Page 2 of About Last Night
If only she didn’t find it so nerve-racking talking to men she found attractive. It was much easier to connect with people when she was behind her microphone. If a conversation was going badly on-air and she was floundering, she could cut them off by playing a song or going to an ad break – snatching some time to pull herself together – and nobody was any the wiser. She’d also got into the habit of pre-recording interviews so she could edit them later and encouraging her listeners to use social media to connect to the show, instead of calling in.
Recently it had seemed as though her show on Flash FM was the only place she had a modicum of control. Out in the real world her deep-seated shyness, stemming from way back in her youth, sometimes induced one of her humiliating brain-freezes, especially when talking to men with a certain appeal.
‘Rabbit caught in headlights’ was not a good look on her.
She glanced around the bar, her gaze snagging on a cosy-looking couple to her right. She experienced a surge of jealousy as they laughed at some private joke together.
Was it really too much to ask to meet someone who was genuinely interested in makingherthe centre of their universe, getting married some day and starting a family? Something she’d been dreaming about since her own dysfunctional family had come apart at the seams.
Her chest gave an uncomfortable lurch. No. This was not the time to start dwelling on her less than perfect childhood.
‘Hey, Lu, speaking of sex gods, check out the guy sitting behind us,’ Emily murmured into Lula’s ear, her hot, boozy breath tickling the hairs on her neck.
Intrigued, Lula swivelled round to get an eyeful of the guyEmily was talking about. She could only make out his broad back and a hint of his profile because he was turned away from her, but she could see exactly what had caught her friend’s interest.
An expensive-looking shirt fitted his broad-shoulders perfectly, giving a tantalising suggestion of the ripped body concealed underneath.
Lula would bet her life he could be found sweating away in the gym every morning before setting off for some high-powered job. Something about his self-possessed posture made her think he was somebodybigsomewhere. You just got a feeling from people like him.
Power and control.
The skin on the back of his neck, between the crisp collar of his shirt and the clean, razor-cut of his short back and sides haircut, was tanned a warm honey colour, as if he’d just got back from a holiday in the sun. Lula could picture him, stretched out on the golden sand in just a tiny pair of swimmers, his body shimmering with perspiration in the intense midday sun.
Ooh.
The buzz from the glass of wine returned, only this time it washed a deep satisfying heat through a much more intimate part of her body.
Good grief, if just a flash of his skin could do that to her, imagine what would happen if she got to speak to him face to face.
Spontaneous combustion, probably.
A crazy idea struck her that made her heart thump heavily in her chest. Perhaps she should practice on him the façade of kick-ass poise and self-assurance that she was going to need at tomorrow’s meeting. She could buy him a drink, then plonk herself down at his table as if she chatted up dishy men every day. She just needed to draw on the confidence she summoned to performon the radio and she could become the outgoing woman everyone expected her to be in real life.
At work she got past any awkwardness at meeting new people by researching her subjects thoroughly and planning her questions, but she didn’t have the time or tools for that right now. This would have to be a study in improvisation.
She would fake it till she made it with this guy.
Even the suggestion of ‘making it’ with him sent another zingy little frisson deep into her pelvis.
Just flirting, Lula – that’s all that’s gonna happen here.
Okay. Time to get her game face on.
If she could succeed at capturing the interest of a handsome man in a bar tonight, she could damn well persuade the station owner to give her a fair hearing tomorrow.
Tonight, audience, I’m going to be Tallulah Lazenby – top rated DJ at Flash FM, social mover and shaker and loquacious livewire.
She sat up straighter in her seat.
Yes. Positivity. That’s the ticket.
Powered by that rousing resolve, she grabbed her bag and got up, centring herself on her six-inch heels, and primed herself to shimmy seductively past the sex god and over to the bar.
Tristan Bamfield winced and placed his beer bottle onto the sticky pub table with a firm clunk as the group of women sitting behind him let out another squall of high-pitched laughter.
Usually he wouldn’t stray from the hotel bar when he was working away from home, but he’d found himself needing to escape from the over-zealous attentions of a primped-to-within-an-inch-of-her-life Sloaney who’d zeroed in on him, and this dimly lit traditional London pub, with its purple and blackpainted walls and trendily scuffed up leather sofas and painted tables, had seemed like the perfect refuge.
Until this band of banshees had followed him in shortly afterwards, that was.
