Practically Perfect (22 page)

MAX WAS SITTING
at the bar and got up the moment she walked through the door. He’d obviously been watching for her, and came to meet her, looking very handsome and gratifyingly pleased to see her.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said as he put his arm on her back and kissed her cheek. ‘I got a lift with Chloe and she had to do something with the children.’ Now was not the moment to tell him the reason she’d had so little time to get ready. That would come later, should she need to entertain him. It was nice to think that she had an amusing story up her sleeve, just in case.

‘You’re not all that late and you look – beautiful. What would you like to drink? Wine? Gin and tonic? Or what about a glass of champagne?’

His smooth sophistication made her feel suddenly gauche, as if he could tell most of her clothes were borrowed. ‘A glass of champagne,’ said Anna without thinking. ‘Thank you so much.’

It was only when she saw a bottle being opened that she realised this was probably not a cheap option. It wasn’t that she didn’t think Max had plenty of money, but she didn’t want to appear greedy. This was so important to her: she had to do everything right.

Max, who had been drinking mineral water at the bar, fetched his glass and led her to a table. ‘You can have some red later if you’d prefer. It rather depends on what
you
want to eat.’ He looked at her as if what she wanted to eat was the most important thing in the world.

‘What about you?’ she asked, suddenly daunted. ‘Will you have red and champagne?’

‘Certainly not! I’m driving. I’ll just have one glass of champagne.’ He smiled into her eyes.

Chloe’s mention of wolves flashed through her mind. Was he planning to get her drunk so he could have his evil way with her? Then she remembered that it was Max, and his way would not be evil, it would be what she’d been dreaming of for years.

The first sip of champagne went to her head and she relaxed a little and smiled back at Max. The thought that she might have lipstick on her teeth flashed through her mind. She didn’t wear lipstick often. She was surreptitiously running her tongue over her teeth when Max leant forward.

‘Do you mind if I say something?’ he asked gently.

‘No!’ She sounded startled in spite of trying not to.

‘You have not got lipstick on your teeth.’ He was smiling at her and she found his reassurance rather endearing.

Anna laughed and leant back in her chair, feeling much more relaxed.

‘How did you know I was worrying about that?’ she asked.

‘Experience.’

Oh my goodness, thought Anna, he must know a lot about women. But then, of course, someone as good-looking and self-assured as he was would undoubtedly be very experienced. She was about to express this thought when he said, ‘So, Anna, what have you been up to?’

She was quite glad of the change of subject and to be able to talk about something she was knowledgeable about. ‘Well, I’ve finished the fireplace and the end wall
looks
wonderful,’ she said, warming to her favourite topic. ‘Eric, who did the blockwork and plastering for me, did a wonderful job. I could have done the bricklaying OK, but my plastering’s not all it might be …’ She realised that she’d lost his attention somewhat. ‘What about you? Did you get the contract for the shopping precinct?’ In Anna’s, albeit rather limited, experience of men, she felt sure this would be a safe conversational gambit.

‘We did,’ he said proudly.

‘Wow.’ Anna was impressed although personally she couldn’t imagine anything worse than having to spend a year at least designing a shopping mall and multi-storey car park.

‘Yes, lots of excuses to celebrate. Shall we think about ordering? The chef here is very good.’

The menu, when it came, was full of items she didn’t understand or couldn’t pronounce. ‘What are you going to have?’ she asked, to give herself time to decipher the menu.

‘I’ll have the calamari to start with, and then the sea bass. The fish is very good here.’

Anna didn’t like fish very much and had finally spotted something she recognised as steak. Would he think her dreadfully unsophisticated if she chose that? Unsophisticated
and
greedy? She decided to go for it anyway. Better safe than sorry.

‘I’ll have the steak, I think. My mother reckons women need red meat.’ Then she wished she hadn’t mentioned this in case he asked her why her mother thought that, and the reason was too feminine and intimate. What was it about Max that made her so gauche? Why couldn’t she just keep quiet and at least give the impression of sophistication, even if she wasn’t likely to fool him?

‘And to start?’

‘Prawn cocktail. I love this retro-food, don’t you?’ she suggested.

He smiled. ‘No, actually, crustaceans covered in pink sauce have never appealed to me.’

‘But I expect here the sauce will be really delicious and prawns are very good for you.’

‘Do you eat everything because it’s good for you?’ His raised eyebrow told her he found this faintly amusing.

‘Well, I try to eat healthily, when I’m not eating junk.’ She sighed. ‘I do eat rather a lot of biscuits.’

He gave her a long look that made her blush. ‘It doesn’t seem to have affected you in any adverse way.’

A wave of desire washed over her. This was Max, whom she had fixated on for years and years, whom she loved, and he was about to be hers. She smiled again, no longer worried about lipstick on her teeth or choosing the wrong things on the menu, and said flirtatiously, ‘Oh good. I’d hate to think it had made me come out in spots.’

‘You know perfectly well that it hasn’t.’ He flicked her nose with the tip of his finger. ‘Even someone as lacking in vanity as you would have noticed that.’

She chuckled at the compliment, although she had indulged in her fair share of vanity that evening. She and Chloe had worked very hard to make her look her best. ‘I suppose so, even though I haven’t got a mirror.’

‘You haven’t got a mirror? You are a one-off, Anna!’

Anna accepted this gracefully but luckily didn’t have to reply because at that moment the waitress appeared to take their order.

Anna declined a glass of red wine with her steak, preferring to stick with champagne – that did seem to have an emboldening effect and she was rather enjoying her newfound confidence.

Max joined her in finishing the rest of the bottle, as he
was
having fish. Anna smiled at him again over a forkful of prawn cocktail, which was indeed delicious. She was ecstatic with happiness. She was with Max, flirting with him, eating delicious food, and afterwards, when he took her home, she would invite him in. She had spent precious moments making the bed look tempting and had hidden all her dirty clothes.

‘So, how long will it be before the house is finished?’ he asked, smiling across the candlelight at her.

‘Ages, really, but I’m going to put it on the market the moment the staircase is finished. Things are a bit slack at the moment, everyone keeps saying, but I need to sell as soon as possible.’

‘How much are you hoping to get?’

Anna named a figure that wouldn’t have bought a two-bedroom flat in London, but was still an awful lot of money for a very small cottage. ‘Mind you, that will be my starting price. I’ll probably have to come down from there. If it’s all looking wonderful, which I hope it will be, I’ll ask even more.’

‘Hmm, greedy!’ he said.

Anna knew she shouldn’t have had champagne
and
steak.

‘I like that,’ he went on.

Anna smiled, heartily relieved.

‘Actually, I’ve got a friend who’s looking to buy in this area,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I could bring him over to have a look next time I come down to stay with my mother?’

‘Er … of course,’ she said brightly, thinking about her still-very-much-a-work-in-progress cottage. ‘As long as it’s not next week or anything. It won’t be nearly ready. And it is very tiny. He might want something bigger.’

‘I’m sure it’ll be fine. He just wants a little love nest in
the
country, for weekends. And as an investment, of course.’

‘I had wanted to sell it to someone who’d live there all the time, a couple and a baby, perhaps,’ Anna said quietly.

‘Darling, if it’s as small as you say it is, that doesn’t sound very likely.’

She cherished the endearment for a moment before saying defensively, ‘Chloe manages, although they are very cramped.’ She thought about the happy, noisy chaos where Chloe’s family lived on top of one another, but had to admit not everyone would want to live in a doll’s house, however charming.

‘Anyway, can I bring him round to look?’ He seemed very determined.

‘As I said, as long as it’s not too soon.’ She smiled at him, hoping he’d move on to a less daunting topic of conversation.

‘I was thinking more the week after next.’

Anna gulped. ‘That is a bit soon,’ she squeaked. ‘I mean, It hasn’t got a bathroom or a staircase yet.’

‘How much longer do you want?’ he persisted.

‘I really have no idea – a month?’ she said hopefully.

‘Make it three weeks and we’ve got a deal. He only wants to view, remember. He’s got enough imagination to fill in the gaps. Even if he bought it on the spot, you’d still have time to finish before he could move in.’

Anna was flattered he had so much confidence in her project but then again, he hadn’t seen it yet. Still, he was probably right. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I suppose I just panicked. I’m doing as much as I can myself.’

‘You got someone in to do the plastering. Provided you’re not totally under-funded …’

‘Of course I’m not! I planned it all very carefully.’

‘No need to get offended. Most people have absolutely
no
idea about how much money alterations and improvements are going to cost.’

As this was true, and she had under-budgeted a little, she sighed and said, ‘So, tell me about your friend. What sort of man is he?’

He laughed. ‘I promise you he’d be a perfectly good incumbent of your beloved house. I knew him at school. He used to come and stay. He was one of the few friends my mother approved of.’ Anna could well believe few people came up to her exacting standards. ‘He can be guaranteed not to smoke in the house, or put his feet on the furniture.’ He paused while she replaced her glass. ‘I might ask you to tea, too. You could meet Mother.’

She smiled, ready to regale him with her funny story now she’d had a few drinks. ‘Actually, I’ve already met her.’

‘Oh? She didn’t say anything. But it’s hardly surprising, considering how near to each other you live. How did you meet?’

She giggled. ‘I cleaned out her greenhouse with Chloe. Today! While you and your mother were inside, Chloe and I were scrubbing away with our hair tied up in scarves like old-fashioned cleaning ladies.’ Somehow the story didn’t seem so funny, now. ‘She won us in a raffle in aid of Greyhound Rescue.’

He frowned slightly. ‘So that was you? Two women, both covered in dust and cobwebs. You were filthy. I saw you out of the window.’

‘I know. And you phoned me! I was terrified you’d spot me. But you should have seen the greenhouse. Spiders as big as mice; cobwebs like camouflage nets; enough creepy-crawlies to colonise another planet.’

He was smiling politely, but he wasn’t rolling on the floor laughing. But then Max wasn’t the sort who’d do
that
. She pressed on. ‘Anyway, it was quite funny, really: I was so dirty, I didn’t want you to recognise me. And you didn’t.’ She twinkled up at him, willing him to share the joke, which at the time had seemed so hilarious.

His lips flickered slightly. ‘I doubt if my mother would find it all that funny. And let’s hope she doesn’t recognise you, either. She wouldn’t be remotely amused to be entertaining someone as a guest who’s been a sort of – servant.’

Anna realised she’d made the most ghastly mistake. ‘You probably had to be there, but it was funny at the time, honestly,’ she said to the tablecloth.

‘I hope I’m not coming across as pompous,’ he said.

Anna looked up. ‘Oh no!’ she said insistently.

‘That’s good, but I’d like to think I know when to take life seriously.’ He laughed gently.

‘Well, so do I, obviously, and I’d never do anything to upset your mother.’

‘Of course not. You’d never upset anybody.’

He probably meant it as a compliment, but Anna decided this made her sound pathetically bland, someone she was determined not to be. ‘Excuse me, I must just go to the Ladies,’ she said.

Once there she gave herself a sharp talking to about not being too flippant. She couldn’t expect a man like Max to be amused at the childish things that made her and Chloe fall about. They may have found it funny that she had spent all day cleaning out his mother’s greenhouse and then been too shy to say hello but it wasn’t really, and she probably hadn’t told the story very well. He was possibly a bit touchy about his mother, but then, lots of men were. She resolved to make Mrs Gordon love her when they met properly. Suitably braced up, she went back.

‘I assumed you didn’t want a pudding,’ said Max when
she
returned to the table. ‘I just ordered you an espresso and a Cognac. Is that OK?’

If Anna had been with anyone other than Max, she might have gone for the exuberant chocolate creation she had seen go past earlier, but he was not the sort of man to eat chocolate with, unless it was that wincingly black sort that was so bitter it made your mouth curl.

‘That’s perfect. I may not sleep if I drink the espresso, though.’

‘Then stick with the brandy.’ He smiled at her. It was such a sexy smile – more a slight closing of the eyes and lifting of one corner of the mouth than a toothpaste beam – and Anna’s stomach contracted with longing. As just seeing his name had caused this to happen for years, it was hardly surprising it happened now. But was she having the same effect on him?

She smiled back with, she sincerely hoped, the right mixture of mystery and enthusiasm. She’d be all right when she’d had the brandy. Alcohol always made her feel relaxed and affectionate and she’d stop feeling she’d put her foot in it at any moment. When the drinks came, she scrutinised him over the top of her brandy glass. He was very handsome; even Chloe acknowledged that. She suppressed a sigh.