He looked up and saw she was smiling shyly at him, still with her hand in his hair. Tom liked her sweet kiss on his cheek but thought she could probably do better, so he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her down onto his lap. He then slammed his mouth down on hers and kissed her, thoroughly enough to communicate just how much he appreciated her bringing him his favourite lunch and offering to help him on what had the potential to be the most disastrous day of his career.
It was safe to say that Tom had been with a fair few women in the past. Most of his relationships only lasted a few months until visions of Frankie had crept into his mind whilst they were intimate, and he’d had to make the decision to end things. However, not one of his previous girlfriends (even those he had been seeing a lot longer than Frankie) had ever noticed when he was stressed and done something practical to help him.
The type of woman Tom normally took an interest in, whilst beautiful, were often more than a little self-involved. And he couldn’t imagine any of them remembering his favourite sandwich and bringing it to him on a whim.
With a supreme effort of will, he had not done what he was sorely tempted to do, which was to forget about the bloody presentation and instead spend the afternoon with Frankie on his desk, but pulled away from her while keeping her on his lap. As she did after all the other kisses they’d shared, Frankie looked at him with such reverence that it made Tom feel like he had climbed Mount Everest, sorted global warming and cured cancer, all in the space of a few minutes. Then she traced the contours of his face with her fingers, searching it with her beautiful, deep, brown eyes as if she didn’t quite believe he was real.
‘Frankie,’ he called softly, and watched in fascination as her eyes gradually started to focus again. ‘I need to get this done now, honey.’ Her eyes moved to his.
‘Right,’ she whispered. Her gaze then dropped to his shirt and for some reason her brows drew together and her nose scrunched. ‘Um, Tom … are you going to wear that shirt?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s creased.’
He chuckled. ‘They’re not going to give a monkey’s about my shirt, Frankie.’ One consequence of Frankie getting bolder with him was that she had found the courage to ask him about his wardrobe (or rather lack thereof). He’d explained (to her visible horror) that he hadn’t been shopping for clothes for at least five years. His mum bought him all his work clothes, and he wore his T-shirts and jeans until they literally fell apart. He didn’t even have to buy his socks and pants: ‘Father Christmas’ supplied these every year.
‘It’s really, really creased,’ Frankie added, ‘and it’s stained.’ She pointed to a nigh-on invisible stain on his sleeve, no doubt from the coffee he had been inhaling since that morning.
‘Frankie, I could walk in there stark bollock naked and all they would care about is how I propose to randomize my test subjects.’
She giggled her soft musical laugh, her body moving against him, and again he had to fight not to sweep his desk clean so he could push her up onto it.
She brushed her lips against his, and then, with their lips only a hair’s breadth apart, said, ‘Believe me, handsome, if anyone in there has functioning ovaries they would be distracted.’ She smiled against his mouth and he started chuckling. ‘It could even jump-start a few non-functioning ones. If anything could bring menopausal ovaries back from the brink it would be you naked in the middle of the day.’ He laughed harder, but did it with his face shoved in her neck and hair, smelling her light flowery scent. ‘Oh! And don’t forget gay men. I’m pretty sure you’d float their boat too.’
Once his laughter had died to a soft chuckle, she pressed another quick kiss to his lips and hopped up.
‘I’ll let you strip off and get going then,’ she said, smiling cheekily at him over her shoulder as she negotiated her way around his stacks of papers and went to the door.
Three quarters of an hour later, a much more dishevelled Frankie stepped back into his office trying not to drip over any of his work, and handed him a waterproof garment bag from M&S with a new wrinkle-free shirt inside. He noticed that it was pouring with rain outside, and realized that Frankie had ridden her bike into town to get the shirt for him.
Yes, it was safe to say that if Tom wasn’t in love with Frankie before, he most definitely was now. She was by far the sweetest, most thoughtful woman he had ever met. That, coupled with her beauty and her ability to make him laugh on even his most stressful day, made her almost too good to be true.
One of her only drawbacks was the hassle he encountered when he tried to control her rampant benevolence. Something which he’d found was not only restricted to him. Something that was not even reserved for just her friends.
She would help get a trolley round a corner if she found a porter struggling; was forever putting in drips and taking blood for other trainees she barely knew if they couldn’t find a vein; he even found her sitting with an elderly lady in the corridor, engaged in the ridiculous pretence that they were both waiting for a bus. After he’d managed to extract her from this crazy endeavour (much to the old lady’s disgust, which she made abundantly clear by whacking him round the ear with her handbag), he’d found out that Frankie was supposed to be getting her lunch, but had forgone this in her attempt to calm the demented ninety-year-old down whilst the nursing staff were busy.
Tom was not pleased that Frankie had barely eaten all day, and even less happy to be assaulted by an old lady (who, even though she looked frail, had certainly put a considerable amount of force into her swing). However, what he was pleased about was that when he dragged Frankie away and practically forced lunch down her throat, her gorgeous eyes had flashed with anger, and she had not been hesitant at all when she furiously (and adorably) told him to ‘Stop pushing me around and bloody jog on.’
He’d rarely seen Frankie’s eyes flash with anger before, and as a goodly number of her expressions were wont to do, it made him want to kiss her, which to her further annoyance he did, right in the middle of the canteen.
He was bloody thrilled that she did not hide her anger from him. He was also thrilled that after her anger dissipated with the kiss she didn’t retreat back into her shell, fearful of his reaction. She just rolled her eyes at him, looked mildly embarrassed about his public display of affection (something she was slowly, if reluctantly, getting used to), and sat down to eat her lunch.
All of these recent signs from Frankie, Tom took as indications that he was breaking through and winning her. That was why, when he skirted around the unconscious, vile-smelling homeless man propped up against her building and pressed the buzzer to her flat, he was smiling.
He was taking her out tonight to the pub with the others (the others being Ash, Lou, Dylan, Lizzy, and a couple of Tom’s consultant buddies). Tom had found that Frankie’s extreme shyness with him did not extend to people in general, unless they intimidated her for some reason. He understood that this was largely down to Lou, and to a lesser degree Dylan, who had been steadily building her confidence since the first day of uni. Their only setback had been ‘The Devil Incarnate’, as Lou liked to refer to him.
Tom was not a violent man, but he vowed that if her ex-boyfriend ever approached Frankie again he would happily beat the snot out of him. Only the worst kind of man deliberately undermines a woman’s confidence in order that she won’t realize she could do a lot better. Tom himself was pretty proud of the fact that her self-esteem seemed to be improving since being with him.
As for his friends, they loved her too. She was warm and funny, and she had the almost uncanny ability to sense pain in others and know exactly what to do about it. One of them was a renal consultant called Tony. Tony had been in Tom’s year at uni and had played rugby with Tom and Dylan. Therefore, unfortunately, Tony knew about Tom’s crush on Frankie back then and her subsequent shooting him down at the university bar. So Tony was not at first a huge Frankie fan. But Dylan had begrudgingly explained what a prick he’d been (of course with Frankie out of earshot – Tom having reluctantly kept his promise not to tell Frankie what Dylan had done), and Tony agreed to give her a chance.
Within an hour of meeting her (despite the fact they were surrounded by friends in a crowded pub), Tony was pouring his heart out to her and practically crying on her shoulder about his messy divorce. It was uncanny. Tom was close to Tony, but Tony had certainly never cried on his shoulder about anything. Thank God.
To Tom’s further amazement, since that night Frankie had become Tony’s go-to girl for emotional support. This, together with a constant supply of chocolate brownies (Tony’s favourite – and once Frankie knew your favourite you had a lifetime’s supply), was perking Tony up no end. In fact, often when Tom came over to the flat he’d find Tony already ensconced on Frankie and Lou’s sofa, drinking tea, munching a brownie and discussing his latest woes, with a sympathetic Frankie curled up next to him.
‘We’re on our way down, Weasel,’ Tom heard Lou say through the intercom. A second later the doors of the building burst open and Frankie charged out towards him, a huge smile on her face. As she neared she did a little jump and hopped into his arms with her legs around his waist. She then proceeded to cover his face in small kisses.
‘You got it!’ she shrieked with unbridled glee, slapping her hands on his chest. ‘I knew you would, your proposal wasbrilliant!’
