Page 16 of Hit For Six (Balls and Banter #1)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lola

Lola took in the scene of destruction behind the bar.

Two customers exactly where they shouldn’t be…

and that was for starters. It couldn’t have looked more like she’d been on a mission to take advantage of her first night in the new job the moment backs were turned.

As if she was handing out free drinks and free love to anybody who wanted it.

Which totally matched Friday’s image, even if Maxine knew differently about what had happened at the cricket stadium.

Ice cubes littered the floor like they’d showered down from the heavens in a freak hailstorm, and the tropical contents of the counter appeared to have come off the worse for wear in a fight with a Caribbean tornado.

‘This has been a big mistake, Maxine. I’m sorry for wasting your time. I-I’ll get my coat.’

Now it was Lola’s turn to apologise. Which seemed the height of injustice, all things considered, and particularly in light of her employer’s words from yesterday about having a duty to protect every woman who dipped their toe in The Bubble Bath.

Apparently this didn’t extend to Lola because conveniently, once again, nobody had witnessed the run up to events.

Except Monty, whose opinion would hardly be considered credible.

But this was the world she, and numerous other women, were living in.

Lola might be tired of it but she was used to it.

Tonight was just another illustration of SIX’s core message; when you peeled back the layers of any glamorous production (stage or cocktail bar, stadium or office) powerful men were still taking advantage of women.

And now her life was even more of a mess because the last few moments of said existence left her wondering if someone had hypnotised her.

That kiss had been earth-shattering, spellbinding and spine-tingling all rolled into one.

Who knew a man could send her to the edge of space without giving her an orgasm?

And to be honest, Monty very nearly had.

It had been impossible not to sense his hardness.

There’d been barely a millimetre between them.

But then Lola remembered the sickening choreography that had preceded it all and she fell back down to earth with a nasty bump.

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Maxine lowered her voice in response to Lola’s high-pitched statement.

‘Too right!’ echoed Monty, suddenly sounding a whole lot more confident than he had when Lola had served him and his friends their drinks, until he took in her withering look.

‘My teammate was harassing her,’ he tried to explain to Maxine and the hovering Wilf.

‘This isn’t Lola’s fault. She can hardly predict when a powercut is going to hit Bath.

Well, then… I just happened to call into the main bar to check that she–’

Lola held her hand up, signalling for Monty to stop.

She was incandescent at him for getting involved.

This was none of his business. Besides, despite Maxine’s words, her eyes told Lola another story.

Her boss had been right behind Wilf when he’d arrived with the flashlight, which meant that she wouldn’t have been the only one who’d spotted Lola making out with a customer.

Even if she hadn’t seen the precursor to the main event, she didn’t need the drama that seemed to perpetually trail in Lola’s wake.

Not when she was attempting to run a brand new business.

And Lola couldn’t blame her. True, she hadn’t asked for the drama herself but if her own enterprise ever came to fruition one day, she’d prefer to hire sensible staff too.

Lola picked her way across the debris, determined to make things as easy as possible for Maxine.

Tim glared at her as if she was the She-Devil 2.

0, his knees knocking together from his hiding place under the bar.

It was all she could do not to pelt him with the rest of the ice but he wasn’t worth her energy.

Monty reached out a hand to help her navigate the mess but Lola didn’t take it.

With as much dignity as she could muster, she bowed her head as she walked past the customers and their paused conversations.

Then she grabbed her long, violet, threadbare wraparound granny cardigan from the coat stand and completed her second walk of shame of the weekend, out of the bar and up another flight of stairs.

It was tipping down outside. Lola had barely taken a step and she felt as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over her.

She swept her wet fringe from her eyes and plucked the soggy– and in the current circumstances, pathetic– cocktail umbrella from her hair, sighing as she looked up to the heavens.

The bruised sky had turned the August evening prematurely dark and rendered the Abbey’s spires fittingly Gothic.

But the fresh air was more of a tonic than any cocktail to be found in the underground bar.

The doorman handed Lola a sturdier umbrella of the large golf variety, even taking the time to open it for her.

Just as well. She really didn’t have the will to fight the drowned rat look.

‘No need to bring it back, my luvver. Keep it as a souvenir. I’m sorry things didn’t pan out,’ he said in a broad West Country accent that she’d totally missed yesterday, and in such a way that Lola wondered how many times a similar scenario had come to pass.

She thanked him and crossed the square, making for Pulteney Bridge and her basement apartment several streets beyond, trying not to wince at yet another male taking liberties with a woman.

It was a term of affection. A regional turn of phrase.

Not everything was an attack on her gender, even if it felt like it right now.

‘Lola! Wait up!’

Those words had déjà-vu written all over them.

It was exactly what Harry had said when he’d puffed his way up the stadium steps.

At least Monty was fitter and less likely to keel over from a cardiac arrest. But still.

Lola really didn’t fancy reenacting Friday afternoon.

She kept walking, pretending she hadn’t heard him.

Mainly because she had no idea what to say.

It had been two years since she’d had a kiss.

Two whole years! Which had led to the most disastrous fling with a guy called Orlando, who’d found himself ceremoniously dumped when he’d refused to get in Lola’s dad’s ‘crappy’ 1999 Ford Focus.

Greg had kindly driven to pick his daughter and her boyfriend up from a weekend at Glastonbury but Orlando had stubbornly walked back to Bath instead.

The writing had already been on the wall (well, canvas) when the snobby git had abandoned her and her rustic tent to smuggle himself into some old private schoolboy friends’ luxury yurt in the posh field, leaving her to party alone as she watched her favourite bands.

And really, she should have taken the very large hint from the universe prior to all of this when Orlando’s entire wardrobe for the festival had consisted of suit jackets, sumptuous scarves…

and a poncy Panama hat. It had been a life lesson in discernment and she’d vowed never to date out of her class again.

There hadn’t been the budget for nights out to fly hotspots, and Lola hadn’t felt the urge to put Squiffy on a lead so she could encourage a pet meet-cute in one of the city’s green spaces.

She’d long known that romance would need to happen out of the blue.

But this was not what she’d had in mind.

Monty had probably only kissed her because he felt sorry for her.

She reached the pavement’s edge, wondering how the square had run out on her and why she hadn’t had the sense to ask Maxine where the hidden tunnel to the park was.

Many of the Georgian buildings opposite Parade Gardens had one squirreled away in their basements and it would have made a far better escape route from The Bubble Bath.

But here she was and she could hardly zigzag back in a game of cat and mouse.

Spotting a fleeting gap in the traffic, Lola darted across the road to safety, determined to keep up her stride, until she heard a mammoth screeching of brakes and a feeble beep.

No, please tell her he hadn’t been such a twit!

Lola really hoped Monty’s impulsiveness had stopped at him jumping over the bar.

Now she had no choice but to turn on her heel, quit running away from her problems and behave like a grown-up.

Monty held an apologetic hand aloft to the stressed-out driver of a cute Fiat Cinquecento and continued to pace toward her.

Lola reluctantly came to a halt by the stone wall above the River Avon.

Pulteney Weir thundered behind her, competing with the heavy downpour.

It would have made the perfect cinematic backdrop for another, much longer kiss as the two of them stared at one another, waiting to see who would make the first move, as if they were in a friendlier version of a Spaghetti Western.

Monty’s hair was plastered to his face in a quirky Manchester indie band makeover, while his cobalt eyes pierced her heart and made her knees wobble.

Lola felt terrible that he was getting so drenched but then the doorman could have handed him an umbrella too.

Okay, sometimes inequality did work in a woman’s favour.