Page 71 of Love Me Till Wednesday

‘Take a seat,’ he said. ‘The menu’s on the coffee table. But if you don’t like any of it, the kitchen will make pretty much anything you fancy.’

‘Thanks,’ she said as she perched on the edge of the sofa. ‘But I’m not feeling that hungry at the moment.’

‘That’s ok. We can leave it until later. Champagne?’ He’d asked room service to bring up a bottle. It was next to the menu, chilling in a silver bucket.

‘What are we celebrating?’ she asked.

‘Finding one another again? Jim?’

‘I’ll drink to Jim,’ she said.

Jim. But not the two of them. That was worrying.

‘You seem on edge. Has something happened?’ he asked as he took the foil off the champagne bottle.

She sighed. ‘I’m not sure I should be here. If I were your fiancée, I’d be upset that you were having a private dinner with your ex.’

So that was it. At least that was easily fixed. He hoped so anyway.

‘Ex-fiancée,’ he said as he half-filled the two champagne flutes and waited for the bubbles to die down. ‘She’s been cheating on me.’

Lisa looked shocked. ‘Are you sure?’

‘She’s pregnant, and the baby can’t be mine. I had the snip fifteen years ago, and the odds of it failing are minuscule. I’d say that makes it pretty clear what’s been going on.’

‘When did you find out?’

‘In the all-night cafe this morning, just before you walked in.’

‘Wow! You have had a rollercoaster of a day.’

‘You could say that.’ He took a deep breath and sat down on the opposite sofa.

‘Why didn’t you mention it earlier?’

‘It hadn’t sunk in properly. And I was too focused on what had happened with us and Jim.’ He could see the pity in her eyes. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me. It’s freed me from a difficult situation. Do you mind me asking something? When you married Greg, what kind of wedding did you have?’

She looked bemused by the change of subject. ‘We kept it simple. Mum looked after Jim while we slipped off to Vegas. Then we just had a party for everyone at the house when we got back. Why?’

He smiled. ‘I just wondered. Adrienne was planning something a lot more extravagant for our nuptials. Acrobats, a pipe band, birds of prey, a flight of doves, and god knows what else.’

‘Are birds of prey and doves a good combination?’ Lisa asked.

‘I doubt it, but I’ll never know now.’

She laughed. How he loved that sound.

‘You could say I’ve had a lucky escape,’ he said as he topped up the champagne flutes and handed one to her.

‘And so have the doves. To lucky escapes,’ she said.

‘And new beginnings,’ he added.

Lisa sat back down on the sofa. ‘That meal was delicious, thank you.’

Her appetite had miraculously returned as soon as she’d established Nick and Adrienne were no longer together. She must’ve been more on edge about it than she’d dared to admit to herself.

She’d been relieved to see that oysters were nowhere on the menu. She’d played it safe by ordering the cottage pie. Hopefully, that wouldn’t make her ill. She still had nightmares about throwing up in the street the first time she’d gone out with him.

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