‘I don’t understand why you should be so keen to get him off your case,’ Rachel had said, ‘but more to the point, where the hell does this leave Callum?’
It was a very good question. He might have had a teeny crush on her when they were children, but that was all in the past. As adults there had never been anything other than an extremely close friendship between them. She had to admit though, his response to her kissing him had taken her by surprise, as had the expression on his face afterwards. She wasn’t sure what to make of that.
He had texted her the other day to say he’d heard about the bother her father had got himself into, but not a word did he say about that kiss.
Through the open door of her office, Jenna caught sight of Blake emerging from the lift. He’d only taken a few steps when Vanessa, the intern who had started working in the legacy department this week, approached him. Furtively watching the encounter, Rachel’s voice echoed in Jenna’s ear – ‘Has it not occurred to you that he might genuinely like you? Why else did he come over in the restaurant to say hello to you, and then join us for a drink?’
‘To make me feel uncomfortable,’ Jenna had retaliated. ‘He enjoys making me squirm.’
Rachel’s response had been to roll her eyes and do that annoying little wobble of her head she did when she thought somebody had just said something particularly stupid. ‘Yeah right, the man has nothing better to do than make your life a misery,’ she’d said with withering contempt.
No, thought Jenna, as she continued with her covert observation of Vanessa flirting outrageously with Blake – flicking her hair and laughing, and leaning in close with exaggerated eye contact, then moving in for the kill by patting his arm – I’m the one making a first-class job of making my life a misery. Somehow it had become a habit for her and she didn’t know why. It was a habit she needed to break before, as Rachel said, her prickliness turned her into a mad and bitter old woman.
In bed last night, Jenna had vowed she would ring Callum and be completely honest with him. But what to say? ‘Hey, Callum, you know when I kissed you? Well …’ The imaginary conversation never got any further than that; it always ran aground on the rocks of her shame and embarrassment. But then an insistent voice inside her head, sounding remarkably like Rachel, would shout:‘Tell him! Just tell him! Or I will!’She would then try to picture herself laughing the whole thing off with Callum, dismissing the kiss as the same mistake he’d made when they were children, nothing more than an impulsive error of judgement. The trouble was Callumknewher. He knew that she rarely, if ever, acted impulsively – that was much more Rachel’s territory. Yet she had in that instant, and it wasn’t a mistake she was going to make again.
She forced her attention back to the lengthy email she had been writing before she’d been distracted by seeing Blake. Within seconds a familiar voice interrupted her flow of concentration.
‘Knock knock.’
‘Who’s there?’ she answered, knowing perfectly well who it was, and keeping her fingers moving over the keyboard, her eyes on the screen.
‘Atish.’
‘Atish who?’ she said, playing along.
‘Bless you. Okay, I can do better than that. Answer me this: Will you remember me in a month?’
‘I might,’ she said warily.
‘That’s good. Now will you remember me in a week?’
She turned to look at Blake, her fingers slowing to a stop. ‘I would imagine so.’
‘Knock knock.’
‘Who’s there?’
He slapped a hand against his forehead. ‘Ouch, that hurts, you’ve forgotten me already.’
She chewed on her lip to stop herself from smiling; it would only encourage him. He then raised his hand to the door and rapped his knuckles against it, at the same time saying, ‘Knock knock.’
‘Who’s there?’
‘Armageddon.’
She sighed. ‘Armageddon who?’
‘Armageddon a little hungry, fancy some lunch?’
Prickles, she reminded herself, thinking of the habit she needed to break and the mad and bitter old woman she didn’t want to become.You can do this, Jenna Fielding. Relax.‘Why not?’ she said with a lightness that she saw took him by surprise.
They bought their lunch at the counter inside a deli just around the corner from Heart-to-Heart, and took it outside to eat at a table on the pavement. After the rain of yesterday, the warm summer sunshine had people in lively spirits. ‘I’ve never eaten here before,’ Jenna said by way of conversation. ‘Is it a regular place for you?’
‘Nope, this is my first visit. How’s your charred vegetable and kale pesto wrap, is it as disgusting as it sounds?’
‘I’ll let you know when I’ve tried it,’ she said. She took a bite and instantly regretted her rash decision to go for the healthy option. She chewed gamely on the foul-tasting concoction and washed it down with a mouthful of fizzy water.
‘And your verdict?’ he said with a smile.
