Hmm, and a merry Christmas to you, grumpy, thought Amy.
They stood in clumsy silence for a second.
‘So did you have a good trip?’
‘It was great.’
‘You didn’t text me back.’
His dark eyes made her feel guilty again.
‘Will Hamilton,’ she replied as the penny dropped. ‘That was you.’ She tried not to squirm as she remembered the mystery text that she had read just a minute before Daniel’s call had distracted her from everything else.
‘We were on our way to the airport, then I turned my phone off,’ she said, flushing at the lie.
‘For twenty-four hours?’ he replied, his black eyebrows knitting together to su
ggest his disapproval.
Her arm was aching and being in Will Hamilton’s presence was unsettling. She had known from the second she had met him that he was suspicious of her, and ignoring his text, his concern about his relative, had undoubtedly done little to make him trust her any more.
‘I’d better go,’ she said, nodding to the suit bag that contained Georgia’s dress. ‘Heavy.’
‘Santa suit?’ he said wryly.
‘A dress. One of Georgia’s actually; she lent it to me for a special night out. Hence the flowers.’
‘Result dress, was it?’
She wondered what a result dress was and then blushed at the thought of it lying in a heap in the Claridge’s bedroom and knew exactly what he was talking about.
‘Well, this isn’t just a dress, it’s a work of art. It deserves to be carefully looked after.’
Will smiled for the first time and his whole face lightened.
‘I can see that you’ve been spending too much time with Georgia; you’re starting to talk like her.’
‘No bad thing, surely?’
Will shrugged and looked down at his watch, indicating that their conversation was over.
‘Are you okay there, bag, flowers? Or do you need a hand?’
‘I don’t need a hand,’ she said as a thought occurred to her. ‘But I wouldn’t mind a word . . .’
He glanced down at his watch again as if her request was an inconvenience.
‘Please, Will, it’s about Georgia. I’ll only keep you five minutes. Girl scout’s honour,’ she said, raising three fingers.
‘You were a girl scout?’ he said, taking the dress bag out of her hand.
‘Buy me a coffee and I’ll tell you all about it,’ she said, leading him into the nearest coffee shop.
The café they had entered was bristling with boho shabby-chic trinkets – of course it was: this was Primrose Hill, where everything had to be elegantly distressed. Immediately she could see that it was Will’s local coffee place, because of the reaction of the girl behind the counter as he walked in.
‘Hello, Will,’ she smiled, batting her eyelids shyly behind her fringe.
Amy suppressed a smile: the girl was practically handing him her phone number. She gave Will a sideways glance as he ordered two lattes. She could certainly see why the pretty blonde barista would notice him. He was a good-looking guy with a crooked smile, clever eyes and the sort of aristocratic bone structure that came with generations of good breeding and which not even his messy dark hair could disguise. In his college-boy jeans and sweater he looked a lot like the handsome young men from the drama department at college, the particularly good-looking ones who always thought they were destined for movie stardom. In another life, her life pre-London, pre-Daniel, she might even had had a crush on him.