The water kicks in, sobering me up.
‘Feeling better?’ he asks. My breathing has become raspy because his gaze has slipped to my mouth. I bite my lip slowly.
‘Are you sure?’ he says softly.
I nod. I’ve never been so sure in all my life.
And just like that, we fall into each other unable to keep from kissing a moment longer. When I finally take hold of my senses, and break apart from him, I gasp out something about the moral code and ethics, only for him to burst out laughing and shake his head.
‘I don’t give a shit about your code,’ he says easily and pulls me to him. ‘I’m not sure the ICF cares as much as you think it does.’
I like this maverick, and his devil-may-care attitude to work and his easy kissing technique.
I fully enjoy his varied kissing procedures for another ten minutes, before I become aware my sister, with camera phone held aloft, and Maria-José-Inmaculada-Carmen, are hovering by our sides, grinning away.
I break instantly from Oliver’s embrace and turn to face them.
The important thing to remember here, I think, is my manners. I turn to Maria-José-Inmaculada-Carmen first. ‘You remember the nice gentleman from the ICF, don’t you?’
She gives me a strange look. Her eyes are slightly crossed. ‘Yes, yes, of course! Of course, yes. YES! You are mister… the laughing man. Of course. Mr Laughing Man.’ She is exceedingly pissed.
Oliver continues to laugh, shaking his head. ‘Don’t you have some sort of booking system? How can you not know my name by now?’
She’s on her own. She can take one for the team.
‘Oliver,’ he says, introducing himself. ‘Oliver Reynolds.’
Then me and Maria-José-Inmaculada-Carmen look incredulously at one another. For once we are locked in mutual understanding. We make big 0s with our mouths.
Reynolds!
Reynolds! I’ve always wanted to be MRS REYNOLDS!!! I wonder if he’d mind changing his name to Ryan.
‘Meester RAYNOLDS!’ she yells. A small hissing sound emerging from her lips.
Oh god, Oh god, Oh god.
‘Meester RAY-NO-W-LDS,’ she repeats super slowly in case I didn’t get the inference. She gives me a pantomime Widow Twanky type wink.
Thankfully, Oliver allows this to go straight over his head. ‘And you must be the infamous sister.’
Oh shit.
But before I can explain, my sister suddenly looks alert and about to make a Nobel-prize-winning revelation.
‘I have nearly a million followers on Instagram. I post videos… you know, on TikTok? You’ve probably seen them? I do life hacks? To help people like… live better, y’know? Milly-May follows me?’
This means very little to Oliver, and he doesn’t flicker.I LOVE HIM!Then my sister looks at him all wonky-eyed and points to herself, ‘I used to manage over two hundred staff…’
I step in and cut her swiftly off, ‘Yes, yes, he knows.’
Oliver gives me a look and says that he’s off to the bar to get us all a pint of water each.So kind. So, so kind.
‘If I was going to steal any of your boyfriends,’ she says, looking mischievously at me, ‘it would be Oliver. He’s absolutely off-the-chart good-looking and so unbelievably sexy. In fact, he reminds me of someone… ‘
I am momentarily stumped by this. I wouldn’t put it past her to only pretend to be joking.
‘You’re not my type,’ says Oliver, swooping in suddenly, to take us by surprise.
