Page 183 of Falling for You
He meets my eyes and my heart pulls. ‘It’s Nate.’
I smile at him. ‘Hi Nate. I’m Annie.’
‘Is it too late for me to ask you on a date?’ He holds my gaze steadily.
I pause, looking around the room. Tanya is still engrossed with ponytail man, looking pretty happy.
‘Right now?’ I ask.
‘No, not now!’ Nate laughs, and then reads my expression. ‘Unless you want to? Yeah, now is good. Not here though, right? I want more than two minutes this time.’
‘Okay,’ I say, pulling out my phone and sending a message to Tanya. ‘Let’s go. I know a place.’
‘I can’t believe this is where you’ve taken me for our first date.’
‘You said you’d never tried British cuisine!’
‘Yeah, butthis? Is this really the best London can do? What about Gordon Ramsay?’
‘He’d love a kebab. I mean, it’s technically Turkish but trust me, it’s part of our culture.’
Okay, so I didn’t leave the Clapham Arms with the intention of taking Nate to a kebab shop, but the temptation was too great to ignore. He started babbling about how he moved to London to experience life here and then admitted that he’d never had a Saturday night kebab.
I mean, he was practically asking for it.
We step forward in the queue. I glance back at Nate and swallow a laugh. He looks horrified.
‘I’ll order for us, shall I?’ I grin, taking Nate’s silence as a yes. ‘Two lamb shish, please.’
The guy behind the counter nods as I tap my card on the machine. Nate jumps in alarm. ‘Oh no, have you just paid? This is getting worse by the second.’
I laugh. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I’d never take a woman on a first date to a kebab shop, let alone let her pay.’
‘I wanted to pay.’
‘So did I!’
I pull myself up onto one of the stools and place my bag on the table. It’s a tiny kebab shop, with lurid yellow lights and brown tables. In about three hours, the place will be overflowing with drunk, famished Londoners. But for now, it’s just us eating in.
It’s funny. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to recognise him in a line-up of men. It was so dark when we met and he was wearing a mask. And it was over just as quickly as it had begun. But tonight it was like as soon as I set eyes on him, my body seemed to know who I was facing before my brain did. Something just switched inside me, and that was that.
He’s better-looking than I remember. He has dark, thick hair which is curly and close to his head and a beard that runs across his strong jaw. His eyes are green and sparkling, and his arms are covered in strings of tattoos.
He’s gorgeous.
I hop back off my seat as our order is ready and pass him the yellow polystyrene container. I snap mine open and look down at the sea of school-bus-yellow chips, shredded salad and layers of meat. I catch the look of horror onNate’s face as he takes in his own portion and burst out laughing.
‘What?’ He laughs nervously.
‘You look like I’m about to give you poison.’
‘I’m worried you are.’
‘It’s nice!’ I say. ‘Everyone in London loves it. Trust me, it’ll be rammed in here within a few hours.’
He picks up a cut of meat dubiously and drops it back into the box.
