Page 30 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
‘And so I said, “Is that a rocket in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?” No! Hang on. “Is that a rocket in …” Sorry! “Is that a rocket inmypocket or are you just pleased to see me?” Jesus! I mean, “am I just pleased to see you?” Shall I take it from the top?’
Tom clearly couldn’t take it any longer. ‘Please don’t,’ he said, stepping forward so that Daquon had to step to the side. ‘I do apologise for this … well, “gentleman” doesn’t seem the right word.’
‘Man, you always do this,’ Daquon muttered, shaking his head at Tom, but backing away, leaving Tom and a girl in a pink pussyhat alone.
‘I can get rid of losers all by myself,’ the girl said.
‘I didn’t do it for you,’ Tom said with a friendly smile like he was a normal, friendly man. ‘I did it for purely selfish reasons. I was actually going to die from shame if he’d tried another permutation of that clichéd chat-up line.’
The girl, who was sharply pretty, like she didn’t suffer fools gladly, allowed herself to smile. ‘I was beginning to feel sorry for him.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ Tom advised and now they were both smiling at each other, and Mattie had to run through a checklist to make sure that yes, this was Tom, wearing his glasses and a bow-tie and his most hairy tweed jacket. Because Tom kept smiling and a smile from Tom Greer was a lesser-spotted event; there were comets that appeared more frequently than the upper quirk of Tom’s lips.
‘I couldn’t help but notice your hat,’ Tom was saying now. ‘Did you go on the Women’s March last year?’
‘Absolutely, and this year too. And I’ve been running a series of workshops on activism at my little sister’s school. I’m Clea, by the way,’ she said, holding out her hand.
‘Tom.’ They shook hands. ‘I think it’s so important to be an ally. I’ve realised that one of the most important contributions I can make to standing up for gender equality is to listen and support rather than thinking that my voice needs to be heard.’
‘Wow. I thought men like you were rarer than unicorns,’ the girl said, with an appreciative smile as she gave Tom a lingering look. Obviously she didn’t find the bow-tie too much of a turn-off. ‘The amount of men I’ve met who’ve tried to mansplain feminism to me.’
Tom held up his hands. ‘I live in fear of being accused of mansplaining.’
‘Well, if you promise not to do any, I’d really like to get together with you some other time when there’s less open flame?’ Pink Pussyhat said, twisting away from someone who brushed past her with a sparkler. ‘I’m wearing a lot of manmade fibres.’
‘Though given the gender divide of the majority of people working in the garment industry, they’re probably womanmade fibres,’ Tom said, and they both laughed, and if it wasn’t for the smoke from the bonfire making her eyes water, Mattie would have been convinced that she was dreaming. She had to be, because Tom tapped his number into Pink Pussyhat’s phone and she rang him to make sure he had her number.
‘I’ll call you,’ she said very eagerly, waving goodbye as she left to find her friends.
Tom wasted no time, and swiftly moved to the other side of the bonfire where he quickly despatched poor Daquon again and, within five minutes, was shamelessly flirting with yet another girl. By this time, their corner of the garden was quite deserted so Mattie didn’t dare sneak any closer and draw attention to herself.
Instead she had to watch Tom and his third victim smiling and laughing, there was also a lot of arm touching until the girl reached up to wipe at a spot on Tom’s face. ‘A smut from the bonfire,’ Mattie heard her say, as Tom smiled. Then he and the girl, who now had a deathgrip on Tom’s arm, walked back down the garden towards the house.
It was amazing, Mattie marvelled, that Tom could be all things to all people; the stern alpha male, the feminist ally, the shameless flirt. Yet all this time, he’d only shown one side of himself to her: the deeply annoying, buttoned-up pain in the arse side.
Would the real Tom Greer stand up? Mattie pondered this thorny question for a good five minutes until she realised that Tom was at her side, and it must have been the heat from the bonfire that was making her cheeks burn so brightly. Or maybe it was because she was trapped in a black-wool chokehold.
‘I come bearing gifts,’ Tom said and he held up another bottle of lager. ‘So you won’t have to drink what passes for mulled wine round here. And a sparkler.’ He held up his other hand. ‘Want to light my fire?’
Mattie had had enough. She pulled her scarf loose so that Tom could see her cross face. ‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘And I am immune to your … your wiles!’
Tom frowned from behind his glasses. ‘Of course it’s you. And what do you mean, my wiles? You sound like someone in one of those ghastly Regency romance novels Posy loves so much.’
‘You’d know about that,’ Mattie muttered, but she muttered it very quietly because she wasn’t ready to havethatconversation with Tom. She’d need much more than a bottle of lager before she felt emotionally fortified enough to bring up the topic of his PhD dissertation. ‘I really should go and find Pippa.’
‘She’s busy supervising Mikey and Steve as they prepare to light the fireworks, because they know nothing about Health and Safety, or indeed the Fireworks Code. Anyway, she was the one who told me come and find you. Said you’d gone outside and to just search for the woman who looked like a member of the Baader-Meinhof gang.’
‘Ha! I bet she didn’t say that I looked like a member of the Baader-Meinhof gang,’ Mattie said. If she didn’t know who the Baader-Meinhof group were, then she was pretty sure that Pippa wouldn’t either.
‘They were a German terrorist organisation,’ Tom explained, which was all the motivation that Mattie needed to tear off her hat, though she could tell it had done terrible things to her fringe. Still, it was only Tom, and even if every other woman at the party seemed to think that he was some sort of nascent sex god, Mattie certainly didn’t.
Although, to be fair, he had brought her lager and a sparkler, but now he was trying to steer her towards the house, his hand on the small of her back. Mattie was about to take umbrage at the steering when Tom said, ‘Probably best to watch the fireworks from a safe distance, especially if Mikey and Steve plan to light them so close to the bonfire.’
‘Good idea,’ Mattie said, scurrying for the haven of the patio. ‘Also, why is there a bonfire and fireworks at a Christmas party?’
‘They were meant to have a Guy Fawkes party in early November but they got very drunk the night before and were too hungover to go ahead with it,’ Tom explained as he followed Mattie up the garden. ‘It’s taken them so long to reschedule that it had to be rebranded as a Christmas party.’
‘Hence the mistletoe and the comedy Christmas T-shirts?’
