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‘I’m sick of sleeping with dolly-birds. I much prefer a woman I can talk to afterwards. Someone who’s on the same wavelength as me. Someone like you, Harry.’
She rolled her eyes at him. ‘In that case, we can talk about work as well as sex.’
Alex’s exasperation was interrupted by the waiter arriving with the wine. Alex waved aside the tasting procedure and just asking him to pour, which he did, before placing the bottle in an ice bucket by the table.
‘Would you like to order now, sir?’ the waiter enquired.
‘Come back in a few minutes,’ Alex told him.
Harriet picked up her glass and took a sip. Alex did likewise, his mood turning dark as he glared over at her and thought how he much preferred her when she was naked and moaning with desire. No sooner had she put her clothes back on than the difficult woman was back, the one who liked rules and checklists, the one who was as intriguing as she was irritating.
* * *
Harriet picked up the menu and pretended to study the courses on offer, but her mind was still on things decidedly sexual. Various erotic images kept popping into her mind, all of them imaginative and wickedly exciting. In the end, she gave up, putting her menu down and picking up her wine glass.
‘You order for me, will you?’ she asked after a deep swallow of the wine. ‘I’m not fussy, especially where seafood is concerned.’
‘Right. How about we skip the entree and share a seafood platter? I’m not in the mood for waiting ages between courses.’
Harriet shivered as their eyes met across the table. When he looked at her like that, she wouldn’t have minded skipping the whole meal.
‘Fine,’ she said and took another gulp of wine.
He frowned at her. ‘I’d go easy on the alcohol till the food arrives, if I were you. Drinking too much on an empty stomach is never a good idea.’
Harriet’s sigh carried exasperation. In truth, the alcohol was going straight to her head, but so what? It stopped her worrying about what she was doing and what she was suddenly craving. She was glad when the waiter came back and took their order; glad even when Alex’s phone rang, leaving her to sit there and sip her wine in silence while he answered it, her ears pricking up when she heard Alex use the word ‘dad’. She’d never heard him talking to family before. Not at work, anyway.
‘That’s good, Dad,’ he was saying. ‘No, it’s not going to be easy, but it’s the only way.’
A short silence, then he added, ‘I’m proud of you. Look, I’ll talk to you some more tomorrow. I’m out at dinner at the moment. With a very pretty lady.’ This with a smile over at her. ‘Yes, Dad, I will. Hang in there. Bye for now.’
He hung up, his smile disappearing as he put the phone away.
‘My father,’ he said unnecessarily, then added, ‘He was the family emergency the other day.’
‘Oh?’ Harriet questioned, not wanting to pry, but naturally curious.
There was instant regret in Alex’s eyes. Clearly, he wished he could snatch back those words. But then he shrugged and said bluntly, ‘My father’s a drunk. He’s been living with my sister, Sarah, and giving her grief. Without going into unnecessary detail, I was finally able to get him to go into rehab this week. Hopefully, it will work, but I won’t be holding my breath. Still, it gives poor Sarah a decent break.’
Harriet could see that talking about the situation was difficult for him. At the same time, she felt that perhaps he needed to talk about it. Men were their own worst enemy sometimes. They were poor communicators when it came to emotional issues. She wondered if Alex was secretly worried that he might become a drunk, too; that he might have inherited his father’s weakness. It would explain why he was careful with alcohol.
‘That’s sad, Alex. Has your dad always been a heavy drinker?’ she asked gently, forcing him to talk about it.
‘No. Not at all. It didn’t start till after my mother died. She was the love of his life. And the rock in the family. When he lost her from cancer way too early, he couldn’t cope. None of us coped all that well. We all adored her, you see. Sarah was devastated. I can’t begin to describe how I felt. I found it hard to come to terms with the fact that if she’d been diagnosed earlier, she would probably still be alive.
‘Still, none of us kids handled our grief by turning to the bottle. My brother, Roy, eventually took off to the minefields in Western Australia, where he worked seven days a week and made a small fortune for himself. I gather he’s married with children now, but we hardly ever hear from him. Sarah became an oncology nurse before getting married and having a family of her own.’
