of that I’ve got a mass of courses and exams coming up in the next year, but that’s IR for you. It doesn’t matter how hard I work, how much I learn, there’ll always be more.’
‘Is that “Do as I say, not as I do”?’ she asked, and he laughed and nodded.
‘Pretty much. Work can easily take over—not that I’m the best person to tell anybody how to run their life since I seem to have trashed my own, but there you go. You could always learn from my experience,’ he said, and went back to his fish and chips.
‘They look tasty. Can I pinch a chip?’
‘Be my guest,’ he said, and she took the last one off the plate as a shadow fell over the table.
‘Was everything OK for you both?’
‘Great, thanks.’ He looked up at Maureen and smiled. ‘Filling. I’ve eaten myself to a standstill.’
‘So you don’t want dessert? That’s not like you.’
‘Not tonight, I don’t think. Iona?’
She would have loved a dessert. She’d spotted one on the specials board, but Joe didn’t seem inclined.
‘I don’t suppose you’d like to share the baked chocolate fondant?’ she asked wistfully, and he just groaned and laughed.
‘There’s my resolve going down the drain.’
‘That’s a yes, then,’ Maureen said with a smile. ‘One, or two? And do you want coffee with it?’
He shook his head. ‘Just one, and no coffee for me, Maureen. Iona?’
‘No, I’m fine, thanks. The fondant will be more than enough.’
It took ten minutes to come, but it was worth the wait and she was enjoying the view and the company.
Maureen put the plate down between them, they picked up their spoons and Iona waited for him to cut it in half, but he didn’t, just dug his spoon in, so she joined in and kept eating until their spoons clashed in the middle.
She glanced up, their eyes locked and he smiled and put his spoon down. ‘Go on. Finish it. It was your idea.’
She didn’t argue, just pulled the plate closer, scraped it clean and put the spoon down a little sadly.
‘That was delicious. All of it. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. Shall we go?’
She nodded, and he got to his feet, dropped a pile of notes on the bar in front of Maureen and they headed out into the darkness and a light drizzle.
‘Oh. I didn’t know it was going to do that,’ she said with a rueful laugh, but he just reached out and took her hand in a firm, warm grip and they ran, guided by the light of his phone, and got back to the house before they were more than slightly damp.
‘Coffee?’ he asked, heading for the porch and standing under the shelter.
She hesitated on the drive. ‘I thought you didn’t want coffee?’
‘No, I didn’t want coffee there. I prefer mine, but I can’t say that to Maureen, can I? It would break her heart.’
It made her laugh, as it was meant to, and she suddenly realised she did want a coffee, and she was also curious about the house, and his aunt, and—well, him, really.
And she was getting wet.
She stepped under the shelter of the porch and smiled. ‘Coffee would be lovely. Thank you.’
He put the key in the door, turned it and pushed it open, flicking a switch that flooded the hall with light.
‘Welcome to the seventies,’ he said wryly, and stepped back to let her in.
* * *
It was stunning, and completely unexpected.
The walls were a pale acid green, but that wasn’t what caught her eye, it was the way the ceiling sloped steeply up from right to left, rising along the line of the stairs and over the landing, creating a wonderful, open vaulted entrance hall.
‘Wow! I love this!’
‘Me, too. It goes downhill a bit from now on, mind,’ he said with a low chuckle that did something odd to her insides. ‘Come into the kitchen, I’ll make you a coffee.’
She followed him through a glass door into a large rectangular room that ran away to the right across the back of the house. To the left were double doors into another room, in front of her beyond a large dining table was a set of bi-fold doors, opening she assumed to the garden, and on her right at the far end of the room was the kitchen area.
Not that there was much kitchen.
‘Ahh. I see what you mean.’
He chuckled again. ‘Yeah. It’s a mess. I got the bi-folds put in and the dividing wall taken out, so I lost most of the units, but to be honest I haven’t got the time or energy to decide what I want in here and it’s a big job, starting with taking the floor up and re-screeding it because they weren’t quite level. So I’m learning to love the tiny scraps of seventies worktop and the ridiculously huge sink and the utter lack of storage, but it’s only me so it’s fine. And the pub’s handy when I get desperate,’ he added with a grin. ‘So, coffee. Caf, decaf, black, white, frothy?’
She stared at him, slightly mesmerised by the sight of him propped against the sink with his arms folded, relaxed and at ease. It was gradually dawning on her just how incredibly attractive he was, how well put together, how confident, caring, thoughtful, sexy—
‘Hello?’
She pulled herself together and tried to smile. ‘Sorry. I was just a bit stunned by the kitchen,’ she lied. ‘Um—can you do a decaf frothy?’
‘Sure, that’s what I’m having.’ He flipped a capsule into the machine, put a mug under the spout and pressed a button, put milk into the frother and then propped himself up again and frowned thoughtfully at her.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Well, nothing you want to hear. You told me to butt out.’
‘Are we back to that?’ she said with a sigh.
‘Yes, we are, because... Iona, if you want a baby, why wouldn’t you look for a partner?’
‘I’ve tried that,’ she said, really not wanting to go there. ‘And, anyway, that’s not what it’s about.’
He looked puzzled, then shrugged. ‘OK, so why not go through a proper sperm bank or clinic? The risks to you are huge if you don’t use a donor regulated by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. They won’t have had genetic testing, no sperm quality check—it’s a minefield, even if you don’t take into account the risk of picking up a life-changing infection such as Hepatitis or HIV. The screening process is so thorough, so intensive, the physical and mental
