drink?’
She smiled. ‘How about if I was a sewage worker? Would you want to have a drink with me then?’
There was a tiny break in the rhythm of his steps. ‘Only if I was allowed to wear a peg on my nose.’
Her tense jaw muscles relaxed and a smile she’d been anchoring down sprung up. Finally, he’d joined her game. She grabbed his hand and speeded up. ‘Come on. I know the perfect place.’
Noah had no choice but to follow Grace as her shoes measured out rapid little steps. Even in heels, she only just reached past his shoulders and he didn’t have to do more than stroll to keep up.
The sky glowed a murky pink, reflecting the street lamps of a vast city. Typical for a spring night in England, an icy splosh of rain hit the top of his head, not even deflected by his hair. If he and Grace didn’t hurry up, they were about to get soaked. Just as he opened his mouth to ask where they were going, she dragged him into a doorway.
Out of the wind whistling down the High Street, the air was surprisingly close. Grace was only inches away, smiling up at him cheekily. He took a deep breath. It didn’t matter that the rain was now falling out of the sky and his right arm, out of the cover of the small doorway, was getting wet. All that mattered was the slight shine cast on her lips by the street lamp on the other side of the road. He couldn’t stop looking at them. The smile faded from her face and she regarded him with wide eyes.
The sound of the rain slapping against the pavement seemed to grow and intensify until it filled his ears. He knew he was about to lean forward and kiss her. Not that he’d made a decision; somehow he just knew. And there was nothing he could do to stop himself.
Just as his muscles prepared themselves for movement, he heard a jangle of keys and suddenly Grace was gone. He looked in confusion at the open door and listened to her heels track their way across the darkened shop. Attempting to follow was a bad idea, he discovered, sending a chair flying and leaving himself with a throbbing shin.
‘Hang on a moment,’ Grace said from somewhere in the darkness.
A few seconds later a light went on above a counter on the other side of the room. As his eyes adjusted to the blackness, a thunderclap rumbled a few miles away. Grace skirted round the tables and closed the door. She didn’t say anything as she moved past him; it was only as she was walking away back to the counter that she spoke.
‘This place serves the best coffee in the whole of South East London.’
Now he noticed his surroundings. The place almost resembled an auction room with its assorted wooden tables and chairs—no two matching. Large velvet-covered sofas occupied one corner and big canvases of abstract art and pictures of coffee beans hung on the walls.
‘The best?’
Now Grace was more than ten feet away and standing behind the safety of a counter she seemed to have regained her usual chatty manner. ‘Absolutely. And I know that because I make it. What will you have?’
‘Espresso,’ he said without thinking. ‘Double.’
‘Coming right up. Make yourself at home.’ He moved towards one of the low armchairs near the counter and sat down as Grace began banging things and turning knobs. A minute or so later she joined him with two cups of steaming espresso. The smell of freshly ground coffee filled the air like a fog. They sat and sipped their drinks in silence.
Grace hadn’t switched any extra lights on and they were sitting on the fringes of the yellow glow from the counter. Even in this artificial twilight she seemed brighter and bolder and more alive than just about anyone he knew.
‘So, Noah…How does a guy like you end up listed on an Internet dating site? If you don’t mind me saying, I wouldn’t have thought it was…you know…your thing, or that you needed help in that department.’
Noah considered what she’d said for a moment, then smiled.
‘I decided that meeting people via the Internet was as good a way as any. It’s all down to chance, really. You meet someone in a bar, or at work, or wherever…Why not the Internet? Joining a site with a matching service should help take some of the guesswork out of it.’
Grace rolled her eyes. ‘You make it all sound so romantic!’
Romance. What was that, anyway? He, like most men, had thought it meant flowers and chocolates and candlelit dinners. That much he could manage. In the five years he’d been with Sara, the one woman he’d thought of marrying without the help of a dating site, she’d tried to explain that romance was more about connecting with someone on a deeper level, about seeing into someone’s soul. He’d nodded and looked thoughtful and, although he’d tried hard to understand, he’d had the funny feeling he’d missed the point. Even though he’d connected to the best of his abilities she’d still walked away, telling him it wasn’t enough. The truly tragic thing was that he honestly didn’t know what he could have done differently.
Noah stared out of the plate glass window at the front of the shop. It was raining hard now, fat drops bouncing off the road and swirling down the gutters. That kind of romance was the last place to start if you wanted a successful relationship.
When he looked back at Grace that cheeky eyebrow rose again. How could she say so much with one small twitch of a muscle?
‘Don’t you believe in fate, in destiny?’ she asked.
Noah didn’t even have to stop and think about that one. ‘No.’
‘So it’s all just down to random events and chemical reactions, then?’
‘Well, partly…at least, I think that’s what sexual attraction boils down to, but we’re not just talking about that. Choosing someone to spend your life with is about more than chemistry, surely? Why? Do you believe in fate?’
Grace put her cup down and looked at the ceiling. ‘I don’t know…It’s comforting to think that love isn’t just some random genetic thing. Where’s the magic in that?’
Uh-oh. If she was looking for magic, she was barking up the wrong tree. He didn’t do magic any more than he did romance. Loyalty, honesty, sheer bloody-mindedness—he had those things in spades, but there wasn’t any fairy dust involved. It was just the way he was made. Time to get things back on firmer ground. Time to return to facts and figures and things a man could quantify.
‘Why did you join Blinddatebrides.com?’
Grace looked at the ceiling and shook her head. ‘Actually, I’d never heard of the site before this morning. Someone else joined on my behalf and I’m going to kill her when I get my hands…’ She bit her lip and grimaced. ‘Sorry. That didn’t sound the way I meant it to. I didn’t want to imply that I regret meeting you.’
‘Of course you didn’t.’
He liked the way she didn’t filter her words.
‘Maybe I’ll let her off with dunking her in the old horse trough on the common…Now that I’ve discovered having a blind date isn’t quite as horrendous as I anticipated.’
The corner of his mouth twitched. ‘I’m flattered. Me having such fine teeth, and all. You will tell your friend about the teeth, won’t you?’
Grace
