I see that smile spread across his face and the dimples I haven’t been able to get out of my head since the first time I saw him, all of my nerves melt away.
He looks … overjoyed. No, it can’t be overjoyed. Maybe constipation? I don’t think anyone has ever looked that happy to see me before.
‘You made it sound so perfect.’ I have to wet my lips and swallow a couple of times to make my voice sound stable.
‘I can’t believe you came!’
‘And I brought ice cream.’ I hold one of the cones out towards him.
He goes to take it but his hand stops in midair and we both look at it because he’s covered in black grease. He pulls it back quickly and tries to wipe it on the cloth he was using to clean the thing he’s just shoved into the pocket of his dungarees. ‘Look at the state of me. I don’t usually get into this much of a mess.’
He plunges a hand into the dungaree pocket again and pulls out a mini packet of wet wipes, covering it in the black grime as he struggles to open it and pull one out, and I stand there with two ice creams melting in my hands, wondering when dungarees became so sexy. I’ve always thought of them as a work uniform for builders, but on Nathan, they look like something from a Calvin Klein aftershave advert. Even with the rips and stains, one rip in particular shows a delicious sliver of thigh, and …
I’ve been here for all of two minutes and I already can’t stop perving on the man. I can’t remember the last time I looked at a guy and fancied him this much, no matter how much Daphne tries to make me. Fancying men and how sexy they might or might not be hasn’t been on my priority list for a long time now, and yet I already want to slide a finger into that tear in the faded denim and … I force myself to think of something else.
‘I’m so sorry.’ Nathan’s scrubbing at his messy hands with a wet wipe, which looks about as effective as a chocolate teapot. ‘Talk about a good first impression. This is a boiling hot water, exfoliating handwash, and a scrubbing brush job, and I’m nowhere near any of them.’
He seems nervous, maybe even more nervous than I was, and it’s completely and utterly endearing.
‘Do you need a hand?’ I say, wishing I could kick myself before I’ve even finished the sentence. Who makes terrible puns like that in front of a gorgeous man they wouldn’t be opposed to impressing? What is wrong with me? I don’t know why I bother hunting for excuses not to go out with any of the men Daphne tries to set me up with. I should go and let them be instantly put off by my terrible sense of humour. She’d soon stop trying.
At least he’s polite enough to laugh and make it sound genuine, his eyes crinkling up again as he grins at me, and I find myself staring at him. His hair is so dark brown that it’s almost black and his brown eyes reflect the colour of the sand and the sun, making them look golden in certain slants of light. I always thought he was gorgeous by the washed-out light of an underground train, but in natural daylight, he’s glorious.
‘You couldn’t, er, feed it to me, could you?’
I let out an undignified snort and cover it with a nervous giggle, sounding like a pig that’s had a nappy accident, if pigs wore nappies and were perceptive enough to be aware of soiling themselves. Maybe those nerves aren’t so far away after all. ‘Well, that’s one way to break the ice.’
I try to ignore the way my stomach flips as he groans and goes to smack himself on the forehead but stops just in time to avoid a greasy handprint across his face. ‘Oh God, that wasn’t meant to sound as bad as it did. I meant in a completely non-erotic way, obviously. Just hold it in my general direction and I’ll lick it like a dog.’
‘I’d be happy to,’ I say, wishing I could think up a clever, witty response to make up for the ‘do you need a hand’ fiasco.
‘My nefarious plan for getting pretty girls to feed me ice cream is almost complete. Next step, world domination.’ He steeples grease-covered fingers in an evil overlord way, making me giggle again. ‘I’m going to stop making an idiot of myself anytime now.’ He gestures towards the gap in the metal fence. ‘Come in and sit on my wood.’
I laugh, but mainly at how fiercely red his cheeks have gone.
‘I meant my wooden decking, obviously.’ He points towards the edge of the platform in the sand surrounding the tent. ‘I told you I’m crap at talking to people.’
‘Well, I asked you if you needed a hand, so I think we’re fairly even on that front. And these are melting.’
He smiles as he sits down and I perch on the wooden pathway next to him, not close enough to touch, but close enough to hold his ice cream to my right.
He leans forward and licks it. ‘You have full permission to poke me in the nose with it if you want.’
I’m trying eat mine daintily without ending up in a Beauty and the Beast-style porridge scene and it makes me laugh so much that I nearly take my own eye out with the Flake. ‘I was just thinking about how easy it would be to do that. Are you some sort of mind reader or what?’
He laughs too. ‘I think there’s an innate part of every human being that makes that connection when there’s a pointy ice cream and a nose around.’
I give him a sideways glance, appreciating the way his tongue runs up that smooth ice cream. His chin is so close to my hand as he moves, near enough that I can almost feel the drag of his stubble, and it’s probably a really weird thing to sit here and feed ice cream to a complete stranger but it doesn’t feel as weird as it should.
‘I can’t believe you came. I didn’t think you would and I was really hoping …’ He shakes his head without finishing the sentence. ‘And I can’t believe you brought me ice cream. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but …’ His voice drops to a whisper and I naturally lean a bit nearer to hear him. ‘I’ve already had two of these today.’
I laugh like it’s a terrible secret. ‘Isn’t there an unwritten British law that says you have to have a 99 when within a five-mile radius of a beach?’
‘Oh, definitely, but I don’t think they mean to prescribe them like Paracetamol, you know, one every four hours until your liver packs in from sugar overload. I had one when I got here this morning and then I couldn’t resist running back across the road for another one after lunch. I foresee that working across the street from an ice cream parlour is going to be very bad for me.’
‘I can’t think of a nicer place to work.’ I nod towards the sea in an attempt to take my mind off his tongue and how close it is to my hand. ‘The ice creams are just a bonus.’
‘I can’t believe you came,’ he says again. ‘I was really hoping you would. I got the impression on the phone that you’d love it here, and I thought I’d probably scared you off and I’d never hear from you again, and I just …’ He swallows and leans over until his shoulder knocks gently into mine before sitting upright again. ‘I’m chuffed you’re here.’
It makes the sun warming my skin feel like it’s warming the whole of me from the inside out. He’s so … uninhibited is the word that springs to mind. Either he’s overcompensating because he thinks I’m a deranged stalker and is biding his time until he can run away, or he’s genuinely pleased to see me, and instead of trying to hide it and invent excuses like I am, he’s not afraid to say it. I’m still wondering if he’d believe that I
