Gib couldn’t help thinking about his home on the Pacific coast, with its huge, light, open rooms and its view of the ocean, and he sighed. He was beginning to wonder if he might regret taking up the challenge Josh had thrown him.
Behind him, the taxi driver cleared his throat meaningfully, and Gib stepped up to the door and pushed the bell, his most charming smile at the ready. A bet was a bet, and it was too late to change his mind now.
He hadn’t heard the bell ring inside, and pushed it again just as the door jerked open and he found himself looking at a tall, slender girl with the fiercest green eyes he had ever seen. She had a swing of straight dark hair, straight dark brows and a generous mouth that belied the severity of her expression.
Gib’s smile blinked off in surprise. Had he got the right address? He distinctly remembered Josh saying that all three girls were very ordinary. They’re just nice, friendly girls, he had said.
This girl didn’t look at all ordinary to Gib, and she didn’t look very friendly either.
‘Yes?’ she snapped.
‘I’m John Gibson.’ Gib put his smile back on, but it bounced right off her. ‘Gib to my friends. And you must be Phoebe, Bella or Kate?’
‘I’m Phoebe,’ she acknowledged reluctantly, and frowned. ‘We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow was the original plan, but I was all ready and an earlier flight came up, so I thought I might as well just come on over and turn up.’
He had the bluest eyes Phoebe had ever seen, and they danced in a way that instantly made her feel boring and repressed for not being the kind of spontaneous person that changed arrangements at a whim and breezed across the Atlantic with about as much fuss as she would make popping down to the shop on the corner.
Less, probably.
Phoebe had had a bad day. Her boss, Celia, had been in a vile mood, nitpicking and throwing tantrums with an even greater regularity than normal. Escaping at last, she had spent more than forty minutes waiting for a bus which turned out to be only going as far as Clapham Junction anyway. Too fed up to hang around in the rain, she had set off to walk the rest of the way, without thinking about the fact that it would take her nearly an hour and that she was carrying two heavy folders and wearing quite unsuitable shoes, and when she finally hobbled into the kitchen she had discovered that the pilot light on the boiler had gone out, so there was no hot water for a bath.
And now there was this Gib on her doorstep.
Sod’s law, thought Phoebe morosely. Be at your best with your hair perfectly in place and your lipstick perfectly applied, and you could be sure that when the doorbell went unexpectedly it would be someone doing market surveys or that man who kept trying to get them to change their electricity supplier.
Look and feel like a limp rag, however, and you could guarantee that the most attractive man you had ever seen in the flesh would turn up on the doorstep!
When she looked at him properly, she could see that he wasn’t actually that handsome—his features were too irregular for classic good looks—but he had a quirky, mobile face with eyes so blue and so alive that somehow that was all that you noticed.
Phoebe was distinctly unnerved by the sheer vibrancy of the man. He had that relaxed yet vivid air of someone who spent his life in the sun. Just looking at him was like getting a blast of ozone. He was the sort of man who ought by rights to be at the helm of a yacht or plunging into the ocean waves with a surfboard under his arm, not standing in this grey south London street evidently wondering why she was staring at him.
Recollecting herself, Phoebe stepped back and held open the door. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said awkwardly.
Gib stayed where he was on the doorstep. ‘The thing is, I’ve got a bit of a problem,’ he admitted, and turned to indicate the taxi which was waiting in the street with its meter ticking at a rate of knots.
‘I lost my wallet somewhere between LA and the arrivals hall at Heathrow. I think someone might have lifted it in the baggage hall, but anyway it’s gone. I reported it to the police and have cancelled all my cards but I thought the best thing I could do would just be to get a taxi here and hope someone was in.’
He looked back at Phoebe with a rueful smile that she was sure was perfectly calculated to have most females swooning at his feet. ‘You wouldn’t have some cash to pay the taxi driver, would you? I’ll pay you back, of course, as soon as I’ve sorted something out.’
Phoebe forced herself to resist the smile. It was just a little too like Slimy Seb’s, who only ever came round when he wanted something and who was always patting his pockets and discovering that he had ‘forgotten’ his wallet, knowing quite well what a soft touch Kate was.
This Gib looked as if he was out of the same mould, one of those cocky, charming types that thought all they had to do was smile and everyone else would fall over themselves to do whatever they wanted. Phoebe didn’t trust men like that. She had met too many of them, and seen too many friends like Kate hurt by their selfish behaviour to ever succumb herself.
Gib was watching her expression and reading her lack of enthusiasm without difficulty. ‘Hey, it’s no problem,’ he said. ‘I’ll just get the taxi to take me to Josh’s office. I’m sure I’ll find someone there to bail me out.’
It was lucky that he had mentioned Josh. As Bella’s best friend, Josh spent a lot of time in the house, and Phoebe was very fond of him. If Josh vouched for Gib, she had better not leave him to sort out his own problems the way she was strongly tempted to do.
‘There’s no need for that.’ She managed a brittle smile. ‘I’ll just go and get my purse.’
‘Thanks, I really appreciate that,’ said Gib as the taxi drove off. ‘I’ll let you have the money back tomorrow.’
That was what Seb always said to Kate, too.
‘Everything’s a bit of mess,’ said Phoebe stiffly as she led the way to the kitchen at the back of the house. ‘We were going to tidy up for you tonight.’
They had planned a special welcoming meal as well. Bella was doing the shopping on her way home, but of course spontaneous types like Gib never thought of how they might mess up anyone else’s plans, did they?
‘Hey, I didn’t want anyone to go to any trouble,’ said Gib, alarmed by her frosty manner. ‘Josh said you’d just treat me like a friend and let me muck in with the rest of you.’
‘Now that you’ve turned up early, it looks like that’s what you’re going to have to do,’ said Phoebe, carrying the kettle over to the sink to fill it.
Gib eyed her warily, picking up on the hostility but not quite sure what he had done to provoke it. Maybe she was cross like this with everyone, which would be a crying shame with that warm, creamy skin and that lush mouth, he thought and then remembered that he wasn’t supposed to be thinking like that. All you’ve got to do is be a friend, Josh had said. What could be easier than that?
Clicking on the kettle, Phoebe turned to face him, and Gib looked quickly away. ‘Nice kitchen,’ he said.
It was a big, cluttered room with fitted cupboards at one end and at the other a shabby sofa and deep armchair covered with an ethnic-looking throw. In the middle was an antique pine table submerged beneath a welter of half-read newspapers, magazine cuttings, recipe books and files with papers spilling out of them. Gib spotted an iron, a collection of nail varnishes, a sequin bag, and—he did a double take—yes, a huge tabby cat curled up in a nest of papers.
The kitchen run by his housekeeper at home had gleaming steel surfaces and was so intimidatingly tidy that Gib rarely ventured in there. This room was messier and a lot less hygienic, he thought, glancing