Up Close and Personal (3 page)

Juliet came to stand beside him, resting her head against his arm. ‘Don’t be silly, darling. He’s just a bit prim and proper, that’s all. He’ll soon loosen up once he gets to know
you.’ She wrapped her arm round his waist. ‘I’ll take you on a guided tour later, if you like. There’s tons to show you.’

‘I bet there is; I can’t wait to see it,’ Dante said, trying to sound as if he meant it. He knew he should be excited about the prospect of exploring his new home, but instead all he felt was a sense of being hopelessly out of his depth.

2

It was lunchtime in Loxwood High Street and Chez Gaston was bustling with life. Sitting at one of the restaurant’s coveted window tables was journalist Yasmin O’Brien. The exotic product of an Irish father and a Malaysian mother, she was tall and olive-skinned, with glossy chestnut hair and startling green eyes. Since making her entrance, five minutes earlier, Yasmin had drawn plenty of admiring glances, but she was too engrossed in her mobile phone to notice them. She’d just received a text from her current lover, David, a fellow journalist, who lived in London. They’d met at a press conference in the city and, after some flirtatious small talk as they waited for the conference to begin, David had invited her to join him for dinner that evening. Dinner became a nightcap at Yasmin’s hotel and so on to bed. They’d been seeing each other for nearly two months now – though, given the distance between them, their dates were usually confined to weekends.

In the beginning, things had been great. Just lately, however, David had grown clingy and now here was a text demanding to know why Yasmin wasn’t coming down that weekend. Rolling her eyes in exasperation, she punched out a brief reply, promising to call him that evening. She’d break the bad news to him then. Even for someone as single-minded as Yasmin, dumping a lover by text was a no-no.

The text safely despatched, she leaned back in her chair
and smoothed a hand over her Miu Miu pencil skirt. The designer suit had cost her the best part of a month’s wages, but it had been worth every penny. Whenever she wore it, she felt powerful, invincible even. Not that she wasn’t pretty self-assured already, but just occasionally she needed an extra boost of confidence, especially when it came to dealing with some of the
Sunday Post
’s curmudgeonly hacks, who resented her rapid rise through the ranks.

Yasmin had wanted to be a journalist for as long as she could remember. After graduating with a first in media studies, she’d joined a local free sheet as an unpaid intern. Six months of making tea and photocopying followed before she landed a proper job as the editor’s PA. By her own admission she was a useless secretary, too busy looking over the reporters’ shoulders and bombarding the features editor with ideas to take dictation. Within a year, she was working as a junior reporter on the showbiz desk of a well-regarded evening paper. Equipped with a socialite’s charm and a racehorse’s stamina, Yasmin rose steadily through the ranks until, at the age of thirty-one, she defected to the
Sunday Post
, becoming the first female showbiz editor in the paper’s long and proud history – not to mention the youngest.

Yasmin checked her watch; her friends were running late. Feeling bored, she pulled her compact out of her handbag and flipped it open, checking her teeth for lipstick marks. The face that stared back at her looked tense – which, given her current workload, was hardly surprising. Sighing, she snapped the compact shut. When she was stressed, there was only one remedy and, with the soon-to-be-dumped David miles away in London, she was going to have to seek a cure closer to home.

Looking up, she saw Gaston himself standing at her table. ‘Good afternoon, Mademoiselle O’Brien. What a pleasure it is to see you – as always,’ he lisped. ‘And may I say how lovely you’re looking today?’

‘Thank you, Gaston,’ Yasmin replied, though she knew his compliment was meaningless, given that he took the same toadying tack with all his rich and/or well-connected female customers.

‘Can I get you something to drink while you’re waiting for your friends? A glass of Chablis, perhaps?’

‘Just some sparkling water, thanks; I need to keep a clear head for work.’

‘Of course.’ Gaston threw a hand camply in the air. ‘And how
is
the world of show business?’

‘Oh, you know, the same as usual: fickle, fatuous, ferocious.’ She smiled. ‘And utterly fabulous, of course.’

‘I enjoyed your gossip column last weekend,’ Gaston said, raising his voice slightly so the nearby diners would realize he was talking to a local luminary. ‘How do you dig up all that dirt?’

Yasmin tapped the side of her nose. ‘A good journalist never reveals her sources.’

‘I understand,’ the restaurateur said with a smile. ‘I’ll be right back with that drink.’

‘Wait,’ Yasmin said, touching his arm as he turned to go. ‘Your nephew from Grenoble … is he working today?’

‘Pascal? Yes, as a matter of fact he is.’

‘How’s he shaping up?’

‘So-so.’ Gaston lowered his voice. ‘I know he’s my sister’s boy, but, between you and me, he has a bit of an attitude problem. He wants to be a top chef, but, as I keep telling
him, he’s got to start at the bottom. That’s why I’ve got him waiting tables.’ He shook his head despairingly. ‘He thinks it’s a waste of his talent, but he’ll thank me for it one day. He needs to work on improving his English too. Some of our customers find his accent a little thick.’

‘I wouldn’t mind giving him private lessons,’ Yasmin murmured.

‘I didn’t know you spoke French, mademoiselle.’

‘I don’t. I had something else in mind.’ Yasmin cocked her head to one side. ‘Perhaps you could send Pascal out with my water. That way I’ll be able to discuss my proposition with him directly.’

Gaston gave a small nod and disappeared.

A few minutes later a stocky man wearing the restaurant’s regulation black suit approached Yasmin’s table. He was very young with flashy dark looks and black hair that curled over the collar of his jacket. While most of Chez Gaston’s waiters were deferential and understated, this one wore a distinct air of arrogance. He strutted rather than walked, shoulders pulled back as if to emphasize the broadness of his chest. After depositing an ice-filled glass onto the table, clumsily knocking Yasmin’s butter knife out of alignment in the process, he began to fill it with sparkling water. Then he straightened up and stood with his legs aggressively akimbo.

‘Gaston – ’ee said you wanted to see me,’ he said in heavily accented English.

Yasmin’s eyes flickered from Pascal’s crotch to his face and back to his crotch again. ‘You’re new here, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘I spotted you last week; you served me a delicious duck pâté.’

Pascal gave a little pout and a shake of his head. ‘Zee chef ’ere, ’ee is very good, but ’is pâté is not as good as my grandmère’s. She gave me zee recipe when I came to England. I make it all the time to remind me of ’ome. It is …’ Pascal kissed the tips of his fingers. ‘Out of zis world.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’ Yasmin leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table, and looked the waiter in the eye. ‘I expect you’re wondering why I asked to see you.’

Pascal nodded.

‘I was keen to find out how you were settling in,’ Yasmin continued. ‘I know Gaston has very high standards. Family or not, working for him must be pretty tough.’

Pascal stuck out his bottom lip. ‘’Ee’s okay, but ’ee gets angry wiz me because my Engleesh is not so good.’

This was the opening Yasmin had been waiting for. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’m not a qualified language teacher or anything, but I’d be happy to spend some time with you, talking English – just, you know, to bring you up to the required standard.’

Pascal looked at her, confused. ‘You would do
zat
, for me – a stranger?’

‘Why yes,’ Yasmin replied. ‘I’m a journalist, so I work with words all day. I’d be delighted to help you.’

The waiter rubbed his jaw, which was covered in decidedly non-regulation stubble. ‘Zat would be very kind, mademoiselle. But I would ’ave to do somezing for you in return.’

‘Oh, I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.’ Yasmin’s eyes flitted over Pascal’s crotch again. ‘I know.’ She paused and bit her bottom lip provocatively. ‘Perhaps you could cook me dinner.’

A lazy smile spread across the waiter’s face as the penny dropped. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I zink I would like zat.’

As Pascal made his way back to the waiter’s station, one of Yasmin’s business cards now nestling in his jacket pocket, he passed a curvaceous brunette wearing a baby sling. The woman paused for a moment, scanning the room, before making her way towards one of the window tables.

Seeing her approach, Yasmin sprang to her feet.

‘Hi, Nicole,’ she said, kissing her friend on the cheek. She turned to the sleeping infant pinned to the other woman’s chest. ‘Hello, Tilly, darling,’ she whispered, bending her head so she could inhale the baby’s sweet scent.

‘She wasn’t such a darling last night when she was screaming her lungs out,’ Nicole said as she eased herself into a chair. ‘She’s got colic; I’ve been up half the night with her.’

Yasmin winced. ‘Poor little thing. Can’t Connor prescribe something for that?’

Connor Swift, Nicole’s husband of three years, was a GP and a well-known figure in Loxwood.

‘No, apparently there’s no treatment for it, so I guess I’ll just have to get used to the sleepless nights.’ She patted the area under her eyes. ‘Look, even my bags have got bags.’

Yasmin smiled sympathetically. ‘You should have stayed at home and grabbed a couple of hours’ rest while the baby was asleep.’

‘What – and miss seeing Juliet for the first time in months? You’ve got to be kidding.’

Yasmin tapped her watch. ‘I hope she gets here soon. I’m doing an interview at two thirty.’

‘Who is it?’ Nicole said eagerly. ‘Anyone exciting?’

‘Just some second-division soap star who’s written her
autobiography. I daresay I’ll be clawing the walls by the end of it.’

‘Don’t knock it … showbiz editor of the highest circulation newspaper in the south-west of England? I wouldn’t mind swapping with you. All those launches and after-parties … sounds like heaven to me.’

Yasmin raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s not all glitz and glamour, you know. Some of it’s bloody hard work.’

‘Don’t give me that, Yaz. You love it … you know you do.’

Yasmin broke into a grin. ‘Yeah, you’re right, I can’t deny it: I
have
got the best job in the world.’ As she spoke, she caught sight of a familiar figure crossing the Square. ‘Look!’ she cried excitedly. ‘Here’s Juliet.’

Nicole turned towards the window. ‘
Ohhh
,’ she groaned in disappointment. ‘She’s on her own. I thought she was going to bring Dante.’

‘That’s a shame. I’m dying to meet him.’ A frown nicked Yasmin’s brow. ‘I hope she knows what she’s doing, getting married again so quickly. It’s barely a year since Gus died and you know how close those two were. I’m worried she hasn’t given herself enough time to grieve properly.’

‘She did take his death very hard,’ Nicole agreed. ‘Poor Gus. I still can’t believe what he did … and for Juliet to be the one to find him.’ She gave a little shudder. ‘It makes me go cold just thinking about it.’

‘Do you remember when we went to see her at Ashwicke, just a few days after it happened?’ Yasmin asked.

‘How could I forget? She could barely string a sentence together; the poor woman was in pieces. Do you remember how she kept saying how it was all her fault? That was the worst thing.’

Yasmin nodded. ‘For a while I was really worried about her. She seemed so … I don’t know … broken. And rattling around that big old house on her own couldn’t have been good for her.’

‘That’s why setting up the hotel was such a brilliant idea. Apart from having people around the place, it must really have helped take her mind off things.’ Nicole gave a long sigh. ‘I really admire Juliet. I don’t know how I’d find the strength to go on if anything happened to Connor. After everything she’s been through, she really deserves a bit of happiness.’

‘Well, judging by her emails, it looks as if she found it in Aspen,’ Yasmin said. ‘Let’s just hope this Dante’s as crazy about her as she obviously is about him.’ She broke into a smile as Juliet entered the restaurant and waved to attract the other woman’s attention. A moment later, they were hugging warmly. ‘It’s wonderful to see you,’ Yasmin said as she released her friend. ‘I can’t tell you how much we’ve missed you.’

‘And I’ve missed you too,’ Juliet replied as she bent down to hug Nicole. ‘More than you know.’ She planted a kiss on top of Tilly’s head. ‘I can’t believe how much this little one’s grown.’

‘She’s crawling now,’ Nicole said proudly.

‘Clever girl! I’m looking forward to giving her a great big cuddle when she wakes up.’ Juliet took a seat at the table. ‘Sorry I’m late. There was a bit of a crisis at the hotel this morning – Jack, our kitchen porter, has gone down with the flu.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Although, knowing Jack, it’s more likely to be a hangover. Normally, we could’ve managed without him, but I’ve agreed to lay on a special
birthday dinner for one of the guests and there’s no way Chef could’ve done all the prep on his own. I’ve spent the morning on the phone, trying to find a temp, without any luck – and then Dante very kindly agreed to step into the breach.’

‘Wow,’ said Nicole. ‘I’m impressed.’

Juliet pressed a palm to her breast. ‘Honestly, girls, I can’t believe how lucky I am. Dante’s so strong and dependable … the sort of person that would never let you down.’

‘How can you tell when you’ve only known him a couple of months?’ Yasmin’s hand went to her mouth. ‘God, that must’ve sounded really rude. I’m pleased for you, Juliet, really I am. It’s just –’

Juliet finished the sentence for her: ‘You’re worried I might have rushed into things?’

Yasmin blushed. ‘Well … yes.’

‘I know how it looks – a woman of my age falling for a barman on holiday. You probably had a heart attack when you read my emails.’

‘I was a bit concerned for you.’ Yasmin flashed a look at Nicole. ‘We both were. You’ve been through a tough time this past year; no one could blame you for wanting a bit of fun.’