“You have to keep it interesting,” she muttered to herself, scrubbing out a couple of lines of scribbled notes and addingsomething different which she thought might sound more appealing.
If she talked less about the day-to-day management tasks she handled in the hotels where she worked and more about the glamorous resorts and fantastic cities and beautiful destinations she got to enjoy thanks to her language skill advantages, that might appeal to the kids more.
A few more scribbled notes and strike-outs on her notepad and she’d crafted some decent remarks about how she hadn’t particularly enjoyed learning Spanish at school to begin with, and hadn’t been especially good at it either, until she realised how much she wanted a career in hospitality and that language fluency would unlock opportunities that would be out of reach otherwise.
Gaby wrote and revised and practiced her short speech once more, feeling silly all over again for talking to herself. Her voice sounded stilted and awkward, and unless she learned to relax and sound more natural, the kids would tune her out regardless of what she was saying.
“Damn it Peter, I can’t believe you talked me into this,” she muttered.
But it was impossible to be upset with Peter about this, because if she was being honest with herself, she was glad they had a good reason to spend more time together. Torturing herself by making a speech in front of teenagers was a complicated way to go about it, but at least Peter’s request for help meant the time they’d spend together tomorrow would come cloaked as a helpful favour instead of something more… significant.
And the dinner he’d offered to buy her after she’d finished her guest speaker gig at the school? Well, that was just him showing his gratitude. It would be rude to turn him down whenall he wanted to do was say thanks for helping him out of a tight spot.
“Sure, keep telling yourself that,” Gaby muttered, still flicking through the pages of her notepad.
They could both pretend there was nothing more to their dinner plans tomorrow than a token of thanks or another chance for two friends to catch up on old times.
But Gaby knew differently and she suspected Peter did too.
Their time together in the pub last night had made her want more—more time with him, more opportunity to learn about the man he’d become, more conversation.
She shouldn’t want those things but couldn’t seem to help herself, couldn’t seem to stop her mind drifting back to him. Any lingering doubts she’d had about getting together for a drink had vanished the moment they’d left the house together.
And in the hours they’d spent in each other’s company, she’d felt at complete ease with him.
The same ease and comfort she’d felt during their summer of love.
It was as if the fifteen years that separated then and now had simply vanished.
Gaby didn’t know what any of this meant. The flicker of attraction she’d felt when he turned up at the door yesterday had only deepened as the evening went on.
What would that flicker feel like after another evening in each other’s company?
Perhaps dinner together was a really bad idea. Rekindling an old flame was just plain bad judgement. She was leaving in a weeks’ time and she’d come to Hamblehurst to help her aunt, not to have some mad affair.
She blushed when she realised just how wild she was letting her mind run. In a matter of seconds she’d turned a thank-you dinner into an epically ill-conceived fling.
Gaby closed her notebook and checked the time and was stunned to discover she’d been working on her speech—and fantasising about Peter Bailey—for over an hour. Harry Goodwin had arranged to pick her up at five-thirty to drive her to the hotel for the corporate networking function she was managing, which meant she ought to get moving on early dinner preparations.
As she hurried downstairs, she was glad she’d be busy tonight at Harry’s hotel because it would keep her crazy thoughts about Peter at bay.
For a while, at least.
10
The following afternoon,Gaby made the thirty-minute walk from her aunt’s house on Foxglove Street to Hamblehurst secondary school, her heart racing with nerves every step of the way.
The sooner she got this guest talk over and done with, the sooner she could stop feeling like she might throw up.
Managing the corporate event at the Riverford Hotel had kept her busy last night just as she’d hoped, but she’d tossed and turned in bed afterwards, fretting about the talk she’d agreed to deliver.
Today, she’d spent the morning doing chores around the house for her aunt and dealing with cleaning tasks that were out of the question for Jill while her recovery continued. Scrubbing the bathroom and the downstairs shower room and mopping the kitchen floor before hoovering every carpet in the house and dusting every surface had kept her happily occupied.
Over her aunt’s protests that she’d done enough already, she’d then dealt with a batch of laundry, washed the front windows inside and out, and refilled the bird feeders when she realised the greedy creatures had once again emptied the containers.
Jill enjoyed watching the birds from the window while her knee healed and Gaby was glad to keep the feathery visitors supplied with tasty seeds for her aunt’s entertainment.
Now as Gaby approached the school gates, the mixture of a disturbed night’s sleep and a busy morning filled with household chores left her yawning. She only hoped she didn’t look as frazzled as she felt.
