Anything for You Ch. 01

As Anne-Marie explained that she needed something to wear to the Christmas dinner at her husband's golf club, I slipped out to the stock room, more grateful than usual that I could leave the woman in Alice's capable hands. I loved my job—loved my shop—but working with a hangover was proving harder than I'd expected.

Though if I were being honest with myself, it wasn't just the hangover. No matter how hard I tried to shut them out, snippets of the conversation I'd had with Drew the previous evening kept filtering through the haze.

He couldn't have been serious, I decided for what felt like the hundredth time that morning. And he couldn't have believed that I'd been serious either, could he? If I phoned him now and told him it was all a joke, that I'd gone along with the idea to see how long it would be before he cracked, he'd simply laugh and tell me he'd been doing the same. It would be like the time he and my brother had formed that God-awful band when they were seventeen.

Paul, so talented at virtually everything else, couldn't carry a tune in both hands and although Drew's singing wasn't bad, his guitar playing had been dire. Jimi Hendrix he wasn't. But they'd done a gig at a local pub and the next day, I'd phoned Drew up, disguising my voice and pretending to be a talent scout who'd spotted them playing the night before. It had taken him a full three minutes to twig...

I felt myself grinning until the shadows began their inevitable descent over my memories of happier times and with a heavy sigh, I bent down to open the large carton on the floor. Pulling out the polythene-wrapped garments inside, I piled them unceremoniously on to the huge table in the middle of the room.

Not bad at all, I thought, shaking out one of the cream-coloured scooped neck tops and scrutinising it carefully. Just the right amount of material in the front, three-quarter length sleeves. In fact...

"Alice?"

She turned to discover me standing in the doorway holding the top aloft and her face brightened. "Ohyes," she exclaimed with an approving nod and hurried over to take it from me. "Anne Marie? Dear—this could be just the thing."

I watched with a smile as Anne-Marie's face lit in turn, feeling that faint fuzz of contentment I always felt at such times. So what that I'd never gone to college, that I had no retail qualifications and no degree in design? I was damned good at my job.

Okay, sourcing and selling maternity wear might not be everyone's idea of a career in fashion, I had to concede, ducking back into the stock room to answer the telephone. But as a result of my efforts, our clients came from miles around, the customer-base strengthened by the word of mouth testimony of countless grateful mothers-to-be—and more recently, a four page spread inMamma magazine. Business was booming and the word 'expansion' was being muttered in my earshot on a regular basis these days.

"In Full Bloom, Sam speaking."

"Samantha,bella!"

It was as though the person who most often muttered that 'expansion' word had somehow developed the ability to tap into my thoughts. "Marco," I said with a laugh, delighted to hear his deep, melodious Italian accent. "How lovely to hear from you!"

"Believe me, the pleasure is mine." Marco's English was always flawless, far better than my own. "How are you? Business is blooming, I hope?"

I smiled at his customary pun. "Of course," I said briskly, perching on the edge of the table and settling in for a lengthy conversation. With Marco, there was rarely any other kind. "Procreating remains the number one activity in Stow Newton. You know there's not much else to do around here in the evenings."

"Excellent." There was genuine amusement in his tone. "I can count on your continued custom for the foreseeable future then?"

"Oh, I think I'll be able to place a few more smallish orders," I teased, aware he knew full well that his company supplied my shop's biggest and most popular range of maternity wear. "So long as the next shipment's made up of better quality items than the one that arrived today. I've never seen such a load of old tat."

"'Old tat'?" Marco repeated, mock incredulous. "I beg your pardon, Signorina Bloom?"

"So you should," I retorted, tongue firmly in cheek. "Your standards are slipping, Signor Maretti. I may only be able to mark up this stuff by three hundred to four hundred percent. It's just not good enough."

"Ah, Samantha,cara." He gave a low, appreciative chuckle. "Ever the hard task master. Or should that be mistress?"

"You don't know?" I exclaimed, pretending to be shocked but rather spoiling the effect by giggling. "Marco, I'm hurt! How long have we known each other?"

More than five years, I realised after a moment or two, a part of my brain working on the question even as we continued to banter back and forth. We'd met at a trade fair in Paris back in the days before my great aunt retired, when she'd still owned and managedIn Full Bloom. I'd been nineteen years old and on one of my first trips abroad, keen to seek out new designers and lines for my aunt's ailing maternity wear shop. Looking back, I hadn't a clue what I was doing, going largely on gut instinct and what my aunt had already acknowledged to be a flair for the unusual.

That I'd met Marco Maretti had been more a case of luck than judgement—but a stroke of luck it had certainly turned out to be. At the time, his company was just branching out into the field, its staff of designers small but talented. It had been a gamble to place what seemed to me an enormous order back then—these days in order to satisfy demand I placed orders quadruple the size—but it had paid off.

Much to my Aunt Sarah's surprise, I'd inadvertently found a niche in the maternity wear market. The middle class—and inevitably older—mothers-to-be in the Stow Newton area who baulked at the idea of flaunting their bumps beneath skimpy T-shirts had been delighted whenIn Full Bloom began stocking high-end but affordable maternity clothing, from smart office separates to evening wear.

"Anyway,cara," Marco said several minutes later, "wonderful though it is to spend all this time talking with you about absolutely nothing of consequence, I did in fact have an ulterior motive for making this call."

"You did?" I frowned then winced at the ensuing twinge of pain in my right temple. I'd been enjoying our conversation so much I'd almost forgotten my hangover.

"Uh huh." Once again I could hear the note of laughter in his voice. "You see, I'm going to be in town at the end of the week."

"In Stow Newton?"

He chuckled at my startled tone. "Well, London first. But I was planning on coming up to see you on Friday. I was hoping I might be able to take you out to dinner."

Friday. My birthday. Drew would understand if I bailed on him, I thought with a surge of relief. He knew how important a supplier Marco was. We could cancel the hotel room booking. The idea of us spending a night at thePark had been a spur of the moment thing, after all. It wasn't as though we were really going to go through with the whole sleeping together bit, was it?

"Er..." So why was I hesitating?

"You have other plans?" Marco sounded disappointed.

"Actually, yes. Yes, I do." The words seemed to fly out before I could stop them.

"You can't cancel?"

I suddenly wanted to laugh out loud. I hadn't been invited out for months—and now I'd had two offers for the same night. "It's my birthday," I explained quickly, rather wishing I hadn't when I heard Marco's exclamation of surprised pleasure. "A friend of mine is already—" I hesitated again, grasping for words "—taking me out to dinner." It wasn't exactly a lie; room service counted, didn't it?

"Okay." Marco seemed undeterred. "Then may I take you to dinner on Saturday evening instead?"

Would I still be a virgin by then?

I swallowed down another nervous choke of laughter. "Yes," I got out, my voice rather unsteady. "That—that would be great."

"Excellent." Marco didn't seem to notice my near hysteria. "I'll come to the shop, yes? What time do you close?"

"On Saturday?" Too late, I remembered I'd planned to take the day off. But Marco had visited the shop before. It would be much easier to meet him here than try to direct him to my house, especially given my current befuddled state of mind. "Four thirty."

"Wonderful." It sounded like he meant it. "I look forward to seeing you then."

"You—you too."

I stared at the phone in my hand for several seconds after he'd hung up, replaying the conversation, staggered by the decision I'd made. I'd had an unexpected but entirely reasonable out—and I'd chosen not to take it?

"Who's taking you out to dinner on Friday night?" Alice's suspicious voice demanded behind me. I swung around to face her, conscious of how fast my heart was beating. "Was that Marco? Don't tell me you just make up an excuse not to go out with Marco Maretti?"

"You were listening?" I accused. "To my private conversation?"

Alice looked unmoved, as I'd known she would. "Marco Maretti?" she repeated. "Tall, dark, handsomeand Italian, Marco Maretti? And you turned him down?"

"No." I rolled my eyes in surrender. "He's going to take me to dinner on Saturday night instead, okay?"

"Well, praise the Lord for that," she said with evident relief. "For a moment there I thought you'd lost your mind. You wouldn't catch me saying no, not that he'd ask—I'm much too old for him. Butyou—"

"He's thirty-six!" I interjected hastily before she could go any further with that train of thought. "And divorced. And well-known for being a serial womaniser―"

"So he's eleven years older than you," Alice interrupted in turn. "So what? And as for the rest, that just makes him..." Her knowing smile seemed shockingly salacious for a woman of fifty-nine. "Experienced."

"Alice!"

She looked amused by my discomfort—until she remembered her original question. "Then whois taking you out for dinner on Friday?"

I sighed. Alice could be such a Rottweiler. "Drew."

She frowned, clearly puzzled. "You blew off Marco Maretti for my nephew?"

Enough already. "Yes," I said, infusing my reply with as much dignity as I could muster. "He asked first, okay? He's my oldest friend, I've known him for years, remember?"

And maybe on Friday I'd discover what it meant toknow him in the Biblical sense.

Oh my God.

Alice tutted slightly and turned to the carton I'd unpacked, reaching into it to retrieve the parcel I'd inadvertently left at the bottom. "Hey, it's your birthday, it's up to you," she said, straightening up with a sniff that sounded faintly disapproving. "And if you think spending the evening with Drew is the right thing to do, well..."

I couldn't meet her gaze when she let the sentence trail off, afraid my expression might give something away. Because to be completely honest...

I still wasn't sure that it was.

*

Yes, I know it's been a long time. I'd love to say I've got Chapter 2 completed and ready to go too...

...and who knows, maybe it will be by the time this posts ;-)

If you've read me before, you'll know what I'm like - I never intend to keep you waiting. But it seems I need the little extra prod of knowing that people are waiting for the next chapter in order to get down to finishing it. So feel free to prod away!

Thanks for reading. Your votes and comments are, as always, much appreciated.

Lily -x-