‘Congratulations!’ he says grinning. ‘That makes two of us. Aren’t we the lucky ones?’
I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not but he continues grinning down at me, and his dark brown eyes blink innocently as he awaits my reply.
‘Look, I’m not prepared to have this conversation out in the open like this,’ I tell him. ‘There are … things I would like to discuss with you.’
‘Really?’ I see his brows raise under the brim of his cap. ‘Sounds intriguing. I’ll be finished here in …’ He looks at his watch. ‘Maybe an hour. Do you want to meet me in that pub on the harbour at say … six? We can discuss all you like then when I’ve got a pint in my hand.’
‘I assume you mean The Merry Mermaid?’
He nods.
I sigh. ‘Well, if you’re not prepared to come down and talk to me now …’ I wait hopefully in case he changes his mind.
‘I’m not.’
‘In that case then, yes, I guess I’ll have to meet you at six.’
‘Great.’ His head disappears from the window. ‘If that’s all,’ he adds, re-appearing again after a few seconds, ‘someof us shop owners have work to do.’ His head disappears again and the window is shut.
I roll my eyes and shake my head in exasperation. Then I turn away smartly and walk back down the street.
Grrr, what a very irritating man, but if I wanted to find out more about his shop then I was going to have to do as he asked and meet him at the pub later.
There is nothing, other than Molly and Barney, that is more important to me than my little shop and its staff. I’ve worked incredibly hard to get it to where it is today, and I’m determined to discover whether this newcomer to St Felix is about to put our success under threat.
Four
‘So who is this date with exactly?’ Molly asks, as I sit at my bedroom dressing table in our flat above the shop attempting to pull a brush through my long thick hair.
‘I keep telling you, it’s not a date!’ I insist, finally getting the brush through the stubborn knot I’d been pulling at for the last few seconds.
I stare at myself in the mirror. Even my critical gaze can see I look better now than half an hour ago when I’d finished up at the shop and grabbed a shower. It made a nice change to see my hair down. I usually wore it pulled up in a high ponytail, partly because it was easier in the shop, and partly because of the strong sea breeze that always seemed to gust around St Felix. ‘I’m simply meeting up with the owner of the new art shop that Noah told me about.’
‘To give him grief, right? Sebastian told me.’
‘No,’ I say, wondering if I should put some make-up on. I did look a little pale and heavy around the eyes this evening. ‘I merely want to find out what sort of equipment he’s going to be stocking, and whether it will affect our business in any way. I don’t know if his shop willonlybe selling art supplies or whether it might broaden its scope …’
‘Is he hot?’ Molly asks.
‘Who?’
‘The guy that you met earlier. What’s his name?’
‘He didn’t say.’ I reach for some lip gloss. ‘We never got around to exchanging names.’
‘A blind date!’ Molly squeals excitedly. ‘Cool.’
‘I think you’ll find that a blind date is one where you know the name of the person but you haven’t actually seen them before. This is the other way around.’
‘So, I’ll ask again then. Is he hot?’
I turn away from the mirror towards her. Molly is lying casually on her stomach on my bed, keeping one eye on the phone in her hand and the other on me getting ready.
‘Not that it makes any difference but, no, I don’t think so. I only saw him through an upstairs window, and he had a hat on.’
Molly thinks about this. ‘What sort of hat?’
‘Er … a baseball cap, I think. Why?’
