Page 20 of Fundamentals in Flirting

“We can take Ted home after dinner,” Henry persisted.

Clara leant towards him and with a mischievous smile whispered something in his ear. He went a little pink and coughed a few times. She looked to us with a subtle wink and said, “But you’re going to make sure Hannah gets back safely, right, Ted?”

“Right!” Teddy beamed gratefully at Clara, before turning back to me. “Plus I still owe you dinner, so I can do this after you’ve sorted the cow out, can’t I?”

I nodded as Teddy helped me into my jacket. “I’m so sorry to bail. It was really nice to meet you all. Sorry about the wine,” I said feebly, giving everyone a small wave, and going over to kiss my parents on the cheek.

“Come on, Hannah, we’ve got a cow to cure. Bye, everyone,” Teddy said, his hand on the small of my back. He guided me towards the exit, accompanied by an obvious and disapproving tut from my mother as we left the devastation that I had caused in our wake and headed for the door.

“Let’s hope you’re a better architect than you are an actor,” I said when we were outside, and I started to snort-laugh as I thought about his performance. “That was the worst collection of accents I’ve ever heard.”

Teddy squeezed my waist lightly before letting me go and chuckling.

“I don’t know what you mean. That was a flawless execution of a series of regional dialects. Shall we get some fish and chips and go to Coatley Park to eat them?”

Coatley Park was a tucked-away tourist hotspot with panoramic Cotswolds views and scenic leisurely walks. It was also known locally as Dogger’s Drive, for, well, obvious reasons, and it was best avoided after dark unless you wanted to see something that you maybe weren’t quite ready to see. It had been an eye-opener for sure when I’d pulled in there to take a call after a late-night check on a colicky horse last week. It had left me wanting to burn my eyeballs with a blowtorch.

“All right, but we leave before it gets dark.”

Teddy laughed. “Spoilsport.”

I dropped him at the fish and chip shop to put our orders in, while I parked up in a side street opposite. Through the window, I could see him leaning against the counter. He seemed relaxed and was smiling at the woman in a hairnet and white hat who was scooping chips into cardboard trays. She seemed familiar, and as I pushed the door open and she glanced up, I suddenly found myself staring into the surly face of my teenage nemesis, Mandy Shaw.

Urgh! Would this bollocks of a trip down memory lane never end?

“There you are, Hannah,” Teddy said pleasantly, “I was just telling Mandy how we’d run into each other again.”

“Were you, now,” I muttered.

“Wow, it’s so good to see you, Hannah! How are you?” Mandy asked, her voice falsely cheery and bright, but she couldn’t disguise the undercurrent of meanness that I recalled from our schooldays.

So, she hadn’t changed much then. How lovely.

“I’m fine, thanks, Mandy. You?”

“Better now I’ve seen Teddy again,” she said gustily, batting her eyelashes at him, and he grinned in reply.

It was a stark reminder that he was the biggest flirt known to man (or woman), seemingly able to schmooze his way around anyone he chose. It was a fact I needed to remind myself of whenever he levelled the full force of that charisma at me. I was definitely not going to let myself fall for that, because another overtly charming but adulterous man was definitely not what I needed in my life. I needed to remember once bitten, twice shy, and likely to commit murder, in my case.

“Ted says you’re the new vet at the practice down the road?”

“Yep.”

Teddy shot me a puzzled expression at my clipped answers, clearly picking up on my reluctance to speak.

“Wow, that’s cool,” she said in a tone that indicated she thought it was anything but cool.

“But Ted is an architect, and that reallyiscool,” I said sarcastically.

“Oh yeah, that really is cool,” she breathed and gazed back over at him, but he was scowling at me, clearly trying to work out what on earth was going on here.

“And you work in a fish and chip shop, Mandy, so that’s really, reallycool.” Ooh, horrible Hannah had rocked up today, and both Teddy and Mandy gawped at me, open-mouthed. This was monumentally petty and nasty, not really like me at all, and I was suddenly ashamed of myself for being such a cow. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

Mandy finished wrapping up the food with a flourish, placing the packages into a bag and handing them to Teddy, her fingers accidentally (on purpose) brushing against his. “It’s been so lovely to catch up again, Ted. Why don’t we go out for a drink sometime?”

Teddy smiled and gave her some cash. “Sure. I’ll let you know.”

Without waiting for the change, he firmly ushered me out of the shop and towards my parked car.

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