heard again his rich accent, and how could a woman not smile?
‘You never did tell me …’ Niklas said, smiling as he invited her to join him in after hours conversation. ‘Why is your world too small?’
CHAPTER THREE
THEY PULLED BACK the divider that separated them and lay on their sides, facing each other. Meg knew that this was probably the only time in her life that she’d ever have a man so divine lying on the pillow next to hers, so she was more than happy to forgo sleep for such a glorious cause.
‘I work in the family business,’ Meg explained.
‘Which is?’
‘My parents are into real-estate investments. I’m a lawyer …’
He gave a suitably impressed nod, but then frowned, because she didn’t seem like a lawyer to him.
‘Though I hardly use my training. I do all the paperwork and contracts.’
He saw her roll her eyes.
‘I cannot tell you how boring it is.’
‘Then why do you do it?’
‘Good question. I think it was decided at conception that I would be a lawyer.’
‘You don’t want to be one?’
It was actually rather hard to admit it. ‘I don’t think I do …’
He said nothing, just carried on watching her face, waiting for her to share more, and she did.
‘I don’t think I’m supposed to be one—I mean, I scraped to get the grades I needed at school, held on by my fingernails at university …’ She paused as he interrupted.
‘You are never to say this at an interview.’
‘Of course not.’ She smiled. ‘We’re just talking.’
‘Good. I’m guessing you were not a little girl who dreamed of being a lawyer?’ he checked. ‘You did not play with wigs on?’ His lips twitched as she smiled. ‘You did not line up your dollies and cross-examine them?’
‘No.’
‘So how did you end up being one?’
‘I really don’t know where to start.’
He looked at his watch, realised then that perhaps the report simply wasn’t going to get done. ‘I’ve got nine hours.’
Niklas made the decision then—they would be entirely devoted to her.
‘Okay …’ Meg thought how best to explain her family to him and chose to start near the beginning. ‘In my family you don’t get much time to think—even as a little girl there were piano lessons, violin lessons, ballet lessons, tutors. My parents were constantly checking my homework—basically, everything was geared towards me getting into the best school, so that I could get the best grades and go to the best university. Which I did. Except when I got there it was more push, push, push. I just put my head down and carried on working, but now suddenly I’m twenty-four years old and I’m not really sure that I’m where I want to be …’ It was very hard to explain it, because from the outside she had a very nice life.
‘They demand too much.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘They don’t listen to you.’
‘You don’t know that either.’
‘But I do.’ He said. ‘Five or six times on the telephone you said, “Mum, I’ve got to go.” Or, “I really have to go now …”’ He saw that she was smiling, but she was smiling not at his imitation of her words but because he had been listening to her conversation. While miserable and scowling and ignoring her, he had still been aware. ‘You do this.’ He held up an imaginary phone and turned it off.
‘I can’t.’ she admitted. ‘Is that what you do?’
‘Of course.’
He made it sound so simple.
‘You say, I have to go, and then you do.’
‘It’s not just that though,’ she admitted. ‘They want to know everything about my life …’
‘Then tell them you don’t want to discuss it,’ he said. ‘If a conversation moves where you don’t want it to, you just say so.’
‘How?’
‘Say, I don’t want to talk about that,’ he suggested.
He made it sound so easy. ‘But I don’t want to hurt them either—you know how difficult families can be at times.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘There are some advantages to being an orphan, and that is one of them. I get to make my own mistakes.’ He said it in such a way that there was no invitation to sympathy—in fact he even gave a small smile, as if letting her know that she did not need to be uncomfortable at his revelation and he took no offence at her casual remark.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t have to be.’
‘But …’
‘I don’t want to talk about that.’ And, far more easily than she, he told her what he was not prepared to discuss. He simply moved the conversation. ‘What would you like to do if you could do anything?’
She thought for a moment. ‘You’re the first person who has ever asked me that.’
‘The second,’ Niklas corrected. ‘I would imagine you have been asking yourself that question an awful lot.’
‘Lately I have been,’ Meg admitted.
‘So, what would you be?’
‘A chef.’
And he didn’t laugh, didn’t tell her that she should know about steak tartare by now, if that was what she wanted to be, and neither did he roll his eyes.
‘Why?’
‘Because I love cooking.’
‘Why?’ he asked—not as if he didn’t understand how it was possible to love cooking so much, more as if he really wanted her tell him why.
She just stared at him as their minds locked in a strange wrestle.
‘When someone eats something I’ve cooked—I mean properly prepared and cooked …’ She still stared at him as she spoke. ‘When they close their eyes for a second …’ She couldn’t properly explain it. ‘When you ate those blinis, when you first tasted them, there was a moment …’ She watched that mouth move into a smile, just a brief smile of understanding. ‘They tasted fantastic?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wanted to have cooked them.’ It was perhaps the best way to describe it. ‘I love shopping for food, planning a meal, preparing it, presenting it, serving it …’
‘For that moment?’
‘Yes.’ Meg nodded. ‘And I know that I’m good at it because, no matter how dissatisfied my parents were with my grades or my decisions, on a Sunday I’d cook a meal from scratch and it was the one thing I excelled at. Yet it was the one thing they discouraged.’
‘Why?’ This time he asked because he didn’t understand.
‘“Why would you want to work in a kitchen?”’ It was Meg doing the imitating now. ‘“Why, after all the opportunities we’ve given you …?”’ Her voice faded for a moment. ‘Maybe I should have stood up to them, but it’s hard at fourteen …’ She gave him a smile. ‘It’s still hard at twenty-four.’
‘If cooking is your passion then