Page 30 of The Twelve Dates of Christmas
His smile was warm and his posture relaxed, and Kate thought there probably wasn’t much that rattled him.
It was down to Kate now. The rep looked at her with a cross between hope and pleading. It would be churlish to make the rep’s life difficult and pointless to force Sam to continue their date when he clearly wanted to be with someone else.
“Of course,” said Kate graciously. “No problem at all.”
The rep visibly relaxed.
“Thank you!” she said, and introduced them. “Oliver, this is Kate. Kate, Oliver.”
And she scurried off before they had the chance to change their minds.
Oliver sat down.
“Hello,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ll be your consolation prize for the evening.”
They hit it off instantly.
“This isn’t really my thing,” said Oliver. “My mates signed me up for it because they’re fed up with my, and I quote, lackluster love life.”
“Oh dear.” Kate laughed. “Is it that bad?”
“Put it this way,” said Oliver. “Lackluster would be an improvement.”
Kate considered her own love life. It had been so long since she’d had sex, she worried her hymen might have grown back. Kate raised the shot glass that the barman had just filled with blue liquid.
“Here’s to an end to lackluster love lives,” she said.
“Amen to that,” said Oliver.
They clinked shot glasses, knocked back the blue liquid, and coughed and spluttered on the strong liquor.
Oliver was into rock climbing and, ironically given his choice of clothing, was a tree surgeon by profession. He was impressed that Kate knew her way around a climbing wall—thanks to Dan—and even more impressed by her design credentials; their shared love of nature made for easy conversation.
“It seems to me,” said Kate after her second Slippery Nipple, “that there are two distinct camps at these events.”
“Go on,” said Oliver, draining a Sex on the Beach and checking the ingredients for the next cocktail.
“Well, there’s the ‘just haven’t found the right one yet’ camp and the ‘found the right one and lost them’ camp,” she said.
“Actually,” said Oliver, “there are three. You’re forgetting the ‘I’m just here for a shag’ camp. And don’t go thinking that’s just a bloke thing,” he went on. “On my first date we didn’t get onat all! We both agreed we didn’t want to see each other again. And then she suggested that we might as well have sex anyway so it wasn’t a wasted evening.”
“Wow!” said Kate.
“On my life.” Oliver handed her a glass. “Screaming Orgasm?” he asked.
Kate took the drink and sipped it.
“Don’t mind if I do,” she said. “At least your date turned up. My first couldn’t be bothered.” She hiccupped and almost slid off the stool but recovered herself.
“Aw, that sucks,” said Oliver. “He was clearly an idiot.” And he poured himself a double measure of something green.
An hour and a half later and Kate and Oliver were well and truly hammered. They had fixed themselves something that loosely resembledthe recipe for a Sex on My Face and retired to a couple of leather armchairs in the corner.
“So you’re a found-’em-and-lost-’em,” Kate slurred. “And I’m a jus-aven’t-found-the-righ-one-yet.Hic.”
“Yep,” said Oliver. “I am a self-confessed idoit, I mean indoit...”
“You mean idiot,” said Kate helpfully.
