Not if your name was Leo Hunter, apparently.
‘They should pay me commission.’ Leo grinned as they took a seat. ‘I’ve sent more clients their way than I can count.’
Lizzie wasn’t used to being spoiled.
Afternoon tea was sumptuous and Leo was very good company. ‘Do you do this a lot?’ Lizzie asked.
‘Not too often,’ Leo said. ‘It’s nice to pause sometimes.’
She felt dreadfully gauche. It was a pause in Leo’s day and yet Lizzie felt tempted to whip out her phone and take a photo as afternoon tea was delivered to their table and the china cups filled. ‘My mum would have loved this.’ She glanced up. ‘Sorry, that sounds really maudlin. My mum loved anything to do with food—she was a wonderful cook.’
‘Was?’
‘She has Alzheimer’s.’
‘How bad is she?’
‘She had good days and bad,’ Lizzie said. ‘Mainly she has no idea who I am but every now and then her face lights up and we talk, though it’s mainly a teenage Lizzie she’s talking about. It’s good to know that she does recognise me sometimes.’
‘What about your father?’
He’s in the same home as Mum. He’s relatively well, though …’ She didn’t really want to discuss it. Yes, she’d chatted away to Ethan about how her father, despite her best efforts, refused to even come out for a coffee with her. How he didn’t even want to go out to the shops. But she just didn’t want to bore Leo. ‘This is lovely.’ She looked at the gorgeous surroundings. ‘It’s a big change from my old job.’
‘You’re from Brighton?’ Leo checked, recalling her résumé.
‘I came to London a couple of years ago, once my …’ She stopped. All her conversations seemed to lead back to her parents. ‘Mind you, I’m seeing a different side to things since I started the job. I’ve never been to a formal ball.’
‘It will be fun,’ Leo said, taking out a sweetener and flicking it into his tea.
Lizzie let out her breath and asked the question that had been plaguing her, though of course she knew the answer. She was just fishing for a hint about what Leo would expect her to wear. ‘What’s the dress code for the ball?’
‘Evening wear, formal.’ Leo was spreading jam on a scone when he glanced up. ‘You’ll be fine.’
It was all so easy for him.
‘I’m just a bit worried—’
‘You’ll look stunning,’ Leo interrupted, doing his best to put her at ease and failing miserably.
For Lizzie things came to a head just before home time when she heard Kara, one of the plastic surgeons, talking about the ball. She kindly tried to bring Lizzie into the conversation. ‘Do you know what you’re wearing yet, Lizzie? I hear Leo’s taking you.’
‘That’s right.’ Lizzie nodded. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’
God, she had to say something to him. She wouldn’t just be letting herself down. Leo expected glamour on his arm and later in that afternoon Lizzie finally caved, knocking on his door.
‘Who is it?’
‘Lizzie.’
‘Come in.’ He turned briefly from the basin as she entered. ‘I’m surprised you bothered knocking.’
‘What are you doing?’ Lizzie asked, and if she sounded brusque it was to cover up her embarrassment at the sight of Leo. He was naked from the hips up, his suit pants sat low on his hips and there was a fresh shirt over the chair. He had, she presumed, just finished shaving and was now trying to take out his own stitches. ‘You can’t take your own stitches out.’
‘It’s harder than I thought,’ Leo admitted.
They were tiny sutures, and Leo was having more trouble than he’d expected, getting the tiny blade to snip the thread, but, given where he was going, it was essential he looked his best.
‘I’ll do it.’ Lizzie sighed.
‘Sorry to trouble you!’ Leo quipped, and well he might. After all, he was paying her extremely well, but only as he sat down and put his head back did he realise her discomfort, only then was he suddenly aware of his own naked skin, because Lizzie was leaning over him, and trying not to touch him as she soaked the wound to soften it so that the stitches wouldn’t stick or catch on their way out.
Breast implants? Leo wondered as one hovered above his view, and he desperately tried to quash that thought, not just because it was inappropriate but rather more the effect it was starting to have on him. ‘Just take them out.’
‘I’m going to.’
No, there were no implants, Leo knew his silicone from his saline and these were just soft and ripe, and his jaw clamped down as he focused on the blade in an effort to keep things down!
Lizzie’s hands were shaking slightly. She could smell his cologne and his bare arm seemed to burn her skirted thigh as she leant over and tried to slip the blade beneath the suture.
‘Stay still,’ she warned.
‘I am staying still,’ Leo snapped, because ninety nine per cent of him was, it was just the flood to his groin that was the problem. He lay there refuting the body surface area charts he’d studied in his medical training, because that part of his anatomy certainly accounted for more than one per cent right now.
He did his twelve-times table backwards and breathed in the scent of antiseptic rather than focusing on the fresh smell of her, and when that didn’t work he reminded himself that Lizzie could be sleeping with Ethan.
Olivia.
With just one word he averted disaster.
‘Done.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You need a little adhesive strip here,’ Lizzie said. ‘It’s a teeny bit open in the middle.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘Whatever.’ Lizzie shrugged.
No!
Both said it in their heads as their eyes met.
This is so not going to happen.
‘You should keep it dry …’
‘I know the drill.’
‘Of course.’
‘Lizzie?’
‘What?’
He didn’t know how to ask her, yet he had to know if there was more between her and Ethan, but the time wasn’t right now—there was somewhere else he needed to be. ‘I’d better get on.’ He stood and pulled on his shirt as she cleared the dressing pack away and put the blade in the sharps box.
‘Are you going somewhere nice?’ Lizzie asked, as he opened a bag and pulled out three new ties, with the extortionate price tags still on.
‘Somewhere very nice,’ Leo said. ‘And I’m actually nervous.’
‘Oh?’
‘Which tie? I asked them to send a selection.’
‘Grey …’ Lizzie said, then changed her mind. ‘I like the silver one.’
‘Nope.’ Leo shook his head. ‘Too much.’
‘You really are nervous!’ She grinned. ‘So where are you going?’
‘I actually can’t tell you,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve another house call to make.’
‘You’re going to see a patient?’ Lizzie frowned because he truly did seem tense.
‘Yep.’
He was knotting his tie and kept having to redo it.
‘So why can’t you tell me?’
‘Completely confidential,’ Leo said.
‘Isn’t everyone?’
‘Of course.’
He wasn’t saying any more and Lizzie loathed herself for being so curious, but who on earth could it be? After all they’d had Marianna, you didn’t get any more prestigious than a soon-to-be European princess … maybe another royal?
‘What time do you have to be there?’
‘Six,’ Leo said. ‘On the dot. How’s that?’ He stood there, looking absolutely stunning, his hair brushed back, his suit to die for and, yes, his tie was perfect.
‘Can’t beat a good old Windsor knot,’ she said, and gave him an almost imperceptible wink. ‘Though maybe you should have gone for royal blue.’
Still he refused to be drawn but she did see his tongue roll in his cheek as he suppressed a smile. ‘See you, Lizzie.’
‘Good luck,’ she called out to him as he headed off, and, rather than nervous now, Leo was actually smiling.
Lizzie was far too perceptive!
CHAPTER EIGHT
INSTEAD OF WORKING out what she would be wearing for the ball or getting a pedicure and her nails done, Lizzie’s weekend was spent in Brighton.
‘I’m going to a ball next weekend,’ Lizzie told her mum, chatting away as she sorted out her mother’s clothes for the week.
‘Do you hear that, Faye?’ her father, Thomas, asked. ‘Lizzie’s going to a ball in London.’
But Faye wasn’t interested in anything other than the thought that someone had taken her watch.
‘It’s being fixed, Mum,’ Lizzie attempted again, but Faye wouldn’t accept that. Today everyone was a thief, including Lizzie—who she thought was a stranger rifling through her wardrobe in broad daylight.
‘It’s Lizzie,’ Thomas said when Faye angrily confronted her.
‘Mum, I’m just trying to sort out your clothes,’ Lizzie explained patiently.
‘I’m not your mother,’ Faye shouted, and then walked off and Thomas followed her. It was normal that she didn’t recognise her, Lizzie more than knew that, and the anger and aggression was part of her illness too, but it hurt to see her mother so angry and fearful, and to not even be recognised was an agony that couldn’t always be rationalised away.