The Oddest Little Chocolate Shop in London (5 page)

  
She
frowned. ‘Three staff. You, Rachel … and who else?’

  
‘Sophia.
She’s on holiday this week. Back in France.’ He sighed. ‘She’s my cousin.’

  
‘I
see.’ Clementine guessed what was coming. ‘Well, you can’t sack your cousin. So
I guess it will have to be Rachel who goes?’

  
His
half-smile was grim. He shook his head. ‘No, Rachel is brilliant with the
customers. Though perhaps a little … how do you say … ?’

  
‘Scatty?’
she suggested.

  
‘Pushy,’
he said at the same time, and they grinned at each other.

  
‘So
you want to keep Rachel and give your cousin the shove?’

  
‘You
put it very eloquently,’ he said drily, and sipped his black coffee, making a
soft noise of satisfaction at the taste. His dark gaze sought hers and he
smiled into her eyes. ‘Simple pleasures are the best. Don’t you agree?’

  
She
had to swallow against a lump in her throat in order to mutter an incoherent,
‘Um, yes.’

  
Oh good grief.

  
Her
hands trembled a little as she lifted her coffee mug.

  
Get a grip
, she told herself.

  
But
how could she? Dominic Ravel was a total sex god. He had the body of an
athlete, smouldering looks like a French film star, his voice was like honey
over warm dark chocolate, and here she was, having coffee with him. Alone, in a
locked shop.

  
‘Careful!’
he exclaimed as she tipped the mug to her lips, staring back at him in a daze,
and ended up with a lap full of scalding coffee.

  
She
shrieked and jumped up, knocking her mug over as she tried to put it down and
escape the burning sensation between her thighs. The delicate bone china mug
rolled onto the floor in what felt like slow motion.

  
She
distinctly heard the china CRACK, and closed her eyes in horror.

  
‘I’m
so sorry!’

  
He
was there a few seconds later, a dishcloth pressed to her cream skirt where the
dark stain of coffee was already spreading. ‘Don’t panic,’ he said right beside
her ear, making her shiver. ‘C’est pas grave.’

  
Opening
her eyes, she shook the wet skirt away from her body. If only it wasn’t so
tight-fitting, she thought, wincing.

  
‘Bloody
hell, that’s hot!’

  
She
looked down at herself, trying to assess the damage, and could have moaned with
embarrassment. The wet material of her skirt was sticking to her thighs in a
highly undignified way.

  
'You
have to take it off,' he said abruptly. 


  
She stared at him, shocked. 'What?'

  
‘Your
skirt, Clementine. The coffee was still very hot. You need to remove it. Vite,
before the material burns your skin.'

  
Still
not thinking straight, she belatedly realised what he was telling her. Then she
reached round for the zip and wriggled out of the skirt. She was wearing tights
underneath, of the 'nearly nude' variety. Her tights were wet too, at
mid-thigh, so she dragged them down. He helped her, then handed her another
clean dishcloth to dry her legs. While she was rubbing herself up and down,
feeling very foolish and more than a little exposed, he hung her damp clothing
over one of the high stools.

  
'Better?'
he asked, his look concerned.

  
Clementine
nodded, holding the damp dishcloth in front of her pink lacy knickers.

  
His
dark gaze moved up her bare legs to the protective dishcloth. His mouth
twitched. 'Very fetching.'

  
Oh hell.

  
So
much for impressing him with her intelligence and poise. The office
professional. Instead she had just ended up looking like a complete fool.
Still, it could have been worse, she comforted herself. It could have been one
of her Full White Cotton Briefs days. Instead he had got an eyeful of her pink
lacy panties. That was okay. They were quite sexy compared to most of her
regular underwear.

  
As
long as she did not turn around, he need never know there was a pink rabbit
design on the back.

  
‘I
don’t suppose you’ve got some jeans I could borrow?’ she ventured, her face as
hot as her thighs. ‘Or a long coat I could wrap around myself? I’m really
sorry. I’ve broken your lovely china mug. And just look at the mess.’

  
His
eyes twinkled as he assessed her predicament. They definitely twinkled. ‘Wait
here,’ Dominic murmured, and disappeared into the shop.

  
‘Where
would I go?’ she wailed after him, then sat gingerly on the stool in her lacy
knickers and stared at the coffee-stained skirt in despair.

  
What
a clumsy idiot you are, Clementine, she told herself crossly. What must he be
thinking? Probably how to get her out of there before she could spill or break
something else.

  
She
remembered a moment at school where she had backed into someone in the art
class, slipped over clutching at them and suffered the indignity of having a
pot of green paint upended over her uniform. Green dress, green arms, green
legs, and worst of all perhaps, green on her shoes, so that as she squelched
miserably towards the school office she had left green footprints along the
corridors …

  
She
had never lived that day down. Even now when she saw old school friends at the
pub, one of them would invariably exclaim after a few beers, ‘Oh god, do you
remember that hilarious time when Clementine … ’

  
Yes,
her clumsiness was rightly famous. But did it really have to surface just when
she was trying to impress this man with her cool professionalism.

  
Better
the poor sod should know now, a grim voice said in her head. While he can still
escape ...

  
Dominic
came back through the bead curtain.

  
‘Everyone
knows I’m a total menace,’ she began to say, jumping up with the intention of
apologising again, then stared at the pretty summer dress he was holding out to
her.

  
'This
any good?' he asked.

  
It
was a flimsy white and pink polka-dot halterneck, and given her height would
probably reach to about mid-thigh. She took it though, dredging up what she
hoped would pass for a grateful smile.

  
Seriously?
In this weather? Clementine eyed the summer dress with misgiving. Not only
would she look like utterly comical in the outfit, but she would be frozen
solid before she reached the corner.

  
'Perfect,'
she muttered.

  
‘I
know it’s not very warm, but I thought,’ he said, apologetically indicating her
coat and ubiquitous pashmina, ‘that if you wore those as well, you would not be
too cold. There were no tights, je regrette … But the dress is better than nothing.
Oui?’

  
A
silly, childish wave of jealousy came over her as she stood there, staring at
him and clutching the halterneck dress. Whose dress was this, she wondered feverishly?
Some girlfriend, perhaps, who had come round to stay the night … and just
happened to leave her dress behind?

  
An
image rose in her mind and refused to be ignored, an image of him in bed with
the kind of girl who might go home in her boyfriend's clothes. Then Clementine
realised that she was precisely that kind of girl. The clumsy kind who has an
accident and ends up leaving in completely different clothes to the ones she
arrived in.

  
She
swallowed. ‘Yes, of course, thank you.’

  
‘Je
vous en prie.’

  
Hesitantly,
Clementine met his eyes. Please don’t laugh, she was thinking. Or I shall
shrivel up inside and never speak to you again. ‘Is there somewhere I can
change?’ she asked huskily, then cleared her throat. Ridiculous to sound like
she was starting a cold just because she was a bit embarrassed. ‘Or perhaps you
could turn your back?’

  
‘Naturellement,’
he said gravely, and lifted the bead curtain for her, inclining his head as she
passed him, just as though she were royalty. ‘Perhaps upstairs?’

  
‘Thank
you,’ she said again, sidled through into the shop, clutching her coat and the
dress, then hurried up the narrow stairs to his flat.

  
To
her relief he did not follow.

  
It
was only later, awkwardly stripping off her blouse in his unlit kitchen with
all the blinds drawn, that she realised he would have had a prime view of her
bottom as she passed him. And the pink rabbit design on the back of her
knickers.

  
A
sense of total humiliation swamped her. So much for sexy. So much for seductive
Clementine.

  
‘Why
me?’ she moaned to the empty air, then squeezed into the far too tight and too
short polka-dot dress, horrified to find it almost did not fit at all.

  
Too many chocolate truffles!

  
And
she still had to go to work. Very, very late. She
 
glanced at the kitchen clock and just
wanted to go home and dissolve in a puddle of her own shame and inadequacy, not
go on to a day’s boring drudgery at the office. But there was at least a dress
shop between the chocolate shop and her uncle’s accountancy firm, and she probably
had enough in her bank account to buy a plain skirt if they had one in her
size.

  
Slipping
quietly back into the kitchen a short while later, barefoot and bare-legged in
her halterneck dress and coat, she scooped up her shoes and bag, plus the
coffee-stained list of phone numbers, then glanced about for Dominic.

  
He
was nowhere to be seen.

  
Thankful
that the handsome Frenchman was not around to witness her embarrassment, she
popped on her shoes and hurried down the shop, feeling distinctly under-dressed.
The door was unlocked and standing wide open, with no sign of the owner. Even
the cat had vanished.

  
‘Thank
you,’ she called back into the empty shop, wondering if perhaps there was some
other place he could be hiding – waiting for her to leave so he could
have a good laugh at her expense, no doubt.

  
There
was no answer, so she nipped out into the cold air and almost collided with an
old lady in a dark navy coat and matching shoes, with a wide-brimmed hat. She
looked as though she was going somewhere special.

  
‘I’m
so sorry!’ she exclaimed, righting the old lady before she could fall. ‘I
wasn't looking where I was going. Are you okay?’

  
The
old lady nodded mutely, straightened her glasses on her nose, then hurried
along the street with barely a glance in her direction. She looked thoroughly
miserable.

  
‘Oh
dear,’ Clementine muttered, feeling even lower than before. Such sad eyes. And
she had almost knocked the poor thing over.

  
It
was going to be one of those days when nothing went right. And she had had such
high hopes when Dominic invited her in for coffee.

  
‘Cheer
up!’ a bloke in a paint-festooned boilersuit commented from a ladder as she
hurried underneath towards the nearest dress shop, not much caring about
attracting further instances of bad luck. ‘It might never happen.’

  
She
was not very amused when the decorator looked her up and down, then threw a
wolf-whistle after her.

  
It
already has, she thought gloomily.

But of course her day had to get worse. How
could it not have done? This was her, after all: the greatest living menace
known to man after the deathwatch beetle. There was nothing for the day to do
but get worse.

  
Arriving
at work almost an hour late, she was not surprised when Uncle Geoffrey called
her into his office and asked her to shut the door.

  
He
stared at her in silence as she traipsed inside, her cheeks as pink as the
polka dots on her too-tight dress.

  
‘This
isn’t going to work, is it?’ he began, and she sank into the chair opposite his
desk without being invited to sit down.

  
‘Oh
crap,’ she said, and blew out her cheeks. ‘You’re giving me the sack, aren’t
you?’