Chapter 7 #2
I’m completely and utterly clueless within seconds about my surroundings. I have no idea how far we’ve walked or what direction the door we came in is, or… anything.
(Apparently there are lights in the loos – you’re led to your fully lit cubicle, released inside and then afterwards taken back to your seat. Charlotte specifically checked about that before she agreed to the date.)
We’re both guided onto bar stools (which have backs, luckily, because the darkness seems to affect balance too) and then a deep voice says, ‘Hi. I’m Jake,’ and I nearly fall off mine.
I hadn’t really registered before how very deep his voice is. I was too busy being furious, initially about his disdain for the romance genre, the reading of which makes a lot of people very happy, and then about his apparent desire to trash my reputation and career.
His voice is really deep. Being a romance writer, I’d have to call it gravelly.
And if I were one of my own characters, I’d have to mention that it’s caused the little hairs on the back of my neck to stand up.
I think the reason for that is – even though I did know we were meeting him here – I didn’t expect him to have arrived first, so hearing him speak was a bit of a surprise.
‘Hi,’ says Charlotte. ‘I’m Charlotte.’
‘And I’m here too,’ I say quickly because I suddenly really don’t want to know what Jake’s like in flirt mode. I think it might make me feel sick. ‘Freya.’
‘Oh, right.’ And, yes, his voice has definitely changed, got colder. Clearly he dislikes me as much as I dislike him.
‘I thought it would be nice if she came in and introduced us,’ Charlotte explains. ‘Shared a drink with us at the bar.’
‘Great,’ says Jake in an unenthusiastic tone.
I glare in the direction of his voice and say nothing.
A silence almost as dense as the darkness begins to envelop us, and then, just as I’m beginning to feel very guilty in case this is awkward for Charlotte, and am considering starting up some basic conversation, there’s a bit of shifting around from what I think is her direction, and then she gamely says, ‘So, national TV and a challenge. I’m guessing you’ve entered into this as reluctantly as Freya has? ’
Jake laughs (clearly going for fake charm – I’ve just thought of another ‘sm’ word for him – smarmy) and says, ‘It’s certainly a strange one.
And I think Freya might have drawn the short straw.
Whatever she does, I don’t think she’s going to be able to convince me that there’s no everlasting love in my future.
Whereas all I have to do is get her to fall in love.
’ I don’t like his tone. Sarky. He put a lot of emphasis on the word whatever.
As though he thinks I’m going to go down the setting him up on disastrous dates route on purpose.
Charlotte is not stupid. ‘Are you perhaps imagining that Freya thinks there is no possibility that you could fall for me?’
‘Ha, yes, no,’ Jake says. ‘Perhaps I worded that badly.’
‘Yes, you did,’ I inform him. ‘Charlotte is one of my best friends. And also very attractive by anyone’s standards.’
‘Great,’ replies Jake, even more sarkily. ‘I’m sure we’ll hit it off very well then.’
‘Frankly,’ says Charlotte, ‘I’m tempted to walk out at this point, but I’m actually quite interested to experience the restaurant part. Happy to stay with Freya instead of you, though.’
‘Sorry,’ says Jake. ‘I would very much like to spend the evening with you. I, er, just couldn’t resist a little – entirely joking – dig at Freya because we had the small disagreement that led up to this challenge.’
I love hearing him grovel.
‘Are you just saying that because you have to – because of the contract with the production company?’ I can’t resist asking. I’d be extremely happy to have dinner here with Charlotte in his stead and tell Sonja that he reneged. That would pretty much be a win for me straight off.
‘Certainly not,’ Jake says, doing something with his voice that makes it sound almost caressing, and makes me want to reach out in the dark and punch him, frankly. ‘I’m very much looking forward to getting to know Charlotte.’
‘Keep talking,’ says Charlotte, apparently having fallen for his caressing tones.
‘What would you like to drink?’ a voice asks us and I scream slightly.
‘It’s okay. You’re safe,’ says Jake, in a really sarcastic voice.
‘Thank you so much,’ I say, not gritting my teeth at all.
There’s laughter coming from the direction of the voice (well, I think it’s the direction; I now feel that I have no idea where anything or anyone is, even with sound clues).
I choose a mocktail (I feel like I need to keep my wits about me) while Charlotte and Jake both choose margaritas.
‘So how do you two know each other?’ Jake asks once we’ve finished choosing.
‘Well,’ Charlotte begins. ‘There’s a long version and a short version.’
‘I’d love to hear the long version.’ Jake has injected a hint of laughter into his voice, which, if I didn’t know better, I’d think was bordering on attractive. As it is, I know it’s an entirely cynical ploy to make sure he’s definitely got Charlotte back on side after his earlier mess-up.
Charlotte starts the story by telling him that she writes romance too.
‘Oh, I see.’ Jake sounds like he’s sniggering to himself, and I’m pretty sure that he’s immediately realised that one of the reasons I asked Charlotte this evening is that I know he cannot stand romance authors.
As she tells him about us being the only two authors at a conference who got the wrong bus (we went north; we were supposed to go south) from our hotel and ended up at a solar-powered swimming pool makers’ conference (which we did not immediately realise), he chuckles in all the appropriate places (Charlotte is a great raconteur) and generally behaves like the entirely pleasant companion he is not, all the while giving me the impression that he’s seen right through me.
This impression is confirmed when his first question following the story is, ‘So romance. What books do you write, Charlotte? Do you have a pen name?’
‘Ha ha, no, I think it’s too soon to tell you that,’ Charlotte says. ‘I saw your conversation on TV.’ She lowers her voice so it’s all husky and seductive-sounding. ‘If you fall in love with me and prove Freya wrong, I’ll tell you then.’
Jake and I both laugh, which is an achievement on Charlotte’s part; I can’t imagine there’s much that Jake and I would both find funny.
‘What kind of romances do you write?’ Jake persists after a moment. I’m quite surprised that he knows there are different kinds; I’d have thought he’d lump romance as a genre all in together.
‘All contemporary. Some comedies, some extremely spicy, some both funny and spicy.’ Charlotte doesn’t write under her own name and is clearly not going to fall into the trap of telling him anything that will make her easily identifiable.
If I thought there was the slightest chance I could win this challenge, now would be a good time to try to get to know a little bit more about Jake and try to work out what direction I should be going in with these dates.
‘So that’s me and my career,’ Charlotte says. ‘What about you? What made you decide to become a divorce lawyer?’
‘I suppose it’s the combination of law and helping people through a difficult time in their lives.’ He says it so glibly that it’s obvious he says it every time like that. And of course he isn’t going to say anything in front of me that would give me any leverage for the challenge.
This is pointless, I decide, and I have stuff to do this evening.
Hopefully – unless she falls in love with Jake and would feel disloyal doing so – Charlotte will fill me in later on anything she learns about him (barring anything physical, I very much hope).
‘I should leave you two to it,’ I say. ‘So you can move on from the why-do-you-do-your-job interview-style questions to your actual date.’
If only it weren’t pitch-black and I could actually leave. ‘Um.’ I catch myself pointlessly looking around.
‘Are you looking around for someone to help right now even though you can’t see?’ Jake asks. ‘Because I just did that and I’m wondering if I’m the only one who can’t adjust fast.’
Okay. No. We don’t do pally. He’s obviously just trying to make Charlotte think he’s a normal, friendly person. I’m not going to be petty though. (Not in front of Charlotte, anyway.)
‘Ha,’ I say. ‘Yep. I did.’ I put my hand up and kind of waggle my fingers, and then I clear my throat loudly.
A voice immediately says, ‘Can I help you?’
And within a minute I’m on my way out, saying, ‘Well, I would hug one of you and blow polite air kisses at the other, but I obviously can’t see you, so… I’ll just wish you a good evening and look forward to hearing all about it. Have fun!’
As I’m led away, Charlotte says, ‘I’ll text later.’
And Jake says, ‘You’re never going to win.’
‘In your dreams,’ I reply, because childishly I am not going to let him have the last word this evening.
And, crap. The more I think about it, the more it’s obvious that I can’t win because I cannot convince him that a happily-ever-after isn’t waiting around the corner for him.
But, also, he can’t win, because I know I’m not going to fall in love.
Which means – terrible thought – if we’re both honest about the outcome of these dates we’re both going to be losers on a team-building weekend in Devon.
Torture.