his own, not speaking to anyone, travelling alone. It would be nice to have someone other than a part-time PA in the house. Someone to share a meal and glass of wine with at the end of the day. Someone to bounce ideas off or moan to about the latest deadline. And, if there was a little chemistry there, so much the better.
He’d been on three dates with Blinddatebrides.com so far and all had been unmitigated disasters. The women had been nice in their own way, he supposed, just not suitable at all. He was on the verge of downgrading his expectations in the short-term and just looking for a date-buddy, someone who wouldn’t mind attending functions with him to keep the vixens at bay. Even the stupid computer at Blinddatebrides.com—or the trained hamsters, or whatever they used to match people up—should be able to cope with something as simple as that.
Although the match suggestions from Blinddatebrides.com had seemed fine when he’d checked out the profiles, when he’d met the women in person…well, that was where it had all gone wrong.
Hopefully, tonight’s choice would buck the trend. He leaned forward to focus on the pixelated little picture on her profile. Local businesswoman. Age forty. And the picture was intriguing. Dark glossy hair. Stunning blue eyes and the smallest of smiles that hinted at both intelligence and mischief. Not his usual sort, but he’d kept coming back to this profile even after he’d discounted it. And if there was one thing he’d learned from all these years accessing his creative right brain, it was that sometimes you had to ignore the facts and go with your gut.
‘Coo-ee!’ Martine’s voice echoed round his empty kitchen. She’d obviously just let herself in. He reached for the mouse and had just closed the window as she walked through the study door.
‘What was that?’ she said, eyes fixed on the monitor.
He’d hired her for her razor-sharp instincts, but sometimes he wished he owned a remote control so he could switch them off.
‘Nothing for you to poke your nose about in,’ he said with a grin and handed her a stack of travel documents.
CHAPTER TWO
THE girl standing behind the reservations desk glanced up at him. It was the same girl as last week. He remembered the neat little bun she wore at the nape of her neck and how he’d wondered if it hurt to scrape one’s hair into something that tight. Just like last week, she didn’t seem to be in a particularly good mood. A raised eyebrow was all the welcome he got. Good. His attempt at going incognito was working.
‘Smith,’ he said, returning her look. ‘Table for two. Eight o’clock.’
She blinked, then deigned to check the reservations book. ‘This way, sir.’
She took off at a brisk pace.
‘Has my…dinner companion…arrived yet?’
The girl didn’t even turn to answer. The little bun wobbled back and forth as she shook her head. If Barruci’s didn’t have the finest wine list in this corner of London, he’d have boycotted the place weeks ago. But it was the best little restaurant in the suburb of Vinehurst, right on the fringes of London’s urban sprawl. A few minutes’ drive to the south and it was all countryside. Vinehurst had probably once been an idyllic little village, with its narrow cobbled high street, a Norman church and an old-fashioned cricket pitch that was still used every Sunday. Somehow, during the last century, as London had spread, it hadn’t swallowed up Vinehurst, as it had similar hamlets and towns. There was a distinct absence of grey concrete and high-rise buildings, as if the city had just flowed round the village, leaving a little bubble of rural charm behind. It was a great place for a first date.
At eight o’clock on the dot, a woman walked into the restaurant.
It was her.
The dark wavy hair was coiled behind her head somehow and she wore a neat black coat, fitted at the waist. Even though he was too far away to tell if her eyes were really the same colour as her profile photograph, they drew his attention—bright and alert, scanning the room beneath quirkily arched brows. He watched as her gaze flitted from one table to the next, pausing for a split-second on the men, then moving on when she saw they weren’t alone.
Noah put down the menu he’d been perusing and sat up straighter, giving no indication that his heart was beating just a little bit faster. Could the hamsters at Blinddatebrides.com finally have got it right?
Finally, the woman leaned over and whispered something to a waitress. The girl nodded and waited as the woman stopped to remove her coat. There was a collective pause as every man in the place held his breath for a heartbeat, then pretended to resume conversation with their friends, wives or girlfriends. In reality, they were tracking the woman’s progress across the room. Even the ones who were far too young for her.
Under the respectable coat was a stunning dress. The same shade and sheen as a peacock’s body. The scoop neck wasn’t even close to being indecent, but somehow it didn’t need to be. It teased very nicely while it sat there, revealing not even a hint of cleavage. The hem was short and the legs, the legs…
Well, the legs hadn’t been visible in the Blinddatebrides.com photo, but they were very nice indeed. Too nice, maybe. Maybe she was a vixen incognito. He loosened his tie slightly and tried to smile as she followed the waitress through the maze of tables, leaving a trail of wistful male eyes in her wake. The smile felt forced and he abandoned it. He didn’t do small talk; he did conversation. And he didn’t do overly effusive greetings these days, even in the presence of such fine legs.
When the waitress pulled out the chair opposite him for her, he stood and offered his hand. ‘Noah…Smith.’ A necessary diversion from the truth if he was to gauge if his dates really liked him for his personality rather than his bank balance. Sometimes he wished he’d had enough sense to use a pen name, but the lure of seeing ‘Noah Frost’ stamped in square letters across the front of a book jacket had been too great after all the years of rejections.
‘Hello,’ she said, shaking his hand, then quickly pulling hers away again. ‘You’ve got really nice teeth.’
He opened his mouth to say, All the better to eat you with, but managed to stop himself. Instead, he just kept quiet and motioned for her to sit down. He did the same.
‘Nice teeth?’ he said, smiling again. ‘Do you want to check my hooves to see if I’m good stock too?’
She blushed ever so slightly and the mischievous little smile from the profile photograph made an appearance.
‘Grace Marlowe—blind-date virgin…’ She clapped a hand over her mouth. It looked as if she were trying to wipe a cheeky smile away as she dragged her hand over her lips and let it fall. It didn’t work. The grin popped back into place as if nothing had happened.
‘That came out all wrong. What I meant was…this will be my first time.’
She closed her eyes and bit her lip. Without opening her lids, she kept speaking. ‘I’m making it worse, aren’t I—digging myself an even deeper hole?’
Noah stared at her. This wasn’t how the other dates had started. Where was the murmured conversation, the polite questioning as to jobs and musical tastes?
‘It’s only because I’m more of a blind-date veteran that I’m not in there with a matching shovel.’
She opened one eye. ‘You’re nice, Mr Smith. And chivalrous to a lady in distress.’ The
