Gabi was just telling them about a stunt involving an umbrella when Rosie’s phone rang. ‘It’s the babysitter,’ she said, answering with a frown on her face. She listened, agreed, then hung up the phone and stood in one movement.
‘Riley’s thrown up,’ she said to Wren. ‘And has a fever.’
Wren stood too, immediately, then looked around the bookshop at the debris that remained. Walker spoke without hesitation.
‘You two go, I’ll clear up.’
The two women glanced at each other and then Wren threw the bookshop keys through the air in a high arc. Walker caught them in one hand.
‘Walker to the rescue,’ Rosie said, already pulling on her coat.
‘We owe you,’ she said, as she hurried out the door.
‘I’ll drop the keys through your letter box,’ he said. ‘Text me later how she is.’ Wren turned off the main lights as she went, leaving Walker and Gabi in the lamplight in their reading corner.
The bell jangled as the door shut and then it was just the two of them. And about four hundred cats. One of them butted against his shins and he bent to stroke it.
‘Do you like cats?’ Gabi asked. She looked more relaxed now, snuggled into the corner of the chair.
‘Love them,’ he said. ‘I’ve got one of my own. Fatboy Jim. He’s the biggest ginger cat you’ve ever seen. More like a small dog.’
Gabi laughed and sipped her wine.
‘Not that you would have believed it when I first rescued him. Someone dumped him by the bins at the fire station. He was the most pathetic little thing I’d ever seen. Hardly more than a few weeks old.’
He gave the cat at his feet a final stroke and sat back in his chair, taking a pull of his beer.
‘Have you got pets?’ he asked.
Gabi shook her head, thinking of her penthouse, all glass and stainless steel and white walls. Hardly cat territory.
‘What about when you were a kid?’ he asked. She shook her head again and looked away.
‘We weren’t a very cosy kind of family,’ she said eventually. ‘Which is probably why tonight felt right out of my comfort zone. My parents never read to me.’
Walker felt his eyes widen.
‘Never?’ he asked.
‘Mamma only liked fashion magazines and there’s not much to read to your daughter inVogue. . .’
‘And your dad?’
‘He was away on business a lot,’ Gabi said. She rolled her shoulders against the back of the sofa and groaned.
‘You okay?’ Walker asked.
‘It’s just these crutches. They’re such a pain. I can’t carry anything with them. I already owe Amber three mugs that I’ve broken. And they’re agony on your shoulders after a while.’ She closed her eyes momentarily and rocked her head side to side to relieve her neck. ‘Maybe I need a good massage.’ The words hung in the air between them as he watched her, remembering the feel of her body in his arms when he caught her. The shape of her body at the gym.
‘I can do that,’ he said, suddenly wanting to, very much indeed.
She glanced at him and there was that challenge in her eyes again. That glint of mischief.
‘Are you any good?’ she asked, one eyebrow raised. He stood, smiling.
‘I’ll let you be the judge of that,’ he said.
Walker moved to the back of her chair, looking down on the crown of her head. He rubbed his palms together briskly to warm them before taking gentle hold of her cardigan and sliding it from each shoulder, leaving her shoulders bare apart from the straps of her vest top. He heard her take a deep breath of anticipation and he saw the rise of her breast.
