Most of the time Nina avoided looking at Noah. Just the mere suggestion of his presence was enough to irritate her but now when she glanced over at him, she was struck once again by the sensation that she’d seen him before.
She still couldn’t think where. She didn’t tend to hang out with business people and she’d certainly remember Noah, what with the hair – it was really a glorious colour when Noah was caught in a patch of sunlight as he was now – and the freckles; he wasn’t the type of person you forgot. Especially when he smiled at Nina as he was doing now. The smile transformed his face so he stopped being a geeky business analyst in a navy-blue suit and became quite an attractive man. He had good cheekbones too.
It seemed that Noah was softening so it would be a pity not to take advantage of it. ‘You write down most things.’ She came around the counter so she could sidle closer to him. ‘Go on, let me have a little look.’
Noah clasped his iPad to his chest. ‘At what I’ve written? That would be a violation of ethics, don’t you think?’ This close, his eyes weren’t just green but had a ring of hazel around each pupil. ‘Though if you come any closer, I will have to write that down.’
Was that a threat or a joke? Nina couldn’t tell.
‘I’ll make it worth your while,’ Nina said in her huskiest voice. She batted her eyelashes and quivered her bottom lip. If she hadn’t been wearing her hated Happy Ever After T-shirt, which sadly hid her cleavage, she’d even have used her breasts as part of her deadly arsenal.
Noah, however, was unmoved. Though he did smile again. ‘Where’s the famous sexual harassment book?’ he asked. ‘I think what I’m about to write down would be more appropriate there.’
‘We don’t actually have a sexual harassment book,’ Nina said. ‘The only person that Posy, Very and I could possibly sexually harass is Tom and he’s not worth the effort.’
‘Or Tom could sexually harass you?’
‘He wouldn’t dare,’ Nina laughed delightedly at the thought of Tom sexually harassing anyone, and Noah must have thought she was smiling at him because he smiled at her. Again.
Nina smiled back, it seemed the polite thing to do, which meant that she and Noah were locked into a whole smiling back and forth thing like they were having a moment.
Which they weren’t. No moments were being had here.
‘Look, if you’re nipping over to the tearoom for lunch, then I could come with you?’ Noah suggested because this was what smiling at people got you. ‘I’m still working my way through the savoury selection. Is there anything you’d recommend?’
‘Well, Mattie makes this amazing pork-and-apple sausage roll flavoured with harissa,’ Nina replied, because Noah was a sort-of-colleague and it was just idle lunch chat. It wasn’t like she was being friendly or anything. ‘It’s not for the faint-hearted.’
‘Sounds great,’ Noah said enthusiastically. ‘I love spicy food.’
‘Except I can’t leave the shop until Tom gets back,’ Nina pointed out because there was no way she wanted to be lunch buddies with Noah. Not if he wasn’t even going to let her sneak a peek at his iPad. Although if she could get on his good side, he was sure to give her a glowing performance review and that would serve Tom right.
Talking of which, the shop door opened with great force and Tom stood there in the doorway. ‘Nina! What are you doing?’ he said.
‘Nothing!’ Nina protested, side-stepping away from Noah. How had she got so close?
‘Didn’t look like it,’ grumbled Tom. ‘Anyway, I need a word with you.’
It was a blessed relief to step away from Noah and stop smiling. ‘Are you finally going to admit that there was no footnotes emergency, then?’
‘What? No! Let it go already.’ Tom shut the door. ‘That’s not what we need to talk about.’
Suddenly there was a hand on Nina’s arm. Warm fingers covering Cathy and Heathcliff as they embraced against the gnarled old tree. ‘Should I wait for you? Or do you want me to get you one of those sausage rolls for your lunch?’
‘I’ve already got Nina lunch,’ Tom said with a little edge to his voice, like he doubted Noah’s intentions. ‘A smoked-salmon bagel from Stefan and a cinnamon bun for afters. Now, if we could have that talk … alone,’ he added pointedly.
Noah looked a little put out as he walked around the counter. ‘Actually I could do with some fresh air before that sausage roll,’ he said and Nina found herself smiling again.
‘It does get a bit stuffy in here,’ she commented as Tom glared at her.
He waited until the door had shut behind Noah then seized Nina’s hands in a very unTom-like way. ‘Am I going to have to write you up in the sexual harassment book?’ Nina asked, tugging her hands free.
‘No fraternising with the enemy,’ Tom said and Nina was about to point out that Noah wasn’t an enemy so much as an unregistered alien, when Tom took her hands again.
‘I wanted to say sorry about before,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’
Nina shook herself free again. ‘You mean your “employee of the month” routine? Honestly, Tom, I didn’t know you had it in you to be such a little bitch.’
‘Neither did I,’ Tom agreed. ‘I’m quite ashamed of myself. I say united we stand, together we fall, right? Shall we just do what we normally do when that Noah is around?’
‘God, yes! But maybe not quite as normally as usual,’ Nina suggested. ‘Probably less backchat when Posy and Verity are being particularly bossy.’
‘Sounds like a plan.’ Tom handed over a brown paper bag from Stefan’s Deli as if he’d been planning to withhold lunch if Nina had refused to stand in solidarity with him. ‘Also it was exhausting being so efficient. I can’t keep the act going for another minute longer.’
‘I am surprised you managed to last a whole morning,’ Nina said with a grin.
‘Although you and Noah looked quite cosy when I interrupted you,’ Tom remarked as he unwrapped his own bagel.
‘Interrupted implies we were in the middle of something and believe me, we weren’t in the middle of anything.’
‘I just wondered if … no … forget I brought it up …’ Tom shook his head.
Tom often did this. Started saying something tantalising and then clammed up so that Nina had to work really hard to ferret out a piece of juicy gossip or a spectacular example of bitchery.
‘What?’ she asked. ‘Don’t leave me hanging.’
Tom took his sweet time chewing a mouthful of bagel before he answered. ‘Really, it’s nothing.’
‘Tom!’ Nina growled.
‘I was just wondering, if you were cosying up to that Noah anyway …’
