gave her a rueful smile. ‘I had intended just to introduce myself and ask you to have dinner with me.’
The ‘but’ hung in the air between them.
Instant attraction, that neither of them had been able to fight.
Oh, Lord.
What if there had been problems? What if someone had come looking for her in the space of time she’d been out here with Karim, failed to find her, panicked?
She couldn’t afford to do this. For her business’s sake.
‘I really do have to go,’ Lily said.
He took a pen and a business card from his pocket, and scribbled a number on the back of the card. ‘Call me,’ he said, handing the card to her.
It was more of a command than a question. Karim was clearly a man who was used to people doing what he told them to. Normally, the attitude would have annoyed her. But that connection between them, and the way he’d kissed her… This sort of thing didn’t happen every day. She had a feeling it had shaken him just as much as it had shaken her. And even though her head told her that this was a seriously bad idea, that relationships just messed things up and were more hassle than they were worth, her mouth had other ideas. ‘I’ll call you,’ she agreed softly.
He cupped her face briefly with one hand, the gesture cherishing. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay here for a few minutes. And if Felicity isn’t happy, text me and I’ll go and talk to her.’
And charm her out of a bad mood, no doubt, Lily thought wryly. Not that she was going to let him make excuses for her. If there was a problem, it was her responsibility and she’d deal with it. But she knew he’d meant well, so she smiled politely. ‘Thanks.’
As if he couldn’t help himself, he brushed his mouth over hers. ‘Later.’
And the promise in his voice sent another kick of desire through her.
CHAPTER TWO
‘LILY! Oh, thank God you’re back.’ Beatrice, her chief waitress, sounded heartfelt.
‘What’s…? Oh.’ Lily cut off the question, seeing Hannah, her assistant, clearing up a soggy mess from the floor. The bite-sized pavlovas topped with a slice of strawberry and a kiss of cream that she’d assembled fifteen minutes or so ago had turned into Eton Mess, splattered across the floor. The whole lot would have to go straight in the bin.
And now they were one large platter short of puddings.
Just as well that, knowing how easily meringues could shatter, Lily had brought extra to cover any breakages.
‘Can you whip me some cream, Hannah?’ she asked. ‘And, Bea, if you can wash up that platter, please?’ Meanwhile, she checked what she had left in the way of fruit. There weren’t enough strawberries to do a full platter of mini strawberry pavlovas, but she could add some lemon curd to half the cream and add a slice of kiwi fruit for contrasting colour.
‘I’m so sorry, Lily,’ Hannah said, looking tearful. ‘I wasn’t looking where I was going, I tripped, and I—’
‘Hey, no use crying over spilt meringues,’ Lily interrupted with a smile. ‘It happens. I have spares. It’s fixable.’
‘But…’
‘It’s OK,’ Lily said, firmly yet gently. She knew exactly why Hannah was distracted. Hannah’s marriage was coming to a very messy end and the strain of trying to minimise the effects on her four-year-old daughter while trying to keep her life together was spilling over into her work. Not that Lily intended to read the Riot Act. Hannah, despite having a newborn, had been there for her when things had gone so badly wrong with Jeff. This was Lily’s chance to do the same for her friend.
Jeff.
A harsh reminder of exactly why Lily shouldn’t ring the number scribbled on the back of Karim’s business card. Relationships spelled trouble. They distracted you from your goals and made life difficult. Particularly when your judgement in men was so lousy that you trusted them completely and they took advantage of your naivety. Took everything, the way Jeff had. Crushing her self-respect, her pride and her bank account. The sense of betrayal, hurt and loss had been crushing. And someone as gorgeous as Karim would have women dropping at his feet—just like Jeff. OK, she knew that not all men were unfaithful, lying louses…but Jeff had hurt Lily enough to make her extremely wary of relationships.
Pushing both her ex-husband and the gorgeous stranger out of her mind, Lily applied herself to assembling another plateful of pavlovas.
Working rapidly, she moved on to filling tiny choux buns with the coffee liqueur mousse she’d made earlier and sent Hannah out with a tray of miniature chocolate muffins and Bea out with melon-ball-sized scoops of rich vanilla ice cream covered in white chocolate and served on a cocktail stick.
The platters all came back with just a couple of canapés left on each. Good. She’d judged the quantities just right: enough to leave Felicity’s guests replete but not enough to be wasteful. Years of having to struggle to pay off the overdraft Jeff had run up in her name—an overdraft he’d spent on his mistress—meant that Lily absolutely loathed waste. Quietly pleased, she concentrated on clearing up.
She’d just finished when Felicity Browne came in. ‘Lily, darling, that was stupendous.’
‘Thank you.’ Lily had learned not to protest that no, no, she was just average. There was no room for false modesty, in business. She wanted her clients to feel reassured that they’d made the right choice in using Amazing Tastes for their catering needs, and accepting their compliments helped to do that.
‘Those little choux buns…’ Felicity began wistfully.
Lily smiled, guessing exactly what Felicity wanted. ‘I’ll send you the recipe. And you don’t have to make the choux pastry if that’s a hassle for you. You can serve the mousse on its own, in little coffee cups—just garnish them with a couple of chocolate-covered coffee beans and maybe a sprig of mint for colour.’
Felicity laughed. ‘That’s exactly why I always ask you to do my parties. You’re so good at those little extra touches.’
‘Thank you.’ Lily acknowledged the compliment with a smile.
She stayed just long enough to make the polite social chat she knew was expected of her, made one last check that she’d left Felicity’s kitchen completely spotless, then dropped Hannah at her house on the way home. As she took her equipment out of the van and put it away Lily couldn’t help thinking about Karim. And even though she knew it was crazy and it was way too late to call him, she fished inside her handbag for his business card.
Though it wasn’t in the little pocket where she usually kept business cards. Odd. She’d developed a habit of filing things away neatly—they were easier to find, that way.
She checked the rest of her bag. It wasn’t there, either.
Impossible. She was sure she’d put it in her bag.
And then she thought back. When she’d returned to the mini-crisis in the kitchen, she’d probably put the card on the worktop instead of her handbag, knowing that before she did anything else she needed to reassure her staff and stop them panicking.
Which meant that the card had probably been swept up with the refuse and thrown away.
Damn, damn, damn.
She could hardly phone Felicity and ask if she could rummage through the bin. And she definitely couldn’t ask her for Karim’s number or the guest list, because that would be completely unprofessional and Elizabeth Finch was never, but never, unprofessional.
Well, OK, occasionally she acted unprofessionally. As she had on a certain balcony, a couple of hours earlier that evening, when she’d kissed a tall, dark, handsome stranger. Really kissed him. And if they hadn’t been interrupted, who knew what would have happened?
But