‘At least you’ll be going to the
right places with this TV thing, I suppose,’ interrupted Molly. Summer looked surprised at her mother’s turnabout. ‘Because my number one priority is to find you a boyfriend.’
Summer sighed. So Molly hadn’t changed her tune, after all; she just wanted to get her married off to some fat hairy millionaire.
‘I mean, have you even had a date since you’ve been back in London?’ asked Molly.
Summer shrugged. She had had plenty of men offer to take her on dates, alright. They stopped her on the streets, at the gym, on photo-shoots, but she liked to keep her distance. For a moment she allowed herself to think about Charlie McDonald, wondering if he had ever got his record deal. Molly grabbed her daughter’s hand across the white starched tablecloth.
‘Darling, you are the star of the sexiest ad campaign of the summer and you should be capitalizing on this. Plenty of good men have become available recently, and we all know they don’t hang around for very long. I’m going to set you up on a date.’
Summer couldn’t help but giggle nervously. ‘I thought you wanted to be my manager, not my pimp.’
Molly threw down her fork. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! I’m your mother and I want the best for you. I always have.’
Maybe Molly was right. It was a long time since she had had any fun; she could do with some male company. No, it wouldn’t do any harm to go on one date, would it?
It wasn’t exactly a blind date. Molly had taken Summer out for dinner to Cipriani and had invited half a dozen friends, who spent the entire evening knocking back Bellinis and talking excitedly about where they were spending the summer. It was like an episode of ‘On Heat’, Summer thought to herself with a smile. She found herself seated next to Ricardo Lantis, a second-generation Panamanian businessman whose family had made millions in supplying food to supermarket chains around the world. He looked in his early forties; skin tanned, expensively dressed in a blue open-necked shirt, a hint of black chest hair. Ricardo had a permanently serious expression, but lively green eyes and his powerful charisma made up for his rather average looks. Molly had whispered that he had a house in Belgravia and a sprawling estate on Mykonos, where he held the ‘most decadent’ parties every July.
‘It’s impossible to think why we have never met before,’ said Ricardo to Summer as his lobster linguine arrived.
‘It’s probably because I’ve been living in Japan for the last four years,’ she said. ‘It’s been strange coming back. Things seem to have changed completely.’
‘Well, you must let me show you around,’ he said, pouring her a glass of Chablis. ‘London is so underrated, but it is far more exciting than Tokyo, Paris, New York, or wherever your modelling exploits have been taking you.’ He paused, ‘Your mother’s been telling me all about your glittering career.’
Summer wondered how well he knew her mother. She was intrigued by Ricardo, but found him a little intimidating, with his stories of international business. He told her he had studied law at Harvard, but he quit his studies at the age of twenty-four when the lure of the family business – one of the biggest wholesale food businesses in the world – became too much to resist. Now Ricardo was a multimillionaire and commuted between Panama City and London twice twice weekly. On top of that success, he had climbed the Matterhorn, competed in a triathlon and was a black belt in tae kwon do. He was the archetypal alpha male; just the sort her mother approved of.
When the dinner party disbanded, Ricardo proposed leading a party in the direction of Annabel’s, but Summer made her excuses – she had a meeting at a cosmetics giant in the morning – a possible campaign, said her agent.
‘Oh come on, darling,’ hissed Molly, who was clearly taking advantage of the fact that Marcus was in Dubai on business.
‘I can’t, mum,’ said Summer. ‘Tomorrow is business.’
As they waited in the street for their drivers, Ricardo asked Summer for her number.
‘How about we do dinner on Thursday?’ he said, handing her a card. ‘I’ll send the car to collect you at eight. You can text me your address beforehand.’
As she pulled away in a taxi, Summer sank back in the seat with a satisfied feeling. Her mother certainly seemed pleased for once, and Ricardo was interesting company. Not drop-dead gorgeous but, yes, he was certainly attractive. She closed her eyes and began to look forward to Thursday.
27
‘Don’t look now, but there is somebody very yummy staring at you just over there,’ whispered Candy Woodall, tipping back her Chardonnay spritzer.
‘Where?’ giggled Erin, trying to look around the wine bar without making it too obvious. Erin and Candy – Marcus Blackwell’s PA – had come out for a rare girls’ night out after work and the wine and gossiping had gone straight to Erin’s head.
‘There. The one who looks like Jude Law,’ said Candy a bit too loudly, pointing a discreet finger in the direction of the bar. Erin’s eyes scanned the bar. It was hard to see in the dim light; this bar was trying very hard to be French brasserie, with sea-green mosaic walls, a long walnut and bronze bar and too much candlelight. Her eyes followed Candy’s now frantic pointing and she finally saw him, sitting on a bar stool. He was very handsome, with nut-brown hair, green eyes and a smart white shirt.
‘Crikey,’ Erin gulped, ‘I think I know him.’
‘Well go over there and talk to him!’ said Candy, making ‘shoo-ing’ gestures with her hands. ‘He’s been looking over at you for the last five minutes.’
Erin felt herself blush. She wasn’t exactly on first-name terms with him; they had met for about three seconds earlier that week when he had come in to see Adam with some colleagues from Dennon Associates, a firm of architects. But she remembered him: the smile he’d given her when she’d handed him a coffee had kept her on a high all week.
Candy pushed a ten-pound note in her hand and gave Erin a gentle shove in the direction of the bar. ‘It’s my round, but you’re buying,’ she smiled. ‘I want another spritzer and you want his phone number.’
Still blushing furiously, Erin made her way to the bar, wishing she had taken more care dressing that morning. Rushing for the tube, she had resorted to cast-offs from her Cornwall days: a white shirt and a black cheesecloth skirt, saved from falling off her now-narrow hips by a wide leather belt. Taking a deep breath, she found a space at the bar next to him but pretended not to notice him, instead waving her tenner at the barmaid to get her attention.
‘I know you, don’t I?’ said a voice to her left. Turning, she saw the man from Dennon was smiling at her. His eyes were the clearest green she had ever seen.