‘Pretty hard to miss that giggle.’
‘What do you care, anyway?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Well, if you must know, I was getting information from her.’
I snorted. ‘Is that what they call it these days?’
He ignored this and went on. ‘She’s from Paris, so I was trying to find out where this Le Chat Masqué place is.’
‘And what did you have to give her for that, Casanova?’
‘It’s a bar in Montmartre,’ he went on as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘It’s been frequented by the same bar flies for the last twenty years, which probably explains why we couldn’t find it on the web. She walks past it every day on the way to work.’
He went to the bed and bent over to retrieve a scrap of paper from the floor. I admired the shape of his buttocks straining against his boxer shorts, and a shiver spiralled its way down my back as I remembered how they’d felt beneath my hands.
‘Here.’ He handed me the paper, which had street names and directions scrawled on it.
‘Oh,’ I said awkwardly. ‘Well, thanks.’
‘What have you been up to this morning?’
‘Can you put some clothes on, Nick?’
‘Yep.’
He turned away to pull on a pair of jeans, and I returned to my room, leaving the door slightly ajar, the image of Nick’s body burned onto my retinas.
I took the notebook out of my pocket and began to flick through it. There was nothing immediately of interest, but maybe if I couldn’t get the story and lost my job I could sell the book on eBay.
Nick walked into the room a few minutes later, closed the door behind him and sat down on the edge of the bed. Too late, I noticed one of my bras lying right beside him. It wasn’t a sexy, lacy number either, but the kind of practical, unadorned version, greyish with age and with fraying straps, that you only wear when you know for sure that you’re not going to have sex. He picked it up, looked at it, then held it out to me, one eyebrow raised. I snatched it from him, my face hot with embarrassment, balled it up and threw it across the room.
‘What have you got there?’ He nodded towards the notebook.
‘I paid a visit to Ford’s mate,’ I said. ‘Pretended to be a PI and pilfered this notebook when he wasn’t looking.’
Nick looked impressed. ‘Nice work!’
‘And that’s not all.’
I held my bag aloft, and he was even more surprised. ‘What? How?’
I explained the events of the morning and, to his credit, he didn’t interrupt me once. I’ll admit that I embellished the story just a bit, especially the part about snatching my bag away from Adelita, but Nick roared with laughter and I felt edified with my exaggeration.
‘You’re starting to sound like a real journo now,’ he said once I’d finished.
A pleasant warmth coursed through me. ‘I’m starting to feel like one.’
‘So you’ve got everything back now?’
I peered in the bag. Purse, check. Now-cancelled passport, check. Laptop, check. ‘Yep. All cashed up again.’
‘Well, I was going to take you out to lunch to make up for my behaviour yesterday. Then I thought we could do some sightseeing since you won’t get much of a chance once you’ve got your new passport and we’re back on the story.’ He glanced at me quickly, then looked away. ‘But I guess it’s not necessary now you’ve got your money back.’
He was starting to sound awkward now, and I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. But I couldn’t resist one more stab. ‘Will that be by the hour?’
He winced. ‘Yeah, sorry about that. I was a prize wanker yesterday.’
‘You really were.’
‘Sorry. It was hardly your fault you got mugged. I shouldn’t have called you stupid.’
‘You did stop me from getting run over by a Jag, so that’s something.’
Our eyes met for a second, and I was the first to look away.
‘Anyway, I guess you probably want to start looking through that notebook,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
He stood up and walked towards the door. Before I could think it through, I’d jumped to my feet. ‘So where are we going?’
He turned around to face me. ‘What?’
‘Well, are you taking me out to lunch or not?’
As I followed him out into the hallway, I wondered what exactly I was doing.
Nick guided us to a small restaurant hidden down a narrow lane away from the tourist area, where we feasted on exquisite antipasto, perfectly cooked pasta, tender veal and velvety panna cotta. And, of course, a veritable shitload of wine.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a chick who eats as much as you,’ Nick remarked as I mowed into my pasta.
‘I like food,’ I said.
‘Hey, I’m not complaining. I once went out with this girl who actually ordered an egg white omelette. There wasn’t a second date.’
I laughed. ‘You broke it off with someone over a food order?’
‘Well, she was also a vapid, self-absorbed socialite. The omelette was the last straw. I like a woman with an appetite.’
His eyes lingered on mine and my whole body tingled. ‘Sounds like some of my former clients at the salon. They’d spend their entire disposable incomes on personal trainers, designer clothes and facials, yet they wouldn’t know what good food was if they fell over it. It was all low-fat this, zero-sugar that. No way to live if you ask me.’
‘Do you ever miss it?’ Nick asked.
‘The salon? Are you kidding me? Getting out of that place was the best thing I ever did. It was making me crazy.’
‘So you’d still rather work under Katrina’s dictatorship?’ Nick got up from his chair and performed an excellent impersonation of Katrina on the warpath.
Restaurant patrons watched in amusement, and I doubled over with laughter.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t exactly hit the big time at Women’s Choice,’ I said when he’d sat back down. ‘But being a journo is all I’ve ever wanted to do. And it sure beats doing Brazilians on fifty-year-olds.’
Nick’s eyes grew
