‘We need to find somewhere to change,’ he said abruptly. ‘We’ll end the day by going somewhere decent to eat.’
‘All this to save me from the trauma of having to face James?’ Amy remembered Claire’s questions earlier that day when she had asked why. Why had the gardener, to whom she wasn’t attracted and who wasn’t attracted to her, decided to put himself out to take her to Manhattan? He didn’t act as though he was interested in her, but just in case he started getting the wrong idea Amy decided to set him straight.
‘All this stuff,’ she began awkwardly.
‘Stuff?’
‘The dress. Now dinner. I hope you don’t think that…’
‘That…?’ Rafael guided her into a coffee shop where she gratefully dropped into a chair. Only problem was that she was now obliged to look him in the face when she talked to him. Very bad. Judging from the innocently curious expression on his face he wasn’t about to make things easy for her. Someone came to take their order and seemed excessively cheerful considering their modest request for two cups of unadorned filter coffee when the menu suggested that anything short of a latte was sacrilege.
Rafael leant forward and proceeded to give her the full benefit of his undivided attention.
Vaguely alarmed, Amy inched back and tried to get her scattered thoughts in order. What had she been thinking?
‘You were saying…?’ he asked with interest. ‘Shall I help you out?’ he volunteered into the growing silence and Amy gave a strangled response and a shrug that could have meant anything.#p#分页标题#e#
He took it to mean that he could embarrass her further by leaning closer. ‘You don’t want me to think that I’m buying you because I’m buying you a cheap dress and something to eat…Not only am I a dinosaur out of touch with the real world, but I’m also caught up in the old-fashioned male way of thinking that dinner equals sex.’
‘No! That’s not what I meant!’
‘Isn’t it?’
Amy took refuge in a mouthful of coffee. Why had they come to a coffee shop? Why not a wine bar where she could have gulped back some restorative wine and found a bit of Dutch courage to continue the conversation? ‘Well, you can’t blame me, can you? I mean, it’s only fair to lay one’s cards on the table from the outset. That way there won’t be any misunderstandings and a girl has to look out for herself, don’t you agree?’ She wondered, in panic, how she could have the nerve to warn off a man most women would throw themselves at. No wonder his expression was one of surprised disbelief. She sternly reminded herself that it was imperative to lay down her ground rules irrespective of what he looked like.
‘What makes you think that you’re my type?’
Amy’s mortification deepened. Rafael thought that she really did blush extremely well. Granted, James would probably only have seen her in her working clothes and his imagination led him to believe that her working clothes would be far from sexy, but how was it that his brother hadn’t been able to glimpse the tantalising woman behind the uniform? Rafael was slightly surprised considering James prided himself on his vast knowledge of the opposite sex.
‘I’m not your type any more than you’re mine,’ she said, thinking on her feet, ‘but I just don’t want any misunderstandings to occur.’
‘What is your type?’ Rafael asked. ‘James, I suppose?’
Amy, in that split second, had a moment of terrible realisation. James wasn’t her type even though she had sincerely thought he was, even though he really was the sort of guy she usually went for, a guy who had the gift of the gab and didn’t take life too seriously. Yes, of course, they worked hard but they always knew how to have a good time. Guys like Freddie and those before him all the way down the years to when she had been a teenager dating the captain of the school sports team. If anyone had told her that she might one day be drawn to a man who hardly ever seemed to smile, never mind laugh, who didn’t possess a pair of jeans and with a CD collection she would hate to see, she would have laughed until she cried.
All her boyfriends had been blond, for heaven’s sake! It was a standing joke in her family. How dared this cynical dark-haired man sneak up on her from behind and get under her skin?
As she was still reeling from the thunderbolt, something else wormed its way out of hiding and filled her consciousness like a dangerous, toxic fog. Not only was she attracted to this least likely of men, but this least likely of men could prove to be the most lethal to her system because she reacted to him in a way she had never reacted to any boy or man in her life before. It was as if he made her three-dimensional. He could hurt her and Amy didn’t want to be hurt. She could see now that she had never been hurt before, not really, not in any meaningful way.