Making Your Mind Up by Jill Mansell Page B

manner. She had inadvertently picked him up this morning in Ted’s shop and now here he was, drinking wine on her patio and asking her to tell him all about herself. In her disastrous experiences with men, they’d invariably been far more interested in talking about themselves.
    Then again, she’d always had an extra-special talent for getting involved with breathtakingly selfish members of the opposite sex.
    What a shame this one lived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
    â€œWell, I’m thirty-nine. And divorced.” Oh Lord, now she sounded like a lonely hearts advert. Dismissing the last bit with a wave of her hand, Cressida said, “But that was years ago. And I love living here in Hestacombe, running my own little business. It started as a hobby while I was working as a legal secretary, but then I stupidly got myself into a relationship with my boss. Of course it came to a messy end after a few months and things were pretty awkward at work after that.” Pretty awkward was putting it mildly, but Cressida spared him the grim details of how it felt when your boss dumped you and took up with the nineteen-year-old office tart instead. “So I jacked in the job and decided to give the card thing a go. The first few months were scary—I was traveling around begging shops and businesses to stock my work—but gradually it began to take off. And now…well, it’s great. I’ll never be rich, but I make a living and the hours are flexible. If I want to take a day off to go bungee jumping, I can. Other times, I’ll be up all night making fifty wedding invitations or birth announcements. You never know what you’ll be asked to do next, and I love it.”
    There, that was cheerful and positive, wasn’t it? Tom couldn’t think she was a sad sack now. She sounded wild and free, spontaneous and impulsive…
    â€œBungee jumping?”
    â€œWhy not?” Still feeling wonderfully wild and free—it possibly had to do with the wine—Cressida flashed a dazzling smile and casually tossed her hair back from her face. Click-click-clung went the tortoiseshell combs as they flew out of her hair, bounced off the back of the chair, and hit the patio.
    â€œOK.” Cressida gave up; she clearly wasn’t cut out to be wild and free. “Maybe not bungee jumping. But if I feel like it, I can take a day off and go shopping.”
    â€œNothing wrong with that.” Tom nodded in agreement. “As far as my ex-wife was concerned, a week without new shoes was a week wasted.”
    â€œWas she incredibly glamorous?” She’d always longed to be glamorous herself, but Cressida knew it was never going to happen. Glamour was beyond her. No matter how many times she set out determined to buy something tailored and chic, she always seemed to end up being inexorably drawn to long gypsyish skirts, billowing cotton shirts trimmed with velvet and lace, and embroidered jackets.
    â€œGlamorous? Not especially.” Tom considered this. “Angie just liked to have lots of everything in every color. She was always smart, though. Well,” he added, “I daresay she still is.”
    Something else I’ll never be , thought Cressida. Smart implied being acquainted with a steam iron, and she wasn’t. Could a man who’d been married to a well-turned-out woman ever be interested in someone who didn’t own an ironing board?
    Oh dear, now she was definitely getting too carried away. The poor fellow had only come around to thank her for helping him out.
    â€œNot that Donny appreciated it,” Tom continued easily. “Angie was always trying to get him to dress smartly too, and all he ever wanted to wear was holey sweatshirts and camouflage combats. These days I just let him wear anything he likes. Kids have their own ideas of how they want to look, don’t they? You must find the same.”
    â€œWell, um—”
    â€œSorry.” Seeing that