Tempting Fate Read Free

he’s not, it would be nice to feel attractive again. It would be nice to feel that I still have it, even if it’s only for three more minutes.
    ‘Gabby?’ Her arm is grabbed, and she spins to find herself face to face with Claire. ‘Who is that adorable guy at the bar? I can’t believe you’ve been flirting with someone all evening! We haven’t seen you at all!’
    ‘I’m not flirting,’ Gabby says, certain that she is not. ‘I don’t flirt. I don’t know how to flirt any more. I’m just having a really interesting conversation with a sweet young guy.’
    ‘He’s not sweet.’ Claire glances at him. ‘He’s a stone-cold fox!’
    ‘Right.’ Gabby nods. ‘And he’s twelve.’
    Claire squints as she looks across the room. ‘He’s not twelve. He’s at least twenty-five. Old enough to know what he’s doing …’
    ‘Claire!’ Gabby reprimands. ‘For a start, he’s ten years younger than me, and secondly, hello? I’m married. Remember?’
    ‘We’re all married,’ Claire replies, and she winks. ‘Doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun.’
    Gabby doesn’t ask her what she means by ‘fun’. She shakes her head with a laugh as if Claire’s suggestion is ridiculous, then moves towards the bar, where Matt is waiting with a big smile.
    On the way there, Gabby is aware that she is holding herself straighter, smiling more widely, giving off an aura that is causing the other men to turn and look at her in admiration.
    Because tonight, thanks to this younger man who is paying her attention, Gabby feels alluring. Despite her incredulity that he may be flirting, deep down she is aware of a connection between them. She has no plans to do anything about it – Gabby would never be unfaithful – but it has been years since she felt desirable, years since she felt sexy, beautiful. It is a powerful, heady feeling, and once tonight is over it will be gone. When tonight is over she will once again be a middle-aged suburban housewife, caught up in the pots and pans of life.
    What’s the harm in dragging it out just a little bit longer? She isn’t going to do anything.
    Absolutely not.
    ‘Everything okay?’ Matt flicks his eyes to her phone.
    ‘Just my husband. Checking in.’ Now she has said it again. She has a husband. ‘He’s with our girls, camping in Vermont.’ She breathes a sigh of relief, knowing she is safe now the information is out there. There is no pretence at being available any more, and what man would not respect the presence of another?
    ‘What’s your husband like?’
    This is unexpected. ‘You’d love him,’ she says. ‘Seriously. The two of you would get on like a house on fire.’
    ‘I’m sure we would. He’s a man of excellent taste.’ Matt grins.
    Gabby giggles and teasingly smacks him on the arm. ‘Flatterer.’
    ‘Truth-teller,’ he counters. ‘So what
is
he like?’
    How does she describe Elliott? From the moment she met him, both of them sitting at the same table, at the same time, at a coffee shop in New York, she knew he was exactly the kind of man she had been waiting for. She was twenty-three, working at a bookstore in the city; he was five years older, a doctor, doing his internship at Columbia-Presbyterian.
    He had asked if he could share her table, even though there were several empty ones, then he spent the nexttwo hours distracting Gabby from her work, and making her laugh with his impromptu stories about the people waiting in line, so that eventually she shoved her sketchbook and pencil into her bag and gave up any attempt at drawing.
    The next day she met him at Central Park for a walk. He showed up with a hamper that had belonged to his grandmother, stuffed full of badly made sandwiches and packets of crisps in every flavour because, he explained, he didn’t know which flavour she’d like and didn’t want her to be disappointed.
    ‘I am married to the most wonderful man in the world.’
    Matt smiles. ‘What makes him wonderful?’
    ‘He’s