Page 98 of Never Too Late
‘Then don’t be so modest.’
‘Would you like a drink?’
I checked my watch. ‘I ought to be getting home, but thank you.’
A flicker of disappointment crossed his face and I felt the same but I wasn’t ready for the possibility that one drink might lead to another and that to something else. I was feeling freer, more confident, than I had in a long time but I’d also not shown my bits off to anyone other than my husband in a very long while and even the latter had been pretty intermittent over the last few years. The last time Tomas and I had gone to bed, I’d been a lot younger, and a lot perkier than I was now. Thankfully, being less endowed in the boob department meant that I was hardly kicking them along if I didn’t wear a bra – which, with the French resistance to such undergarments I was succumbing to more and more, was just as well. But they still weren’t exactly standing to attention with the same gusto they had in years gone by and various other bits of me were definitely more southerly located than they had been back then. Tomas, on the other hand, appeared to have aged as well as one of his family vineyard’s fine wines.
‘You’re doing it again.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked as he held my coat up and I slipped my arms into the sleeves.
‘Chatting away to yourself.’
‘Was I?’
‘Mentally,’ he said, shrugging on his own impeccably cut overcoat.
‘Oh. Well, I have a lot to say,’ I joked.
‘I’d like to hear it.’
‘Another time, perhaps.’
He looked like he was about to reply but then changed his mind.
‘Why are you putting your coat on?’
‘To walk you home.’
‘Don’t be silly. It’s chilly out there now. Stay here in the warm. I know my way.’
‘I know that,’ he replied, picking up his keys from the gleaming blue marble bowl on the console table he’d dropped them in when we’d entered the house several hours ago. He looked down at me. Even with the new heeled boots I’d chosen to go with my outfit today, he still had a good seven inches of height on me. ‘Kitty, would you allow me to walk you home?’
I looked up into his face and knew it wasn’t just the wine that meant I’d find it hard to say no to anything this man asked.
‘That would be lovely, thank you.’
37
I pulled the key from my pocket and rested my hand on the handle of the apartment door.
‘Thank you for seeing me home.’
‘Any time. Could I see you again?’
‘When?’
‘As soon as possible.’
‘Tomas…’
His head dropped and he nodded a couple of times before raising it again and meeting my eyes. ‘I know. I’m rushing things.’ He shook his head. ‘Exactly what Christophe told me not to do.’
‘Have you been talking about me?’ I asked. There was a flirtatious tease in the words. Paris certainly brought that out in me it seemed. Having put the skill away for quite some time, it was good to know it hadn’t rotted away to dust.
Hugh and I had sort of drifted together – in the same way that we had drifted apart now that I thought about it. We’d been happy but passion wasn’t a big part of our relationship. Tomas, on the other hand…
‘As often as I can.’
