The Personal Shopper (31 page)

Annie just smiled as Dinah ticked him off with the words: ‘Hey! This is an old-fashioned romance. It’s progressing nicely, slowly, in a ladylike and gentlemanly way. Keep your overactive sex drive out of it.’

Connor just snorted.

Their first courses arrived, delivered by
a waiter with a pert behind
and a quite Parisian level of rudeness.

‘The soup?’ he snapped and dumped the dish in front of Connor, so that the liquid slopped over the edges of the bowl.

Annie was not sure about this restaurant. It was in its first week and had been opened by friends of Connor’s who’d had the novel idea of combining a hairdressing salon with a restaurant. As you walked in there were chairs and smart white-linen-covered tables ready for diners, but on a raised platform beyond were chairs, mirrors, washbasins and all the accoutrements of a hair salon. It didn’t make for a happy combination.

Annie could not imagine wanting to be spotted in a headful of highlight foils by people eating their lunch.

Nor would she want to eat in a place filled with the smell of hair dye, with hair clippings on the loose.

‘Do you dare me to tell the waiter there’s a hair in my soup?’ Connor whispered at them.

But this plan was thwarted by the appearance at their table of one of the owners. ‘Hey, Connor, my man, you’ve made my day!’ came the greeting from the tall, very blond, tight-pink-T-shirted man now hovering over their table.

‘Henrik!’ Connor greeted him like a long lost friend, standing up to give him a big hug. ‘This place is great!’ he gushed.

Henrik wanted to know what Connor and his guests thought of the food, the décor, the venue, everything.

All three told him as many complimentary and flattering things as possible until finally he went away, promising the chef would be out to meet them later.

Connor tried to look as thrilled as he could at the prospect of this.

‘So, c’mon,’ Connor urged Annie, ‘cough! It’s Sunday afternoon, you arrive at Gray’s house for lunch and . . . ? Take us from there.’

‘OK, OK . . . Gray was looking good,’ she relented. ‘He’d obviously made a full rec
overy from . . . the Jacuzzi incid
ent.’

‘Wearing?’ Dinah asked, suppressing a smirk.

‘Black,’ Annie replied. ‘Black jeans, black shirt, black leather flip-flops and really nice feet.’

‘Mmmm.’ Connor was impressed with the detail. ‘And how’s his hair? Real? Or rug?’

‘It’s just
dye
d
,’ Annie replied, a little coolly, ‘I’ve already told you that.’

‘Never mind, anyway, Annie gets the hots . . . for Mr
‘
Grecian 2000
’
. Excellent!’ Connor noted. ‘So did you get down to it straight away or was there alcohol involved first?’

‘You don’t have to tell him!’ Dinah insisted.

‘Yes you do!’ Connor insisted. ‘We’re family. Think of all we’ve done for you. We deserve to kno
w about Annie’s first romantic encounter in ages
.’

‘We had lunch,’ Annie continued, ignoring as many of Connor’s remarks as she could. ‘Gray made seafood risotto with champagne. He
cooked
with the Tai
ttinger!’

Connor looked impressed.

‘Then we ate, and talked and drank the rest of the bottle.’

‘Aha . . .’ Connor prompted, scraping up the last mouthful of soup from the bottom of his bowl. ‘And
 
then? Were you ready for some dental work? An intricate mouth examination?’

Dinah dug her elbow into his ribs sharply.

‘We went to the sofa . . . Steady!’ Annie put her hand over her wine glass, so Connor couldn’t top it up any further. ‘And it got . . . nicely steamy,’ she decided on.

She’d liked Gray’s kisses. His mouth was very clean and probing. The black leather sofa had been too slippery though. She’d kept having to put an arm down on the floor to keep them both from sliding right off and this had been distracting.

His careful questioning – ‘Can I undo this? Would that be OK with you?’ – had been a mixture of charming and annoying.

But the prospect of undoing his perfectly ironed black Hugo Boss shirt and running her tongue along the fragrant, freshly showered, tanned skin beneath had begun to make her feel pleasantly hot and bothered.

Opening one button at a time, she’d discovered that his nipples were small and his chest smooth and hairless.

‘And did ya?’ Connor asked.

‘Kinda,’ Annie replied.

‘Oh, no, the Viagra didn’t let him down again, did it?’ Connor cut to the chase.

‘No!’ Annie insisted. Lowering her voice, she added, ‘They’ve worked out a new dose for him at the hospital, one which won’t make him dizzy . . . and believe me, it’s quite impressive.’

‘Oh yeah!’ Connor encouraged.

‘Like a ramrod,’ Annie added.

‘You lucky girl! Maybe you should introduce us,’ Connor couldn’t help himself.

There was a pause and even Dinah had to admit to herself she was quite interested in hearing the rest now.

‘Well . . . were you ramrodded?’ Connor asked with a wicked grin. ‘Brace yourself, Annie, I’m a dentist. Brace yourself . . . geddit?’

‘Oh ha ha,’ came from Dinah.

‘Er . . . no. It was all a bit too much, too soon. I ducked out,’ Annie confessed.

Did she want Connor to know the nitty-gritty? That making use of the shiny sofa surface, she’d slid herself out of Gray’s heated kissing and easily towards his navel.

‘You went oral on the dentist, didn’t you?’ came Connor’s merciless question.

‘I’m not answering,’ she told him.

‘Did he ask you to open wide? And try not to swallow?’ he teased, paying no attention to the waiter who was dumping their main courses in front of them now.

‘I’m
not
answering!’ she told him.

‘Stop it, Connor,’ Dinah warned.

‘It’s been a little confusing,’ Annie confided. ‘There I was, convinced I was desperate to have sex with the guy . . . desperate to have sex full stop . . . And when it came down to it . . . well . . . it was too big a step to take all at once.’

‘How did he react?’ Dinah asked.

‘He was fine. Charming . . . very grateful,’ Annie told them.

‘I bet he was,’ said Connor, and Annie’s cheeky smile returned. ‘And afterwards?’ he prompted.

‘It was very comfortable. We snuggled on the sofa, cuddled up and we were able to talk about things. He’s really nice, you know. I wish you two would give
 
him a break. He said he really missed having a wife.’

‘His wife?’ Dinah checked.

‘No. A wife.’

Annie had asked Gray the same question. ‘No, definitely not missing my wife,’ he’d told her. ‘She was .
 
. . difficult to live with. But someone to come home to, someone to share even the very small things with – I miss that.’

His fingers had found hers and he’d squeezed her hand tightly.

‘I miss that too,’ she’d told him. ‘Obviously I have the children, and they’re fantastic . . . don’t know what I’d do without them, but being part of a couple, sharing your life . . . it’s very special,’ she’d said, feeling slightly nervous that she’d overexposed herself, overstepped a line.

But Gray had just nodded and squeezed her hand again.

‘We got into his rooftop jacuzzi,’ she told Connor and Dinah.

‘Nice. Very nice,’ said Dinah. ‘Left the ornaments in peace this time.’

‘Naked or costumes?’ Connor asked.

‘Costumes. I told you, he’s very gentlemanly and very proper.’

‘Then he drove me home, but we made a bit of a detour via the shops.’

‘Mmmm, this sounds good,’ was Connor’s comment.

‘Aha – it
was
good,’ Annie agreed. ‘He bought me a very nice pair of shoes.’

‘Show,’ said Dinah.

This was easy, Annie just lifted a foot up into the air. All her waking hours since Sunday had been spent with her feet
in these adorable pointy pumps;
palest biscuity gold leather with just a hint of glitter to them. She gazed at them fondly. They were just so pretty: girlish, ready to party, light-hearted and Gray had be
en very good at shoe-shopping. He s
eemed to understand why shoes were such a tonic: because you were never too fat for shoes . . . you’d never crept up a size without noticing. They were the perfect present to yourself, they came in a box, wrapped in tissue paper, all pristine and unbroken.

‘Look and be jealous, Dinah,’ said Connor, stroking the shoe. ‘Bryan could really learn from this man.’

‘How?’ Dinah asked a little sharply.

‘He’d get so much more sex if he took you out shopping afterwards, wouldn’t he? For Miu Miu, you’d probably do some very filthy things.’

‘Bryan doesn’t need to buy me anything,’ Dinah huffed, but quickly followed it with, ‘But if Gray wants to treat Annie, that’s lovely. Now we’re asking you abou
t your sex life,’ she told him ‘And you will not be spared.’

Connor looked at them in a seriously unusual, blissed-out kind of way, then tugged up his white T-shirt. Right acros
s his rippling stomach from hip-
bone to armpit was a fine red line – intermittent, as if caused by a slim chain rather than a cord. There were also deep red pinch marks on either side of his rosy nipples and a brand new raw-looking metal stud in his navel.

‘It’s love, definitely love,’ Connor said. ‘Where would you like me to start?’

Dinah let out a little scream before saying, ‘It’s OK, we’re fine. Really.’

Connor got hold of his wine glass and held it up, Dinah did likewise, then Annie too.

‘To falling in love,’ Connor offered.

Annie was sitting, feet up, on the big sofa holding a vast bowl of popcorn, with Owen curled up on one side
 
of her and Lana on the other. The two takeaway pizza boxes were on the floor in front of them and all three were in their pyjamas, because it was Tuesday night, DVD night. Whenever possible on Tuesdays, the three of them snuggled up together for a pizza and an evening of giggling through something as hilarious as Blockbuster had to offer.

When the phone began to ring, Annie leaned forward, but Lana instructed her: ‘Leave it to the answering machine. This is a really good bit, I don’t want to pause it.’

‘No, you don’t have to,’ Annie insisted. ‘But I think I better—’

‘Muuuum,’ Lana complained. ‘Don’t! I’ll have to move my feet, I’ll get all uncomfortable.’

‘Lana!’ Annie stood up, pushing Lana’s legs away from her lap. ‘I won’t be long.’

Lana didn’t make any reply, Owen stayed glued to the screen, so Annie hurried out of the room to take the call in her bedroom before it was too late.

‘Hello there, lovely to hear your voice . . .’

When Annie heard those words, she was delighted to have guessed correctly: it was Gray calling.

She lay back on her bed to enjoy the chat, listening with interest to what had been going on in the Holden dental world today.

After she’d imparted her news, they began to plan their next meeting.

‘I’d like to see a lot more of you,’ Gray purred. ‘A lot, lot more.’

Annie’s attention was distracted by Lana coming into the room.

‘Are you on your own?’ Gray was asking.

‘No, not any more.’