Free Paradise Fields by Katie Fforde Page A

that she didn’t know it helped to stay, she did, but she just didn’t have time. So she staggeredout of the door under the boxes of chewy bars, holding her boots, aware she was red in the face.
    What
had
she done that was different? she wondered. She’d eaten out so much over the holidays. Perhaps it was because if she ate out she always had salad, and if she stayed in she often had pasta. Maybe she should write a diet book called
Eat Out Every Night
– it could be a companion volume to Viv’s
Fit for an Affaire
.
    Nel stopped dead. She couldn’t believe her eyes. As if by some sinister alchemy she had summoned up the very man who had made her think she wanted an affaire. She was so shocked, she dropped all her boxes and her boots.
    Jake didn’t look shocked, he was frankly laughing, his face alive with merriment. Devil or not, his laugh was too infectious not to respond to. She’d been found out, and Nel was always ready to laugh at herself. ‘I am so busted!’ she said. She picked up a boot and pulled it on.
    He was in his squash kit: black shorts, white shirt, and a fetching gleam of moisture. As he knelt to pick up her boxes, she noticed how enormous his feet were in his squash shoes. What was it they said about men with big feet? She suppressed the thought.
    â€˜You are indeed busted!’ He straightened up, handed her the chocolate bars and looked down into her eyes. ‘I’m sure you don’t need to come to Weight Watchers, but I’m quite pleased you did. Would you like to come for a drink? Or am I still the enemy?’
    In some ways, he was even more of the enemy than ever, because he was flirting irresistibly, and making her do it back. ‘I can’t.’
    â€˜Why not?’
    If only he wouldn’t look at her like that! He was doing it on purpose, to torment her! She knew he wasn’t interested in her, so why was he being like this? Well, she wasn’t going to give in. He could practise his charm on Kerry Anne, she’d be much more receptive.
    â€˜I’ve got to get back.’
    â€˜Why?’
    She took a deep breath. ‘There’s a television programme I promised to record for Fleur, and I can only do it if I’m there when the programme’s on.’
    He nodded. ‘That’s a real shame. Next week, perhaps?’
    She definitely couldn’t handle this. He was the opposition. She couldn’t go out with him: she mustn’t even see him if he was going to have this effect on her. Nel decided that she was never going to that Weight Watchers again. She’d find another class somehow – or give up.
    â€˜I don’t think so.’ She wedged her boxes more firmly under her chin. ‘Now I really must go, or I’ll miss the beginning of the programme.’
    It was Saturday morning, Nel was in the chemist, studying the buy-two-get-one-free offers, trying to decide whether it was really good value to buy six months’ supply of toothpaste in one hit, when she saw the only person in the world she loathed.
    Vivian always told Nel that she was very dull when it came to disliking people. People Nel declared she couldn’t stand would, after Nel had got to know them a little better, become, ‘She’s all right when you get to know her. She’s just not a very good communicator.’
    This time, Nel determined, observing Kerry AnneHunstanton inspecting body scrubs, she was going to keep right on hating her, and not find out about her difficult childhood, her alcoholic father, and end up either feeling sorry for her, or worse, liking her. She glanced at her; why did she marry Pierce? For his money? For his crumbling stately home?
    Suppressing her sudden curiosity Nel scooped three giant tubes into her basket and moved on to the section euphemistically referred to as ‘feminine hygiene’. Here the special offers were very bulky and it was while she was trying to apply logic to the