Not Ideal
Jack
“She’s sweet,” Stella said. It was a few hours after the café. We were back in the office and had only just finished the planning meeting for a campaign about haemorrhoid cream, making her comment more than a little random.
“Uh … what?” I glanced at Stella and raised my eyebrows. The other staff had all left the conference room, but Stella was hanging around as I took down the boards.
“That little barmaid,” Stella said. “You like her, don’t you?”
“Well, I . . . ”
Stella laughed.
“Why on earth did you ask her to work the conference if you like her? Smooth move, Don Juan.”
I paused on the way down to unplug my laptop and looked up at Stella again.
“I didn’t ask her toworkon the yacht. Why would she think that? What did she say?”
Stella bit her lip. “Oh dear,” she said. “Bad case of crossed wires then.”
“Let me get this straight. Urvi thinks I want her to come to Saint-Tropez for the weekend so that she can, what . . . be abarmaid?”
“She did seem to be under that impression, yes.”
I raked both my hands through my hair and looked up at the ceiling. “Oh balls,” I muttered.
“You really must let me do more of the talking for you, darling,” Stella told me. As always, her “darling” grated on my nerves. “When left to your own devices with these things you do tend to make the most horrific cock-ups.”
I sat down heavily and stared at the wall for a moment.
“You can’t blame her really,” Stella told me. “It probably wouldn’t have crossed her mind that you were interested in her romantically. She is alotyounger.”
“I’d better ring her, set her straight,” I muttered as I pulled my phone out of my pocket. Before I could dial Stella’s hand wrapped around my lower arm.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she told me.
“Why not?”
Stella took a deep breath and looked away. “Well, I don’t want to hurt your feelings but . . . ” she trailed off and removed her hand.
“I’m a big boy, Stell. Why shouldn’t I ring her?”
She sighed and took a step back. “Well, it’s just she wassohappy about a potential job. I think she needs money pretty badly.”
I pictured Urvi’s ancient Converse and the hole I’d noticed in her jumper and nodded slowly. “Yeah, but I – ”
“And she said . . . Look, I’m sorry, but she told me you’re ‘not her type’.”
“Not her type?” I frowned. It may sound arrogant, but so far in my life I had proved to be every woman’s type. Okay, that statement was obnoxious, but not totally unfounded. Women had been hitting on me since I was fifteen years old. One even cornered me in the frozen isle of Waitrose just yesterday, damn it! “Did she reallysaythat?”
“Yes, and she went on to describe her type as more artistic.”
I smiled. “Well I can work around – ”
“Look, Jack, Itoldher you liked her okay?” Stella cut me off and I felt myself redden. This was like being back in primary school.
“What the hell? You had no right – ”
