My feeling was wrong. By the time I’d ordered my starter and main course and enjoyed a complimentary appetiser (yes, the prices made my eyelids twitch, and had I not been so adamant in sticking to the spirit of the Dream List, I would have gone for the cheapest thing on the menu and then got out of there) I was starting to genuinely enjoy myself. However, just as the waitress brought out my mackerel, another customer waved at me from their table on the other side of the room, offering a sympathetic smile.
I gave a tentative wave back before turning to pretend I was engrossed in my food, mind racing to think where I’d seen the woman before. She looked to be in her late thirties, definitely not someone I knew from Sherwood, and too old to have been at school or university with me. I scrolled through the ReadUp team in my head, but couldn’t place her. It was only when I sneaked another peek, and happened to catch a proper look at the man sitting with her, that I remembered.
Crap.
Sam’s brother. The one who, the one and only time I’d seen him previously, had suggested that Sam shoot my dog.
And now his wife was briskly texting, while having a hushed exchange with her husband that included more furtive glances over at me.
I took a deep breath, reminded myself why I was here and ate another blissful forkful of fish, trying not to pull a face that revealed quite how my tastebuds were rolling about in ecstasy as I shifted my chair around a couple of inches to block Sam’s family from my peripheral vision.
I’d polished off my starter, enjoyed a palate-cleansing cucumber sorbet and was about to tuck into my guinea fowl when a much louder voice interrupted the soft chatter, causing everyone, including me, to swivel around to see what philistine had disturbed the genteel atmosphere.
My heart instantly plummeted into my overly high heels before rebounding back into my throat on the next beat.
Sam stood beside his sister-in-law, his sun-streaked hair an agitated mess, face creased with concern, wearing a grey T-shirt, worn jeans and scuffed brown boots.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked, causing his sister-in-law to shush him.
‘You said it was an emergency,’ he said, the worry in his voice slipping into annoyance.
She slid her eyes over to me and back again a couple of times, trying to get Sam to look my way without saying anything. I should have ducked my head, started scrolling on my phone or something but it was a rabbit-in-the-headlights so-awful-I-can’t-stop-watching type of moment. Eventually, she did a totally unsubtle pointing gesture, as if by keeping her finger close to her midriff I wouldn’t see it, and Sam turned a second too soon for me to avert my gaze.
Which I did anyway, of course, heartily shoving in a far-too big chunk of guinea fowl so that when he arrived at my table a second later and said hi, my cheek was bulging.
I did that awful please wait while I chew gesture, rotating my hand near my mouth while sort of smiling and rolling my eyes in a faux-goofy manner. Beneath the stupid expression, I was slowly dying, one humiliated cell giving up on me at a time.
‘Hi!’ I managed, eventually, after a painfully big swallow. Thank goodness this place served such tender meat or it would have dragged on forever.
‘Um, is it okay if I…’ Sam nodded at the chair opposite me. ‘I don’t want to cause even more of a scene.’
‘No, of course.’ I patted my mouth with a napkin, tempted for a second to just drape it over my head and stay there until everyone had gone home.
‘I’m so embarrassed, and annoyed,’ he said, as soon as he’d shuffled the chair as close to the table as possible so he could speak more quietly.
‘Oh. Um, sorry…’
‘No, not at you!’ He shook his head. ‘At Megan. Interfering old bat. She messaged and said to come over as soon as possible, and when I called to ask why she turned her phone off. I thought Tom must have choked on a chicken bone or something.’
‘So what?’ I ate a forkful of fondant potato. I wasn’t missing out on this meal, no matter what drama accompanied it. ‘I was the emergency?’
‘Megan assumed you’d been stood up.’
‘And needed rescuing?’
‘Precisely. And before you ask, this is more about me than it is you. She’s been desperate to set me up ever since… well. Since I’ve been single. Despite me telling her repeatedly that the last thing I want is a serious relationship.’
The last thing he wants…
Good to know.
Well, actually it was rubbish to know, but at least I knew before I’d completed the Dream List and asked him out or something even more embarrassing.
‘So she calls you any time she sees a random woman out alone?’
He sighed. ‘Mum told her that you had dinner with me the other week. They were practically planning wedding outfits. I did say that if anything you’re even less interested in a relationship than I am. We’re friends, and there’s no point hoping we’ll become anything else.’
Again, good/rubbish to know. I swallowed back the lump of humiliation now blocking my throat and tried not to think about how Steph and I had been discussing my wedding dress only a few days earlier. I could pretend that had nothing to do with Sam, except that we’d considered adding gold beading to match his eyes.
‘So we’re friends?’ I offered a smile, to show how nice and friendly and chilled I was.
‘Don’t smile!’ he muttered urgently. ‘It’ll only encourage her.’
At that point, the ma?tre d’ appeared like a ghost out of nowhere. ‘Sir, will you be joining madam?’
Sam shifted in his seat, a faint blush rising up his cheeks that completely contradicted everything he’d just said. My foolish heart pounded a little harder against my ribs. ‘Is that okay?’ he asked, glancing first at the ma?tre d’, then at me.
‘You might as well stay now you’re here,’ I said, trying hard to keep my smile under control. ‘Seeing as we’re friends.’
‘Very good.’ The ma?tre d’ nodded. ‘Can I get you anything, then, sir? A drink, perhaps, or the menu?’
Sam ordered a coffee, we both ordered the same dessert, and then we were alone again.
He looked at me before dropping his gaze to the table and then back up, the question bubbling under his skin.
‘Go on, ask me,’ I said, my stomach deliciously full.
‘It’s none of my business.’
‘And? If we only ever asked questions that were our business it’d be a pretty rubbish conversation.’
‘Were you stood up?’ he asked, after hesitating for another moment.
‘No.’
‘So this was part of the Dream List?’
My stupid, starving hormones couldn’t help pinging to attention at how his face shone with relief.
‘Well, duh!’ I grinned, admiring the beautiful room. ‘What kind of a Dream Man wouldn’t have brought me here.’
‘This place only opened a few months ago. I thought you made the list when you were at school.’
Reminder to self: Sam never forgets anything I say.
‘It’s an evolving document. Not sure Pizza Hut is quite my idea of a dream date these days.’
‘Fair enough.’ He paused while the waitress delivered our coffee and chocolate crémeux. ‘So, the other night…?’
‘A romantic dinner for one.’
He automatically glanced down at my jumpsuit.