instead of giving him the full on broken down reason that dinner was a non-starter, not least because her list of life rules seemed to bring out the exasperation in those of her friends that knew about them.
‘It’s been lovely to see you,’ she breezed, ‘but my friend should be arriving any time now and I really need to get properly settled in the room. And then of course we’ll be busy, shopping, sightseeing, you know how it is.’
Her mobile burst into life in her jeans pocket and she fumbled it out. Perfect timing. The screen informed her it was Liz. Obviously she must have arrived at Paddington and was checking in with a progress report. She flashed Tom Henley a confident see-how-busy-I-am roll of her eyes, and picked up. The line was awful. She came to a standstill on the thick pile carpet and moved to one side of the corridor to let other guests pass. Tom Henley didn’t excuse himself, simply leaned against the wall and watched her with an amused expression in his slate grey eyes.
‘You sound like you’re shut in a fridge,’ Ella said.
‘That isn’t so far from the truth.’
She had to focus hard to hear Liz’s voice over the background crackle.
‘You’re where?’
Surprise made Ella forget herself and exclaim without thinking and she clocked, a second too late, his eyebrows raising almost imperceptibly.
There went her perfect excuse.
Liz’s voice was faint.
‘I’m in a train carriage somewhere between Newark and some other station at the ends of the bloody earth, waiting for someone to rescue me. And the buffet car’s just run out of coffee.’
‘How long are you likely to be?’
She turned her body away toward the wall and tried to talk into the phone without moving her lips while Tom made no attempt whatsoever to avert his eyes or look busy. Instead he was watching her, a small smile touching the corners of his mouth. For Pete’s sake, where were his manners? He couldn’t have eavesdropped more openly if he’d grabbed her mobile and pressed speakerphone.
‘It isn’t looking good.’ Liz’s voice was apologetic.
Conscious of his eyes on her, she took a few paces away from him, out of earshot and lowering her voice just to be sure, although why she was bothering she had no idea. It was perfectly clear that her big fob-off was trapped in the snow somewhere up North.
‘You can’t give up,’ she pleaded through gritted teeth. ‘I need you here. I’ve bumped into some guy from my past, we had a…’ she searched for the right word. Just exactly what had they had? ‘…fling,’ she said eventually. ‘A few years ago. He’s asked me out to dinner.’
She couldn’t bring herself to mention their more recent steamy (literally) encounter in the spa. It had been a lapse of judgement, nothing more. He’d caught her off-guard.
‘And that’s bad because?’
‘Because I don’t do the past. You know I don’t.’
That attitude had afforded her a lot of face-saving and bravado in the past. It was tried and tested.
‘That’s just some stupid principle, Ella. It doesn’t mean you’re incapable of it.’
She might have known Liz wouldn’t see it her way. Her friend was forever trying to fit her up with blind dates.
‘You would say that though, wouldn’t you?’ she countered. ‘You and Alfie are on-again off-again so often I can’t keep track.’
‘That’s how the rest of us do it, Ella,’ Liz said patiently. ‘It’s called give and take. That’s how you get to know someone.’ A pause, then, ‘what’s he like?’
Ella glanced back down the corridor at him. Tom smiled at her and nodded and her stomach gave another of those small melty flips. She tightened her grip on the phone.
‘Too good-looking for his own good and won’t take no for an answer,’ she said out of the corner of her mouth. ‘What are the chances of you getting here tonight?’
Liz’s laughter was just audible over the crackly line.
‘Tonight? Try the whole weekend. Have you seen the forecast? Imagine a snowball in hell and then lengthen the odds. By a mile. I’m getting back home before we resort to eating the weak.’
‘For Pete’s sake, Liz!’
‘It’ll do you good,’ her so-called friend said. ‘When did you last have a date? And look at it this way, if it’s as bloody freezing there as it is here, at least you’ll have someone to share body warmth with to survive.’
***
A couple of days stuck in the snow in London had suddenly taken a very nice turn for the better.
‘Have dinner with me tonight,’ he said again, as soon as she pocketed the phone.
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not? Your better offer is stuck in the snow somewhere for the rest of the weekend.’
‘That was a private conversation.’
He shrugged and grinned.
‘Yeah well, it was kind of hard to miss. Come on, you’re on your own now, I’m offering to buy you dinner. What exactly is it that you’re afraid of?’
‘I’m not afraid!’ she snapped.
‘Then what?’
She looked down at her fingers.
He watched as she took a deep breath before the knockback, not that he had any intention of taking no for an answer, no matter how many times or how many different ways she said it.
‘I don’t do the same situation twice,’ she said.
‘Living in the moment.’ he said, holding her hazel gaze. ‘Of course. I get that.’ That had been something else so enthralling about her all that time ago. Unlike him, with his mapped out future and responsibilities, she’d had no agenda, no grand life plan other than to squeeze every drop out of every single experience she had. The memory of what that had meant in bed made heat begin to simmer in his veins. ‘But still we didn’t part on bad terms back then. Where would be the harm in us having dinner?’
Gentle fob-off clearly wasn’t working so she cut to the chase.
‘I just have rules about that kind of thing,’ she blurted. ‘Life rules.’
He was staring at her as if he thought she might be insane.
‘Life rules,’ he repeated.
She emphasised each point by counting them off on her fingers.
‘I never go over old ground. I don’t do the same situation twice. The past is the past. I leave it there and I only ever look forward – which are actually all the same rule said in
