Page 12 of Love Affair in London (Once Again #12)

T he pub was three blocks from the bridge.

Flower boxes bloomed with bright impatiens and pansies along the front.

Inside it was dark, exactly the way a pub should be, with a long mahogany bar, a plank floor, and latticed windows overlooking the river.

The noise level was akin to a rave. Thankfully, a server showed them to a table in the back where the music and voices didn’t pound against Piper’s ears.

Was she getting too old to handle all that noise?

“I’ll have a champagne cocktail,” she told the young server, whose hair was a frizzy bomb on top of his head. “We aren’t driving,” she said to Jared with a singsong note. “You can have whatever you want.”

“What’s your best pilsner?” he asked.

The young man rattled off a name Piper couldn’t decipher. Obviously, Jared did when he said, “I’ll have that. On draft?”

The man gave a snort that was answer enough.

After the waiter shot back to the bar, she leaned forward. “I didn’t even understand what he said.”

Jared leaned close and laughed. “Neither did I. But if he’s recommending it, then I’m sure it’ll be good.”

Despite the crowd in the pub, the server returned shortly with their drinks. Bitters soaked the sugar cube sitting at the bottom of her champagne cocktail, the bubbles rising.

Jared’s golden yellow lager had what Piper presumed was the perfect amount of foam on top of the massive mug. They raised their glasses. “Bottoms up,” he said with a smile.

But neither of them bottom-upped. Piper preferred to sip and savor her champagne.

Jared took a tentative taste, then another, and finally a third.

She finally had to ask, “Is it the best?”

He licked the cute foam mustache off his lip. “It’s pretty damn good.” Then he gazed down at the menu. “What should I order?”

The only offering was Sunday roast, no cottage pie, no shepherd’s pie, no fish and chips, no bangers and mash, none of the usual pub fare. “Traditionally, Sunday roast is beef. But you can have pork, turkey, or lamb.”

He popped a pair of reading glasses out of his shirt pocket and perched them on his nose, looking adorable with them on. And making her feel a little less old.

His decision came quickly. “I’ll go for the roast beef.”

She didn’t need reading glasses yet. Good genes. Her mother had never needed reading glasses, and her father had only used them in his eighties, though that might have been part of the dementia. She hoped she’d follow in their footsteps as far as reading glasses went.

“I’m torn between the roast beef and the roast lamb.” She looked at him through slightly lowered lashes. “We’ll see what pops out of my mouth when the waiter asks.”

He chuckled at that. “An inability to decide, or the pleasure of the surprise?”

No one had ever asked before, and his question delighted her. “A bit of both. I figure that whatever I end up saying is what I really want.”

The waiter arrived just after she’d spoken, and they put in their orders, the lamb roast being what popped out of her mouth. After all, she’d had roast beef with Roger only a couple of days ago. “Can we please have an extra pot of gravy as well?” she asked.

The waiter, without saying a word, typed into his tablet. Gone were the days of handwritten tickets in a lot of restaurants.

After another sip of champagne, she jumped into small talk.

She’d never been an introvert who couldn’t figure out what to say.

Sometimes she actually talked too much, which was why she started with a question, so she didn’t take over the conversation.

“So what does a good Samaritan do for a living?”

She enjoyed his laugh, a deep baritone like his voice. His smile was nice too. Make that amazing. It was enough to melt a woman’s knees. Thankfully, she was already sitting.

“I don’t know about good Samaritans, but I’m an engineer. I’m in London for a sales conference where I get to describe the product in layman’s terms.”

“What does your company make?”

“We’re in telecommunications, a firm you’ve probably never heard of because we’re not commercial. We make long distance radios. They’re often used at inaccessible sites, like mines or the tops of mountains. But you’ll also find them at relay sites for telecom companies.”

“Interesting,” she said.

He laughed again, the sound skating across her skin and burrowing deep inside. “It’s not the most scintillating topic. In fact, most people find it boring,” he admitted.

She would never find him boring, no matter what he talked about. But she could only look and not touch. He was her exact type, like Patrick Dempsey, when he first started on Grey’s Anatomy, back when she was in her thirties. But that was twenty years ago, and Jared was far too young for her.

“So, an engineer,” she chatted. “I take it you design the product?”

“I did at one time. As well as figuring out how to manufacture it. But now that I’m VP, I get in very little design time.”

She picked up on the wistful tone in his voice. “You sound like you miss it.”

“I do. But I’ve got teenagers in private school and an ex-wife to support. So VP of Engineering it is.”

She wondered if he’d told her about the ex-wife so she’d know he was no longer married. But that would mean he had designs on her . Yet he had to know she was more than a decade older than him. He couldn’t possibly be interested in her that way.

Then, as if embarrassed that he’d revealed so much in one sentence, he turned the tables on her. “What about you? Your friend canceled on you, and you’re here on vacation alone. But what else do you do?”

“I’m an accountant, and quite possibly too boring to interest anyone.”

His laugh was a look more than a sound. “I’m not bored yet.”

“It’s from an old Monty Python skit. Or something like it. My father always used to repeat it because he was an accountant.”

She felt a twinge of grief. Though both her parents had been gone for twenty years, she still thought of them often and fondly.

She’d lost them so close together. Dad had Alzheimer’s, and being fifteen years younger, Mom became his caretaker for the last five years of his life.

Those five years and the sheer exhaustion of caring for him had taken their toll on her.

She’d died of a heart attack only a month after Piper’s father passed.

“An accountant with a sense of humor,” Jared was saying. “I don’t believe you could be boring.”

Pushing aside her sad thoughts, she lifted an eyebrow. “I’ll try not to be.”

“Tax accountant?”

She rolled her eyes. “Then I really would be boring.” She shook her head.

“I have my own business doing bookkeeping and taxes. I guess that makes me only half boring. But I also work for a couple of nonprofit agencies. One of them is for seniors, and I help with taxes and estate planning. The other provides financial counseling for low-income families.”

“I find it all fascinating.” His eyes seemed to twinkle, as if he were teasing her. “It must be very rewarding helping those people out.”

She could have droned on about how interesting it really was.

But then non-accountants didn’t get it. “I enjoy working with older people. They might not understand as much, especially the widows, but somehow, they’re much friendlier.

And they have some marvelous stories to tell.

That’s why I always give my clients two hours instead of one. I like to let them talk.”

He looking at her musingly. “That’s nice. I have quite a few older aunts and uncles that I see at family barbecues, anniversaries, birthdays, weddings. When I was a kid, I hated listening to their stories, but now I find it captivating. It’s a part of my history too.”

She leaned forward, raising both eyebrows. “And how many of your aunts pinch your cheek every time they see you and ask you when you’re getting married again?”

He laughed outright at that. “Have you been hanging around my family barbecues?”

She sat back, smiling, then toyed with the stem of her champagne flute.

“It’s what they all do. When you’re young, they ask when you’re getting married and having babies.

” She had plenty of friends with aunts and uncles and knew the drill.

“And when you’re older and divorced, they ask you when you’ll find another man.

” She flicked a hand at him. “Or another woman.”

His laughter was infectious. She thought even the people at the other tables were laughing with them, though she didn’t think anyone could actually overhear.

“My Aunt Bertha.” He winked. “Yes, her name is Bertha. She’s my great aunt. She started in on me almost the moment the ink was dry on my divorce papers. You gotta love her, though. I swear to God, she keeps trying to set me up with all her younger —” He curled his fingers in air quotes. “—friends.”

Despite her laugh, she wondered how many of those friends were her age. She didn’t want to think about it and decided it was time for a subject change. “So, kids. How many? What ages? Boys or girls?”

His features softened, and his brown eyes turned the color of milk chocolate. “Two kids. Liam is thirteen and Scarlett is fifteen, going on nineteen.” He grimaced.

“Ahh,” she said. “Teenage girls seem to grow up so much faster than the boys.”

“You have any of your own?”

She shook her head. “No kids. But lots of friends with kids.” She didn’t tell him about the almost stepdaughters. Or that she was happy to be rid of them. He’d think she was terrible if she said that. Even though it was true.

Then, because he’d been candid about his marriage, she added, “Just an ex-husband.”

Unlike many people, he didn’t ask her why she’d never had children. “What city do you work out of?”

“San Mateo. Do you need a new accountant?”

He shook his head. “The guy I use is great. He manages my investments as well. Are you looking for new clients?”