash towards the door so fast I almost believe that Tim hasn’t spotted me. I’m deciding I’d rather get the bus home when he catches up to me at the entrance.

“Where are you running off to?” he asks, a playful smile on his face.

“Oh, there you are.” I feign surprise. “I just looking for you.”

“Ready to go?”

I yank one of the heavy glass doors open. “Ready.”

Of course, being alone with Tim is distinctly better than having someone like Helen seeing me out with him. But still I wish the drive from Horsforth to Rothwell were quicker, allowing for less time of awkward car conversations.

There are only so many questions I can ask about his mother, or how he likes living in Leeds again.

And there is no way I’m going to venture anywhere near the subject of his sister and her bloody wedding.

I thank him when we pull up outside my flat and unbuckle my seatbelt.

“We should go out again,” he suggests.

I look away without answering. Maybe I’d be inclined to agree if we’d gone to a film, rather than having to watch him behave like an idiot in the restaurant.

Before I know what’s happening, Tim is pressing his face towards mine.

Well, not just his face. His lips, too.

And, even as I pull away, I can feel the sheer heat of his mouth.

Christ, that’s hot. No wonder he’s just lost half his body weight in sweat.

“Are you okay?”

I nod and force a brittle smile while my fingers grip the door handle. “Thanks, Tim.” I push the car door open and swing my legs out. “Good night.”

The car engine is still running as I walk up the steps and unlock my front door. I give a limp wave in Tim’s direction and watch him drive off.

I did try, didn’t I? I set out with the best of intentions for my night with Tim. It just isn’t going to work.

The living room is dark with no sign of Zara, but I’m not worried about that.

All I want to do is take off these stupid shoes and climb into bed, where I can eat a big bag of Maltesers and watch the repeat of
EastEnders
on BBC Three.

Chapter Sixteen

I wake up to a phone call from my mother.

“Hello?” I mumble, trying to shake my morning voice. My mum does not understand anybody who sleeps in past eight o’clock, mostly out of jealousy that she has never been able to do so.

“Ah, I presume you made it home, then.”

I pull myself into a vague approximation of a sitting position. “What?”

“You didn’t stay at Tim’s last night?”

I scan the familiar surroundings of my bedroom, the cluttered bedside table covered with used makeup wipes, the wavy mirror on the wall next to the open wardrobe. “Why would I stay at Tim’s?”

I’m not going to bother enquiring how she knows that I was with him last night.

“You’re quite right, darling. There’s nothing wrong with a woman having some respect for herself. Especially after all these things you see on TV about young girls going out in their knickers.”

“Mum,” I interject with a yawn, “what on earth are you talking about?”

“Oh, I’m so pleased that you’re finally giving Tim a chance.”

“Don’t get too excited,” I tell her. “The date was awful.”

“Oh? That’s not what Tim said.”

“What?” I peel the covers back and sit on the edge of the bed. “You’ve already spoken to Tim?”

“Of course! I wanted to hear from him how things had gone. He says you two might be going out again.”

“Well, we’re not.”

“Never say never, darling!”

“Trust me, mother. I am
never
going anywhere with Tim Hudson again.”

I use her silence as an opportunity to slip my feet into a pair of fluffy slippers and tug on my dressing gown.

I’m combing my fingers through my hair when Mum decides to speak again. “That’s a shame. I was thinking he’d make an ideal date to Bryony’s engagement do.”

“An ideal date?” I choke on the words. “I’m sure he would. Just not for me.”

“And it’s winter themed, so there’ll be plenty of mistletoe,” she continues as though she hasn’t heard me.

Since when did it become compulsory to bring a date to an engagement party? A party that I don’t even want to go to.

I rub my fingers against my forehead as though that will remove the mental image of Tim puckering up beneath the mistletoe. But the picture morphs into somebody else’s face. A bloody Michael Bublé look-alike I have even less desire to think about.

“I’ve got to go, Mum,” I say into the phone. Even though I haven’t. Even though the only thing that awaits me is a chat with Zara about last night.

Since I still hold her partially responsible for engineering the date in the first place, it’s not a conversation I want to have.

It’s Sunday, so I assume Zara will either be eating breakfast in front of the telly, or hunched over her laptop.

When I step into the living room and find it empty with no TV on, my eyes automatically scan the usual places for a note.

And there isn’t one on the fridge, mantelpiece, coffee table or breakfast bar.

But then there she is. I can see her through the window, standing at the bottom of the steps leading up to our building, chatting animatedly with Gary from upstairs. Her hair is tamed into a ponytail, and she’s wearing a pink vest and matching jacket with black tracksuit bottoms. That’s when I notice that he too is dressed in sportswear.

I study the two of them, taking in the sweat patches on Gary’s grey T-shirt, the pristine white trainers on Zara’s feet (a footwear option I didn’t even know she owned).

How did I not know that they’d become running partners? And who even goes out running in the middle of winter?

A couple of minutes later, Zara returns to the flat, almost jumping right back out the door when she sees me waiting for her with my foot tapping.

“I didn’t think you’d be up.” She drops her water bottle on the table and glances at the clock, which tells her it’s barely half past eight.

“Obviously. Or you would have told me about that, wouldn’t you?”

“About what?”

“You and Gary. Running buddies, huh?”

“No.” She kicks off her trainers. “I bumped into him and thought I’d ask about which type of axe he prefers to use on his victims.”

“Very funny.” I fold my arms across my chest. “What’s really going on, then?”

“Nothing’s going on. Can’t two people enjoy running together?”

I shoot her a sideways look. “Is that where you’ve been disappearing to recently?”

She rolls her eyes at me, muttering, “I didn’t know I lived with Miss Marple.”

“So it’s a coincidence that you’ve suddenly taken up the same hobby as our upstairs neighbour, is it?”

Zara shrugs before heading off to her bedroom. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to keep fit.”

From anybody else, that excuse might have been convincing. From my cupcake-loving flatmate, I think I can safely disregard it.

At least I managed to avoid any reference to Tim and last night’s date.

* * *

I can’t face telling the girls at work about my disastrous date, especially after bumping into Helen under such humiliating circumstances.

But I’m not expecting the interrogation she gives me as soon as I’m settled at my desk.

“How come you ran off the other night? You never said who you were meeting,” she greets me.

I sigh. “Morning to you, too, Helen.”

“You were meeting somebody?” Scarlett joins in. “Like a date?”

“No,” I say through gritted teeth.

“Who was it?” Helen continues.

“Was it Liam?” asks Scarlett.

“Liam?” I almost choke on my words. “Why would I have been meeting Liam?”

Scarlett shrugs. “He was asking me about you. I think he likes you.”

I snort. “I highly doubt that, considering what he said when you tried to set us up.”

“He wanted to know if you were seeing anybody.”

I stare back at her. “Why would he start asking questions like that when it’s obvious he has no interest in me whatsoever?”

“Because he’s a man,” Helen offers. “Trust me, I’ve met enough of them. Nothing they do makes sense.”

Scarlett turns back to her computer without saying another word.

Why do I get the feeling that she knows more about this than she’s letting on? And why would she hold back information?

My stomach lurches at the thought of it being anything to do with her still undetermined baby daddy.

I finally get some answers after Scarlett makes a not-so-subtle suggestion that we both stay in the office for lunch.

With Helen and Nora gone, she feels comfortable enough to share the secret with me.

“I have a proposal to make,” she says.

“Oh?” I take a bite of my sandwich.

She looks down at her belly, hidden beneath a slouchy black jumper. “I’ll tell you who the father is. Providing you ask Liam out.”

“What?” I almost choke on my Lucozade. “Are you crazy? He’s as much as said that he isn’t interested, so I don’t know why you think—”

“He likes you,” she interrupts.

“Scarlett.” I fix her with a hard stare. “If he wanted you to set us up, he would have let you.”

“Give him a chance. You two got off on the wrong foot.”

“I’m not going to ask him out.” I shake my head.

Scarlett pouts. “Why not?”

“It’s bloody obvious why not! Do you think I want to embarrass myself?”

“Well, the offer’s there.”

“Are you really not going to tell me until I go out with him?”

She shakes her head. “Nope.”

I suppose such an offer changes my theory that Liam’s the father. Why would she be trying so hard to push me onto Liam if she had any romantic involvement with him?

My focus now is on how close I am to finishing the confidence guide and, although the final point sounds rather generic, doing something that scares me every day—one that I should probably have been putting into practice from the onset—it’s the penultimate point that terrifies me.

How am I going to ask someone out on a date if they’re “way out of my league”? Isn’t that the whole point of leagues of attractiveness in the first place?

“I haven’t told anyone else about the baby yet,” Scarlett says after a while.

I glance at her. “Not even the father?”

“Not even him.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“I guess I’ll have to.”

“You’re going to keep it, then?”

I watch as she looks down at her still-flat stomach beneath her jumper again. “I…I guess I don’t know.”

“You should.”

“Should I? Me? I’m not really the mothering type, am I?”

I laugh. “What about daddy? Reckon he’ll be any good at fatherly duties?”

“Oh, I see. You think I’m stupid enough to tell you who he is.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid, Scar.”

“Yes, you do. Stupid enough to get myself into this mess, anyway. But I might as well get
some
fun out of it.” She studies me for a second. “Ask Liam out.”

I close my eyes and fill my head with a vision. A stupid one, of me in a simple white satin dress, à la Pippa Middleton. Michael Bublé’s version of “Crazy Love” plays softly in the background as I glide towards the altar. (All brides glide, don’t they?)