Someone Like You (22 page)

When Hannah threw back her head and laughed her deep, husky laugh, it surprised her most of all.

She, Miss Cold-as-Ice Campbell, the woman who could quell Viking invaders with one sharp glance, flirting like a lunatic with this gorgeous guy! It was unbelievable. But enjoyable.

Maybe the hunky gym manager from the hotel had opened the floodgates and let her trust the opposite sex again, Hannah thought with a rush of excitement. And why not? She’d been on her own for long enough. She deserved a man in her life.

‘I suppose it says “professional charmer” on your business card?’ Hannah smiled at him and let her cloak of buttoned-up iciness melt away. As she did so, it was as if she had physically changed. Her face relaxed, the tension left her body and her pose became her natural one, an undulating, instinctively sexy one.

‘As a matter of fact, it says “actor”,’ he replied.

‘Oh.’

‘Disappointed?’

She shook her head, letting her hair ripple gently around her shoulders. It looked good when she did that; she wanted him to notice. ‘I’ve never met an actor before. Not properly,’ she amended.

‘You mean, you met them improperly?’ He grinned.

She waved a reproving finger at him. ‘Being smart won’t get you anywhere in life.’

‘I dunno,’ he said, leaning a fraction closer to where she was standing behind the desk, ‘it’s got me pretty far up to now. Although things have definitely improved since I met you.’

‘We haven’t met,’ she said. ‘That’s what I meant about meeting actors properly. You and I haven’t been introduced, so we haven’t met properly. The others I met were never introduced either.’

‘They must have been blind not to want to be introduced to you,’ he said fervently and held out his hand in a formal manner. ‘Delighted to meet you, madam. Felix Andretti, at your service.’

She took his hand, revelling in the feel of his warm skin against hers and the excitement she felt in the pit of her stomach at his touch. ‘Hannah Campbell, delighted to meet you too.’

‘Now that we’ve got the proper bit over, can we move on to the improper bit?’ he said, dark eyes dancing. ‘So what did you mean about meeting friends? Can’t you cancel and go out with me instead?’

‘No,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I can’t. This is special, they’re good friends and I can’t let them down.’

‘Male or female?’ he asked.

‘Female.’

‘Goodie. I’ll come along.’

‘You can’t.’

Felix pretended to think about this. ‘ “Can’t” isn’t a word I recognize.’

‘I suppose “no” isn’t a word you recognize, either,’

Hannah teased.

He grinned in assent.

The phone rang and Hannah grabbed it. It was David looking for Felix. She passed the receiver over and heard them arrange to meet somewhere else as David was still delayed.

‘I better get going,’ Hannah said sweetly.

‘Can I see you again?’ Felix asked, leaning against the desk, only a few feet away from her. She breathed in his aftershave, feeling drunk already on this heady sensation.

‘Yes. Now, bye.’

‘Do you want a lift?’ he asked.

‘I’m going to take the bus, I left my car at home.’

Felix’s smile was almost feral. ‘Let me drive you in we can talk on the way. I want to discover everything about you.’

Hannah thought of Harry’s second letter which was burning a hole in her handbag with its pleading for her to answer his previous one. She’d got it that morning and had read it twice. Please agree to see me, it’s important.

Stuff Harry. She needed to live a little.

Swathed in a flowing cerise dress with nails and lips the same vibrant colour, Leonie sailed into Sachs’ bar and tried to look as if she wasn’t feeling self-conscious. She was out of her familiar black plumage and had left off a lot of her normal eye make-up, the combination of which made her feel as if she’d come out half-naked or with her skirt tucked up into her knickers. But none of these people would know that. To them, she had to appear confident and relaxed, a woman about to meet her two new friends and to tell them her thrilling news.

She spotted Emma almost immediately. Jammed into a corner by one of the windows, Emma was mouselike in beige office gear, sipping what had to be mineral water.

That’d have to stop, Leonie decided happily as she progressed regally through the bar. She’d left her car at home so she could have a few drinks, and she’d insist Emma went home in a taxi if necessary because she was letting her hair down too. On the phone, Emma had sounded depressed even though she’d done her best to cover it up.

Leonie had been convinced for many years that while alcohol couldn’t cure anything, a couple of glasses of wine made the pain fuzzier and more bearable.

‘Emma, love, how nice to see you.’

‘Leonie!’

They hugged warmly and Leonie was relieved to feel that her friend wasn’t quite as sliver-thin as she had been in Egypt. Emma would never be a candidate for Weight Watchers, but at least she’d lost that skeletal look.

‘You look amazing,’ Emma exclaimed. ‘That colour really suits you. Is the dress new?’

‘Old as the hills, nearly as old as I am,’ Leonie revealed.

‘I’ve never had the guts to wear it before, but I’m celebrating …’ She broke off and grinned. ‘Can’t tell you until Hannah gets here. We need a full coven for revelations.’

‘Thank

God somebody has good news,’ Emma said, sinking back into the banquette, her body flattening against the back of the seat as if all the energy had been drained out of every muscle.

Leonie took a good look at her. Emma was naturally pale-skinned and even a week in the sweltering Egyptian sun hadn’t done anything more than give her nose and cheekbones a faint dusting of tan. But she looked paler now than Leonie would have expected. After all, they were only back three weeks. She was still quite freckly herself, an effect she helped along with liberal dustings of bronzing powder.

‘What’s up?’ she said fondly, patting Emma’s slender knee.

‘Where do I begin?’ Emma groaned, thinking of worrying over her mother and of how her father’s comments about the loan had been driving her insane with quiet frustration.

‘Not without me, you can’t spill any beans without me,’

came a voice and Hannah appeared, bringing with her several admiring glances and the waiter, who had studiously ignored the other two up till then.

Eyes glittering, Hannah sank into the seat beside Emma and attempted to wipe the enormous dirty great grin off her face. She failed.

‘You’ll never guess what’s just happened, girls!’ her mouth quivered with excitement and she kept moistening her full bottom lip with her tongue, a nervous tic that was clearly having a terrible effect on the waiter’s equilibrium.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ he said in what sounded like a German accent, trying not to drool.

Hannah turned her glittering toffee-coloured eyes to him and breathed, ‘Yes,’ in a come-to-bed husky drawl. ‘I’ll have a martini with white lemonade, thank you.’

The waiter looked as if the words ‘martini with white lemonade’ were code for ‘Can you bring me round the back of the bar and shag me senseless,’ because he stayed gazing lovingly at Hannah for several moments before Leonie decided she needed to hear whatever exciting thing had happened to Hannah, and that she wouldn’t hear it with him hanging about with his tongue around his knees.

‘I’ll have a glass of white wine and so will you, Emma,’

she said loudly.

Emma didn’t even protest. The waiter loped off.

‘Now,’ Leonie turned on Hannah, ‘if Mel Gibson walked into your office today and asked you personally to show him a couple of love nests, I want his phone number and his vital statistics or we are never going to be friends ever again, got it?’

Hannah giggled like a naughty convent girl caught out playing hooky from Home Ec so she could have a sneaky fag. ‘It’s much, much better than Mel Gibson.’ She beamed at them and began patting her chest as if to still her beating heart.

‘What?’ said Emma, agog.

‘Yeah, what’s better than Mel Gibson?’ demanded Leonie, who’d spent a happy evening with Mel and half a bottle of Lambrusco the night before, courtesy of an old Lethal Weapon movie.

‘Felix Andretti,’ breathed Hannah.

‘Who?’ asked the other two in unison.

‘He’s an actor, the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen.

Older than Brad Pitt, but with that same golden glow to him and, oh, I can’t describe him.’

‘Yes, you bloody can!’ squealed Emma in excitement.

‘The most fun I’ve had since I last met you two was pushing my trolley round Superquinn wondering whether to splurge on steak or buy special-offer pork again. I need glamour in my life, so tell me,’ she commanded, her throaty voice low and vibrating with humour.

‘OK.’

They all scooched up closer on the banquette to hear the lowdown on Felix but had to wait until the waiter dispensed their drinks with agonizing slowness.

‘Thanks,’ they said automatically, willing him to be gone.

‘Is he straight, single, or does he have a mad wife locked in the attic a la Mr Rochester?’ Leonie asked when they were alone again.

Hannah appeared to think about this. ‘You know,’ she said meditatively, ‘I don’t know and,’ she smirked, ‘I don’t care! He’s bloody gorgeous and I am seriously in lust. We are talking drop-dead gorgeous, girls.’

She took a sip of martini but barely tasted it: she was high on excitement and didn’t need alcohol for any buzz.

‘He’s half-Spanish and he’s been living in London for the past few years. He’s making a new TV series in Wicklow for the next six months and he needs a flat. He’s a friend of my boss, although I don’t know from where.

I couldn’t imagine two more different people. David is buttoned-up and serious; Felix is exotic, different, a free spirit, a man who doesn’t plan life but faces everything on his own terms,’ she added dreamily, thinking of how Felix had wanted to drop his plans for the evening to take her out. Just like that. He’d been struck by the thunderbolt of attraction the same way she had.

Emma quietly thought that Felix sounded not unlike Harry, the free spirit who’d broken Hannah’s heart when his desire to be different, exotic and to face everything on his own terms meant he’d dumped her unceremoniously to travel to South America. But she said nothing. Hannah was so determined not to get hurt by a man ever again, she’d be careful: Emma was sure she would.

Leonie, meanwhile, was misty-eyed with the romance of it all. Down to earth in so many ways, she lost all sense of reason when it came to love, Emma realized.

‘What did he say in the beginning and how did he get talking to you when it was Mr James he’d come to see?’

Leonie asked breathlessly.

Hannah explained how she was changing clothes and had her skirt practically at waist-level when Felix had sashayed into her life and they all roared with raucous laughter at the thought.

‘I’d hate to see the sort of guy who’d come marching into the surgery if I was struggling out of my uniform and into a little sexy number,’ Leonie joked. ‘Probably the local vicar with his poodle, neither of whom have strong hearts. They’d both collapse.’

Emma gave her a gentle shove. ‘What are you like?’ she said. ‘You were the star of the show in Egypt. I hope you’re not going to get all negative now you’re back home.’

‘Only kidding,’ Leonie said quickly. ‘I’m in a very positive mood, honest. Now Hannah, give us more dirt on the studly Mr Andretti.’

Hannah didn’t need any more prodding. Besotted with Felix and still reeling from the heady effect of meeting him, she couldn’t stop herself from talking about him. With anyone else, she’d have maintained her usual composed demeanour, but with Leonie and Emma, well… they were real friends, not colleagues or relatives or any of the people with some ulterior motive for friendship. She could trust them, so she let herself go.

‘I thought you were off men at the moment,’ Leonie teased after another fifteen minutes of how beautiful Felix was and how stylish he looked and how he had that longlimbed grace that reminded Hannah of leopards in the wild …

Hannah bit her lip. ‘I was, but you have to take opportunities when they’re presented to you. And he’s so presentable.

You’d love him, Leonie. He wanted to come here tonight, you know.’

‘You should have,’ Leonie sighed. ‘He sounds amazing.

That’s probably as near to a man as I’m ever going to get meeting your Mr Wonderful and touching his suede jacket when we shake hands.’

Hannah immediately felt sorry for wittering on and on about Felix. ‘It was only a bit of fun,’ she said hurriedly.

‘I’ll probably never see him again. I’m getting all worked up over nothing. And I did say I was concentrating on my job and not going to get involved with a bloke ever again.’

‘You can’t limit yourself when it comes to true love,’

Leonie declared. ‘You have to go with the flow when the time is right. I said you were mad to decide never to get involved with a man ever again, didn’t I, Emma?’

‘You did. But tell us your news, Leonie. She has something thrilling to tell,’ Emma added to Hannah.

‘Well,’ Leonie hesitated, ‘it’s nothing compared to Brad Pitt II.’

‘Tell us,’ hissed Hannah.

‘OK, I’ve put an advert in the personal section of the Evening Herald.’

‘Yahoo!’ yelled Hannah loudly.

‘Well done,’ said Emma in delight. ‘What did you say, when’s it going to be in the paper - or have you got any replies yet?’

‘I’ve brought the advert with me,’ Leonie said, fishing it out of her handbag. ‘It was a nightmare writing it, I can tell you. I mean, how do you describe yourself?’

‘Vivacious, funny, glamorous blonde …’ said Hannah immediately.

‘… seeks man to be good to her because she’s got a gentle soul and deserves love,’ finished Emma.

Leonie blushed. ‘You’re so sweet, both of you. I wish I’d had the pair of you to help me write it. My friend Angie from work helped or I’d never have done it.’

‘Give us a look,’ demanded Hannah.

Together, they pored over the handwritten copy of Leonie’s ad:

Statuesque blonde divorcee, early forties, loves children and animals seeks warm-hearted man with GSOH for friendship and maybe relationship. Box No 12933.