Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [125]
Of course she knew that her version of short and tight was lickbum chaste compared to the snug pelmets barely covering some of her colleague’s bottoms, but all these things are relative.
On the way to work she prayed Joe wouldn’t be there. On a shoot or sick or dead, maybe. But as she walked in the door he was the first person she saw. Lounging on his chair, with his skin and his cheekbones and his long, rangy frame. Paralysing terror engulfed her. How could she flirt with this man? She fancied him way too much. In an instant she’d scrapped her plans. She wouldn’t do anything, she decided, she’d just behave as normal and completely ignore him.
Then she remembered Fintan, in his hospital bed, and felt like John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons. It’s beyond my control, she intoned in her head. It’s beyond my control. She had to do this.
Starting by revealing her saucy skirt to all and sundry. Oh, God! Wildly she considered doing her day’s work still wearing her coat, but reluctantly realized that that would engender even more comment. It nearly killed her to peel it off, first one sleeve, then the other. Flicking paranoid glances left and right to see if all the men were nudging each other and commenting, she prepared for the walk across the office to her desk.
Dignity in the face of adversity, she urged herself. Think Padraig Pearse before the firing squad, think Joan of Arc being burned at the stake. Thus fortified, she squared her shoulders, lifted her head high, fought the urge to pull her skirt down and embarked towards him.
Establish eye-contact! she ordered herself, in a sergeant-major voice.
She did.
Prepare to smile!
She smiled.
With feeling!
With feeling.
Hold it…
She held it.
Now, speak to him! And make it good!
Feeling that her tongue had swollen to ten times its normal size, she managed, ‘Good morning, Joe.’
Was that the best you could do? That’s shocking! I’ve no choice but to tell you to wiggle your bum.
Stiffly, woodenly, she attempted an undulation of her hips as she walked away until, with frantic relief, she reached her chair and was allowed to stop.
Then, trembling, she sat at her desk and waited for the fruits of her labours. With her wanton behaviour she’d sent him an unmistakable invitation. Would he take her up on it by coming over and asking her out? Perhaps not, she acknowledged, if the only thing he’d liked about her in the past had been her unavailability.
And then there was the Angie factor. Katherine still had no definite proof that Joe and Angie were seeing each other, but if they were, it was bad news for Katherine. And Fintan.
She spent an uneasy morning, full of anxious anticipation, observing Joe discreetly. She eyed his long, sensitive fingers swooping back his hair and yearned for them to touch her. She itched to put her arms around his narrow waist.
By lunchtime he hadn’t been over, so she girded her loins, smiled at him once more and said, ‘Have a nice lunch.’ Let no one say that Katherine Casey shirked her duties!
All afternoon she was tensed for his arrival. Keeping a surreptitious lookout, watching him at his desk. She was unnerved by how handsome she found him. Leaning back in his chair, on the phone, laughing at something the other person had said. Or talking to one of his team, ideas flitting across his face. Or tapping a biro thoughtfully off his teeth, his eyes faraway and speculative. It gave her a warm, nervous, expectant hum in her stomach.
But still he didn’t show. So around five o’clock she smiled at him again, to indicate that she was game for a drink after work. But he just returned her smile cautiously, showing some – but not all – of his white teeth, and said nothing, while Katherine began to feel mild resentment that she was the one doing all the work here. He