‘Yes.’
‘Oh.’ For some reason she felt flustered. Leo. Here. They had barely spent any time together since they’d returned from thechata. Deliberately, on her part. It was getting harder and harder to be around him. Those early-morning kisses had reignited all her feelings for him.
Maybe he’d forgotten his flat keys. In fact, that had to be it. She frowned. Back in the day he’d always been locking himself out of their flat.
‘Would you mind telling him I’ll be down in a minute?’ She caught her lip between her teeth. ‘I need to finish this.’ It was going to take her at least ten minutes if not fifteen and she really couldn’t leave it, even though her heart danced at the thought of seeing Leo. Bad heart.
Jakub lifted a brow and smiled. ‘Don’t worry, take your time. I will entertain him. He works with Karel. I might be able to educate him, while he’s here.’
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, when she went down into the bar area, where visitors finished the official brewery tour with a beer tasting, she found Jakub and Leo deep in conversation over half-drunk glasses of beer.
‘Hey, Love.’ Leo beamed at her and raised his heavy glass. ‘Nice beer.’
Anna looked alarmed for a minute.
Jakub shook his head with an understanding smile. ‘It’s not yours. It’s Šilhov beer. I though the boy should try a quality beer.’ Despite his words there was a teasing twinkle in his eyes.
‘You should come to dinner, Jakub. Shouldn’t he, Anna? We’ve invited our neighbours, Michaela and Jan and Ludmila.’
‘We have?’ Anna stared at him, a little bemused. They’d only very briefly talked about cooking dinner when they crossed paths in the kitchen that morning, suggesting it would be a nice way of saying thank you to the couple downstairs for the weekend in South Moravia. At the time the conversation had been a bit of relief because she’d been having a hard time not being distracted by his bare-chested torso. Her libido had been on high alert ever since they’d come back from thechata.
‘Well, we talked about it and then I saw Jan this morning and Ludmila, so I invited them. Saturday. You didn’t have any plans, did you?’
He knew damn well she didn’t have any plans. Her social life revolved around him, Michaela and Jan.
‘Right,’ said Anna, and was even more surprised when Jakub, having ruminated on the invitation for all of a minute, said very slowly, ‘I would like that very much. Thank you, young man.’
‘Excellent,’ said Leo, clearly pleased with himself. ‘Right. Are you done?’
‘Done?’
‘Yes, finished for the day.’
Anna, dying to ask what he was doing here, lifted an eyebrow. What was he doing here?
‘Yes. Go home,’ said Jakub. ‘There is no more you can do today.’
‘Excellent, we can start planning the menu.’
Within a few minutes, she was standing on the other side of the big, wooden brewery doors, shivering slightly in the dark.
‘What are you doing here, Leo?’
‘I was passing and I thought I’d see if you fancied going for a drink and maybe something to eat.’
‘You were passing?’ Anna didn’t believe a word of it.
‘Okay. Hear me about. You always talk about how nice Jakub is and that he’s a bit lonely. He doesn’t have any family. And Karel’s the same…’ He let the sentence hang but Anna knew.
‘You’ve invited Karel as well, haven’t you?’
Leo beamed at her. ‘Great idea, yes?’
She let out a peal of laughter at the innocent expression on his face. ‘I’m not sure about that – but it’s sweet.’
‘Sweet!’ Leo wrinkled his nose in disgust.
