Chapter 21
CHAPTER 21
I t was a good job Gemma had already finished her drink; if she hadn’t, she was pretty sure she would have spat it out everywhere. This was definitely something Fleur had never suggested to her before.
“Sorry, did you say a double date?” she said. Across the table, Nina’s eyes widened, but Fleur was still talking down the phone.
“So there’s this new guy. He’s joined Henry’s firm, and from what Henry says, I think he’ll be just perfect for you.”
“Okay…” Gemma replied, intrigued to know what had given Fleur this impression.
“He is thirty-four,” Fleur started, only to stop. “Do you have time to go through this now?” she said, a hint of worry in her voice. “I don’t want to interrupt your time with Nina.”
“It’s fine. Nina will want to know everything anyway, so you might as well tell me now. He’s thirty-four, and…?”
Fleur cleared her throat before she carried on. “Yes, and he studied law. That’s probably obvious, given that he’s a lawyer and everything.”
“Right, thirty-four and studied law.”
Gemma struggled to see what could’ve made Fleur assume they would be a decent match, but she didn’t say as much. She wanted to hear what else Fleur knew about him.
“He moved to Maldon about a year ago, but unfortunately, he hasn’t settled in that well. Not because he’s not lovely, he is, he just spends a lot of time working. You know what these lawyer types are like. Anyway, he’s a right foodie. Absolutely loves going to coffee shops, trawling through antique markets, that kind of thing. I don’t know. Something about him made me think you two would be a great fit. We were just going to go for a drink on Monday night. Nothing as arduous as a meal or anything, so what do you say?”
Gemma took a moment to pause before reciting everything that Fleur had just said to Nina.
“She’ll say yes, obviously,” Nina shouted from across the table.
Nina was one of those people who came across as ever so quiet, and was most of the time, until she’d had a couple of drinks and was in the company of people she trusted. Then, she really came out of her shell.
“I don’t know. I think Monday is going to be a bit of a stressful day for me,” Gemma said, only for Nina to jump in.
“That’s why you need to go for a drink. This is perfect. You’ll be too busy thinking about what to wear for your double date to stress about anything Kent does while you’re at work with him.”
While Gemma didn’t believe that was wholly true, she could see the logic in Nina’s thinking. She would almost certainly want a few glasses of wine after a full day working with Kent. Why not have them meeting someone new?
“Okay, count me in,” she said.
“Brilliant, well, we’ll meet you at the White Horse at seven. Looking forward to it. Oh, this is going to be just perfect. I can feel it.”