Jill Mansell - Chapter 1

But it was OK, it didn’t matter, because the voice didn’t belong to Gabe. (That would have spoiled the moment.) Sally reached for her walking stick and hurried out of the flat. Where was Gabe? It was a cold night and all he was wearing was jeans and an old polo shirt. Clunk-step, clunk-step went the stick against the stairs, interspersed with the sound of her rapid breathing.

Then halfway down the staircase she saw the outline of a figure in the shadows, a scruffily dressed figure with messy hair leaning against the far wall of the darkened hallway.

Sally abruptly stopped. Now that she’d found him she didn’t know what to say. ‘I heard the front door. I thought you’d left.’ Gabe shook his head. ‘I was going to. Then I realised I didn’t have my keys.’

‘Or your jacket. You’d have been cold.’

‘That too.’ The whites of his eyes gleamed in the darkness. ‘You could have stayed upstairs,’

said Sally.

‘I couldn’t. Too scared. I told you, I never expected to feel like this.’

‘Me neither.’

She saw him nod. ‘Bit of a shock?’

‘Quite a lot of a shock.’ Gathering her courage, Sally said, ‘But a nice one.’

He was watching her carefully. ‘Really?’

‘Really. I thought I drove you mad. That’s why I’ve been trying so hard to be tidier.’

This time she caught a flash of white teeth. ‘I thought you were doing it to impress Lola’s dad.’

Sally shook her head, wondering if he could hear the frantic thud-thud-thud of her heart from down there. ‘No, not him. You.’

‘I’m impressed.’

‘Well, don’t be. It’s not going to last.’ Sally felt it was only fair to warn him. ‘I gave it my best shot but the novelty’s wearing off.’ She paused. ‘Is that going to make a difference?’

‘I don’t know. Not if you’re moving up to Yorkshire.’

How could everything change so drastically in a matter of minutes?

‘I suppose I don’t have to move up to Yorkshire. Seeing as the main reason I was planning on doing it was to get away from the miserable old git I was sharing a flat with.’

Gabe stepped out of the shadows, came to stand at the foot of the staircase. He touched his chest.

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you.’ Feeling braver, Sally said, ‘Come here.’

He climbed the stairs separating them. This time she knew he was going to kiss her. What she hadn’t expected was for her trembling knees to give way, mid-kiss. Smiling broadly, Gabe gently lowered her onto the stairs and carried on kissing her. God, he was so good at it and his neck smelled so gorgeous, he was ... whoops .. .

The walking stick she’d left propped against the banister toppled over and went clattering down the staircase. Sally squeaked, ‘Oh no!’ and attempted to muffle her laughter against Gabe’s shoulder.

Gabe whispered, ‘Don’t worry, he’s asleep.’

He wasn’t. The door to the ground floor flat was wrenched open and Mr Kowalski, his white hair standing up like acockatiel, bent down and picked up the walking stick. He turned, in his green and white striped flannel pyjamas, and eyed Sally and Gabe balefully.

‘You two! Vot arr you doing, huh? Making sex on ze stairs in ze mittle of ze night?’

‘Sorry, Mr Kowalski. Didn’t mean to wake you.’ Gabe grinned apologetically. ‘We weren’t ...

um, making sex on the stairs.’

‘Ha. Pretty close, if you ask me.’ Shaking his head, the old man skilfully threw the stick up to them, Gene Kelly style. Equally skilfully Gabe caught it. ‘Thanks.’

‘Off, off you go! You make sex in your own beds and leave me to sleep in mine.’ Having gestured extravagantly at the ceiling he shuffled back into his flat muttering, ‘Too much noise, too much sex, tuh.’

Sally buried her face in Gabe’s chest.

‘Sounds good to me,’ Gabe murmured, standing and helping her to her feet.

By the time they reached the flat, Sally was light-headed with lust, dizzy with joy and minus her shoes. As Gabe lifted her into his arms to carry her through to the bedroom, his mobile burst into life.

He shook his head. ‘Don’t worry, just leave it.’

Fretfully, Sally said, ‘I hate not answering a phone.’

‘It’s not your phone.’

As well as ringing, the mobile was switched to vibrate. When Sally had taken it from his jacket pocket she’d left it, along with his keys, on the glass coffee table. Now it was buzzing and jiggling ever closer to the edge.

‘It’s going to fall, it’s going to fall off, I hate it when that happens.’ Sally flapped her free hand agitatedly and Gabe, still carrying her, veered back across the living room.

She scooped up the phone and answered it. ‘Yes?’

‘Oh hi, it’s Maurice, is Gabe there?’

‘Hi, Maurice.’ Sally knew this was one of Gabe’s fellow paps. ‘I’m afraid Gabe has his hands full at the moment. Can I give him a message?’

‘Right, sure.The thing is, I’m down in Brighton at the moment but I’ve just heard from a reliable source that George Clooney was spotted twenty minutes ago sneaking into a house in Notting Hill with a classy-looking redhead. Nobody else knows about it and I owe Gabe a favour so I thought he might like a chance at an exclusive. The address is 15 Carmel Villas.’

‘OK, got that.’ Sally’s heart sank; what rotten timing. ‘Thanks, Maurice, I’ll tell him. Bye.’

‘George Clooney?’ said Gabe, who had been listening in. ‘Mystery redhead? Notting Hill?’

‘Fifteen Carmel Villas.’ It was the perfect tip-off; Carmel Villas was less than a minute away on foot. When she’d been leaning out of the living room window just now yelling Gabe’s name, George might actually have heard her. He might even have been the one who’d yelled at her to shut the fuck up. No, surely not, George would never be that rude.

Put me down,’ said Sally. ‘You have to go.’

But Gabe was shaking his head, grinning that devil-may-care, easy-going grin she hadn’t seen for so long. ‘No I don’t.’

‘Gabe. You can’t miss a chance like this.’

‘Switch the phone off. Stop thinking about George Clooney.’ Kicking open the door to his immaculate bedroom, Gabe said, ‘Just this once, why don’t we let the man have his fun without being interrupted?’

He was about to lower her onto the crisp, spotless, geometrically aligned white duvet. Sally, her arms entwined around hisneck, whispered, ‘I’m warning you, I’m going to make your bed awfully untidy’

Gabe’s eyes softened as they sank down together.’I’m counting on it.’

Chapter 52.

Sometimes you went away for a couple of days and it felt like a couple of days. Other times you went away for a couple of days and when you got back everything was different.

Lola felt as if she’d been away for a year.

‘What’s going on?’ She walked into Gabe’s flat and saw the look on Sally’s face. Total, total giveaway.

‘What?’ Sally half laughed in that way people do when they’re trying so hard to appear innocent.

‘Hey, you’re back!’ Gabe, emerging from the kitchen with a tea towel slung over one shoulder and a cold beer in his hand, said with delight, ‘Come here,’ and gave her a smacking kiss on the cheek.

Ha, confirmation if any was needed. He’d been like a bear with a sore brain for weeks. And now he was kissing her. What’s more, the atmosphere in the room was positively zingy.

‘We’ve missed you,’ Gabe went on cheerfully — and he definitely hadn’t been cheerful for weeks. ‘How did the book thing go?’

‘Great’ Lola indicated the bag she was carrying, emblazoned with the name of the publishing company that had hosted theevent. ‘They gave me lots of books. I was just asking Sal what’s going on.’