AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I’ll just pop them in some water,’ I said, leaving him in the hallway as I disappeared into the kitchen. As I waited for the vase to fill, I practised a few deep, cleansing breaths.
‘I like your flat.’ Finn’s voice floated in from the front door, where I’d rudely abandoned him.
‘Thanks,’ I called out in reply, before muttering in a private stage whisper to my distorted reflection in the kettle, ‘For goodness’ sake, Gemma, get a grip.’
I emerged from the kitchen with a smile that I hoped hid my inner turmoil.
‘Are you ready to leave? You might want a jacket; it can get a little breezy where we’re going.’
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ I said, reaching for my black leather jacket and draping it over my shoulders. I was no longer bothered about not knowing where we were heading. Wherever it was, I was safe with Finn. I had no reason to be so certain, and yet I’d willingly have bet everything I owned on it being true.
*
We shared the lift down to ground level with a group of my neighbours, which pressed pause on all further conversation until we left the building. The late-afternoon sun was still surprisingly strong, and I blinked in its glare like a dazzled mole before reaching for my sunglasses.
‘Where did you park?’ I asked, looking up and down the street but still not spotting Finn’s dark blue car. I rocked on to my tiptoes, trying to see a little further, but my view was blocked by a long black limousine idling at the kerb, taking up twice the space of a normal car. It was the kind of vehicle from which you expect a Hollywood A-lister to emerge.
‘This is us,’ Finn said, his hand lightly cupping my elbow to bring me to a stop.
Stupidly, I continued to look around for the car we’d travelled in the night before. One of the limo’s dark-tinted windows slid open with a whisper, and behind the wheel I saw a man in a dark suit preparing to climb out. Finn bent down and said something to him through the open window. The driver stayed where he was.
‘You have a limousine,’ I told Finn, just in case he hadn’t noticed.
He laughed, his hand resting lightly on the car’s gleaming roof.
‘It’s only mine for the evening,’ he said with a grin as he reached for the rear door handle. ‘I thought it might be nice for us to travel in comfort.’
‘Your car was perfectly comfortable,’ I said, too wrong-footed to realise my comment might have sounded churlish. ‘I mean, this is great, don’t get me wrong, but you didn’t need a different car.’
‘Actually, I did, because I sold mine this morning.’
He opened the back door and all my objections dissolved as I peered into the luxurious interior. There was a back seat that appeared wider and more comfortable than my own settee, and a champagne bucket with a bottle of something that I suspected was expensive chilling on ice. But most appealing of all was the blast of icy air from the car’s air-conditioning system, which I could feel even from the pavement. Grinning like an idiot, I climbed into the car, wondering if this was what it felt like to win the lottery.
‘You should have told me you’d got rid of your car,’ I said as Finn climbed in behind me. ‘I’d have been happy to drive us.’
‘But then you wouldn’t have been able to drink tonight,’ Finn reasoned.
My eyes flashed to the waiting ice bucket. ‘True. But you already know what a lightweight I am. If I drink half of this before we reach our destination, there’s every chance I’ll be completely hammered before we get there. Incidentally, where is that again?’
He laughed and shook his head.
‘Nice try, Ginny,’ Finn teased, slipping easily back into his game of not knowing who I was. Only this time I felt as though I might be playing too. Because I wasn’t sure thatIknew who I was any more either.
I certainly wasn’t the woman who forty-eight hours earlier would have referred to Finn Douglas as an unpleasant, egotistical individual who I’d hopefully never see again. And yet here I was, sitting beside him, already wondering if this might be the best date I’d ever been on. And it had only just started.
Just like the night before, the conversation flowed so effortlessly it was easy to forget how little we knew of each other. Long before we’d left the city traffic jams behind and joined the motorway, I realised I could happily have stayed there for the rest of the evening, without ever bothering to get out of the car at all.
The world outside continued to flash past at seventy miles an hour, only intruding now and again when a passing motorist blasted out a greeting on their car’s horn. ‘I wonder if people think we’ve just got married,’ I mused.
Finn’s raised eyebrows spoke volumes. ‘I’m all for whirlwind romances, but I prefer to leave it a little longer than just one date before I propose.’
He was joking, I realised that, but there was something in his words that sobered me up more effectively than a gallon of black coffee.
‘Have you?’ I asked, very deliberately placing my champagne flute back in its holder.No more alcohol for you, young lady, I told myself sternly.
‘Have I what?’
‘Ever proposed.’ It was galling to realise I’d been only too happy to assume that the absence of a ring meant Finn was unattached. Had that been wishful or simply ostrich-like thinking? I’d been lied to in the past and yet I still appeared to have learnt nothing. Why was I so willing to trust Finn?
