Love Nest Read Free Page A

She swung round. A man – presumably the client – was grinning at her unnervingly, as if he’d read her thoughts. He was about her age. Lanky. Blond, slightly spiky hair. Very blue eyes. Skinny jeans, a Sex Pistols T-shirt and a slightly tattered navy blazer. Very different from the City boys she normally took on viewings. Intrigued, she held out her hand.
    ‘Mr Crex? I’m Lucinda Gresham. How do you do?’
    ‘Lucinda.’ He had a northern accent. Rather cute. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
    She didn’t show it, but inwardly she winced. She couldn’t help it. Her upbringing might have been too sheltered but she had been taught manners. Mummy had trained her that the right response to ‘How do you do?’ was ‘How do you do?’ Ridiculous, but when anyone replied in any other way it made her think less of them and it was all she could do not to correct them. Not that she would have implied that Nick Crex was in the wrong, even if he’d pulled down his skinny jeans and mooned at her. One of the first rules of estate agency was that the customers were always right – at least when you were with them. Back at the office you could bitch about them to your heart’s content.
    But for now Lucinda would nod and smile if Nick Crex told her Princess Diana had been murdered by aliens. She had to prove Niall wrong. Though he’d never said it in as many words, he’d been understandably wary about taking her on at the Clerkenwell branch of Dunraven Mackie, not least at a time when so many agents were being made redundant.
    And quite right, Lucinda acknowledged – even though his behaviour pissed her off – because she had zero experience and owed her job to blatant nepotism. But Lucinda was determined to show her worth, and six months down the line Niall was having to admit that she was pretty good at this selling houses lark, even with the market in its direst straits in years.
    ‘Shall we take a look?’ she asked.
    ‘I’m all yours.’
    She punched in the code that opened the front door. They crossed the lobby and called the lift. Ping. Up to the first floor. Down a long red-linoed corridor. Lucinda knocked on the green front door of Flat 15. Gemma Meehan had told her she’d be out, but you never knew. She’d had a hideous, though hilarious, experience last weekend when she’d ushered an uptight American couple into 12 Dorchester Place, a cute little Georgian house in a quiet terrace near the Barbican.
    Knowing that the owners, the Kitsons, were on holiday in Mallorca, Lucinda had opened the door and marched straight through the hallway to the living room to find Carlotta Kitson wearing nothing but a fuchsia G-string, while a man who was most definitely not Linus Kitson was thwacking her on the bottom with a tennis racquet.
    ‘Oh, whoopsie,’ Lucinda cried merrily. ‘So sorry!’ And she virtually dragged the Americans out of the front door and down the stairs flanked by fake bay trees in a pot. She thought it highly unlikely she’d come across Gemma Meehan in the same situation – she was far too prim. But they did always say the quiet ones were the worst.
    No one replied to the knock, so Lucinda unlocked the door and they stepped inside.
    ‘Wow,’ he said, before he could stop himself.
    ‘It’s a fantastic space, isn’t it?’ Mimicking his body language, Lucinda looked around the large room. To the left, a kitchen with Italian marble surfaces and a state-of-the-art range. In front of them the dining area. A sitting area furnished with vast zebra-striped sofas occupied the rest of the space. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, with views over the slanty roofs of Clerkenwell. It was glorious. Clients always got a great first impression. It reminded Lucinda of Fabio, her sister Ginevra’s ex: great on the surface, but a quick viewing immediately highlighted flaws. Still, Ginevra hadn’t minded – for a while at least – and maybe Nick Crex was the man who for whatever reason might be blind to the