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Phoebe attempted a careless shrug. ‘Oh, well, it’s been over a year now.’
Sixteen months, three weeks and four days, in fact.
Not that she was counting.
‘And we didn’t really get as far as planning the wedding before Ben changed his mind.’
Kate and Bella preserved a tactful silence. They knew quite well that she and Ben had been childhood sweethearts and that the chances of her not having spent most of her life thinking about the day they would get married were remote to say the least.
At least her parents hadn’t sent out any invitations. She had been spared the humiliation of returning presents and answering sympathetic notes, although everybody had known, of course.
Phoebe picked up her tea. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I don’t think any of us need panic about planning our weddings just yet. It’s not as if hordes of men are desperate to sweep us off to the altar!’
‘No,’ Bella and Kate sighed.
‘I’m beginning to think there’s something wrong with this house,’ she went on gesturing with her mug around the kitchen where they were sitting. ‘It’s as if it’s cursed with a special man-repelling aura! Do you think I should sell it?’
The other two sat up in alarm. ‘No!’
‘I like it here,’ Kate insisted.
‘So do I,’ said Bella, adding more practically, ‘and we’d never be able to afford anywhere nearly as nice to live.’
‘I know what you mean about the aura, though,’ Kate reassured Phoebe. She brightened. ‘Maybe that explains why Seb has been so funny recently?
‘I think we should try feng shui before you do anything drastic,’ she hurried on before Phoebe could start on the other possibilities for Seb’s defection. ‘I’ve got a friend who does it. Apparently you can change your luck just by shifting your furniture around a bit and keeping the loo seat down so that bad spirits can’t get into the house.’
‘Well, that shouldn’t be a problem with no blokes around,’ observed Phoebe glumly.
‘Kate’s right,’ said Bella. ‘Well, not about the feng shui maybe, but about not selling. It’s a lovely house, and I certainly don’t want to move. I must admit it’s not going to be the same without Caro, though,’ she added. ‘I can’t believe she’d be selfish enough to leave us just to get married!’
‘I know,’ agreed Phoebe. ‘I mean, what’s in it for her?’ She gestured expansively with her free hand around the kitchen which was in its usual state of shabby chaos.
‘Why would she want to leave all this for a big house in Fulham, a cleaner and an adoring husband?’
‘I can’t imagine,’ said Kate loyally. ‘You wouldn’t catch me doing anything like that! Maybe she’ll miss us so much she’ll come back?’
‘I don’t think we should count on it,’ sighed Phoebe. ‘I know it’s going to be hard to replace her, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to find someone else for her room or I won’t be able to pay the mortgage. Neither of you have heard of anyone who’s looking for somewhere to live, have you?’
They shook their heads. ‘Not anyone I would want to share with anyway,’ amended Bella.
‘It looks like I might have to advertise then.’
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ said Kate nervously. ‘We could get all sorts of weirdos. Remember that film where the new flatmate murders the first girl and takes over her life? We could get someone like that.’
‘Or worse,’ said Bella. ‘We could get someone obsessed with country dancing.’
They were all silent for a moment, brooding on the thought.
‘Or we might get someone obsessed with cleaning,’ suggested Phoebe. She looked ruefully around the kitchen. ‘That wouldn’t be too bad. She’d have plenty to keep her busy, anyway.’
‘I shared with a girl like that once.’ Bella shuddered at the memory. ‘She was completely neurotic about cleaning. There were Post-its all over the flat with instructions about taking out the rubbish or reminders about the dusting rota, and the moment you made yourself a mug of tea she would whip out a coaster and follow you around until you put it down.’
She grimaced. ‘It was seriously spooky! I think we’d be better off with a serial killer or a country dancer.’
‘I think I’d rather sell the house,’ sighed Phoebe.
‘What about that guy Josh was talking about?’ asked Kate suddenly. ‘Did he mention him to you, Phoebe?’
‘Briefly.’ Phoebe drained her mug. ‘What did he say his name was again?’
Kate tipped her head back and contemplated the ceiling while she searched her erratic memory. ‘Gus?’
‘Gib,’ Bella corrected her.
‘That was it.’ Phoebe remembered her conversation with Josh as she helped herself to another biscuit. ‘Doesn’t he only want somewhere temporary, though? We need to find someone permanent.’
‘Yes, but if he was here for a while it would give us time to find someone we really like,’ said Kate.
Phoebe munched doubtfully. ‘We don’t really know anything about him, though,’ she pointed out.
‘We know he’s a friend of Josh’s.’
‘But why does he only want to be here for a few weeks?’ she asked Bella, who as Josh’s best friend could be presumed to know more than the rest of them.
‘I’m not sure. Josh was a bit vague about that. I know he lives in California, but that’s about all. I got the impression he might be in a bit of financial difficulty, which is why he wants somewhere relatively cheap.’
Phoebe looked dubious. ‘If he’s that short of cash, why fly all the way from the States to London?’
‘Maybe he just wants to get away from home for a bit,’ suggested Kate, brightening perceptively at the idea of someone else to take under her wing. ‘Perhaps his heart has been broken, and he needs some time and space to lick his wounds?’
‘Oh, yes, that’s so likely!’ said Phoebe, rolling her eyes. ‘There you are in California, with all that sunshine and spectacular scenery, and you think, “I need to cheer myself up, what can I do? I know, I’ll go and spend six weeks in Tooting!” I mean, nothing against Tooting—I know we like it—but you’ve to admit that a suburb in south-west London isn’t top of everybody’s top ten tourist destinations.’
‘It doesn’t matter why he’s coming, does it?’ said Bella practically. ‘Josh wouldn’t have recommended him if he hadn’t been able to pay the rent, and he can’t be too awful if he’s a friend of his. Why not think about it, Phoebe? Quite apart from anything else, it would be fun to have a man around the house again!’
Kate sat up straighter. ‘And maybe Seb will hear about it and be jealous,’ she added hopefully.
Privately, Phoebe thought it extremely unlikely that Kate’s on-off, but more usually off, boyfriend, known to the rest of the world as Slimy Seb, would care one way or the other, but she knew that Kate lived in daily hope of hearing from him again. She was the only person Phoebe knew who actually believed that if you kept kissing a frog you’d eventually end up with a prince.
‘You never know,’ she said, avoiding Bella’s eye. ‘All right then, we’ll give this Gib a go!’
Gib’s mouth pulled down at the corners as he looked up at his home for the next six weeks. It was part of a terrace of identically narrow, faintly shabby Victorian houses that lined the street, and in the dank drizzle of that April evening even the tub of flowering bulbs at the front door failed to relieve the atmosphere of gloom.
Gib couldn’t help thinking about his home on the Pacific coast, with its huge, light, open rooms and its view of the ocean, and he sighed. He was beginning to wonder if he might regret taking up the challenge Josh had thrown him.
Behind him, the taxi driver cleared his throat meaningfully, and Gib stepped up to the door and pushed the bell, his most charming smile at the ready. A bet was a bet, and it was too late to change his mind now.
He hadn’t heard the bell ring inside, and pushed it again just as the door jerked open and he found himself looking at a tall, slender girl with the fiercest green eyes he had ever seen. She had a swing of straight dark hair, straight dark brows and a generous mouth that belied the severity of her expression.
Gib’s smile blinked off in surprise. Had he got the right address? He distinctly remembered Josh saying that all three girls were very ordinary. They’re just nice, friendly girls, he had said.
This girl didn’t look at all ordinary to Gib, and she didn’t look very friendly either.
‘Yes?’ she snapped.
‘I’m John Gibson.’ Gib put his smile back on, but it bounced right off her. ‘Gib to my friends. And you must be Phoebe, Bella or Kate?’
‘I’m Phoebe,’ she acknowledged reluctantly, and frowned. ‘We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow was the original plan, but I was all ready and an earlier flight came up, so I thought I might as well just come on over and turn up.’
He had the bluest eyes Phoebe had ever seen, and they danced in a way that instantly made her feel boring and repressed for not being the kind of spontaneous person that changed arrangements at a whim and breezed across the Atlantic with about as much fuss as she would make popping down to the shop on the corner.
Less, probably.
Phoebe had had a bad day. Her boss, Celia, had been in a vile mood, nitpicking and throwing tantrums with an even greater regularity than normal. Escaping at last, she had spent more than forty minutes waiting for a bus which turned out to be only going as far as Clapham Junction anyway. Too fed up to hang around in the rain, she had set off to walk the rest of the way, without thinking about the fact that it would take her nearly an hour and that she was carrying two heavy folders and wearing quite unsuitable shoes, and when she finally hobbled into the kitchen she had discovered that the pilot light on the boiler had gone out, so there was no hot water for a bath.
And now there was this Gib on her doorstep.
Sod’s law, thought Phoebe morosely. Be at your best with your hair perfectly in place and your lipstick perfectly applied, and you could be sure that when the doorbell went unexpectedly it would be someone doing market surveys or that man who kept trying to get them to change their electricity supplier.
Look and feel like a limp rag, however, and you could guarantee that the most attractive man you had ever seen in the flesh would turn up on the doorstep!
When she looked at him properly, she could see that he wasn’t actually that handsome—his features were too irregular for classic good looks—but he had a quirky, mobile face with eyes so blue and so alive that somehow that was all that you noticed.
Phoebe was distinctly unnerved by the sheer vibrancy of the man. He had that relaxed yet vivid air of someone who spent his life in the sun. Just looking at him was like getting a blast of ozone. He was the sort of man who ought by rights to be at the helm of a yacht or plunging into the ocean waves with a surfboard under his arm, not standing in this grey south London street evidently wondering why she was staring at him.
Recollecting herself, Phoebe stepped back and held open the door. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said awkwardly.
Gib stayed where he was on the doorstep. ‘The thing is, I’ve got a bit of a problem,’ he admitted, and turned to indicate the taxi which was waiting in the street with its meter ticking at a rate of knots.
‘I lost my wallet somewhere between LA and the arrivals hall at Heathrow. I think someone might have lifted it in the baggage hall, but anyway it’s gone. I reported it to the police and have cancelled all my cards but I thought the best thing I could do would just be to get a taxi here and hope someone was in.’
He looked back at Phoebe with a rueful smile that she was sure was perfectly calculated to have most females swooning at his feet. ‘You wouldn’t have some cash to pay the taxi driver, would you? I’ll pay you back, of course, as soon as I’ve sorted something out.’
Phoebe forced herself to resist the smile. It was just a little too like Slimy Seb’s, who only ever came round when he wanted something and who was always patting his pockets and discovering that he had ‘forgotten’ his wallet, knowing quite well what a soft touch Kate was.
This Gib looked as if he was out of the same mould, one of those cocky, charming types that thought all they had to do was smile and everyone else would fall over themselves to do whatever they wanted. Phoebe didn’t trust men like that. She had met too many of them, and seen too many friends like Kate hurt by their selfish behaviour to ever succumb herself.
Gib was watching her expression and reading her lack of enthusiasm without difficulty. ‘Hey, it’s no problem,’ he said. ‘I’ll just get the taxi to take me to Josh’s office. I’m sure I’ll find someone there to bail me out.’
It was lucky that he had mentioned Josh. As Bella’s best friend, Josh spent a lot of time in the house, and Phoebe was very fond of him. If Josh vouched for Gib, she had better not leave him to sort out his own problems the way she was strongly tempted to do.
‘There’s no need for that.’ She managed a brittle smile. ‘I’ll just go and get my purse.’
‘Thanks, I really appreciate that,’ said Gib as the taxi drove off. ‘I’ll let you have the money back tomorrow.’
That was what Seb always said to Kate, too.
‘Everything’s a bit of mess,’ said Phoebe stiffly as she led the way to the kitchen at the back of the house. ‘We were going to tidy up for you tonight.’
They had planned a special welcoming meal as well. Bella was doing the shopping on her way home, but of course spontaneous types like Gib never thought of how they might mess up anyone else’s plans, did they?
‘Hey, I didn’t want anyone to go to any trouble,’ said Gib, alarmed by her frosty manner. ‘Josh said you’d just treat me like a friend and let me muck in with the rest of you.’
‘Now that you’ve turned up early, it looks like that’s what you’re going to have to do,’ said Phoebe, carrying the kettle over to the sink to fill it.
Gib eyed her warily, picking up on the hostility but not quite sure what he had done to provoke it. Maybe she was cross like this with everyone, which would be a crying shame with that warm, creamy skin and that lush mouth, he thought and then remembered that he wasn’t supposed to be thinking like that. All you’ve got to do is be a friend, Josh had said. What could be easier than that?
Clicking on the kettle, Phoebe turned to face him, and Gib looked quickly away. ‘Nice kitchen,’ he said.
It was a big, cluttered room with fitted cupboards at one end and at the other a shabby sofa and deep armchair covered with an ethnic-looking throw. In the middle was an antique pine table submerged beneath a welter of half-read newspapers, magazine cuttings, recipe books and files with papers spilling out of them. Gib spotted an iron, a collection of nail varnishes, a sequin bag, and—he did a double take—yes, a huge tabby cat curled up in a nest of papers.
The kitchen run by his housekeeper at home had gleaming steel surfaces and was so intimidatingly tidy that Gib rarely ventured in there. This room was messier and a lot less hygienic, he thought, glancing at the cat, but infinitely more inviting. The kind of room where you could sit down with a bottle of wine and relax without worrying about what anyone else was thinking of you.
‘It’s the warmest room in the house,’ said Phoebe, looking around and trying to see it through his eyes. ‘We spend all our time in here, as you can probably tell.’
‘Whose is the cat?’
‘Kate’s.’ Phoebe regarded it without affection. ‘She’s got the softest heart in the world. She’s always coming back with these poor bedraggled creatures she’s rescued, and then we all have to run around finding homes for them, but no one will take that cat, worse luck. Anyway, it probably wouldn’t go,’ she sighed. ‘It’s much too comfortable here. Kate spoils it, and Bella and I are terrified of it. Which reminds me,’ she added, ‘be careful when you come down in the mornings. It bites your ankles until you feed it!’
Josh hadn’t mentioned savage cats when he made his bet, Gib thought a little sourly. He hadn’t mentioned Phoebe’s frosty manner either. Gib just hoped that there weren’t any other nasty surprises in store for him.
As if understanding that they were talking about it, the cat got to its feet and stretched. Seeing the size of it, and the ferocious-looking teeth, Gib gave it a wide berth, but it only gave him a contemptuous stare and jumped off the table to land with a thud on the kitchen floor.
Phoebe watched it stalk out of the room and for the first time ever she warmed to it. Here at least was one other creature unlikely to be impressed by Gib’s smile and spontaneity. Kate and Bella were bound to fall for his charm, but Gib would find that she and the cat were made of sterner stuff!
CHAPTER TWO
PHOEBE had been pouring boiling water into a teapot, and now got out a couple of mugs. ‘Kate and Bella will be back later,’ she said. ‘Would you like some tea?’
‘Great,’ he said with the suggestion of a smile. ‘Now I know I’m back in England!’
‘How long have you been away?’
Gib thought a bit. ‘Nearly eighteen years now.’
‘That’s a long time,’ said Phoebe, trying to calculate how old that made him. It was difficult to tell just by looking at him. He had the solidity of an older man, and there were definite creases around the edges of his eyes. He had to be in his late thirties at least, but he had a disconcerting mixture of dynamism and lazy good humour that seemed to belong to someone much younger.
She wished Kate or Bella would come home. Something about him made her feel tongue-tied and awkward and—worse—boring. It was a feeling that reminded her all too painfully of that terrible time when she had wept as she had asked Ben ‘why?’, and he had told her that Lisa was sweet and feminine and fun.
Not like her.
Gib was obviously fun, too.
‘What do you do?’ she asked stiltedly. Too bad if he thought it was a boring question. She was just being polite. That was what boring people did.
Gib didn’t roll his eyes at the banality of her conversation, but he wasn’t very forthcoming either. ‘Oh, this and that,’ he said vaguely as he picked up his mug.
