‘The shop?’ he said.
‘I’m in the middle of launching a pop-up shop in Portobello Road. It’s my first try at moving into proper retail instead of market stalls. I need it to be a success and nothing’s going to stop me, including your libido!’
Her angry explanation of her business commitments brought a lurching reminder that currently his own life was cruising along rudderless. It wasn’t as if he had a direction right now, or plans to consider. Lack of sleep had no consequence in his life, aside from the fact that his routine was getting a bit out of kilter, and who really cared about that? Since his social circle currently consisted of a group of girly flatmates, an old friend who was hardly ever there, and his kid sister, concern about his sleep pattern wasn’t exactly a buzzing topic of conversation. And since his sleep problems were rooted in an unrelenting spate of cold-sweat nightmares that made staying awake through the dark hours extremely attractive, he’d quite like to keep it that way.
After operations to remove shrapnel and four months of medical care, his physical recovery was as complete as it was going to get. He’d worked hard to regain his fitness, thinking that would be an end to it, believing he’d got off lightly. He hadn’t counted on the nightmares continuing. He hadn’t told anyone about them, not even Poppy, vaguely thinking that verbalising their existence might somehow give them even more of a grip on him. Easier to just evade sleep and hope they would subside. To help things along, he filled his waking hours with distracting activity, taking full advantage of the sudden lack of discipline and routine in his life after years of moulding to the requirements first of boarding school and then the armed forces.
The sense of purpose and the camaraderie that he’d come to take for granted in the army left a gaping hole in his life now it was unexpectedly gone. Hence the appeal of filling his time with far less challenging distractions. For the first time in his life he’d thrown himself into having fun, losing all sense of his current pointless existence by bedding as many women as possible. It wasn’t difficult. Women seemed to fall at his feet with minimal effort on his part, just the way they always had done.
Except, possibly, for this one.
‘If this carries on I’ll report you to the local council for noise pollution,’ she was snarling. ‘Can’t you phone Poppy?’
He cast exasperated hands down at himself in the small towel.
‘With what, exactly? Do I look like I’ve got a phone stashed on my person? If my sister would just haul herself out of her pit and answer the bloody door, I wouldn’t need to be making any noise,’ he yelled at the closed door, pressing his point by adding in another quick bash on it, which made the crazy neighbour from downstairs stiffen like a meerkat.
‘Will you stop with the knocking?’ she hollered. ‘Is Poppy deaf?’
‘Not as far as I’m aware.’
‘Then she’s not bloody in there, is she? You’ve been hammering on that door for half an hour and it’s loud enough to wake the dead.’ She threw her hands up in a gesture of exasperation. ‘For Pete’s sake, she must be at work. I saw her the other day and she mentioned she was on call this week.’
The implications of that information burst through his mind in a flurry of exasperation. Poppy could be gone for hours and he couldn’t bring himself to interrupt her work as a medic for something as ludicrously embarrassing as locking himself out. Her flatmate, Izzy, had just moved out and the only other person with a key was his friend Isaac, who was supposedly crashing in the extra room but who actually spent more time away than he did at home. He was currently globetrotting between swanky new potential continental venues for his chain of cocktail bars.
He had to face facts. He could hang out in the hallway in a towel for a chunk of the day until Poppy got back. Or he could sweet-talk the interfering neighbour, who looked as if she’d be glad to see his head on a spike.
He stepped away from the door, anticipating that an apology might not have quite the clout it needed if he was still within hammering distance of it.
He spread his hands.
‘Look, I’m sorry. What’s your name?’
She narrowed suspicious eyes at his newly amenable tone.
‘Lara Connor.’
‘Lara. I’m Alex.’
She nodded at him, not a hint of a smile, so he tried a bit harder, attempting to mould his face into an apologetic expression.
‘I’m sorry for the noise. The disruption. I had no idea I was bothering anyone. It’s not as if anyone else has complained.’
Quite the opposite. The biggest problem he had was wriggling out of any follow-up dates. He had absolutely no desire to ruin what was a very nice distraction plan by bringing anything so emotionally demanding as a proper relationship into the situation.
As apologies went it was all a bit pants in Lara’s opinion.
‘Why would anyone else complain? No one else has a bed directly below yours,’ she said. ‘And I don’t need an apology or a load of rubbish excuses. What I really want is some kind of assurance that you’ll make an effort and stop the racket.’
‘I’ll move my bed away from the wall,’ he conceded. His voice was clipped and very British. She noticed he didn’t offer to interrupt the endless flow of women through his bedroom.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘And what about now? You can’t keep hammering on that door—my sanity is hanging by a thread. What are you going to do until Poppy gets back?’
She folded her arms and frowned at him.
He shrugged resignedly.
‘I’ll just have to wait it out. Unless you’d like to take pity on me.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said, smoothing her hair back from her face.
‘It could be hours.’ His expression took on a pitiful look. ‘I don’t even have a jacket.’
‘Tough,’ she said. ‘It’ll do you good to put up with a bit of discomfort for a change.’ She made a move towards the stairs, wondering how far he might go with the grovelling, enjoying the upper hand. She’d let him suffer a bit longer and then offer to let him wait in her flat.
His grovelling had apparently reached its limit. Silence as she descended the top step and then a sudden flurry of bangs on the door started up again. She turned back to him incredulously.
He shrugged, his upraised knuckles poised at chest level.
‘You know, I’m really not convinced Poppy isn’t in there,’ he said. ‘Maybe if I knock long enough, she might show.’
He put enormous emphasis on the words ‘long enough’, making it crystal clear he was prepared to knock all day if necessary.
Anger bubbled hotly through her as she stared at him, seeing the challenge in his eyes and knowing that if she wanted to get any work done today at all she would have to give on this. It was all she could do to force herself to act rationally, when what she wanted to do was snarl at him like a fishwife. She would give on this because it was in her best interest, thereby retaining the upper hand rather than dragging herself down to his level, but he needn’t think this was over. Not for one moment.
‘Come on, then,’ she said, turning back towards the wrought-iron staircase.
She glanced around to see him looking after her. The few paces extra distance would have given her an eye-wateringly fantastic full body view of him if she hadn’t bitten her lip in her determination