Page 9 of Hit For Six (Balls and Banter #1)

‘Ooh, I’m sold– even if I did find the formerly dashing Mr. Bridgerton’s behaviour a little on the toxic side as his and Pen’s romance blossomed.’

‘Indeed.’ Maxine raised a brow à la Colin Bridgerton. ‘And I’ll have a peach and coconut mocktail, I think.’

Maxine put in their orders with a waiter called Bartek, before quizzing Lola on her reasons for applying for the evening job when she appeared to have a successful daytime career.

How to answer? Lola decided she needed at least one person on her side.

Somebody who knew her heart’s desire. For the first time in a long time, she told the truth.

‘It probably sounds a bit ambitious but I’m saving up to invest in my own business.’

‘Hey, that sounds exciting … as long as you’re not going anywhere in the next few months.

’ Maxine sounded genuinely pleased for her.

‘I’m not going to dig and ask what your idea might involve.

I firmly believe we should protect our dreams and keep them close to our chest, sharing them with a very select few until they’re at the point of manifestation.

That’s what I did with this place. You should totally go for it, though, Lola. ’

‘Thanks! Slowly but surely, I intend to.’

Lola thought back again to the slightly less glamorous surroundings of the lounge last night, where her half-adopted Squiffy had massaged her beanie paws on her lap.

She’d drawn a glut of brainstorming clouds with arrows poking out of them in all directions; her tummy fizzing with excitement just thinking about that scrap of paper becoming reality. Well, she had to start somewhere.

Bartek placed their drinks in the bath and she tried to keep a straight face.

It seemed a pointless charade now that Maxine had to lean over to pick up her glass from the plughole.

Lola felt like the Chinese gymnast at the Paris 2024 Olympics, whose curiosity had led her to emulate the medal-biting of her Italian peers on the podium and made for a glorious sequence of photos.

Taking Maxine’s lead, she angled her torso into the tub and made a grab for her Polin, trying not to fall in or laugh.

No wonder the sessions in this place could only be booked for two hours unless the private function area was being used.

People must pull so many muscles sitting next to some of these ornate baths– either from nose diving into them or fighting off the hysterics.

When she’d finally fished it out without a spillage, Lola took a contemplative sip of her drink.

‘Wow! That is… Actually I can’t quite find the words to describe it.’

Unputdownable sprang to mind. Quite literally. Which was probably best, all things considered.

‘Mind-blowing, isn’t it? Wilf and Stella Arabella behind the bar have won all sorts of awards for their mixology.’

‘I am not sur…’Lola couldn’t stop sipping her cocktail. Oh, dear. At this rate she’d be spending all her wages here. ‘Prised.’

Maxine laughed in such a way that Lola could tell she was accustomed to her customers’ ecstatic reactions.

‘Well, the job’s yours as long as you’re sure you can handle the extra hours, taking into account your office position. None of the other candidates I’ve seen passed muster and you give off a good vibe. I’m hoping you’ll be able to start tomorrow night?’

Joaquín’s makeover had worked. Lola could have fist pumped the air. She’d never wanted to be famous in any shape or form– most certainly not via Friday’s hideous antics– and it was a relief to know that she blended in with the wallpaper here.

‘Absolutely! That’s great news.’

She knew she was acting like she’d secured the career of her dreams fresh from graduation.

She also knew that she’d gone back on her word of bagging a new career within seven days.

She’d totally failed to escape Julian. But Lola was working on it.

As soon as another part-time job came up which, coupled with this bar opportunity, paid roughly the same as her current exec position, she was out of Celebrate and Commiserate for good.

And despite the last part of the greeting card company’s name, she wouldn’t be crying over it.

‘Fantastic. Shadow me tonight if you’re free for an hour, and then come in tomorrow at six p.m. and we can sort out your uniform.

Sundays aren’t too busy although we do have one fairly big group booking this weekend.

Take the menu home with you so you can familiarise yourself with our signature cocktails and their components.

We rotate our specials once a month according to local countryside foraging opportunities, so those are chalked up on the board. ’

‘I’ll be back in a bit and I’ll study this as if I’m taking an exam,’ Lola promised as she tucked the menu under her wing.

‘Before you go, Lola, there’s just one thing.’ Suddenly Maxine’s expression turned serious. ‘I don’t want you to feel awkward about it… but–’ Lola’s stomach began to churn.

‘Let me guess… you caught the T20 game.’

Maxine clenched her teeth as if she was the human version of the Grimacing Face Emoji.

‘Just your cameo. It’s been kind of unavoidable on my three times a day forays into TikTok when I post videos of this place. You’ve even been made into a meme. That’s life goal stuff for some people.’

Lola sighed. She’d gotten way too ahead of herself. Life was never so straightforward.

‘But you look completely different with your shorter hair pulled back and the ah.’ Maxine stroked the air.

‘Fringe.’ Ha, so completely different that she recognised Lola immediately and had been building up to breaking it to her.

‘I’m just super observant, but the average person won’t have a clue who you are.

It’s yesterday’s fish and chip paper.’ Pfft.

Not even a week had passed. ‘What I’m very badly trying to say is…

are you sure that the guy who was attempting to catch the ball on your right– okay, actually he was on your left, ’cos I need to imagine the scenario from your perspective–’

‘You really don’t want to do that.’

Where the hell was this conversation going? Maxine pulled her glasses down off her bouncy brown bob, her owlish eyes regarding Lola as if she was about to confide in her.

‘Are you sure that he wasn’t somehow responsible for you know…

what happened… your tits hanging out.’ And oh, despite the bluntness of that statement, this was most unexpected.

Apparently there was another person out there who could see right through Julian Tovey.

‘The reason I’m wondering is because we barred that man from here. ’

‘No way!’

‘I’m afraid so, and that’s another reason why I’m so familiar with your face.

I’ve replayed the footage several times and can imagine all too well his hand in things.

’ Wonderful. ‘He came in about a month ago wearing the same hat on top of that eighties hair. He’d had too much to drink and he started trying it on with this group of nineteen-year-old girls.

We were about to call the police but he fled.

Not even Bruce on the door managed to collar him.

Look: I’ve still got the evidence here.’

Maxine pulled her phone out of her back pocket, tapping and scrolling down the screen until she found what she was looking for.

She handed her mobile to Lola, whose head slowly nodded affirmatively as she took in the disturbing hodgepodge of images of Julian straddling the edge of a roll top bath in a most disgraceful manner so he could impose himself on a group of young women.

In the next shot he was lying in the bath, two cocktails in his filthy mitts, whilst the girls’ struggled to conceal their intimidated body language.

‘It was a busy night. We should have been on the case immediately.’ Maxine gritted her teeth at her own mishap this time.

‘I have to know, Lola. Is he still employed by your company? At least, your row of people absolutely screamed corporate-work-event-on-a-Friday-afternoon and I couldn’t imagine for one moment that they were family or friends.

’ Maxine was astute. Lola slowly nodded her head again.

‘I promise that you won’t be implicated in this.

But I do need that information… and I’d like his full name, if possible.

It’s my duty as owner of this bar to protect the women who come in here. ’

Lola was only too happy to consent. Whistleblowing on Julian in return for a job?

She took it all back: she couldn’t have imagined how quickly her life would turn around.

Obviously she had no idea what would happen next.

Harry might not put two and two together when Maxine contacted him, but Julian would be on his radar, at least. Karma was working faster than she’d anticipated.

After the most humiliating twenty-four hours of her life, it felt like Lola had finally got her act together.

Aside from the fact that she must never bump into Monty B-C in the flesh, of course.

But she had a plan. No more coasting along.

She wasn’t about to give Julian credit but in a strangely roundabout way, he’d helped her. How pissed off he’d be if he knew that!

Determined to carpe the hell out of the diem, after a quick intro to the bar staff, Lola shook hands with Maxine, sealing the deal, then headed back out into the beautiful Bath evening with a smile on her face and a spring in her step.

She’d moved on. Physically with her new-ish hair, mentally with her new attitude.

Now all she needed to do was fill in that online business bank loan application so she could fulfil her dreams and help her parents in one fell swoop.

Where better to do so than sitting in a stripy deck chair in the park with a cup of takeaway tea in her hands?

Lola crossed the road to the café closest to Parade Gardens, bought herself a cuppa and made her way down another set of steps onto the lawns, begrudgingly paying the fee to get in (Bath really was cashing in a little too much in the wake of Bridgerton; to Lola’s knowledge, there hadn’t been as much as a libido-inducing tryst filmed in these parts).

But there was an orchestra playing Rick Astley songs in the cute bandstand.

Lola parted with yet more cash to get herself a seat and sank her arse into its blissful hammock as Together Forever started up.

She could spare an hour at best since she had to zip home, feed Squiffy and make herself a bite to eat before returning to the bar.

But this couldn’t wait. Lola pulled out her phone, tutting at the now crazy amount of notifications on her screen, and hit the website she’d discovered last night, filling in her details as precisely as she could at lightning speed.

Hoping against hope that her streak of luck might continue.

‘Is this seat taken, dear?’

An elderly woman with a mop of cirrus cloud hair stood beside her, causing her flying fingers to jolt. Lola bit her tongue to stop the curse dancing on the end of it.

‘Not as far as I know. Feel free to use it,’ she replied brightly. ‘They’ll come round and collect your money soon.’

‘Oh, I know they will, the buggers. I can remember when you used to be able to hire these deckchairs, buy an ice cream and a newspaper.’ The lady waved a rolled up one of the latter at Lola. ‘And you’d still get change from a sixpence.’

Lola smiled sweetly and got back to the task in hand, inwardly flinching at the reference to the most terrifying number in the world.

But she’d barely filled in another field of the online form when a jarring pop rang out across the sea of deck chairs.

It sounded suspiciously like a violin string had broken.

Lola looked up at the band whose merrymaking had ground to an abrupt halt.

That’s exactly what had happened! The musician looked crestfallen and embarrassed as she hugged her instrument to her chest. Lola hoped she felt the soft warmth of her hard relate stare.

Surprised that the lady seated next to her hadn’t noticed the calamity, Lola turned to swap notes, only to come eye to eye with Monty’s scathing face jumping out at her from the back page of the newspaper, along with the headline Titillating Triumph prompts Rumours of International Opportunity!