She was still finding it hard to believe that she was actually here with him and she took a deep breath and reminded herself that he had asked her on a date. It gave her just the surge of confidence she needed to walk towards him and she blushed furiously as he turned to look at her with a slow smile on his face.
‘So… I’ve arranged a little surprise for you…’
Jennifer could barely contain her breathless excitement. ‘You haven’t! What is it?’
‘You’ll have to wait and see,’ he told her with a grin. He leaned back, angling his body so that he could stretch his legs out. ‘I still can’t believe that you’ve finished university and are heading off to foreign shores…’
‘I know, but the offer of a job in Paris was just too good to pass up. You know what it’s like here.’
‘I know,’ he agreed, understanding what she meant without her having to explain. Wasn’t this one of the great things about her? he thought. They had known each other for so long that there was hardly any need to explain references or, frankly, sometimes, to finish sentences. Of course, Paris for a year was going to be brilliant for her. Aside from her stint at university, which, in Canterbury, had hardly been a million miles away, he couldn’t think of a time that she had ever left here and, however beautiful and peaceful this slice of Kent was, she should be champing at the bit to spread her wings and fly farther afield. But he didn’t mind admitting to himself that he was going to miss her easy companionship.
Jennifer helped herself to another glass of wine and giggled. ‘Three shops, a bank, two offices, a post office and no jobs! Well, I guess I could have thought about travelling into Canterbury… seeing what I could land there but…’
‘But that would have been a waste of your French degree. I guess John will miss having you around.’
Jennifer wanted to ask if he would miss having her around. He worked in London, had taken over the running of his father’s company when, in the wake of his father’s death six years previously, the vultures had been circling, waiting to snap it up at a knock-down price. At the time he had barely been out of university but he had skipped the gap year he had planned and returned to take the reins of the company and haul it into the twenty-first century. London was his base but he travelled out to the country regularly. Would he miss having her around on those weekends? Bank holidays?
‘I won’t be gone for the rest of my life.’ Jennifer smiled, thinking of her father. ‘I think he’ll manage. He has his little landscaping business and, of course, overseeing your grounds. I’ve been working to get him computer literate so that we can Skype each other.’ She cupped her face in her hands and looked at him. He was only just twenty-seven but he looked older. Was that because he had been thrown into a life of responsibility at the highest possible level from a very young age? He had had little to do with his father’s company before his father had died. Silvio Rocchi had barely had anything to do with it himself. While he had carried out his diplomatic duties, he had delegated the running of the company to his right-hand men which, as it turned out, had not been the best idea in the world. When he died, James had been the young upstart whose job it had been to sack the dead wood. Had that forged a vein of steel inside him that had turned the boy quickly into the man?
She could have spent a few minutes chewing over the conundrum but he was saying something, talking about her father.
‘And it’s just a thought but he might even enjoy having the place to himself, who knows?’
‘Well, he’ll get used to it.’ But enjoy? No, she couldn’t really see that happening. Her earliest memories were of her and her dad as a unit. They had weathered the storm of her mother’s death together and had been everything to each other ever since.
‘I think,’ James murmured, glancing over her shoulder and leaning towards her to cover her hand with his, ‘your little surprise is on its way…’
Jennifer spun around to see two of the waiters walking towards her and felt a stab of sudden disappointment. They were holding a cake with a sparkler and huge bowl of ice cream liberally covered with chocolate sauce and coloured sweets. It was the sort of thing a child would have been thrilled by, not a grown woman. She glanced over her shoulder to James, and saw that he was lounging back, hands clasped behind his head, smiling with an expression of satisfaction so she smiled too and held the smile as she blew out the sparkler to an audience of clapping diners.
‘Really, James, you shouldn’t have.’ She stared down at more dessert than anyone could hope to consume in a single sitting, even someone of her proportions. The awkward girl she had left behind threatened to return as she gazed down at his special gesture.
‘You deserve it, Jen.’ He rested his elbows on the table and carefully removed the sparkler from the cake. ‘You did brilliantly at university and you’ve done brilliantly to accept the Paris job.’
‘There’s nothing brilliant about accepting a job.’
‘But Paris… when my mother told me that you’d been offered it, I wasn’t sure whether you had it in you to take it.’
‘What do you mean?’ It seemed rude to leave the melting ice cream and the slab of cake untouched, so she had a mouthful and looked away from him.
‘You know what I mean. You haven’t strayed far from the family home… university just around the corner so that you could pop in and check on John several times a week, even though you were living out…’
‘Yes, well—’
‘Not that that’s a bad thing. It’s not. The world would be a better place if there were more people like you in it. We certainly would be reading far fewer stories in the newspapers of care homes where ageing relatives get shoved and forgotten about.’
‘You make me sound like a saint,’ Jennifer said, stabbing some cake and dipping it into the bowl of ice cream.
‘You always do that.’
‘What?’
‘Somehow manage to turn cake and ice cream into slush. And you always manage to do… that…’
‘What?’ She could feel her irritation levels rising.
‘Get ice cream round your mouth.’ He reached over to brush some ice cream off and the fleeting touch of his finger by her mouth almost made her gasp. He licked the ice cream from his finger and raised his eyebrows with appreciation.
‘Very nice. Bring that bowl closer and let’s share.’
Jennifer relaxed. This was more like it. Three glasses of wine had relaxed her but she hadn’t been able to banish all her inhibitions. His treating her like a kid was probably going to bring them all back but clinking spoons as they dipped into the same bowl, exchanging mouthfuls of ice cream and laughing…
Once again she felt intoxicated with anticipation.
She made sure to lean forward so that he could see her cleavage, which was daringly on display. Normally, she wore much plainer clothes, big jumpers in winter and loose dresses in summer. But, for this date, she had splashed out on a calf-length skirt and although the silky top was still fairly baggy, its neckline was more risqué.
It was strange but, although she had no qualms about wearing tight jeans and tight tops at university, the standard uniform for students, the thought of wearing anything tight in front of James had always brought on a mild panic attack. The feel of those lazy blue eyes resting on her had always resulted in an acute bout of self-consciousness. His girlfriends were always so petite and so slim.