Not OK Cupid: A sparkling rom-com you won't want to put down! Page 5

  Brendan, the new cook, appeared through a haze of smoke. He’d taken the morning off for an appointment, and had seemed worried about leaving Ally to cope alone all morning.

  ‘You’ve been cooking,’ he observed, before dragging a stool to the middle of the kitchen. He stood on it and waved a tea towel at the fire alarm until it stopped beeping.

  ‘I fancied a chicken salad, but I got distracted . . . anyway, I only got two orders wrong today.’

  Brendan looked pleased for her. ‘Hey, you’re doing great! Still got your order pad?’

  Ally grimaced. He’d bought her a phone case just the right size to tuck her pad into, with a springy cord that attached to her apron. For three days she hadn’t been able to put the pad down and lose it.

  ‘No,’ she confessed. ‘I forgot to unclip it before I washed my uniform, and after three hours of picking clumps of wet paper off all my black clothes, I gave up.’

  ‘Aw. I thought we’d cracked it. Maybe we can get you a little dry-wipe board that won’t dissolve in the washing machine?’

  ‘You’re so sweet.’ Ally kissed his cheek. ‘I wish Sam would stop being shy and come and meet you.’

  ‘Me too. I know I’d like any friend of yours.’

  ‘I’ll get him here before you go back to uni. Somehow.’

  Brendan smiled, then cocked his head at the radio. ‘Hey, is that “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”?’

  He grabbed her waist and led her in a solemn waltz around the kitchen, making her laugh. She was in much better spirits by the time the next customer arrived. When she cleared a table she paused at the bin, shredded Gran’s cheque into tiny squares, and buried them in a pile of soggy beans.

  After her shift she jogged home, showered, and deliberated over what to wear. Usually she didn’t care what other people thought of her outfits, as long as she felt good, but this was different. This was for Sam.

  She settled on a knee-length dress, rose-pink, that flowed out below the waist. Not tight, not too revealing, but cool enough for the weather. Sam’s mum would approve – she definitely wanted someone for her son a lot more demure than Ally had looked in her barely-there cocktail dress. And Mr Kinsell . . . well, he probably just wanted a daughter-in-law who didn’t chat him up in the garden.

  Best not to think about that: when she looked in the mirror, her cheeks matched the dress. Ally pressed her face against the cold glass and wished she could stop going red every time she thought of Mr Kinsell. God knows, if she got embarrassed every time she screwed up she wouldn’t have to buy blusher.

  An hour later, Ally sat on the train with her art supplies in a battered satchel and a mounted canvas stowed in the luggage rack. She tried to concentrate on her book but there was hardly any breeze drifting through the windows, and she was distracted by visions of Tyson Beckford rubbing ice cubes all over her skin. When Tom Hardy joined in with a sprinkler, she gave up and put the book back in her bag.

  The train didn’t have Wi-Fi but her phone was stuffed to its limits with songs. She took it out and scrolled through her library, stopping at her Blondie playlist.

  Debbie and Harry. She smiled.

  Just as the train passed from London into Essex it got stuck at a signal. She messaged Sam’s dad to say she’d be late, squirming in her seat at the memory of asking for his number. He replied to let him know when she was close to her station. With any luck he’d get Debbie ready before she arrived, so she could rush through the painting and get the hell out of there. The less time she spent talking to Sam’s dad, the less likely she was to say something incriminating.

  Finally, she got off the sweltering train, went through the ticket barriers, and opened her satnav app.

  ‘Ally?’

  Her heart sank and leapt at the same time.

  Mr Kinsell stood by the taxi rank. He was in green again, a deep sage polo that went beautifully with his brown eyes and dark lashes, and charcoal shorts, showing off calves just as stocky and muscular as his forearms.

  ‘Hi, Mr Kinsell.’

  ‘Hi, Mrs Kinsell.’

  ‘What? Where?’ She looked around guiltily for his wife, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  Mr Kinsell smirked at her when she turned back. ‘You.’

  ‘Me? Oh. Oh! Yeah. Right. Mrs Kinsell. That’s me. Well, when me and Sam finally set a date.’

  Smirking, he gestured for her to follow him to the car park.

  Ally groaned in her head and trudged after him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ally couldn’t help liking Mr Kinsell’s car, even if the last thing she wanted was to be in a confined space with him.

  Well, part of her wanted to be in extremely close quarters with him, but only if he was naked and not talking about Sam.

  The Winsor-blue Subaru had a blanket in the back covered in fur, a dog-eared map in the door, and Heart FM on the radio.

  ‘Good journey?’ he asked, as she got settled.

  That was a safe topic of conversation. Ally unclenched. ‘Not bad. It was about three thousand degrees and I’m dangerously dehydrated because I packed a bottle of olive oil instead of water. But the view was nice, and I got a free newspaper.’

  ‘Olive oil? You didn’t notice the colour?’

  ‘Nope. I’m not very observant. I’m surprised I didn’t drink it.’

  He glanced at her. ‘What’s the mortality rate like in your hospital?’

  Crap. Technical questions about nursing. What was a realistic mortality rate?

  ‘I think about . . . um . . .’ She glanced around the car for inspiration and caught him grinning. ‘Hey! Are you teasing me?’

  ‘Me?’ His eyes widened. ‘Never. I’m sure you’ve never put olive oil in a patient’s drip. Are you going to put your seat belt on?’

  ‘Oh, right. Sure.’

  He pulled out of the car park. A lazy breeze drifted in from the driver’s side window and carried his aftershave to Ally. Different today. Cedar wood, jasmine and something fruity . . . blackcurrant, maybe. It was deep, rich, enticing. She wanted to bury her nose in his neck and take breath after breath until she’d caught all the notes.

  ‘Ally?’

  She blinked, and raised her eyes from his neck to his face. The car was stationary, at traffic lights, and he looked concerned.

  ‘You were in another world.’

  She wished. A world where he was free and single and not related to any of her friends. ‘Yeah. You’ll have to get used to that, I’m afraid. I have the attention span of a goldfish with ADHD.’

  He laughed. The lights changed, and he drove off with his hand on the gearstick. Just a few inches, and he’d be brushing her thigh every time he changed up or down—

  Sam’s dad. Not a hot gardener. Man, this heat was making her randy. Well, to be fair, cold made her randy too.

  She was lost in thought again, singing along to Heart, when she heard him laughing.

  ‘What? Oh. My singing?’ Madonna was on the radio. ‘Sorry. Just pretend I’m drunk. It explains a lot of my behaviour.’

  ‘Olive oil’s pretty strong stuff.’

  ‘Yep. Sam hates my singing too. He puts Classic on so the worst I can do is hum.’

  ‘Tell him not to be so grumpy. You can sing as much as you like.’

  ‘So you can laugh at me? I’ll sit in dignified silence.’

  ‘No.’ His mouth twitched. ‘OK, I was laughing. But not at your singing. It’s just . . . it’s not “touched for the thirty-first time”.’

  ‘Huh. Actually, that makes sense. Because she probably wouldn’t be a virgin after being touched up by thirty other guys.’

  ‘Probably. Unless she really enjoys foreplay.’

  Ally watched his hand as he moved the car into fourth gear, and thought it best not to answer.

  He pulled into a small car park at the front of a block of flats. They looked modern, each window identically framed and identically spaced, the front doors all the same colour with the same style of numbering and knockers. It would
’ve been soulless, except for the borders of shrubs and flowers around the perimeter. Through an archway, there were glimpses of a lush green lawn with a curving path, and more bursts of colour at the edges.

  ‘You do the gardening, don’t you?’

  He smiled, and though he was obviously trying to look modest, she could see he was pleased. ‘I negotiated a lower rent for looking after the grounds. It doesn’t take much work. Do you need help carrying your equipment in?’

  ‘You can take the canvas. Thanks.’

  Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Painting was always fun, the dogs were cute, and perhaps Mr Kinsell’s identical twin brother would pop round and beg Ally to let him undress her and—

  ‘Ally?’

  A hand waved in front of her face, and she blinked. She was standing on a doorstep like a vacant milk bottle.

  ‘Are you an only child?’ she blurted out before she’d gathered herself.

  ‘No,’ he said, as if it were a reasonable question. ‘I have a sister and a brother. But we all live at different ends of the country.’

  She managed to stop herself asking if the brother was single.

  The best course of action was definitely to get the dog, do the painting, and leave. Preferably in complete silence from beginning to end.

  He lived in a ground-floor flat at the back of the block, overlooking a patch of rose bushes. The door opened on to Harry, whose face had been pressed up against it. He headbutted Mr Kinsell in the stomach, then bounded up to Ally and put his snout under her dress.

  ‘Harry! In.’ Mr Kinsell planted a leg either side of Harry, and shuffled him inside. ‘We’re working on guest etiquette.’

  ‘I can see it’s going well. Where’s Debbie?’

  Mr Kinsell ferried Harry through a door and shut it. Then he gestured at an open door, and Ally walked into a very clean kitchen.

  ‘Drinks first, before you mummify,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Whatever you’re having. Well, unless it’s alcohol. I’m drunk enough sober.’

  ‘No alcohol. I’ve just bought a juicer, so I’m having whatever I dropped into it this morning when I was half-asleep. All I can tell you is it’s green.’

  ‘Sounds perfect.’

  ‘You’re brave.’ He took a jug of green liquid from the fridge, added ice from the freezer and blended it into a slushie.

  Ally took a sip and tasted lime, green apple, and something else fresh and zingy. ‘Tasty. Are you on a health kick?’

  ‘Something like that. Since I stopped running with the dogs I thought I’d better make up for it, so I stopped eating red meat and bought a juicer. I miss running though. And feeling fit. You’re not helping.’

  ‘Me? What did I do?’

  ‘Sam tells us about all your running and yoga-ing and spinning, whatever that is. And you’re disgustingly young.’

  ‘Am not. I’m twenty-eight.’

  ‘Exactly. I’m forty-seven.’

  Older than she thought, but not old. He was practically a kid when he had Sam. Not that it mattered – it wasn’t the age gap that was the problem. ‘My gran’s eighty-seven and she comes to yoga with me sometimes.’

  ‘Get out of my house.’

  Ally smiled and sipped her drink. ‘I thought you were about forty when I met you.’

  He paused from rinsing out the jug and cocked his head at her. ‘Say more things like that.’

  ‘Fragile male egos.’ Ally shook her head and sighed.

  He leaned on the breakfast bar and squeezed fresh lime halves into their drinks, his muscular forearms flexing and contracting. They were tanned on the upsides, the hairs bleached blond, probably from gardening in the sun. The undersides were pale with blue veins – visible but not bulging, just how she liked. If she ran the tip of her tongue down them even the most gorilla-like men moaned. No, not this one. He’d be a sigher.

  Sam’s dad Sam’s dad Sam’s dad.

  She blinked at him like a drunk lemur. ‘Sorry, Mr Kinsell, what did you say?’

  His eyes crinkled in amusement. ‘Marcus, please. I asked if you and Sam have plans this week.’

  Oh god, questions about Sam. Ally gave it two minutes before she’d blurt out something about going to clubs to pick up men together.

  Vague was best.

  ‘Uh, not yet,’ she said. ‘We don’t really plan in advance, because I forget what we agreed. He just calls or texts and asks if I’m free, then gives me a time an hour before he actually wants me to arrive. It means occasionally I’m on time.’

  ‘Remind me never to get ill. Not if I end up in your hospital, anyway.’

  Right, he thought she was a nurse. Time to change the subject again.

  ‘Keep juicing,’ she advised. ‘So, I’d better get started while it’s still bright. Where’s my client?’

  ‘In the bedroom. Why don’t you go and get acquainted, and I’ll set up. I thought you could paint her in the garden, if that works for you. If I put her cushion out there, she’ll stay still until dinnertime.’

  The bedroom was where Marcus had shut in Harry. He didn’t seem to mind being evicted from the hall – he was lying on his back, limbs in the air, filling a diagonal patch of sunshine on the grey carpet. He thumped his tail when he saw Ally, and she rubbed circles on his stomach that made his hind legs twitch.

  In a corner of the room, Debbie lay in a huge bed very like the one in Marcus’s room back at Mrs Kinsell’s house. She opened one eye as Ally gave her a hand to smell, then went back to sleep.

  Ally manoeuvred herself between the dogs so she could stroke them both at the same time, and looked around the room. It wasn’t the beige fest that usually came with new-build flats. The walls matched the carpet, with shades of grey cleverly chosen to make the average-sized room look bigger, and a steel-blue wardrobe and bedspread. It would’ve been cold and masculine but for the paintings – a seascape with the most beautiful blues and greens, and an impressionist oil painting of a field of poppies. With the windows open and the scent of roses drifting in on summer air, the picture came alive and the bright reds and greens made the grey walls pop.

  Maybe he really did like art. Maybe she really was here just to paint Debbie.

  ‘Ready when you are, Ally,’ came his voice through the window. Ally tried to rouse Debbie, but the dog growled and refused to budge. Harry followed her into the garden, where Marcus had placed a fur-covered cushion in front of the roses. He’d arranged a blanket and a non-furry cushion for Ally, with her painting equipment sitting neatly beside them, and a little folding table. On it sat her drink, covered against the hopefully-circling insects, and an electric fan plugged into an extension cord.

  The garden was obviously communal, spanning a courtyard leading to dozens of apartments, but it was deserted apart from Marcus, bent over a stack of 70-litre compost bags. He picked one up like it weighed nothing and carried it away from Ally’s makeshift studio. The sack hit the ground with a thud, and Ally squeezed her thigh muscles as she busied herself with getting ready. Canvas first, then paints. Harry shoved his nose in her satchel as she took out her paints and, when she pushed him away, he shoved it in her cleavage instead.

  ‘Harry!’ Marcus strode over and dragged the dog away, but as soon as he was free he loped back to Ally and lay down with his head in her lap.

  ‘He likes you,’ Marcus observed, as she ruffled his head.

  ‘I got that impression. I tried to bring Debbie out, but she went all Cujo.’

  He grinned. ‘I’ll get her. Are you comfortable?’

  ‘Very.’

  He returned a minute later with Debbie in his arms, and set her down gently on her cushion. ‘She’s always loved the sun. She used to play in it, now she just sleeps. I think it soothes her arthritis. She seems stiffer in the winter, but there’s only so much the vet can do for old age.’

  His voice was normal, but it was obvious he didn’t think she’d be with him much longer. Ally replayed the way he carried the dog like
a precious china doll, and grasped her crystal.

  Marcus glanced at her, and straightened up. ‘What’s wrong? Hurt your hand?’

  ‘What? Oh, no. It’s a crystal.’

  ‘A crystal?’

  Ally appraised him and decided he wouldn’t laugh. ‘My mum does crystal healing. And gemstone healing and reiki and acupuncture and stuff I can’t pronounce. She’s a bit of a hippie, and as distracted as me, if you can believe that. Anyway, I’m usually quite upbeat—’

  He snorted with laughter, and she paused.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I mean . . . quite upbeat. In the way that water is quite wet.’

  ‘Yeah, like that.’ She cheered up. ‘But when people are sad or angry, I get these horrible black clouds come over me. Mum says I’m an empath. Gran says I have the emotional maturity of a toddler. Anyway, this crystal is supposed to protect me from other people’s energies. And it works because it reminds me of my mum and I can’t be sad when I think of Mum. Plus, I look great in pink.’

  The rose quartz was pale and pretty and went with nearly everything.

  Marcus watched the clouds as if he was chewing it over. ‘So, you’re upset?’

  ‘Not any more.’ Ally chose a paintbrush. ‘My moods change faster than my underwea—forget I said that.’

  His deep laugh was so sexy. ‘Do you mind if I stay or will I distract you? More than usual, I mean.’

  ‘You can stay, but it’s literally watching paint dry. It’ll bore the pants off you.’

  Ooh. Pants off. Boxers or briefs? Bad train of thought.

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  His smile was getting wider each time. ‘I said it won’t bore me. I’m usually out here alone in the evenings. Tell me if you get too hot or cold.’ He arranged the fan so it blew gently on Ally then sat beside her. His enticing scent was faint in the breeze but very much there, and she tried to imagine it was BO and cigarette smoke.

  Ally’s mood soared as she set up the canvas. The garden was beautiful, the only sounds were bird tweets and insects buzzing, and a warm breeze rippled her dress around her knees.

  ‘Ally?’