AllFreeNovel
Share Us
If it was a scent, she thought, it would be a mix of lavender and sun-warmed tobacco, with just a hint of tonka bean.
Make that burnt caramel, she thought, as her eyes fluttered upwards to his face and took in thick, dark hair that gleamed like polished jet beneath the recessed downlights. Sculpted bones beneath smooth gold skin. A dangerous, curving mouth and blue eyes—the bluest eyes she had ever seen. Blue eyes she wanted to high-dive into.
Even though in reality she couldn’t actually swim.
He was the most astonishingly, conspicuously beautiful man she had ever seen.
Her throat felt dry and tight, and suddenly it was difficult to catch her breath. She reached out, touching the wall to steady herself. It was that or fall over.
The man was looking down at the woman beside him, and for that she couldn’t blame him. Whoever she was, she was his equal in beauty. All long limbs and a mane of glossy blonde hair. Like the horses her father used to watch on the television, walking around the paddock before the race started.
The memory pounded through her like their thundering hooves and suddenly she was shaking inside. She didn’t want to think about her father. Thinking about him would just make her feel crushed and powerless, and right now she needed to be strong. Or at least to appear strong.
Only that was hard to do if, like her, you were small and ordinary. And forgettable.
‘This is the wrong floor.’
The man stepped backwards, pulling the woman into the lift with him. Turning to hit the button, his eyes met Effie’s and she blinked as his blue gaze slammed into hers with the force of a wave.
She felt her feet slide sideways. Around her the walls shuddered and fell and everything she knew or thought she knew was swept away. She was standing in a place she didn’t recognise, her body quivering with a wild, dizzying, nameless yearning for—
The lift doors closed.
For what?
Slipping her glasses back on, she stared at her reflection in the polished steel doors, panic and confusion banging inside her. She had no idea how to answer that question. How could she? She had nothing to compare the feeling to.
Not that she minded being a virgin. In fact, when her friends wept over their latest break-up she felt relieved. Her parents’ unhappy, lopsided marriage had made her nervous about trusting in big things like love and devotion. As for sex—she simply hadn’t met the right person.
Or even the wrong one.
It wasn’t just that she was quiet and reserved. Being her mother’s carer had meant there was little opportunity for a normal teenage social life. Sex, intimacy and relationships had bypassed her completely, so that aside from a few clumsy kisses on New Year’s Eve she had never touched a man or been touched. And this man—this stranger—hadn’t touched her, only his gaze had felt like a touch. It had felt real, intimate.
Shaking her head, Effie backed away from the lift and hurried along the corridor.
It made no sense. She was making no sense. Obviously she was nervous about the meeting. That was why her head was spinning. And why her body felt taut and jittery.
On the ground floor, she checked her watch. She had left plenty of time to get changed, but as usual when she walked through the main part of the hotel in her uniform several people stopped her to ask for directions to the restaurant or the lift and it took another twenty minutes before she finally got downstairs.
She needed to get a move on. Sidestepping the clusters of guests, she headed towards one of the side entrances, undoing her apron as she walked and pulling her hair out of its bun into a ponytail.
It was too late to get changed now, although it didn’t really matter. The bank knew what she did and she wasn’t ashamed of her job. But there were still some people who couldn’t see past the uniform, and she didn’t want to be defined by any prejudice that might provoke.
Her pulse twitched.
What would be wonderful would be to look like the woman from the lift. Smooth and glossily sophisticated. Instead, she was thin, with boring brown hair and boring brown eyes beneath boring brown-rimmed glasses.
But maybe if she’d been smooth and sophisticated, she would have been too enchanted by her own appearance to think about making perfume. And she loved making perfume. For her, scent was so much more than just a finishing touch to an outfit. It was a ticket to a life far beyond the four walls of her tiny bedsit.
She felt a rush of excitement as exhilarating and potent as any of the perfumes she created, and a faint smile pulled at her mouth as she stepped into the bright spring morning. She should definitely add that into her proposal. Maybe she should just put a note on her phone—
Her phone!
She stumbled forward, her foot catching on the thought as if it was a crack in the pavement and, yanking open her bag, fumbled inside. But her phone wasn’t there. It was sitting in her locker. Without it she would never be able to find her way to the bank. She had no sense of direction, and it was a waste of time asking people for help in London. They almost always turned out to be tourists.
She was just going to have to go back and get it.
Spinning round, she began swiftly retracing her steps, her skin prickling with anxiety.
