With excellent timing, the doorbell rang right then, affording me an opportunity to give myself a strict talking-to while Nick went to answer it. I was in danger of forgetting what I was doing here, and that could only end badly for all of us.
Nick returned to the kitchen, carrying a flat box roughly the size of a paving slab.
‘Just how hungry are you?’ I teased as he set it down on the breakfast bar and flipped it open to reveal a cheesy feast that could easily have fed half a dozen people.
‘Famished,’ he said with a grin.
‘Me too,’ I admitted, pulling out one of the highly polished chrome stools and climbing on to it.
Nick was busy slicing the pizza, but he still caught my slight wince as I settled myself on the hard seat.
‘Would you like a cushion?’
‘No. I’ve enough natural padding down there,’ I said, wondering how yet again our conversation had returned to the topic of my bottom.
‘Gluteus maximus,’ Nick said as he sunk his teeth into a slice of pizza.
‘Wasn’t he the guy inGladiator?’ I joked.
We laughed more that night than I’d done in months.
*
‘So, what’s left on Amelia and Sam’s bucket list of incredible dates?’ Nick asked, when all that remained in the pizza box were a couple of slices that I’d put money on him eating for breakfast.
‘There are loads. More than we can get through in just a week.’
Nick leant back on his stool and pushed the pizza container to one side, replacing it with a notepad and pen. ‘Okay. Well, what are the “must-do” ones then?’
My thoughts spooled back through my conversations with Amelia. I immediately censored the skinny-dipping escapades, or anything she’d mentioned that had made me blush. Once the more risqué ones were ruled out, there were only three more memorable dates that I wanted to include in the memory box.
‘Sam surprised Amelia on the night of her birthday by turning up at her door bearing a cake alight with candles.’
‘I like this guy’s style,’ Nick said admiringly, jotting down something illegible beside a bullet point. ‘We can easily recreate that one. What else?’
‘They picnicked on the beach in the middle of a heatwave. That was the date when Sam proposed.’ I paused, as though we were in a court of law. ‘Allegedly.’
Nick nodded thoughtfully. ‘The picnic, the beach, and the proposal we can definitely do. But the heatwave will be harder to create, given that it’s only the beginning of March.’
His pen flew across the page, but even squinting I couldn’t decipher a single word. It had to be a medic thing, I decided.
He was still scribbling away, head bowed, which made it easier to reveal the final item for his list. ‘The last one is entirely dependent on the weather.’
Nick looked up curiously.
‘It needs to be raining – pouring, actually. And I’ll have to wear a blue dress and you’ll need to be in a white shirt.’ Nick’s head tilted to one side and there was the beginning of a frown on his forehead. ‘I think Amelia “borrowed” a famous scene from a film and her subconscious spun it into a memory of her and Sam.’
‘What film? What memory?’ It was a reasonable question, and yet for the first time in Nick Forrester’s company, I suddenly felt shy. And warm. Really, really warm.
‘It’s calledThe Notebook– you’ve probably never seen it. And this particular scene is—’
‘When they kiss in the rain,’ Nick completed, his expression unreadable.
His eyes met mine, and as worried as I was about what he’d see in them, I couldn’t look away. Nick was the first to break eye contact.
‘We live in the UK so it shouldn’t be hard to find a rainy day,’ he said, jottingRain, Blue dress, White shirtdown on the pad. It was the only bullet point he underlined and scrawled a large question mark beside.
*
