I feel hot with embarrassment. Oh, God, he’s right. I did do that, didn’t I? “Sorry about that. I got a bit … carried away.”
Casper buries his head under his blanket, as though he can’t bear to watch. I kind of wish I could join him.
“I’m quite sane, I assure you,” I joke weakly. “What can I do to prove it to you?”
A snuffling sound comes from beneath the blanket, which I studiously ignore.
“I’d like to get the chance to find out for myself,” he says lightly.
We look at each other for what seems like a very long moment, and then, out of nowhere, something amazing happens. Something which I haven’t felt for the longest time: a fizzing feeling, sparkling through my entire body like champagne. It takes me by surprise, makes me suck in a breath.
Unfortunately, it seems he isn’t similarly afflicted because he’s already looked away, occupied in the task of attaching a label to Casper’s basket.
“Out of my surgery with you, Miss Swift, before people start to talk. I’ll call you later with an update.”
***
“You’re late, my dear,” Eve states in her sing-song voice as I clatter into the foyer in a whirl of frenetic activity.
“I know, I know.” I’m in the process of attempting to unbutton my coat, unwrap my scarf and smooth down my hair all at the same time. It’s not working. Instead, all I’m succeeding in is getting hopelessly tangled up. “The time has not evaded my notice.”
Eve watches me fighting with my own clothing, her perfectly made-up face as benignly impassive as ever. “Is everything all right?” she enquires mildly.
“I had to run Casper to the vet …” I gasp as my scarf makes a bid to garrotte me. I tug it away from my throat. “Got held up.”
Very pleasurably held up, I add silently. Although, of course, my thoughts are still with Casper, I do find them occasionally drifting back to that moment in the consulting room. Just occasionally. Not … you know, once every two minutes. That would be absurd. Except …
I’d like to get the chance to find out for myself. What did that mean? Frankly, it could have meant anything from I’d like to get the chance to talk to you again all the way to I’d like to ask you out, and everything in between. The fizzing sensation returns as I consider that second possibility, and I bite my lip. Damn it, why do men have to be so obscure, anyway? Why can’t they just say what they mean in the first place and have done with it? Then women wouldn’t have to waste so much of their time and energy dissecting everything, trying to work out what’s going on in their minds when we could be doing other more useful things, like running the world.
Of course, I also have to accept that the alternative to all of this is that it meant nothing at all, save that I’m a hopeless fantasist who’s reading far too much into a simple sentence.
That’s a deflating thought.
“Jeremy’s already been by,” Ruby pipes up from where she’s rearranging leaflets on the front desk. “We covered for you, obviously.”
“And I knew you would.” At last I’ve succeeded in divesting myself of all malevolent accessories and I reach down to pick up the takeaway coffee cups I left on the marble surround. “Hence why I brought these.”
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