Sweet Temptation (32 page)

I slid into my seat, and he leaned over to kiss my cheek, his face soft against mine. He was wearing a crisp, pale blue striped shirt, his face was pinkly clean-shaven, and he smelled faintly of sandalwood. Ohhhh . . .
yes.
And here I was, Lauren Malone, his date for the night. I could hardly contain myself.

‘You look fantastic,’ he said, his voice low and tickly in my ear.

‘Thank you,’ I managed to say, blushing through my make-up.

He took my hand in his. ‘It’s nice to be with a woman who makes an effort,’ he said. ‘I find that very attractive. Very feminine.’

I squeezed his fingers between mine. ‘You’ve scrubbed up pretty well yourself,’ I said. That was the understatement of the year. He looked like a male model, truly – the sort of person you can’t quite believe is real. The sort of person who shines out even in a crowded room.

He ordered us some bread and wine. I would have preferred red, but he said the Sancerre was excellent and, at £35 a bottle, I didn’t feel I could quibble. Besides, he was a chef, wasn’t he? He knew about wine. I would trust him and keep my mouth shut for once – a fact that both thrilled and unnerved me. It wasn’t like me to be subservient, but maybe I’d give it a go tonight.

I could hardly read the menu, I felt so jittery. The bread basket arrived containing a mouth-watering mixture of sourdough, olive tapenade and polenta. Ooh . . . this evening was getting better and better. How I loved bread, and how I had missed it and all its yummy calories.

I grabbed a piece of sourdough and nibbled it, luxuriating in the flavour and texture. Mmmmmm. My taste buds were having a party, they were so excited, while I was trying not to think about the fact that this bread was completely undoing all my good dieting work. Ah well, it was worth it. I would pick at a salad for the main course, I promised, and try to hold back on the wine . . .

Then I almost choked as I felt Joe’s thigh pressing insistently against mine under the tablecloth. Blood rushed to my face immediately – and several other parts of my anatomy, too. Whoa. What with the bread dissolving so deliciously in my mouth at the same time, it was quite the most erotic experience I’d had all year.

‘So, how was your day?’ he asked, and I began talking nervously and rather quickly about shopping with the girls and the German market in town and . . . oh, anything, really – my mouth seemed to be working on overdrive.

He didn’t seem to be paying much attention, though. ‘You really do look hot,’ he interrupted in a throaty murmur. ‘I’m wondering if I’ll be able to make it through the starter without grabbing you.’

‘Oh,’ I said, somewhat taken aback. Pleased, obviously. Delighted, in fact. ‘Is that so?’ I purred, running my foot up his trouser leg.

‘Mmmm,’ he replied. ‘I’m looking forward to getting to know you
much
better tonight.’ His words were loaded with innuendo, and I felt a shiver of anticipation run right through my Magic Pants. (Well, they trembled slightly, anyway. The material was so rubbery and unyielding, even a tremble was saying something.) He took my hand again and started stroking it with his thumb, tracing slow – oh, just unbearably slow – circles on my skin.

I was quivering for him already. ‘Me too,’ I said. We looked into each other’s eyes and I saw that his pupils were dilated. I was sure mine were huge and wanton with lust, too. Blimey. Sexy Joe wanted to have sex with me. ME.

Did he expect to have sex with me
tonight
, though? I wondered, not sure whether to feel horny or panicked. I hadn’t assumed as much. I hadn’t packed my toothbrush as Maddie had advised. I wasn’t even wearing nice underwear, just those skin-tight, decidedly unsexy big pants that were squeezing me so tight I felt light-headed.

I was beginning to dissolve into a puddle of longing, so I changed the subject to something safer. ‘Tell me a bit about yourself,’ I said. ‘How did you get into cooking?’

He shrugged. ‘Well, I’ve always been good with my hands,’ he smirked. Oooer, Mrs. ‘And for me, creating delicious food is an art form. I look upon myself as a modern da Vinci, a Van Gogh in the kitchen . . .’ I was about to make a crack about watching out for sharp knives near his ears when I realized he was deadly serious.

‘. . . because the food experience should not be just about taste,’ he went on. ‘It must appeal to all the senses – the eye and the nose as well as the tongue. It should be savoured, revered, fully appreciated . . .’

Blimey, I thought. He was only a flipping cook. Still, I could go along with the savouring, revering and appreciating, so . . .

‘There’s nothing worse than people who
don’t
appreciate good food,’ he went on, chomping into some of the olive bread and talking through his mouthful. ‘These women you see turning a salad over with their fork and forbidding themselves the pleasure of enjoying a proper meal . . . pathetic. A person’s appetite for food is strongly linked to their sexual appetite, in my experience. Wouldn’t you agree, Lauren?’

‘I . . .’ I began. I’d been thinking that for someone so passionate about food appreciation, he didn’t seem to have noticed that he’d just wolfed down one piece of the olive bread and was now waving the other one around like a baton as he spoke. However, his use of the phrase ‘sexual appetite’ had thrown me. ‘Yes,’ I said meekly in the end. Was he going to
eat
that olive bread? I wondered. Because there had only been two pieces and I’d been hoping to try one. He was using that last bit to prod the air for emphasis, so I didn’t like to ask.

I sipped my wine and listened to him talk at great length about his career, how he was the best chef in Birmingham – no, the West Midlands, no, actually the country – and how he had plans to open his own restaurant chain that would knock Gordon Ramsay into oblivion and . . .

He liked to talk, I had to give him that. Loved the sound of his own voice. And yeah, okay, so it was a
nice
voice – low and sexy, the sort of voice you could imagine whispering raunchy suggestions into your ear in the bedroom – but all the same, I was beginning to wish I’d never asked about his flaming cheffing now. I kept trying to interject, to steer the conversation away from him and how brilliant he was, but he was an unstoppable force, ploughing relentlessly on. And on. And on.

After a while, I started to feel as if I wasn’t there, as if I could be anybody sitting opposite him. He didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in what I had to say, in my personality. So much for ‘getting to know me better’. The only thing he seemed to want to get to know was whether I had tights on or stockings, judging by the way his hand was creeping enquiringly under the edge of my dress.

Okay. Like that. I had the picture. He didn’t want to date someone who had their own mind, their own topics of conversation. He just wanted someone who’d look good on his arm, someone he could boast to, someone whose knickers he could pull off at the first opportunity (he’d have a job pulling mine off, though, the amount of wrestling and heaving it had taken me to get them on in the first place). And while I was flattered that he thought I was attractive enough to be seen in public with (gee, thanks, Joe), the truth hit me like a ton of bricks: that this wasn’t enough for me. I remembered the compatability test I’d run for the pair of us on the office computer.
Computer
says no . . .

I was kind of siding with the computer now. Lauren says no, too.

‘Obviously it was a mistake, me not getting that Michelin star,’ he was droning now, ‘but these inspectors are idiots half the time – they wouldn’t recognize high-class food if it was shoved in their faces . . .’

His leg-pressing was starting to annoy me. I no longer felt like jelly every time he looked at me. I felt . . . bored. Disappointed. What a let-down, I kept thinking. What a tedious let-down Joe Smith was turning out to be.

The food was good, at least. The food was the best thing about the date. I had the beef and it was an orgasm in itself, the way it melted on my tongue. Certainly it was the biggest thrill I’d be getting that evening, I thought glumly. He was still playing footsie under the table, and it was really getting on my nerves now – not only because I felt completely turned off by him, having listened to him bang on for twenty minutes, but also because he was clearly so confident that he’d got me in the bag, so presumptuous that I’d be unable to resist his advances. Ugh. I don’t think so, matey. He was beautiful, yes, but that wasn’t enough. I had barely cracked a smile all evening, let alone enjoyed myself.

Bollocks.

My phone went just as we came to the end of our main course. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, taking it out of my bag. Normally I’d have let it ring through to voicemail – answering one’s phone over dinner is kind of rude, I always think – but he’d been such godawful company all night, I was glad of a chance to interrupt his bragging.

Patrick
, the display read, and I took the call gratefully. ‘Hello?’

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Sorry to interrupt, just wondered if . . .’

‘A car accident?’ I gasped theatrically, clutching a hand to my throat. ‘Oh no. Is she badly hurt?’

There was a pause. ‘Ahhh. It’s going that well, then?’ he said dryly. He cottoned on quickly, did Patrick.

‘Oh God, that’s awful,’ I went on, widening my eyes. ‘Of course I will. Tell her to hang in there, I’m on my way.’

I closed the phone up and pretended to sniffle. ‘Joe – I’m so sorry, I’m going to have to dash,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘My sister’s been hurt in a car crash and is in intensive care. Thanks for a lovely evening, but I’ve got to go. Bye.’

He was staring at me, half-rising to his feet as if to embrace me, but I’d had my fill. I didn’t want him to touch me. Without waiting for his reply, I turned and ran out of there, my heart thumping as I went.

‘So how bad, on a scale of one to ten?’ Patrick asked, sloshing red wine into an enormous balloon glass. On leaving the restaurant, I’d jumped in a cab and gone straight over to his flat, and I was only just beginning to recover.

‘A thousand,’ I said, rolling my eyes and swigging the wine gratefully. He’d had two glasses already set out when I arrived, bless him. ‘Maybe even a thousand and one. He got a few points’ credit for being so utterly handsome, and the food was yummy, but . . .’

‘But then he blew it by being an arrogant shit,’ Patrick finished. ‘As predicted by moi.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Thirsty, are we?’

I’d somehow managed to drain almost the entire glass of wine. So much for being abstemious and sticking to my diet. ‘Parched,’ I replied, holding the glass out to be refilled. God, but it was a relief to be there in Patrick’s place, with its beautiful chocolate-brown soft-leather sofa and pale mohair cushions, the dim lighting, the huge framed Chagall print on the wall and Goldfrapp on the stereo. My place was still half painted, and although the takeaway menus and slovenly ways were now a thing of the past, it didn’t feel as if it would ever be as grown-up a living space as Patrick’s.

‘Cheers, mate,’ I said as he topped me up. I was feeling better by the second. ‘Honestly, I’ve never been so glad to see your name come up on my phone. You must have picked up my telepathic distress signal.’ I sighed. ‘And you were right, as always. He was just awful. So full of himself. I don’t think a girlfriend of his would be allowed to have an opinion about anything. Maybe some women like that, but me . . .’ I pulled a face.

‘But you’re a successful businesswoman, you’re smart and gorgeous and funny, and you don’t need to waste time on pigs like him,’ Patrick said. He was finishing my sentences far better than I was able to tonight.

‘Absolutely,’ I said, pulling out a huge slab of Dairy Milk from my handbag. I’d made the cab stop at the end of Patrick’s road so that I could buy it, as well as two bottles of red wine and forty fags. Stuff it, I might as well go for broke. ‘But do you know the weird thing? I don’t feel as crushed as I thought I might. I mean . . . yeah, I’m disappointed that he’s not the complete package – he’s got the looks, deffo, but in terms of personality, I’ve had better dates with . . .
cockroaches
. But I don’t feel absolutely devastated.’ I started breaking up the Dairy Milk and popped one square into Patrick’s mouth and one into mine. ‘Because I deserve better, like you say.’

‘Hear, hear,’ Patrick said, raising his glass. ‘I knew he was shallow, the way he only fancied you when you’d lost a bit of weight. If he’d had any sense, he’d have fallen for you the first time he ever spoke to you.’ His eyes flicked to the clock. ‘He just wasn’t good enough for you.’

‘No, he wasn’t, was he?’ I replied. ‘The Compatability Crunch program was right after all.’

He laughed. ‘You what?’

I blushed, but before I had to explain myself, the doorbell went.

‘Ah,’ he said.

‘Are you expecting someone?’ I asked in surprise.

‘Um . . . yeah. Steven said he’d pop round,’ he replied, getting to his feet and not quite meeting my eye. ‘You’re welcome to stay, though.’

It was then that I clocked just how immaculate the flat was. How pristine Patrick was looking, how nice he smelled. How there had been two glasses set out in preparation . . .

I jumped up, almost spilling my wine. ‘You should have said!’ I cried, feeling terrible. ‘I’ll go, don’t worry. I don’t want to interrupt anything.’

‘It’s fine, you can stay,’ he said again. ‘Honestly, Lauren. There’s no need to rush away.’

But I was already stuffing the chocolate into my bag, trying to clear the crumbs off his smoked-glass coffee table without smearing them across the just-cleaned surface. I heard the door open and soft voices. Then a silence, as if they were kissing. There was no way I was hanging around being a gooseberry tonight.

‘Steven, this is my friend Lauren,’ Patrick said, coming back into the room just then. His eyes were dark and excited, but there was tension around his mouth too. ‘Lauren, this is Steven.’

Steven was tall and blond with a St Tropez tan and amused blue eyes. He was wearing a shirt which had a black and white photographic floral print, and smart jeans. I didn’t have to look at his shoes to know they would be expensive and classy. He was perfect for Patrick.