Blind-Date Baby

Yes, there were fine lines and wrinkles round her eyes now, and her once slender build had more curves, but she still looked closer to thirty than forty. What a pity that inside her head she was closer to being twenty-one. Being Daisy’s buddy had kept her thinking and feeling like that.

What would happen now Daisy was gone—only due to pop in and out of her life in between travels and university courses? Would she turn grey overnight? And it wasn’t just her hair she was worried about. She could imagine her skin taking on a dull grey pallor, her eyes becoming glassy. Would she wake up one day and discover an overwhelming urge to wear baggy home-knitted cardigans?

Come on, Grace! Snap out of it.

She twisted to check out her rear end and fluffed her hair with her fingers. She smiled. Even through the striped cotton of her pyjama bottoms, she could tell her derrière could stop traffic in the right pair of jeans. She was way too young to hide it beneath baggy cardigans. She did a little wiggle, just to prove herself right. Her reflection enjoyed the joke and laughed along with her.

See? She was still the same old game-for-anything Grace.

She picked the photograph of Daisy out of the mirror frame and studied it closely. One corner of her mouth lifted. That child was a chip off the old block, no doubt about it. This stunt with the dating agency was just the sort of crazy thing she would have pulled at nineteen. Why was she getting in such a lather about one silly date?

You never have to see him again if you don’t want to.

It was time she saw a little more sparkle in her own baby-blues.

She jumped back onto the bed, grabbed the laptop and typed in a frenzy, before she could change her mind.

Englishcrumpet: Okay, girls. I’ll do it. I’m going on the date.

After making a quick character sketch for his Ukrainian villain and jotting down some related plot ideas, Noah checked his emails again. He’d better get a move on, though. His PA would be here in twenty minutes and he really ought to finish getting dressed.

Yes, it was Saturday, but he had a big crime writers’ conference coming up soon in NewYork and they needed to go through the final travel arrangements and double-check that the notes for his seminar were all ready to go. Last job would be to proofread his keynote speech for the opening luncheon.

He shook his head, hardly able to believe that this was how his life had turned out.

It seemed he was always travelling, always speaking here and there. Everybody wanted to know what the secret of his success was, as if there were some ingredient other than a modicum of talent and pure hard graft. Living the life of a best-selling author had its great points, but there was a downside he hadn’t expected. For a start, he spent far too much time on publicity and promotion and struggled to find time to scribble more than a few words some days. Just as well his army background had taught him discipline and how to be cool under pressure.

And then there were the women.

His friend Harry thought he was crackers to complain about the women, moaning that he’d settle for just one per cent of the female attention Noah seemed to generate.

Oh, Noah had certainly enjoyed glamorous women making a beeline for him in the early days, when his books had first reached the top of the charts. The women had laughed and smiled and hung on his every word, marvelling at how clever and handsome he was and how he was just like a hero in one of his own novels. But after five years it was definitely getting a little tired. He was starting to feel like that guy in the movie who woke up and discovered the previous day was repeating itself. Only, in Noah’s case, it seemed to be the previous cocktail party repeating itself.

Okay, the colour of the skimpy dresses and the hair extensions changed. But that was as far as it went. He’d even stopped being surprised how so many stick-thin women professed to love martial arts or were totally fascinated by the cold war. One woman had even spent an hour telling him in great detail exactly how she could strip down an AK47, a hungry glint in her eyes the whole time.

After all his experiences, he could really write a convincing portrait of a glamour vixen who’d do anything to bag herself a rich and successful husband so she could bask in his glory and ride the celebrity merry-go-round for ever. Maybe he’d put such a character in his next book. And maybe he’d have the merry-go-round explode…

Compatibility started with sharing some interests, but it had to go deeper than that, surely. And it had to be a genuine interest, not facts and figures cribbed up on before a date. That was why his new pet project had come in handy. He’d read an article about this website in a Sunday magazine and had been intrigued with the possibility of being able to remain almost anonymous.

He flipped back onto the web page he’d minimised earlier.

Blinddatebrides.com.

If Martine, his PA, knew he’d been surfing on such a site, she’d have fainted.

But what was so surprising about him wanting to find a wife? He was of marriageable age, financially very secure and he had a huge house all to himself. It was just crying out for a wife. And he was fed up going everywhere on his own, being the odd one out at friends’ parties, always having to duck into the bathroom to avoid the glamour vixens at the writing ‘do’s’. Securing a wife would have the added bonus of being the ultimate deterrent.

He wasn’t asking for the moon. At forty-one, he was old enough not to fall for all that love-at-first-sight, finding-your-soulmate nonsense. He didn’t believe that his soul had another half floating around somewhere, desperately looking to re-attach itself. That sounded like a gruesome scene from one of his novels rather than romantic, anyway.

What he needed was a partner in life. Writing could be a lonely business. He spent days on end on his own, not speaking to anyone, travelling alone. It would be nice to have someone other than a part-time PA in the house. Someone to share a meal and glass of wine with at the end of the day. Someone to bounce ideas off or moan to about the latest deadline. And, if there was a little chemistry there, so much the better.

He’d been on three dates with Blinddatebrides.com so far and all had been unmitigated disasters. The women had been nice in their own way, he supposed, just not suitable at all. He was on the verge of downgrading his expectations in the short-term and just looking for a date-buddy, someone who wouldn’t mind attending functions with him to keep the vixens at bay. Even the stupid computer at Blinddatebrides.com—or the trained hamsters, or whatever they used to match people up—should be able to cope with something as simple as that.

Although the match suggestions from Blinddatebrides.com had seemed fine when he’d checked out the profiles, when he’d met the women in person…well, that was where it had all gone wrong.

Hopefully, tonight’s choice would buck the trend. He leaned forward to focus on the pixelated little picture on her profile. Local businesswoman. Age forty. And the picture was intriguing. Dark glossy hair. Stunning blue eyes and the smallest of smiles that hinted at both intelligence and mischief. Not his usual sort, but he’d kept coming back to this profile even after he’d discounted it. And if there was one thing he’d learned from all these years accessing his creative right brain, it was that sometimes you had to ignore the facts and go with your gut.

‘Coo-ee!’ Martine’s voice echoed round his empty kitchen. She’d obviously just let herself in. He reached for the mouse and had just closed the window as she walked through the study door.

‘What was that?’ she said, eyes fixed on the monitor.

He’d hired her for her razor-sharp instincts, but sometimes he wished he owned a remote control so he could switch them off.

‘Nothing for you to poke your nose about in,’ he said with a grin and handed her a stack of travel documents.

CHAPTER TWO

THE girl standing behind the reservations desk glanced up at him. It was the same girl as last week. He remembered the neat little bun she wore at the nape of her neck and how he’d wondered if it hurt to scrape one’s hair into something that tight. Just like last week, she didn’t seem to be in a particularly good mood. A raised eyebrow was all the welcome he got. Good. His attempt at going incognito was working.

‘Smith,’ he said, returning her look. ‘Table for two. Eight o’clock.’

She blinked, then deigned to check the reservations book. ‘This way, sir.’

She took off at a brisk pace.

‘Has my…dinner companion…arrived yet?’

The girl didn’t even turn to answer. The little bun wobbled back and forth as she shook her head. If Barruci’s didn’t have the finest wine list in this corner of London, he’d have boycotted the place weeks ago. But it was the best little restaurant in the suburb of Vinehurst, right on the fringes of London’s urban sprawl. A few minutes’ drive to the south and it was all countryside. Vinehurst had probably once been an idyllic little village, with its narrow cobbled high street, a Norman church and an old-fashioned cricket pitch that was still used every Sunday. Somehow, during the last century, as London had spread, it hadn’t swallowed up Vinehurst, as it had similar hamlets and towns. There was a distinct absence of grey concrete and high-rise buildings, as if the city had just flowed round the village, leaving a little bubble of rural charm behind. It was a great place for a first date.

At eight o’clock on the dot, a woman walked into the restaurant.

It was her.

The dark wavy hair was coiled behind her head somehow and she wore a neat black coat, fitted at the waist. Even though he was too far away to tell if her eyes were really the same colour as her profile photograph, they drew his attention—bright and alert, scanning the room beneath quirkily arched brows. He watched as her gaze flitted from one table to the next, pausing for a split-second on the men, then moving on when she saw they weren’t alone.

Noah put down the menu he’d been perusing and sat up straighter, giving no indication that his heart was beating just a little bit faster. Could the hamsters at Blinddatebrides.com finally have got it right?

Finally, the woman leaned over and whispered something to a waitress. The girl nodded and waited as the woman stopped to remove her coat. There was a collective pause as every man in the place held his breath for a heartbeat, then pretended to resume conversation with their friends, wives or girlfriends. In reality, they were tracking the woman’s progress across the room. Even the ones who were far too young for her.

Under the respectable coat was a stunning dress. The same shade and sheen as a peacock’s body. The scoop neck wasn’t even close to being indecent, but somehow it didn’t need to be. It teased very nicely while it sat there, revealing not even a hint of cleavage. The hem was short and the legs, the legs…

Well, the legs hadn’t been visible in the Blinddatebrides.com photo, but they were very nice indeed. Too nice, maybe. Maybe she was a vixen incognito. He loosened his tie slightly and tried to smile as she followed the waitress through the maze of tables, leaving a trail of wistful male eyes in her wake. The smile felt forced and he abandoned it. He didn’t do small talk; he did conversation. And he didn’t do overly effusive greetings these days, even in the presence of such fine legs.

When the waitress pulled out the chair opposite him for her, he stood and offered his hand. ‘Noah…Smith.’ A necessary diversion from the truth if he was to gauge if his dates really liked him for his personality rather than his bank balance. Sometimes he wished he’d had enough sense to use a pen name, but the lure of seeing ‘Noah Frost’ stamped in square letters across the front of a book jacket had been too great after all the years of rejections.

‘Hello,’ she said, shaking his hand, then quickly pulling hers away again. ‘You’ve got really nice teeth.’

He opened his mouth to say, All the better to eat you with, but managed to stop himself. Instead, he just kept quiet and motioned for her to sit down. He did the same.

‘Nice teeth?’ he said, smiling again. ‘Do you want to check my hooves to see if I’m good stock too?’

She blushed ever so slightly and the mischievous little smile from the profile photograph made an appearance.

‘Grace Marlowe—blind-date virgin…’ She clapped a hand over her mouth. It looked as if she were trying to wipe a cheeky smile away as she dragged her hand over her lips and let it fall. It didn’t work. The grin popped back into place as if nothing had happened.

‘That came out all wrong. What I meant was…this will be my first time.’

She closed her eyes and bit her lip. Without opening her lids, she kept speaking. ‘I’m making it worse, aren’t I—digging myself an even deeper hole?’

Noah stared at her. This wasn’t how the other dates had started. Where was the murmured conversation, the polite questioning as to jobs and musical tastes?

‘It’s only because I’m more of a blind-date veteran that I’m not in there with a matching shovel.’

She opened one eye. ‘You’re nice, Mr Smith. And chivalrous to a lady in distress.’ The other eye popped open and she tipped her head to one side. ‘How come you’ve had so many first dates if you’re such a nice guy? What’s wrong with you?’

Now it was his turn to laugh. His male pride really ought to be dented. None of his other dates had been so blunt. But none of his other dates had been quite so interesting.

‘This is only the fourth date I’ve been on.’

‘In how long?’

He shrugged. ‘A month?’

‘That’s a lot of ladies who passed you by, Noah. Tell me why I shouldn’t follow the crowd.’

Despite the fact that he was known for his cool, unruffled demeanour, he found himself laughing again.

‘I’ve got nice teeth?’

‘There is that,’ she said, her eyes twinkling. And they really were that blue. She looked at the tablecloth and scratched at a catch in the linen. ‘Sorry about the teeth thing. I was a little nervous, and when I’m nervous I tend to say the first thing that pops into my head.’

Although it seemed to get her into trouble, he found it quite endearing. And refreshing. The more successful he’d become, the more people second-guessed their every word around him. Getting an honest reaction—rather than one that had been carefully edited before it left a person’s mouth—was a wonderful novelty.

‘Shall we order?’

She breathed out a sigh, making a little round shape with her mouth. ‘That would be lovely.’

He opened the large, unwieldy menu and scanned it, even though he was pretty sure he was going to start with the carpaccio of beef and follow it with the scallops.

‘We can discuss my many faults over the appetisers,’ he said, completely deadpan.

The bright eyes appeared above the menu, laughing at him. Noah smiled to himself and paid careful attention. You could tell a lot about a person from what food they ordered. She chose the beef too. Another good sign.

No. Not a sign—he didn’t believe in signs. Just an indicator of compatibility.

She let him choose the wine and, by the time he’d narrowed the choices down to match their courses, their appetisers had arrived.

‘So, what do you do, Grace?’

She looked up from her salad—not by raising her head, but by looking at him through her lashes. A flicker of emotion passed across her face and she popped a piece of avocado in her mouth. Didn’t she want to tell him what she did for a living? It couldn’t be as bad as last Saturday’s date. A pet psychologist, for goodness’ sake!

When Grace finished chewing, she mumbled, ‘I’m a barrister.’

Not quite what he’d expected. He wondered if she’d be too tied down to her job to think about travelling with him. That might be a deal-breaker.

‘How about you? What do you do for a living?’

He opened his mouth and closed it again. Time to learn from past mistakes. The moment he mentioned thrillers and novel-writing, the game was normally up. Noah wasn’t a particularly common name and people tended to guess the connection, even if he used his totally imaginative Noah Smith alias. And he didn’t want Grace to go all giggly and stupid like some women did.

‘You do have a job at the moment, don’t you?’ Grace said.

‘Of course I do. I’m a writer.’

To his relief, Grace looked pleasantly unimpressed. ‘What kind of writer?’

He shrugged. ‘I write about military stuff. Quite boring, actually.’ Another little detour.

Grace dabbed her mouth with her napkin. ‘Are you pulling my leg?’

Rats. She could tell he was fudging the issue. Just as well he hadn’t decided to be an actor instead of a novelist. At least his characters were convincing, even if he wasn’t.

‘No,’ he said with his best poker face.

Grace looked at him long and hard. Had she guessed his secret? If she had, she wasn’t smiling and going all gooey, which was unusual.

‘So, tell me about your other dates,’ she said, her eyes never leaving his face. ‘What went wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ He took a deep breath and let his face relax out of his smile. ‘But it’s a serious business, finding a wife. I’m not going to trot off down the aisle with just anyone.’

She put her knife and fork down and stared at her salad for a few seconds. ‘You’re really looking for a wife on an Internet dating site?’

Why did his dates seem to find that so hard to believe? After all, the site in question was Blinddatebrides.com. It kind of gave the game away.

‘Aren’t you looking for a husband?’

Grace shook her head hard to loosen her hairdo a little.

‘What are you looking for, then? Love? A soulmate?’

She dropped her chin and gave him an Are you serious? look from under her lashes.

Good. She didn’t believe in those things either.

‘I’m glad we’re on the same wavelength,’ he said before taking a sip of wine.

Grace pursed her lips. ‘It’s not that I don’t believe in those things. Just that I’m not expecting to find them at Blinddatebrides.com. Nor do I want to. I mean, the whole Romeo and Juliet, all-consuming passion thing really only works for teenagers, don’t you think?’

He raised his eyebrows in what he hoped was a non-committal way. He wasn’t sure what this ‘in love’ thing was. Oh, he’d thought he’d found it once, but it had turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. What people sang about in love songs or wept over at the cinema wasn’t real. It was all an illusion—one he bought into about as much as he had the chick with the AK47.

His parents didn’t do all that hearts and flowers nonsense and they had been perfectly happy for almost fifty years. If it could work for them, it could work for him.

The evening passed quickly. Too quickly.

As Noah dug into his dessert, he decided he’d seen enough of Grace to know she wasn’t what Harry termed a ‘WAG wannabe’in disguise—definitely not a gold-digger! There was a recital at one of the local arts centres next week that he’d planned on going to, and he was going to ask Grace if she’d like to go with him.

He cleared his throat. ‘Grace?’

She looked up at him, a chocolate-dipped spoon half in her mouth. Slowly, and while Noah’s mouth began to water, she pulled it out, sucking the last of the rich brown mousse off.

‘Do you want some?’ she asked, eyebrows raised, mouth slightly smudged with chocolate. Noah meant to shake his head, but it didn’t seem to want to move.

‘Uh-huh,’ he heard himself say.

‘It is rather divine,’ she said, her eyes doing her trademark sparkle.

‘Uh-huh.’

Great. He’d won awards for his command of the English language and all he could do at present was grunt like a caveman. He watched as she carefully dipped the long spoon into her dessert and pulled out a bulging dollop of creamy chocolate mousse.

As she fed him the mousse, she unconsciously licked her lips. Noah felt a kick of desire so hard it almost rocked him out of his chair. His voice was horribly hoarse when he opened his mouth to speak. ‘Grace…?’

‘Yes.’

‘Um…’ Just like that, his brain emptied. Words circled round, but the ability to string them into coherent sentences had just vanished. He grabbed at a few of the nearest phrases in desperation. ‘Concerts!’ he blurted. ‘Do you like live music?’

Grace’s face lit up. ‘I love live music!’

It was only as his heart rate started to slow, pounding heavily in his temples, that he realised it had been racing for the last couple of minutes. He swallowed, which really wasn’t a good idea, because he tasted the chocolate mousse again and his pulse did a U-turn.

‘In fact, I was only at a concert a few days ago,’ Grace said, before turning her attention back to her dessert.

‘Really?’

She nodded and swallowed. ‘I saw this great band up in London recently—The Hover Cats—have you heard of them?’

He shook his head.

‘I don’t expect many of your colleagues share your passion, do they?’

She looked puzzled. ‘Why not? I know jazz and easy listening are popular in cafés, but that’s not all we listen to. Aren’t you being just a little bit narrow-minded?’

For the second time that evening, Noah felt as if he were under interrogation. ‘But I thought you said you were a—’

‘A barista,’ she said, folding her arms. ‘I work in The Coffee Bean further up the High Street.’

If she’d jumped up on the table and started doing the can-can, Noah couldn’t have been more shocked. She had such potential. And all at once he was intrigued, as he often was when he met someone who defied his expectations. What had led her to make those choices? Grace had the personality and energy to do anything she wanted. His brain whirred off, analysing her as if she were a character in a book.

She’d been sitting in silence as he’d absorbed the information, but now she flicked a glance at the door and started talking very fast. ‘Talking of coffee, I don’t really feel like having one—busman’s holiday and all that. Do you mind if we call it a night?’

She reached for her handbag and started to push back her seat. For the first time all evening, the confidence, the pizzazz drained away. She glanced at him for a mere moment as she smoothed down her skirt and he saw a look of both hardness and vulnerability on her face.

‘Grace, I’m sorry. In no way do I—’ He reached for her hand. ‘Don’t go.’

She shook her head. ‘You know what, Noah. This really isn’t going to work out. I think I should just leave.’ And, with that, she nimbly eased herself out of her chair and headed for the coat rack.

Known for his command of the English language? Hah.

Well, if Grace was leaving, so was he. He pulled his wallet out of his pocket, left more than enough twenty pound notes on the table to cover the bill and darted after her.

Grace didn’t even remember putting her coat on. It was only as the chilly night air hit her face that her brain whirred into action. Without making a conscious decision, she turned right and hurried down Vinehurst High Street as fast as the stupid high heels she’d stolen out the bottom of Daisy’s wardrobe would let her.

‘Grace!’

She bit the tip of her tongue between her teeth, shook her head and just kept walking. Every time she told people what she did for a living she got the same reaction, the same look. The one that said, why wasn’t she busy saving lives on the operating table or running a million-pound Internet business she’d started in her front room like other women of her generation?

Because she hadn’t been prepared to sacrifice time with Daisy to build a career, that was why. Daisy had already lost one parent and she didn’t need the other to become a dim and distant memory while childminders did all the hands-on stuff. So Grace had taken a job that let her fit her hours round the school day and didn’t require evening shifts.