Gentlemen Prefer... Brunettes

CHAPTER THREE

CASSIE took pity on her. ‘Don’t worry about it, Beth. You’re only saying what everyone else thinks. Matt and Lauren have been trying to fix me up with their spare men friends for years.’

‘Look, since this is apparently my day for saying the wrong thing, can I do it again?’

‘Will anything stop you?’

‘It’s just that... well, has it ever occurred to you that Jonathan might not have been a swan after all? You’d only been married a few weeks when he died, hardly long enough to find out the faults. And they all have faults, you know. Even the best of them.’

‘I know, Beth.’

‘It’s unfair to measure every man you meet against him.’

‘I know.’

‘But it doesn’t make any difference?’

‘Beth, you don’t understand...’ The waitress arrived to take their order and when she had gone the urge to tell someone, anyone, the truth about Jonathan had evaporated. That was her secret. Her shame. ‘Are you sure you won’t come along to the gym?’

‘At six-thirty?’ Beth seemed as relieved to let the subject drop as she was.

‘An hour in the gym three mornings a week helps to counteract the occupational hazard of constantly tasting new recipes to get them just right.’

‘You mean you claim membership of the gym as an expense against income tax?’ Beth was seriously impressed by that.

‘I hadn’t thought of it,’ Cassie confessed.

‘Check it out with your accountant and let me know what he says. I wonder if I could get away with it? You have to be fit to run your own business, you know.’

‘You have to be fit for any kind of job and somehow I can’t imagine the Inland Revenue subsidising health club membership for the entire nation.’

‘Why not? Think what it would save on the National Health bill.’

‘You know, you’re wasted in business, Beth. With a mind like that you should be in politics. Running the Exchequer.’

‘Are you coming, Nick? The meeting is about to start.’

Veronica was framed in the doorway, her slender figure displayed to advantage in the palest grey and white dress. Outside the day was hot and humid, yet this woman managed to look as if she was moving in her own air-conditioned space, a picture of unruffled poise. He suspected that if she were a glass she would be frosted. The very opposite of the way he was feeling at that moment.

‘I’ll be right with you,’ he muttered, wishing she would move on instead of watching him hunt through the papers on his desk for a sheet of figures that had disappeared without trace.

Instead, she asked, ‘Lost something?’ in a tone that suggested a whole heap of things. But mostly that she had never lost anything in her entire life.

‘One of my secretary’s kids is sick,‘ he muttered. ‘But I know she did those figures before she went home last night...’

Veronica appeared to glide across the room, then, bending from the knees, she picked up a sheet of paper that had fallen beneath his desk. ‘Is this what you’re looking for?’ she enquired as she stood up and offered it to him, a faint smile lifting the corners of her mouth. Like everything she did it combined an economy of movement with perfect grace. He wondered briefly if she had ever been a model, but immediately discounted the possibility that she would ever involve herself in an occupation so trivial.

‘That’s it. Thanks, Veronica.’ He smiled somewhat ruefully, raking his fingers through his hair. ‘I seem to be all over the place today,’ he said, with a slightly helpless shrug. That ‘little boy lost’ thing seemed to get to some women. Maybe it would touch Veronica Grant.

‘The heat gets to some people.’ Her tone suggested only the weak and feeble.

Obviously not.

He shuffled the papers into order and picked up the folder with the details of the new project he had been working on. Beneath it lay Cassie Cornwell’s book, which, despite his promise, had not been opened since he bought it. But at least he hadn’t hidden it away in the bottom of his desk as she had predicted. Veronica picked it up and turned it over to examine the photograph on the back.

‘Is this the book you’re giving your sister?’ she asked.

‘Yes...and no.’ He shrugged. ‘I bought more than one copy.’

Veronica’s eyebrows moved upwards in gentle query. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been bulk buying them as presents for all your female relations?’

‘Thus saving on time, effort and shoe leather? Isn’t that what you advised?’

‘Not quite.’

Somehow he had known that there would be precious few Brownie points for admitting to such a lack of imagination. The truth at least had the virtue of being surprising. ‘No, well, actually, I bought that copy for myself.

‘Oh, sure,’ she said. ‘You’re a new man through and through.’

Her scepticism was beginning to irritate him. ‘The idea amuses you?’

‘You don’t really expect me to believe that you cook for yourself, Nick?’

‘Men have to eat too, you know.’

‘In my experience they usually manage that by getting some poor woman to cook for them.’

‘Really?’ Some of the women who had wanted to cook for him had been a long way from poor, but he didn’t think she was referring to their fiscal status. He wondered why she so despised domesticated women. Did she think they were letting the feminist side down? ‘Maybe you should try a better class of man,’ he advised.

‘Is that an invitation?’

‘An invitation?’

Without thinking he stood back to let her precede him through the door. She didn’t appear to notice this lapse or, if she did, she let it go, but once she was in the corridor she stopped and turned to face him.

‘An invitation to dinner, Nick. I’ve never met a man who could cook before. To be honest I’m still not sure that I believe you can—but I’m prepared to be convinced. I’m free on Thursday evening, if you’ve a space in your diary?’

Not by so much as the twitch of a muscle did Nick betray his surprise. Was that all it took to melt the ice-lady? A little home cooking? Or was it simply that she couldn’t resist the opportunity to catch him out in a lie? Did she think he’d wriggle and squirm to get out of it?

‘Well, there’s an evening track meeting at Crystal Palace that I’m supposed to attend. We’re sponsoring one of the events.’ He waited while her face arranged itself into the superior kind of smile that suggested she had expected some feeble excuse. Then he shrugged and grinned. ‘But I don’t imagine I’ll have any trouble finding someone to go in my place. Shall I pick you up at around eight?’

It was her turn to be surprised, but if she was she didn’t let it show either. ‘Won’t you be occupied with your sauces?’ she asked, making a little stirring gesture.

Frankly, he hadn’t a clue. He had no idea what making a sauce entailed, but he knew it couldn’t be difficult—his mother could do it for heaven’s sake.

‘I won’t know until I’ve decided what to cook. Perhaps I’d better send a car for you.’

Her enigmatic look faltered slightly as she realised that he was serious. Then she lifted one elegantly clad shoulder a fraction of an inch. ‘At eight? Why not? What have I got to lose?’

‘Your waistline?’ he suggested, recalling Cassie’s comments about calories.

She gave him a disbelieving look before returning his book and heading for the meeting, one hundred per cent businesswoman again, her entire being focused on the launch of a new line in ladies’ golfing equipment.

Yet once when he looked up from the projected sales figures he was quoting to the team he caught her looking at him, her forehead creased in a slightly puzzled frown, and it was all he could do to stop himself from smiling.

Every woman had a weak spot. Even if it was only the desire to see a man make a fool of himself. He wondered about Cassie Cornwell and what her weak spot was. Not that kind of cynicism, he was prepared to bet any amount of money. She had the kind of eyes that would melt at a litter of puppies. Or the sight of snow falling on Christmas morning. Or a new baby grasping at her finger...

‘Nick?’

He started at the sound of his name and glanced up to discover half a dozen pairs of eyes looking up at him expectantly. It took a moment to clear the appealing image of Cassie Cornwell and puppies and Christmas in front of a log fire from his brain. What did it was the distinctly predatory look he surprised in Veronica Grant’s eyes.

It was a momentary expression, almost instantly replaced by the cool, slightly distant look she normally adopted. He might have imagined it. But it gave him the uncomfortable feeling that she wasn’t in the least bit taken in by his ‘new man’ act. And that if she caught him out in a lie he’d never be allowed to forget it.

Cassie had been cooking since she was old enough to stand on a chair and knead a piece of dough at her mother’s side and she always found the beating, the kneading, the careful combining of ingredients as she prepared a favourite recipe therapeutic.

But ever since she had turned down Nick Jefferson’s invitation to lunch nothing, not even the creation of a new pasta dish, had been able to shake her of the conviction that she had made a mistake. And it infuriated her. She slammed down the dough on the work surface in her kitchen and proceeded to take her feelings out on it. Nick Jefferson was not her kind of man and never would be. In a hundred years. And she certainly wasn’t his kind of woman.

His kind of woman was tall as a tree, with sucked-in cheeks and a bone structure that showed. The kind of woman who lived on carrot juice and a few leaves of lollo rosso. The kind of woman who wouldn’t dare to take three boisterous boys on a visit to an ice-cream factory in case the calories somehow managed to seep in through her pores. Remembering the hard work she’d had to put in at the gym afterwards, she had to admit that it was a distinct possibility.

She’d certainly be a woman with more sense than to offer to take those same three boys camping...

And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, her brother-in-law had ridiculed the campsite she had picked out...the one with civilised plumbing, hot showers, a swimming pool and a camp store as well as organised activities with trained counsellors...

‘That’s not camping, that’s a holiday camp,’ Matt had scoffed. And her heart had sunk like an undercooked sponge as she had listened to his rose-coloured memories of his own boyhood camping trips. He had waxed lyrical about how they had fished and canoed and swum naked as the sun came up. And Mike and Joe and little George had listened too. At least Joe and George had. She had seen their ecstatic little faces absorbing every last detail. Mike had been quieter. She was worried about Mike.

‘You can’t expect my sister to take the boys somewhere like that,’ Lauren interjected irritably. ‘We’ll have to take them with us to Portugal.’

Matt had no trouble in equalling his wife’s irritation. ‘I thought the whole point of this holiday was to get away from the children...’ Mike got up and left the room. ‘Mike!’

‘Oh, let him go,’ Lauren said. ‘Having him around is like living with a permanent headache.’

Cassie glanced after the boy, wondering if he’d heard. But it was her sister who was worrying her most. She had a pinched look about her mouth and angry eyes. She was looking for an excuse for the kind of row that would leave her free to walk out. Cassie refused to give her that excuse.

‘For heaven’s sake, Lauren,’ she said lightly, ‘anyone would think I was a grade A wimp to listen to you. We’ll have a lovely time, won’t we, boys?’ Lauren gave her a look that suggested she was fooling herself.

Was she? She’d put on a brave face for Beth, and the camp she’d chosen had sounded positively civilised. But to give Matt a chance to put things right she would willingly put up with a few days’ discomfort.

‘You’re right, Matt,’ she continued, with as much conviction as she could muster. ‘Uncommercial sounds like much more fun. Book the site, mark the place on the map and we’ll make like pioneers, won’t we, boys?’

And pioneers was probably right. She was well aware that ‘uncommercial’ was shorthand for an absence of any kind of running water, and ‘untouched’ meant that the toilet facilities would involve the enthusiastic use of a shovel.

Then she gave herself a mental shaking. She had volunteered for this trip and it was a small enough sacrifice to make to save her sister’s marriage. Although she rather thought she’d pass on swimming naked in some freezing Welsh lake at dawn.

She put the bread dough in a greased bowl and covered it with a damp cloth while she waited for it to rise. Then she turned out a solid, cut-and-come-again fruit loaf she had been making for their trip. And after that she started to make a shopping list. A long shopping list.

If she was going pioneering, she had better be prepared for any eventuality.

Nick had always managed to eat very well without ever developing his culinary skills beyond the ability to make a decent cup of coffee. If pushed, he could make a slice of toast, even a sandwich. But he’d always considered the kitchen very much a female province and women, in his experience, couldn’t wait to get in there and display their home-making skills, presumably in the hope they would become a permanent fixture. He’d never discouraged them. He’d never made any promises either. He enjoyed home cooking as much as the next man, but not to the point that he was prepared to give up his independence for it.

But now all that was about to change. He sat at his desk and opened Cassie’s book. It was organised neatly into courses and as he slowly turned the pages he could almost see her in some big, comfortable kitchen, full of the scent of herbs and baking bread, surrounded by earthy vegetables fresh from the garden.

Romantic nonsense, of course. She was a professional cook and almost certainly worked in a stainless-steel kitchen that had all the atmosphere of a hospital operating room.

He bypassed the recipes for rich vegetable soups. Somehow he didn’t think that Veronica was the kind of woman to eat ‘hearty’. No. He’d start with something simple. Something cold that could be prepared in advance and left in the fridge. His sister did it all the time.

Oysters? He grinned. No. That would be too obvious. And he prided himself on not being obvious. Smoked salmon would be better. With that special dill mayonnaise Helen made. And thinly sliced home-made bread. She’d part with a loaf if he asked her for one. Elegant, but easy. Pleased with himself, he made a note on the pad beside him. Round one and so far he hadn’t done a thing.

What next? Something unusual, something that would convince her that he hadn’t picked it up from a cook-chill cabinet at the supermarket. He would have liked to call Cassie and ask her advice. But he didn’t have her number. Beth would know it, of course. But Beth would be too interested in why he wanted it. And jump to all the wrong conclusions. Instead he called his sister.

‘Helen, how are you?’

‘Busy. What do you want?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘Is that any way to speak to your big brother?’

‘Nick, darling, I’m not one of your doting fillies, so please don’t use your butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth voice with me; I know you too well to be taken in. What do you want?’

He considered acting hurt. But she was his sister. And, as she said, she knew him too well to be fooled. ‘Advice. I’m cooking a meal for someone tomorrow night—’ She began laughing before he could finish. ‘What’s so funny?’ he demanded.

‘Oh, come on, Nick. Surely you don’t have to ask? You couldn’t boil water without burning it.’ Then, before he could reply, she said, ‘Oh, I get it You want me to cook the meal for you and hide in the pantry between courses. Sorry, sweetheart,’ she continued, before he could deny it, ‘I’m giving a dinner for Graham’s boss tomorrow night and his promotion rests on the piquancy of my chicken chasseur and the lightness of my pastry. Call a caterer. Or better still take the girl somewhere romantic. That usually does the trick—’

‘Helen!’

‘Doesn’t it?’

‘Not on this occasion.’ Nick gritted his teeth. ‘She thinks I can cook.’

‘Where on earth would she get an idea like that about you?’ Helen asked, hooting with laughter. Why did women always laugh? ‘You didn’t lie to the poor woman, did you?’ Nick was interested to note that Helen referred to Veronica as a ‘poor woman’, too. Maybe they should meet and compare notes.

‘No, I didn’t. She found a cookery book on my desk and sort of jumped to conclusions.’

‘A cookery book? What on earth...oops...was it my birthday present?’

‘More or less,’ he hedged.

‘Even so. Is she soft in the head?’

‘Does she have to be? Cooking can’t be that difficult. Women do it every day of the week.’

‘I guess it must be all that practice that makes us perfect,’ she agreed, with suspicious sweetness. ‘Let me know how it turns out, Nick. Better still, take pictures; I can always use a really good laugh.’ And she hung up.

‘Helen!’ Then, ‘Damn!’ He hadn’t even had the chance to ask her for the bread and mayonnaise.

He considered calling his mother. But not for more than ten seconds. He’d had a basinful of being laughed at.

He’d make his own mayonnaise. He’d do it all. He’d got a cookery book. He could read. If Helen could cook chicken chasseur, so could he. He looked through Cassie’s book. It wasn’t there. He was beginning to understand why there was such a big market in cookery books.

He stopped at the supermarket on his way home. It wasn’t something he did very often—he had a lady who came in every day to clean and organise the essentials of life, although she’d made it plain from the start that she didn’t cook. Even if she had he wouldn’t have asked her. He had something to prove to all those scoffing women.

Tonight he would have a practice run. Tomorrow—well, tomorrow his chicken with grapes, lemon and soured cream would make Miss Veronica Grant eat her words.

He manfully grasped a trolley with one hand and with his shopping list in the other he set about finding all the ingredients he would need. He had paused between a pyramid of canned peaches on special offer and a stack of cornflakes that would have given the Jefferson Tower a run for its money, wondering where to find the dried herbs, when he spotted Cassie Cornwell pushing an overloaded trolley that seemed to have a mind of its own.

She was too distracted by the task of preventing the shopping cart from knocking down the tower of cornflakes to notice him. The urge to let them tumble was, for just a moment, wickedly tempting. But then he realised that this was a God-given opportunity to pick her brains so he took pity on her and, taking hold of the front of the cart, pulled it straight.

Cassie looked up, a smile of thanks already on her lips, but as their eyes connected over a bumper-sized pack of breakfast cereals she blushed. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

‘It was the last time I looked in a mirror,’ he agreed. The blush was oddly gratifying; her lack of enthusiasm at encountering him was not. ‘I take it this mound of food is for your camping trip? Or are you an impulse shopper?’ he enquired.

Cassie had an impulse to throw something at the man. For appearing suddenly like that, before she could warn her body not to do anything stupid. She just knew she was blushing like an iced fancy that had been mugged by the cochineal.

‘No.’ He picked up the box of frosted cereals and turned it over. ‘No. Somehow I don’t see you eating these for breakfast.’ Cassie wondered what he did see her eating, but she managed to restrain herself from enquiring. He told her anyway. ‘A girl like you understands that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I see you tucking into something wholesome and filling. Soft creamy scrambled eggs with cnsp bacon, toast, home-made marmalade and Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee?’ he suggested.

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