you found somewhere?’
‘No.’ He opened the passenger door of the estate car for her. ‘Dad had to take her to the scrap dealer’s for me. I couldn’t face it.’
Oh, bless. On impulse, she gave him a hug.
And then wished she hadn’t when every single nerve-end started tingling.
And tingled a bit more when Gio’s arms came round her to return the hug. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘For not laughing at me.’
‘Course I wouldn’t laugh at you,’ she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as rough and croaky to him as it did to her, and she ducked into the car.
She just about managed to recover her composure by the time he slid into the driving seat. ‘So how come you’ve got an estate car now?’ It was the complete opposite of a little two-seater sports car.
‘Because Marco got really fed up with me borrowing his to do the cash-and-carry run, and nagged me into getting my own. Although my suppliers deliver nowadays, I haven’t got round to changing the car to something a bit smaller and easier to park.’ He slanted her a look. ‘Don’t tell me you drive a two-seater?’
‘I don’t have a car.’ She shrugged. ‘Don’t really need one, for London.’
‘What about when you go home to see your family?’
‘Train and taxi.’
‘So on a bright spring day, you never get up and decide to go to the seaside?’
‘No. But if I wanted to, there’s a reasonable train service from London to Brighton.’ She glanced at him. ‘Is that what you do on your days off? Go to the seaside?’
He gave her a non-committal murmur; given what she’d already heard his family say to him, she interpreted that as meaning that he almost never took time off.
As he turned on the ignition, the car was flooded with indie rock. Very loud indie rock.
‘Whoops.’ He turned the stereo off. ‘Sorry. One of my worst habits. Volume.’
She’d half-expected him to listen to classical guitar music. Or maybe that was too painful—a reminder of what he’d lost. ‘No worries,’ she said. ‘And I don’t mind if you’d rather have music on when you’re driving.’
‘Just not at that volume, hmm?’ he asked wryly, but switched the stereo on again, this time lowering the volume to something much more bearable.
The journey was quick, and he parked in a side street near the Holborn branch. The feel of the place was very similar to the Charlotte Street café, but Fran was intrigued to see that it had its own identity. Different art on the walls, for starters. But the staff were just as warm and friendly as they were at Charlotte Street, and Amy—the head barista—seemed pleased to put a face to the voice from the previous day.
Islington was next, and then Docklands; again, Fran noticed that there wasn’t a uniform style to the cafés. ‘If you’re going to franchise the business,’ she said to Gio on their way back to Charlotte Street, ‘shouldn’t the cafés all look the same?’
‘Yes and no,’ Gio said. ‘I suppose there needs to be some kind of corporate identity. A logo or what have you. But I don’t want them to be identikit. I want each café to fit in with its surroundings and suit the clientele in the area. Which means they’re different.’ He lifted one shoulder. ‘I want to keep it personal. And sell bakery goods produced locally, to local recipes where possible—so if we expand further afield that would mean Banbury cakes in Oxfordshire, parkin in Yorkshire, Bakewell pudding in Derbyshire and that sort of thing. We’ll sell the best coffee and the best regional goodies.’ He frowned. ‘So I suppose that’s an argument against franchising.’
‘But if you go the other route and open more branches, you’re not going to have time to do a shift in every one, every single week, to get feedback from your customers and staff. Especially if some of them are outside London,’ she pointed out. ‘With four, you can do it. With five, it’s going to be a struggle. With ten—no chance.’
He sighed. ‘I’m doing the wrong thing. I shouldn’t be looking at franchising—I should be inventing a time machine, so I can make the time to visit all the branches myself.’
‘What was it your Italian grandmother says about trusting people?’ she asked gently. ‘If you expand, Gio, you’re going to have to learn to delegate. Trust your managers to do what you do and to give you the feedback. You don’t have to do it all yourself.’
‘I’m trying to delegate. I’m trusting you to sort the admin side.’ He coughed. ‘Well. Apart from sitting on your case, earlier.’ He parked in a little square just off Charlotte Street.
‘Where are we?’ Fran asked.
‘My parking space, near my flat.’ He smiled. ‘Told you I lived near the café. It’s a ten-minute stroll from my flat to work, tops, which makes life very easy.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Are you sure you’re still OK for a lesson in lattes?’
‘Sure.’ Which was when Fran realised that she’d actually been looking forward to it. All day. And even though she’d spent most of the afternoon with Gio, most of the time they’d been with other people.
This would be just the two of them.
Alone.
Strange how that thought made her heart beat a little bit faster.
They arrived back at the Charlotte Street branch just before closing. Once Sally and Ian had left, Gio bolted the door and switched off most of the lights. Then he smiled at Fran. ‘Ready?’
‘Yup.’ She fished her notebook out of her handbag.
‘OK. Rule one of milk—it has to be fresh and cold, or it won’t froth. It’s the proteins in milk that make the foam. And the way we do it is with a steam wand—your goal is to get the froth hole in the wand at the same level as the surface of the milk, so you’ll get nice small bubbles throughout the milk instead of huge bubbles at the top.’
‘Why do you need small bubbles?’
He smiled. ‘I’ll show you.’ He talked her through how to use the steam nozzle on the machine, starting with half a pitcher of cold milk and gradually working it up so it became warm and frothy. ‘This is perfect for a latte. And latte art.’
‘Latte art?’ Fran asked, mystified.
‘It’s how you pour the milk in such a way that you make a pretty pattern on the top—the crema comes through in the design. You make a rosetta, swirling the leaves out, and you finish with the stem to pull it all together.’ He tapped the jug against the table; then, with what looked like a tiny wobble of the wrist, he swirled the milk on and a flower suddenly appeared in the middle of the foam.
‘That’s pretty,’ she said. ‘You make it look very easy—would I be right in saying it’s quite difficult?’
‘It’s advanced baristaing—an extra,’ he admitted. ‘It’s what the coffee tastes like that counts most, not what it looks like. If you’ve made vile coffee, it doesn’t matter how pretty it is—the customer won’t want to come back. And then again, some people don’t even notice; they add sugar and stir, and your rosetta’s gone so you might just as well not have bothered. But it sometimes makes the customer’s day when they see a heart or an apple or a flower or a rosetta on the top of their coffee.’
‘Latte art.’ He had to be teasing her.
He spread his hands. ‘If you don’t believe me, look on the internet. There are pages and pages of photos of latte art.’
She still wasn’t sure if he was teasing her or not. But she liked the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, the way his eyes glittered.
‘OK. Remember how to make an espresso?’ he asked.