hips but moved gently around her legs as she walked. A short sleeved black silk top with huge buttons hung loosely on her slender form, and her hair was swinging in the light breeze.
Nice, he thought. In fact, very nice. There was something about the splash of bright red lipstick that transformed Leo from smart to sexy. There was no doubt that she could be quite acerbic, but after their conversation over lunch yesterday he could understand where that was coming from.
He moved towards the side door and popped his head out.
‘Hi Leo - come round this way. It’s easier,’ he shouted.
With little more than a nod in Tom’s direction, Leo made her way to the side of the house, holding the carrier bag in front of her as she approached Tom as if to ward off any advances, had he been thinking of making any.
‘I’ve brought you a present, because I need to ask you a favour,’ said Leo, as ever getting right to the point.
‘Come in - and you don’t need to bribe me to do something for you, you know. I’ll either do it or I won’t, depending what it is that you want,’ Tom said, smiling to take the edge off his words.
They walked into the kitchen, and immediately Leo stopped, dumping the carrier bag on the nearest chair.
‘What a delicious smell. Don’t tell me you’ve found a good Indian round here and I don’t know about it?’ Leo asked, her eyes opening wide as she saw the dishes in the kitchen.
‘I hate to disappoint you, but it would be a cold day in hell before I bought Indian from a takeaway. This is all my own hard work. You like Indian food then?’
‘God, I love it,’ Leo said, walking over to the stove and lifting the lid of a creamy chicken curry. She looked as if she were about to dip her finger in, then thought better of it.
She turned towards him and opened her eyes wide in a lascivious leer, although he was in no doubt at all that unfortunately the source of the arousal was the curry. She moved to the next dish and gave him a questioning look.
‘It will be a prawn jalfrezi when I get round to adding the prawns.’
‘Mmm mmm.’ She lowered her face towards the pan and inhaled slowly. Lifting her head, she turned to Tom. ‘Have you actually made all this?’ she asked, her voice sounding slightly in awe of Tom’s obvious culinary skills. ‘Good grief, you’re as bad as Ellie. You’ll make fine neighbours - forever trying to outdo each other with elaborate dinner parties. Anyway - I’m disturbing you. I’ll tell you what I came for, and let you get back to your cooking. It looks like you’re expecting guests, so I’m sorry for intruding.’
Tom pulled out a kitchen stool and sat down, indicating the other one to Leo.
‘You’re not disturbing me, and I’m not cooking for guests. I’m cooking for me. I like to cook occasionally, principally because I love to eat. Let’s face it, I’ve not got much else to do at the moment. So what can I do for you?’
Leo looked totally nonplussed at the idea of all this work for one person, but she sat down and rested her arms on the worktop and decided to get straight to the point.
‘I need to go back to Manchester, and as soon as possible. Ellie and Max are not in a good place right now, for reasons I don’t want to go into. But if I just up and go, Ellie will think they’ve driven me away, and she’ll blame Max. He’s already told me he wants to do a romantic dinner for Ellie tonight - although I can predict exactly what he’ll cook. I thought if you could phone, posing as one of my clients who’s in dire need of a face to face consultation, I would have the perfect excuse to escape and let them get on with it.’
Tom was sorry to hear that Ellie and Max were having problems. He’d immediately liked them both, but as he knew only too well, other people’s marriages were always a mystery.
‘First of all, it’s no problem making the phone call if that’s what you want. But why don’t you stay here and eat with me tonight. As you can see, there’s no shortage of food. And then you can see how things are in the morning. If they’re not great, Ellie might actually appreciate