think you’re probably the sort of guy they had in mind when they told us to bring a phone book out with us on dates,’ Izzie quipped.
When he looked puzzled, she filled him in: ‘If you had to sit on some boy’s lap, you placed the phone book down first, then sat. An inch of paper barrier.’
‘More like five inches if you lived in Manhattan.’
‘Don’t boast.’ She was smiling now.
‘So you might see me again, Ms Silver, now you know I’m kosher?’
‘I might,’ she said.
‘Listen, I have an art collection in my office building –’
‘You didn’t bid on that Pasha picture at the charity lunch,’ she interrupted.
‘I might have, except I was distracted,’ he growled. ‘I have to go to an artist’s studio to look at some paintings tomorrow afternoon. Would you like to come?’
Izzie took the plunge. Looking at art – where was the harm in that? ‘Sure. What time?’
‘Say eleven o’clock?’
‘You said “afternoon”,’ she said, confused.
‘He lives in Tennessee, in the Smoky Mountains. We’ll have to fly.’
Izzie had never been on a private jet before. First, she and Joe were picked up by helicopter and flown to Teterboro airport where a Gulfstream sat waiting on the tarmac. Inside, apart from the crew, there were just the two of them.
‘It’s fabulous,’ Izzie said in awe as she stepped into the cabin. On the inside, it looked smaller than she’d imagined but the luxury was something she couldn’t have dreamed up. Entirely decorated in calm cream shades, there were only eight or nine vast cream leather seats.
The light oak cabinets were topped with marble instead of airplane plastic. It was luxury cubed. Even the blankets laid on the seats felt too soft to be ordinary wool.
‘Cashmere?’ she asked the stewardess standing to attention with a smile fixed to her face.
The stewardess nodded. ‘The seats are a blend of wool and leather, for added comfort.’
‘There’s nothing you can’t do on this plane,’ Joe said, sitting down and reaching out for the glass of cold beer the stewardess had ready for him, without him even asking for it. ‘Watch DVDs, phone outer space – you name it. They’ve even got a defibrillator on board. Have you had to use it, Karen?’ he asked the woman.
‘Mr Hansen, you know I can’t tell you that,’ she said, grinning.
They flew into Gatlinburg but Izzie could only glance at the pretty streets of the historic town before they were driven out of town for twenty minutes to a property set on its own in the foothills of the Great Smokies.
‘I can see why a painter would want to work from here,’ Izzie said, taking in the sweep of powerful mountains ranged all around her as they walked to the door of the ranch-style house. The greenery reminded her a little of home, but there were no mountains in Ireland like these, no giant peaks that dominated the landscape.
The artist, a man named AJ, made them drinks and ambled round his studio, talking in a laid-back Tennessean drawl. Izzie had worried that the artist might wonder who she was and she imagined an awkward conversation ensuing, but no such thing happened. It was as if, once she was with Joe, she was instantly a member of whatever club they were in at the time. She found that she liked that.
Joe wanted to buy a lot of paintings.
AJ hugged him in a loose-limbed way. Izzie wondered how much it had all cost, but decided against asking. She wasn’t sure if she could take it.
On the flight home, over Cajun blackened fish, a Gatlinburg favourite recipe that the galley staff had prepared in honour of their destination, Izzie idly mentioned her initial anxiety that AJ would wonder who she was.
‘Who cares what other people think or wonder?’ he said, genuinely astonished at such a concept.
‘No reason,’ Izzie said cautiously. ‘It’s just –’
She stopped. She was scared of so many things around Joe: how intensely she liked him, how powerfully attractive she found him. But there were all those complications to consider. Izzie felt she was on a slippery slope now – she didn’t want to fall in.
Also, she was afraid that, just by being with him, she’d appear like the sort of person she disliked: the all-purpose rich man’s girlfriend. Not that she was his girlfriend or anything yet. He hadn’t so much as touched her, and she wasn’t sure if this was on purpose or not.
I have a career and my own life, she wanted to yell. I like him for who he is, not for how much money he’s got.
He dropped her home in the limo. Neither of them moved. Izzie felt so conflicted: on one hand, she wanted to invite him in and see what happened next. On the other, she wanted to go slowly because this felt so special, so different.
If only he’d do something, say something, then she’d know how to respond.
But he seemed to be playing some gentlemanly game, waiting for her to do something.
‘Have you talked to your wife about meeting me?’ she asked. Why did you say that? she groaned inwardly. How to kill a romantic atmosphere in ten seconds flat.
‘We don’t talk about the people in our life,’ he said brusquely. ‘It’d weird me out.’
‘Because you’d be jealous?’ Izzie asked tentatively.
‘Because we’re trying to keep a reasonable family unit together for the sake of the boys and that might add extra pressure,’ he replied.
And then, he leaned over and kissed her softly on the lips, not a Mr Predator kiss but a gentle, till tomorrow sort of goodbye. Izzie closed her eyes and waited for more, waited to sink into the kiss. But there was no more.
‘I’ll call you tomorrow and thanks for coming with me.’
‘Thanks for asking me,’ she said coolly. She was still trying to work out why he hadn’t kissed her properly. ‘I’ve never been to Tennessee before. Does a two-hour flying visit count as being somewhere?’
He looked at her thoughtfully.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Cheerio,’ she said, getting out as the driver opened the door. Cheerio? What’s wrong with you, Izzie? First the weird question about his wife and then ‘cheerio’.
He phoned the next day.
‘Would you like to go on another date?’ he asked.
Date? It had been a date, after all. Izzie hugged herself with delight.
‘Yes,’ she said and squashed the feeling that she’d just fallen down the slippery slope.
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