Well, quite.
Of course, Marcus chose that precise moment to appear next to us, looking devastatingly handsome – having only seen him in grainy photos in newspapers for the last few weeks, I’d forgotten how impressive his physique was close up. This would be all athletes, I reminded myself. It was because I’d never really been around them before. Anyone would feel the same, wouldn’t they?
‘Talking about me again, are you, Dean?’ said Marcus, briefly catching my eye.
‘Always, Marcus, always,’ replied Dean, not caring that he’d been caught. He appeared to have the thickest skin of anyone I’d ever met and I supposed he needed it in his line of work. In fact, I doubted that Marcus was anywhere near his most demanding client – Mia Stephens had seemed pretty highly strung in my opinion, and I knew that there’d be even bigger egos at play within his clientele.
I stood up to greet Marcus, trying not to overthink what I was about to do – I wanted to let Dean know that I hadn’t forgotten I had an agreement to uphold and that I was all in and taking it seriously. And it had to seem authentic – if Marcus was my boyfriend and I hadn’t seen him for a while, I’d want to kiss him. Wouldn’t I?
‘Hello stranger,’ I said to Marcus, running my arm around his waist and pulling him into me.
To be fair to him, he hesitated only for a second before catching on and putting his hand on the small of my back, pulling me closer so he could brush his lips across mine. My stomach flipped and I nearly gasped out loud, right there in the middle of the lounge. His lips had just felt so ... good! When he pulled back, we caught each other’s eyes and smiled, each of us breaking into a soft laugh that from my perspective was a combination of mortification and my head spinning, because I still had my hand on his waist, and my thumb was dangerously close to the six-pack I kept finding myself daydreaming about at inopportune moments. Maybe I just needed to touch them once and get it out of my system.
‘Wow. It is the lovebirds show,’ said Patrick, seemingly unimpressed.
He was probably a) very confused and b) worried that this supposed love affair of ours was going to be distracting for Marcus, which I supposed it might have been if it was real. Then again, I couldn’t imagine Marcus letting anything throw him off course, not this year, not when the possibility of a Grand Slam win felt so tantalisingly close.
I reclaimed my hand, which had somehow moved from Marcus’s waist to the spot right between his shoulder blades, where I could feel his lungs expanding every time he took a breath. I let my arm hang by my side, trying not to look awkward, eventually hooking my fingers over the back of a chair for support and for something to bloody well do.
‘What time are you due out on court?’ I asked Marcus, hoping conversation would deflect his attention away from my flushed cheeks. If in doubt, revert to tennis, I was beginning to learn.
He glanced over at the TV screens lined up along one wall, each showing live footage of an empty court.
‘I’m on court Simonne-Mathieu ... they’re planning to start on time, so I’ll need to be ready for ten,’ said Marcus.
‘Who are you playing?’ I asked.
‘Anton Bauer,’ said Marcus.
‘The Danish guy with the topknot?’ I asked.
‘A topknot and a killer backhand,’ said Patrick.
I thought back toDeuce, to sitting on my sofa with Zoe all those weeks ago – did Marcus beat Bauer, I couldn’t quite remember? Given that the match had culminated in a racquet-smashing extravaganza of epic proportions, I was assuming not.
‘I should go,’ said Marcus, giving his obligatory high fives to Patrick and Nick and Dean.
Lowering his voice, Patrick gave him a few last-minute pointers.
‘Remember how we have been working on sending your forehand straight down the line. If you serve wide, he will be expecting you to hit his return cross court, so give him a surprise,non?’
Marcus nodded. ‘Got it.’
He looked at me, hesitated and then brushed his lips over mine again, just for a second this time, but long enough for my breath to quicken. I wasn’t going to overanalyse it – it was simply an involuntary human reaction to having somebody’s plump, pillow-soft lips placed on top of yours.
‘Good luck,’ I whispered.
He half smiled. ‘See you after.’
I watched him go, noticing that he was taller than almost everyone he passed on the way to the dressing rooms. When I sat down again, Dean gave me a small nod of approval, which I was pleased about,because there was no point putting on what was essentially a performance if nobody noticed how brilliantly I was actually performing.
That night, I waited in my hotel room for a call from Reception. Marcus had said he’d be there to pick me up for the cooking class at around seven, but that if he got caught up at the stadium doing press after his win, it might be a little later. I must have looked at myself in the mirror about ten times in the last twenty minutes, doubting the simple black trousers and white vest combo I was wearing (was I going to get flour all down my trousers? Probably), wondering if heels would look too much; if flats wouldn’t say ‘evening in Paris’ because, even though we were making French bread, it sounded like the world’s bougiest class, complete with cheese and wine at the end as we sampled our baked goods. And would it still be warm out? I slipped on a slouchy grey blazer and then immediately took it off again; I’d hold it over my arm, so that I had the option.
The phone next to my bed rang and I raced to pick it up, worried that I’d miss it and that Marcus would think I’d forgotten about our arrangement and had made other plans for the evening. Which was irrational, really, since Marcus didn’t strike me as the kind of person to automatically assume he’d been stood up. Quite the opposite, I imagined – he was used to women flocking to him, judging by the photos I’d seen of stunning models sitting on his lap, hanging off his every word. It was strange, actually, because the Marcus I was getting to know didn’t seem like the Lothario I’d assumed from the press – he seemed quiet and thoughtful and ambitious. Someone who actually cared about other people. So the fact he kept women at arm’s length, moving on from one to another to another, didn’t really make sense, even though there was actual photographic evidence of the fact – although of course he was a man, so perhaps that was all I needed to know.
‘Madame Whitfield? Monsieur Taylor is in the lobby for you.’
‘I’ll be down in a second.’
