Tempting Fate by Jane Green Page A

don’t know either,’ Gabby manages to say. ‘But I’d love a drink.’
    ‘Coming right up.’ He orders before sitting back to gaze at her.
    ‘What?’ Gabby is self-conscious. ‘Do I have something in my teeth?’
    ‘No. You look great.’ She notices his eyes darken as he says this and she knows it means he’s aroused. She feels waves of embarrassment, of pleasure, before remembering her manners. ‘Thank you. How were your meetings?’
    ‘All good. How’s the piece you’re working on. Didn’t you say it was a desk?’
    Gabby smiles. He remembered. She had found a dark wooden desk at the consignment store and had stripped it with the intention of painting it a soft dove grey, replacing the handles with small, black, iron knobs, and thereby reinventing it as a Gustavian-style desk, perfect for the study. ‘It’s going well,’ she says, getting out her phone and scrolling through for pictures.
    As she scrolls, she realizes Matt is looking at the screen, at all the evidence of her life, her real life, which she doesn’t want him to see. She doesn’t want him to see her husband, her children, the signs of a middle-aged housewife – which is what she is, however much he may want to think otherwise. She tilts her screen slightly to prevent him seeing, but it isn’t enough.
    ‘Wait! Is that your husband?’
    They haven’t talked very much about Elliott. Gabby isn’t even sure Matt knows his name. It wouldn’t feel right to discuss him, nor does she want Matt to see him. ‘No,’ she lies. ‘Just some friends back home.’
    ‘Oh come on, let me see,’ he insists.
    ‘No.’ She is firm as she lets the phone fall back into her bag. ‘Can’t find the desk, sorry. Take my word for it, though, that I’m doing an amazing job.’
    ‘I don’t doubt it.’ Matt raises his glass, dropping the subject. ‘Cheers!’ he says as Gabby raises hers. ‘To us.’
    Gabby says nothing as she drinks. Us? To
us
? What us? There is no ‘us’. And yet she can’t deny a thrill at hearing him say the word, and she can’t deny a thrill as her eyes unconsciously move across his body,remembering the picture of him surfing. She can’t deny a thrill as he watches her looking at him then gives her a slow, sexy smile that makes her tingle down to her toes.
    What am I
doing
? She thinks: I need to leave.
    She doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t. She has another drink.
    Their smiles do not fade, each of them is high on the other’s company, and it is only as Gabby sips her third drink that she realizes Matt is talking, has been talking for quite some time, and she has no idea what he is saying.
    ‘I’m drunk,’ she says suddenly, staring at the glass as she tries to focus, pushing it away and shaking her head as if to clear her thoughts.
    Matt raises his eyebrows. ‘You haven’t had that much.’
    ‘I know. I’m a total lightweight,’ she says. ‘Drinking on an empty stomach has never been good for me.’
    ‘Or perhaps it’s very good for you. Depends which way you look at it.’
    Gabby snorts with laughter then looks up at him through her mascaraed eyelashes.
    ‘What? Why are you looking at me like that?’
    ‘Because you,’ she says, wagging a finger at him, knowing she has had too much to drink and it is making her bold, knowing she would never dare say this when sober, ‘are dangerous.’
    Matt sits back, feigning dismay. ‘Me?
Me
?
Dangerous
?I’m not the dangerous one.’ Once again, a slow smile spreads across his face. ‘
You’re
the dangerous one.’
    ‘I’m an old married woman,’ Gabby protests, able to say these words only because she doesn’t feel like an old married woman at all, knows she doesn’t look like an old married woman. ‘You’re the sexy younger man flirting with a woman he can’t have.’
    ‘Oh?’ Matt sits forward, leaning very close, and as his lips brush her ear a shiver runs through her entire body. ‘Are you absolutely sure I’m flirting with a woman I can’t