Page 14 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
‘It does get a bit stuffy in here,’ she commented as Tom glared at her.
He waited until the door had shut behind Noah then seized Nina’s hands in a very unTom-like way. ‘Am I going to have to write you up in the sexual harassment book?’ Nina asked, tugging her hands free.
‘No fraternising with the enemy,’ Tom said and Nina was about to point out that Noah wasn’t an enemy so much as an unregistered alien, when Tom took her hands again.
‘I wanted to say sorry about before,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’
Nina shook herself freeagain. ‘You mean your “employee of the month” routine? Honestly, Tom, I didn’t know you had it in you to be such a little bitch.’
‘Neither did I,’ Tom agreed. ‘I’m quite ashamed of myself. I say united we stand, together we fall, right? Shall we just do what we normally do whenthatNoah is around?’
‘God, yes! But maybe not quite as normally as usual,’ Nina suggested. ‘Probably less backchat when Posy and Verity are being particularly bossy.’
‘Sounds like a plan.’ Tom handed over a brown paper bag from Stefan’s Deli as if he’d been planning to withhold lunch if Nina had refused to stand in solidarity with him. ‘Also it wasexhaustingbeing so efficient. I can’t keep the act going for another minute longer.’
‘I am surprised you managed to last a whole morning,’ Nina said with a grin.
‘Although you and Noah looked quite cosy when I interrupted you,’ Tom remarked as he unwrapped his own bagel.
‘Interrupted implies we were in the middle of something and believe me, we weren’t in the middle of anything.’
‘I just wondered if … no … forget I brought it up …’ Tom shook his head.
Tom often did this. Started saying something tantalising and then clammed up so that Nina had to work really hard to ferret out a piece of juicy gossip or a spectacular example of bitchery.
‘What?’ she asked. ‘Don’t leave me hanging.’
Tom took his sweet time chewing a mouthful of bagel before he answered. ‘Really, it’s nothing.’
‘Tom!’ Nina growled.
‘I was just wondering, if you were cosying up to that Noah anyway …’
‘Hardly cosying up,’ Nina said indignantly.
‘Well, it certainly looked as if you were employing your feminine wiles,’ Tom said because he did like to sound like a nineteenth-century novel.
‘I would never do that,’ Nina said, although she had just been doing that. ‘I’m shocked at your low opinion of me, Tom.’
‘Of course you wouldn’t do that,’ Tom hastily agreed. ‘But if you were flirting to find out more information, going behind enemy lines, on behalf of the both of us, Verity too, then it would be for the greater good.’
Nina couldn’t believe what she was hearing. From Tom. Of all people. ‘You want to pimp me out to Noah? When he’s absolutely not my type. In his suit. With his business solutions. Ugh!’
‘I’m not suggesting that you have sex with him, but you are very attractive,’ Tom said quickly, fluttering a hand in Nina’s direction. ‘Just a little bit of flattery and sticking your breasts in his face. You know, that kind of thing.’
‘Tom!’ Nina was genuinely shocked. ‘What kind of girl do you think I am?’
Tom’s face was so red that it looked like he had third-degree burns. ‘I think you’re a lovely, altruistic woman who loves to stick her breasts in people’s faces anyway, so you might as well have a good reason for it.’
Well, when Tom put it like that … Nina always found it hard to resist a challenge. But Noah?
‘Bit too close to home for my liking. You do know that he’s friends with Sebastian, right?’
‘Just some light flirting,’ Tom persisted. ‘I mean, you nearly got down and dirty with that awful Piers. Taking one for the team, you called it. Verity told me.’
Piers had been a dastardly but quite hot property developer who’d come sniffing round Nina but only because it was all part of his nefarious plan to buy Bookends and turn it into a luxury block of flats. It hadn’t ended well. In fact, it had ended with Piers locking Posy in the coal hole under the shop and flinging grey paint around the shop two days before they reopened, then Sebastian turning up to rescue Posy and beat Piers to a pulp.
It had all been quite thrilling actually but also a timely reminder, not that she really needed one, that Nina had terrible taste in men. ‘That whole Piers thing was very complicated,’ she offered weakly. ‘Anyway, I’ve decided that I’m not going to waste any more of my precious time flirting with randoms. I want a soulmate, not a—’
