Sweet Temptation Read online

  ‘Can I get you a coffee? Tea?’

  He was still staring. This was going like a dream.

  ‘Really, Lauren,’ he said, eyes flicking all over my body. ‘You’re looking hot.’ He coughed quickly, as if catching up with himself suddenly. ‘Sorry. Bit inappropriate,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Not at all,’ I said flirtily, twinkling my eyes at him. ‘In fact … you’re not looking so bad yourself. Now … did you say coffee?’ I knew he hadn’t said any such thing, but he was looking at me so intently I suddenly needed a distraction.

  ‘A coffee would be great, if you don’t mind. Cheers.’

  ‘Of course. Do have a seat. I’ll get my assistant to make us some,’ I said, leaving the room and wondering if he was looking at my bottom. I hoped so. It had got a lot perkier with all the salsa dancing, and the high heels I was wearing gave it an extra wiggle as I walked. I rushed along to Patrick.

  ‘Patch, be a darling and bring us a couple of coffees, will you? Please? And I’ll buy you a beer after work?’

  I wouldn’t normally ask Patrick to do menial stuff like coffee making, but I didn’t want to mess things up with Joe either by trying to carry two boiling beverages on my power-stilettos. There was sure to be a horrible scalding disaster, knowing my luck. And so far everything else had gone so damn promisingly: I’d managed not to end up resembling Barbara Cartland when I’d done my make-up, the green dress still looked stunning (it hadn’t just been a dream), I’d got to work without laddering my tights or twisting my ankle on my heels, and Joe had actually called me hot, for goodness’ sake! There was no way I was going to let a skin wound spoil the party.

  Patrick raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment, other than with a mildly reproachful ‘Coming up, boss.’

  ‘So,’ I said, once I was back with Sexy Joe. I was sitting very demurely, one leg crossed over the other, hands on my top knee. The interview room wasn’t large at the best of times, housing a single desk, two chairs and a PC, but today it seemed even smaller than usual. Intimate, you could say. And … whew! Was it me, or was it warm in there? I could smell Joe’s spicy aftershave and it was making me feel quite swoonsome. ‘You said things hadn’t worked out with you and your ex. Was there a specific reason for the break-up? Sometimes, if you can pinpoint what went wrong, what was missing in the relationship, it can help find you a more suitable partner.’

  Yeah, and let’s have a good old bitch about Serena during the process, I thought cattily.

  As it turned out, there was quite a lot wrong with Serena, according to Joe. She’d stopped making an effort, he complained. I thought he was talking about their sex life, but it turned out he meant her appearance. ‘She got lazy,’ he said, as Patrick walked in with a tray of coffee and biscuits. ‘It was like she felt she didn’t need to bother about herself once we’d got together. She stopped shaving her legs. She even forgot to shave her pits once, it was disgusting.’ He looked appalled at the memory. ‘And she’d slob about on the sofa in these saggy old grey tracksuit bottoms in the evening.’ He grimaced. ‘That’s not very sexy, is it?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ I said. I made a mental note to burn my flannel pyjamas. ‘Thank you, Patrick,’ I added meaningfully, as he was still hanging around earwigging.

  ‘What about her personality?’ I asked, once Patrick had left the room. ‘Was she all you’d hoped for there?’

  He looked blank for a moment. ‘Personality … Yeah, that was okay,’ he conceded. ‘Oh, but the worst thing was seeing her without her make-up on. Bloody hell. It was like something out of a horror film.’

  I laughed, but it was a fake laugh. I was starting to feel kind of sorry for Serena, in all honesty. Wasn’t the woman allowed to chill out once in a while and veg on the sofa with her slap off and her joggers on? Clearly not.

  ‘The thing is, Lauren,’ he said in that sexy deep voice of his, leaning forward. I was glad to be sitting down because this closeness sent me giddy. ‘The thing is, I just want perfection. I want the lot. Beauty, brains, companionship, fun …’ He grinned, his eyes full on mine. I was starting to feel breathless and faint, and my insides were fluttering. ‘Someone like you, basically.’

  His words took a second to register in my brain. ‘Someone … like me?’ I echoed.

  He reached over the desk and took my hand in his. He had big rough chef’s fingers, a firm grip. Oh. My. God. ‘Don’t tell me you can’t feel it too?’ he said hoarsely. ‘There’s something between us, isn’t there? I just find you so bloody attractive … I can’t believe I never noticed it before.’

  My insides had turned to mush. Soup, even. Was this actually happening? Sexy Joe Smith, holding my hand and telling me he fancied me … Surely it had to be a dream. Any minute now I’d wake up and Eddie would be standing on my head, his little pink bum-hole in my face. ‘I …’ I gulped, face flaming, trying to think of something powerfully witty or flirtatious. Something that would seal the deal. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ I replied in a strangled voice instead. And then, in case he changed his mind, ‘Yes,’ I blurted out. ‘Yes, I can feel it. The thing between us, I mean.’ Oh God. Did that sound like the worst kind of double entendre or what?

  He smiled. ‘Then … can I take you out for dinner one night? We can get to know one another better. Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I breathed in wonder. ‘Oh yes.’

  I was in a daze after he left, unable to quite believe what had happened. He had a night off on Saturday week, apparently, and he said he’d book us a table somewhere nice. His treat. He’d be in touch really soon.

  I kept pinching myself, but I still hadn’t woken up. Who would have thought it? I mean, who? Sexy Joe actually wanted to take me for dinner! Sexy Joe had called me ‘hot’ and ‘attractive’ – fact. I had heard him with my very own ears. Christmas had come early all right. There was never going to be a better present than this.

  ‘Well, I think he’s an arse,’ Patrick said dismissively. ‘The way he spoke about his ex, like she was a Barbie doll, for God’s sake! Vile.’

  ‘Ah, but I bet there was more to it than that,’ I retorted quickly. ‘He probably only said that stuff so he didn’t have to go on about how boring and brainless she was.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Patrick said, not looking convinced. ‘I don’t trust him. You watch yourself.’

  I rounded on him, annoyed that he was putting such a dampener on everything.

  ‘I thought you wanted me to get off the shelf,’ I reminded him tartly. ‘What about your Mystic Meg boyfriend-by-Christmas prediction?’

  ‘Yeah, but not with him,’ he countered. ‘I just … I don’t want you to get hurt, Lauren. That’s all.’

  I gave a hard laugh. Another fake laugh, in fact. I was getting good at them. ‘Me, hurt? Don’t be silly,’ I told him. ‘And it’s only a date! It’s not like he’s asked me to marry him or anything.’

  The intercom buzzed just then with my next appointment, so I was able to extricate myself from the conversation. I shook off Patrick’s words – he was just jealous, I told myself. Jealous of me landing a date with Sexy Joe. I couldn’t blame him, really. Who wouldn’t be?

  Luckily, not everyone had been so downbeat about my date. Jess and Maddie had been far more excited for me.

  ‘Oh my God, that’s so fab,’ Jess had whooped the following Monday evening. We were in the Feathers after the FatBusters weighin as usual, and I’d just filled her and Maddie in with all the juicy details. ‘He sounds well lush!’

  ‘And Simpsons is nice,’ Maddie sighed enviously. ‘Lovely food, and very classy. My mum took me for lunch there a few years ago and it was one of the most delicious meals I’ve ever had.’ She elbowed me. ‘And it’s got “rooms”.’

  ‘Rooms?’ I echoed, not following her.

  ‘Yeah, rooms,’ she repeated with a saucy wink. ‘So make sure you pack your toothbrush in your handbag on Saturday night. If you get on like a house on fire, he might just take you for a nightcap upstairs. If you know what I mean.’


  ‘Ooh,’ I said, my stomach doing back-flips at the thought. ‘Well, I’m not sure about that … I mean, it is only a first date …’ Sex with Joe. Much as I wanted it, I was also utterly terrified at the thought. I hadn’t got my kit off for anyone since Brendan – I hadn’t even snogged anyone. What if I’d forgotten what to do?

  ‘Of course,’ Maddie said quickly, putting a hand on mine. ‘Sorry, that’s me getting my kicks vicariously through you and your far more exciting love life, Lauren. I’m not seeing a lot of action under the duvet myself at the moment, so …’

  ‘What, even though you’re such a slinky mama these days?’ I asked in surprise. Maddie had lost another three pounds that week according to the FatBusters Scales of Truth. ‘I’d have thought your hubby would be chasing you around the bedroom every night.’

  She pulled a face. ‘Fat chance,’ she moaned. ‘No pun intended. But you don’t want to hear about that. Go on, tell us more about this dashing prince you’ve got lined up. And what are you going to wear?’

  What indeed? I needed something special, something beautiful, something knock-out. I needed to get my credit cards out. ‘Is anyone free on Saturday for a shopping mission?’ I asked.

  Fortunately, they both were. Unfortunately, when we hit the city the following Saturday, everyone else seemed to have come out as well. It was mid-December and the centre was absolutely heaving with shoppers desperate to load up with Christmas presents, as well as all the tourists who’d flocked to see the German Christmas market in Victoria Square.

  After several hours trying on dresses in every shade imaginable – long ones, short ones, plain ones, sparkly ones – I was just verging on despair when I found the perfect thing. It was a fairly simple black dress with tiny cap sleeves and a plunging V-shaped neckline. The material felt like velvet, but it was lighter and stretchier and had a delicate floral pattern which you could only see when you were close up. It was stylish but not boring, and would look fab with some silver earrings and my hair pinned up.

  ‘Hurrah,’ Maddie said as I handed over my credit card. ‘Does that mean we get lunch now?’

  ‘Bloody right it does,’ I told her.

  The three of us walked up New Street and I felt a rush of joy. The Christmas lights twinkled above us, and the German market was in full swing, with stalls selling wooden toys and handmade candles, as well as iced German gingerbread and pastries. A vat of mulled wine steamed in the cold air on one stall, and the smell of grilling sausages wafted across from another. There was a helter-skelter on our left, and you could hear children screaming and laughing as they whizzed down it, as well as the cheerful music from the carousel further ahead. It was all so wonderfully Christmassy – I felt as if we were on a film set.

  Last Christmas had been the most miserable of my life. I was torn up over Brendan leaving me and just wanted to bunker down with Eddie, the duvet and a whole tin of Quality Street while the rest of the world played happy families without me. In the end, my parents and brother came to rescue me on Christmas Eve and forced me to go home with them, but I still spent the whole of Christmas Day trying not to bawl my eyes out.

  This Christmas was going to be different. I could almost taste it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sweet Temptation

  Maddie

  I was dreading Christmas. Absolutely dreading it. The thought of Christmas dinner without Mum at the table was just unbearable. Unthinkable.

  Mum had always been a big Christmas person. She loved everything about it – choosing presents, taking us all to the panto at the Rep, decorating her house with armfuls of ivy and mistletoe, buying the most enormous tree and hanging it with the same silver baubles she’d had since the Seventies … and she was in her absolute element on Christmas Day. Well, it was a party, wasn’t it? A do. She’d always been good at that. She planned it like a woman possessed – the food, the music, the theme, the works. She’d have a different colour scheme every year – gold and purple, last time, I remembered. Never one for minimalism, my mum.

  But this Christmas was going to be so different. Her absence would haunt me, would taint the whole day, I knew it. How could I laugh about a turkey disaster, pull crackers and wear a stupid hat if I couldn’t smile into her eyes across the table? How would I get through the day without crying over all those Christmases past, all those memories that came tumbling in so cruelly as the kids opened each new door of the Advent calendar?

  As for the thought of January and a whole new year without her, stretching bleakly on the horizon like an empty diary … it was too awful to contemplate. Mum was in my head all the time, talking to me, reminding me of things we’d done together, conversations we’d had. I could hear her voice, her laugh, I could conjure up the smell of her perfume at will. Would she still be there by the end of next year, though, or would she have begun to fade, greying out of my memory? I couldn’t let that happen. I never wanted to let her slip away.

  It was difficult, this grieving lark. I wasn’t doing very well with it at all. I felt that I was dragging the rest of the family down with my sadness, spreading my misery through the house like invisible smoke. I had all these good intentions about how I wanted to be the same brilliant mother to the kids that Mum had been to me, but I felt exhausted by my mourning – too exhausted, in fact, to give them the attention they deserved. It was an effort to get through each day, and I felt that with every block of time that passed – every day, week, month – I was further and further away from those last precious embraces with her.

  So I was glad of an excuse to get out and do something normal, like help Lauren shop for a dress one Saturday, even though walking through Brum with the Christmas lights twinkling and the happy festive music pounding from every shop was a killer. I must admit, I felt slightly jealous of Lauren going off on her date that night. Not because I begrudged her – I didn’t, not for a single minute. It was lovely to see her so sparkly-eyed with excitement, and she looked absolutely stunning in the dress she bought in the end. It was more that I envied her the thrill of going on a first date with a gorgeous man – the flirting and the eye contact, maybe some fervent footsie-playing under the table … God, I missed those days sometimes.

  Not really. Not much. I was a happily married woman, after all; Paul and I had celebrated our fourteenth wedding anniversary in September, and besides, I felt too drained emotionally to find the stamina for a rampant sex life just then. Still, it would have been nice to have felt desired once in a while. Flirted with, even …

  It was funny how losing weight – two and a half stone by this point – had changed things. Back when I was at my fattest, Paul had always told me I was beautiful in his eyes. Now that I was slimmer and felt a million times better about my body, he wasn’t saying any such thing. There didn’t seem to be a lot of flirting and footsie-playing these days either.

  A few weeks ago at FatBusters, one woman, Trish, had told us that she’d broken up with her boyfriend. She’d said that ever since she’d taken up running and started losing weight, he’d become more and more offhand with her, as if he wasn’t pleased for her. He’d tried to dissuade her, telling her that running would give her huge muscular calves and wreck her knees. ‘In the end,’ she said, ‘I realized he was put out by the whole thing. Jealous, even, because I was happy and feeling good about myself. I realized that he only liked me when I was fat and felt unattractive. That made him feel secure, because he knew other blokes wouldn’t fancy me.’

  ‘Ahhh, yes,’ Alison had said sagely. ‘It’s a classic reaction, I’m afraid. You might find it with friends, too, who become insecure with every dress size you drop. It’s sad, but the fact is, you’ve become that bit more threatening all of a sudden. You’re not the fat friend or partner they can look down on and feel better than any more. You’re an equal – and some people can’t handle that.’ She gave Trish a sympathetic smile. ‘I’m sorry to hear about your fella, my love. What a shame he wasn’t man enough to enjoy your success with you, rather than be
made paranoid by it. Still – just goes to show. He wasn’t good enough for you, was he?’

  This conversation had replayed itself in my head a number of times recently. Could this be what was happening with me and Paul? I wondered uneasily. It had even crossed my mind a few times that he was trying to sabotage my diet. Just the other week, for example, I’d needed to work late, and I’d asked him to sort out dinner for everyone. There had been chicken in the fridge and loads of vegetables, as well as rice, noodles and potatoes in the cupboard – and what had he done? He’d gone out to the chippy and bought four fish suppers.

  I’d walked into the kitchen and breathed in that wonderful hot-chip smell and nearly keeled over with desire. He and the kids were already eating theirs – big fat chips sprinkled with salt, dripping with vinegar. My stomach rumbled and for a few moments I was seriously tempted. I hadn’t had a chip in months and was salivating at the thought of dipping one in ketchup and pushing it into my mouth …

  Then I’d got a grip and become angry. More than that, I was livid. Absolutely bloody furious.

  ‘How long have I been on this flaming diet, Paul?’ I’d shouted at him, trying not to breathe in the delicious, eat-me smell of fried potato. ‘How long have I been saying I’m trying not to eat fatty foods? For crying out loud!’

  His face had fallen but he’d said nothing.

  ‘Don’t shout at him, Mum,’ Emma had said. ‘It was meant to be a treat.’

  ‘Yeah, but a treat I’m not supposed to have,’ I’d snapped, pushing my still-wrapped dinner straight into the kitchen bin. The swing-top lid had tipped back like a broad smile, mocking me, and I’d felt like punching the wall. ‘For crying out loud, I’ll make my own bloody tea, then. Is it really so hard for you to chop a few veggies?’

  Nicole had laughed when I’d told her the story the next day. ‘He’s just a man, that’s all,’ she’d said, pouring me a lime and soda as I sat there at her bar. ‘Bless him. Probably had his head full of more important stuff, like the football or the news or … or his willy, of course.’