‘You need to get out more often,’ Amy said suddenly, interrupting herself in mid-flow with a sudden change of topic. She was impressed to see that Rafael didn’t bat an eyelid at the abrupt digression. He just topped up her glass and raised his eyebrows enquiringly. He did that very nicely, she thought with tipsy appreciation. Little inclination of the head, slight smile playing on his lips, just a fetching hint of amusement in his expression.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Well, all this effort for a stranger?’ Amy looked around her. ‘I know you’ve told me that this is some kind of cheap fast food chain—’
‘I don’t recall describing it as “cheap” or “fast food”.’
‘Technicality.’ Amy waved her hand to dismiss his interruption. ‘Fact is…’ she leaned towards him and made a very concentrated effort to sound grave and in control of her wayward mouth, which had a tendency to let her down at the best of times, never mind after a couple of drinks ‘…you didn’t have to bring me on this sightseeing tour of The Big Apple…’ She frowned. ‘Where does that expression come from anyway? The Big Apple? Funny things, expressions…’ She propped her chin in the palm of one hand and looked at him thoughtfully. At any rate, thoughtful was the expression she was aiming for rather than gawping, which she felt very much like doing, as she had felt since the night had kicked off two hours earlier with a drink at a trendy bar in downtown Manhattan. She had dressed in her flimsy, sexy red dress, feeling like a million dollars, and he had dressed in something he had bought in the space of five seconds on their way back to James’s company apartment. How could a five-second shop produce such a staggering result? she had later wondered.
The black trousers, plain shirt and dark brogues might well have been the sort of outfit that she would have found ridiculously stodgy on a man, but on him it looked fantastic. So even though she had been conscious of him all the time they had been at the apartment, it really hadn’t been too bad. The place was enormous, big enough for them to get ready without actually crossing paths, which she was pretty sure would have bothered her a lot more than it would have bothered him. It was only as she had seen him in his full regalia that her heart had gone into insane overdrive.
In that instant, he had stopped being the gardener and turned into someone else. She told herself that the notion was silly because people didn’t fundamentally change according to their dress code, but she had still become idiotically tongue-tied and took the fastest route to self-control via a stiff Bloody Mary at bar number one, followed by some wine at bar number two and now at the restaurant.#p#分页标题#e#
In a minute she would start slurring her words and nobody could ever say that that was a ladylike way to behave. She took a couple of gulps of mineral water and breathed in deeply.
‘Hysterical,’ Rafael said, amused.
‘What is?’
‘Never mind. You were saying? About my decision to introduce you to some of New York?’ Rafael marvelled that there could be something so utterly feminine about a woman who had clearly had too much to drink, something he had always found abhorrent in the past. The red shoestring strap of her dress was in the process of slipping off one slender shoulder, despite her valiant efforts to keep it in place, and her hair was everywhere she probably didn’t want it to be. She was looking at him very earnestly, so earnestly, in fact, that he suspected she was trying to get her thoughts into some kind of coherent order. He was happy to wait in silence for her because her frowning concentration was mesmerising.
‘Yes. Right. Why did you? You never really said.’
Rafael shrugged. ‘Why did you accept? You never really said.’
‘I hate the way you do that. Answer a question with a question. It’s rude. My mum said that if you’re asked a question, it’s only polite to answer it.’
‘I’ve heard a lot about your mother. I’d like to meet her.’
‘She’s part Irish and would eat you alive.’
Since no one had ever come close to doing any such thing, Rafael couldn’t resist a low laugh. ‘Would she now?’ he murmured lazily.
‘Yes, she would,’ Amy informed him testily because he suddenly looked very arrogant and way too big for his boots for her liking.
What a favour he was doing his brother, Rafael thought. If only James knew! This woman could oh, so easily have got her hooks into him because, as Rafael was increasingly seeing for himself, she was far from the ditzy blonde he had originally imagined her to be. In fact, she shared her mother’s carnivorous appetite because she would have eaten James alive! James, for all his experience of the opposite sex, would have been putty in Amy’s hands, had she managed to get them on him, because underneath that cute blonde exterior she was as sharp as a knife. James’s blondes were malleable dolls in comparison. He had no experience of the knife-wielding variety.