Gold Digger

Ollie

“What’s wrong?”

Lottie had pulled me to a stop outside the restaurant. Her eyebrows were raised as she looked between me and the entrance before she huffed out a laugh.

“Ollie, I cannot go in there like this.”

“Like what?” I asked, genuinely baffled.

She pulled her hand from mine to sweep a hand down her body and up again. “Like this!”

“You look great.”

She rolled her eyes. “Ollie, I smell of bleach. I’m wearing a ratty old cat sweatshirt and even rattier jeans and the sole of my trainer is peeling away. I do not look great .” Her hand went up to the messy bun on top of her head and she groaned. “Ugh, I don’t even think I brushed my hair this morning.”

“Nobody cares about that stuff.”

“It’s a Michelin star restaurant, you numpty. Trust me, they care.”

I smiled. “I like it when you call me a numpty.” I gave her hand a tug and drew her in for a hug, folding her small body into mine, uncaring of the looks we were getting from passersby on the pavement. “You and your dirty mouth.”

She chuckled into my chest and shook her head against my suit. “You’re so weird.”

I sighed. “Come on, Lottie. I’m hungry. The last bird I took in there was wearing some sort of boiler suit, for God’s sake. You look great in comparison.”

“Little dating tip for you, big guy,” Lottie said with some fire in her voice. “Not ideal to mention other women you’ve taken somewhere you’re trying to take someone new.”

I smiled. “Are you jealous?” I liked that idea. Smiling might not have been the best choice, though, considering how her eyes flashed green fire when I did it.

“Anyway, that last bird, as you so beautifully put it, was probably in a designer boiler suit that cost more than I make in six months. I doubt she was wearing clothes she scrounged up at Asda that have seen better days.”

“I promise, nobody will care.”

“Well, I’m definitely not going in there now that I know it’s your regular hookup spot. No way.”

Hmm. I recognised that stubborn tone. I had sisters after all. She wasn’t going to change her mind. Bugger, this wasn’t going the way I’d wanted it to. I thought I had dating down to a fine art: wow them with an exclusive restaurant, flash them my few smiles, get my way in all things. This negotiating thing was new to me. The woman wouldn’t even set foot in the restaurant I’d chosen for a start, and I’d already pissed her off.

“I’ve got it,” I said, “Come with me.”

I took her hand in mine and tugged her along the pavement.

“This better not be another fancy place,” Lottie grumbled as we made our way down the street. When she was level with me I took her by her shoulders and steered her around me so that I was on the traffic side of the pavement. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“All this manoeuvering me around. What’s that about?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Just now, you moved me across to your other side.”

I smiled down at her confused face. “Lottie, I’m sorry if I haven’t given you this impression up until now, but I am, in fact, a gentleman.”

Her eyebrows drew together in confusion. “What’s that got to do with moving me around the pavement like a chess piece?”

I sighed. “The lady should walk on the inside, away from the traffic.”

“What?” She laughed. “That’s ridiculous.”

I shrugged. “It’s second nature to me, to be honest.”

“So it’s gentlemanly to be the first to get hit by a car?”

“Yes, of course it is.”

Lottie snorted. “Posh people are weird.”

“Here we are,” I said, drawing us to a stop by Kensington farmer’s market. “Right then, now we just have to find James.”

“James?”

“My fishmonger friend.”

“So let me get this straight,” Lottie said after swallowing some of her smoked salmon bagel. “When you called James your ‘fishmonger friend’, what you actually meant was your aristocratic entrepreneur friend who smokes the most amazing tasting salmon for shits and giggles in smokehouses on his many country estates, and which sell like hotcakes at Harrods, Harvey Nicks and any other posh outlet you can think of?”

“That just about covers it,” I said as I bit off more of my own bagel. “Like I said: fishmonger.”

She rolled her eyes and relaxed back on the bench we were sitting on, closing her eyes, turning her face towards the sun and letting out a contented sigh.

“This is nice,” she said with a wistful tone I didn’t quite understand. She looked so peaceful and heartbreakingly beautiful that it took me a moment to clear my throat and speak again.

“It’s not quite the date I planned,” I grumbled.Ccontent © exclusive by Nô/vel(D)ra/ma.Org.

She smiled and opened her eyes to look at me. “This is way better than being stuck inside a fancy restaurant. Your friend smokes good fish. I feel completely spoilt.”

Spoilt? Sitting on a park bench in a shared garden, eating a smoked salmon bagel. I snorted.

“No, really it is,” she told me. “I’ve been dying to use this garden since I started working for you.”

“Why didn’t you ask for the key?”

Her smile fell and she shrugged. “I didn’t want to impose. Plus I’m not a resident. I’d stick out like a sore thumb around all the yummy mummies who use this.” She let out a short laugh. “You should see the park near mine. No way you’d want to eat in there – too much dog shit, used condoms and drug dealers.”

I stiffened. “That doesn’t sound particularly safe.”

She shrugged. “It’s fine. Not all of us can live in Kensington. I can look after myself. I’ve been doing it for a long while.”

My chest tightened. “How long?”

She looked away and shifted on her chair. “Since I was ten.”

“Ten?”

She shrugged. “That’s when I went into foster care.” Her hands holding the bagel lowered as if she’d lost her appetite. “You should probably know that, Ollie. You could get some flak for my background if we go public. There can be a real stigma around foster kids.”

“We bloody well will be going public,” I said in a firm voice. “And nobody is going to say anything about your background.” I turned to her fully then, putting my bagel down to slide my hand under her jaw and turn her face to mine. “I’m sorry that happened to you, baby,” I said in a softer voice now. “That’s totally shit.”

She swallowed and her eyes became glassy with tears. One fell off the end of her long lashes and I wiped it away when it made it to her cheekbone. She cleared her throat. “Fraggle Rock, sorry,” she muttered. “You must think I’m a right wetwipe. I swear I don’t usually blub like this.” She swallowed again and her eyes dropped down to her lap. “I just… nobody’s really said sorry like that to me before, or told me that what happened was shit. My mates, the other kids in the group home, were in the same boat, so they weren’t going to say it. My social worker was always… well, she was just there to sort stuff out, and I was tricky to place so…”

A surge of anger swept through me at the thought of ten-year-old Lottie being placed into care, uprooted from her home with nobody to even say how sorry they were that it was happening to her.

“What happened to your parents?” I asked cautiously.

“Dad died when I was six,” she said. “Mum couldn’t really cope without him. She started drinking. It got really bad at home. She was never abusive, but she just couldn’t function enough to wash my clothes and go to the shops to get food. The school started to notice the state I was in, the weight I lost and the fact I was always trying to steal food. When social services went round they couldn’t wake Mum up she was so drunk. Rehab didn’t help, and eventually I had to be placed somewhere.”

“How’s your mum now?”

“She got clean when I was fifteen. But she… er… she relapsed again a year and a half ago. Then ten months ago she got sick, really sick – liver failure. She had a bleed from her stomach and she died.”

“Oh God. I’m so sorry, Lottie.”

She shrugged and blinked away her tears as she squared her shoulders. “It happens. Alcoholism can be brutal. I lost Mum but I’m lucky in a lot of ways. I’m sitting in the sun in a posh garden eating smoked salmon. I work for the cleanest man in London who always has loads of leftovers and one of the finest arses I’ve ever seen. Life’s good.”

I took her hand and gave it a squeeze, leaning into her to kiss the side of her head. We sat like that for a long moment whilst I breathed in the floral scent of her hair.

“So you’ve been checking out my arse, have you?” I said eventually to lighten the atmosphere

Lottie pulled back to look up at me and roll her eyes. “I promise you, Ollie. Any red-blooded straight female, or gay man for that matter, checks out your arse given the opportunity.”

“Is that right?” I muttered, leaning in again until my lips were against hers.

“I’ve got salmon breath,” she whispered against my mouth.

“So have I, baby,” I told her. When my tongue darted out to lick the small spot of cream cheese from the corner of her mouth, she let out a small moan and closed her mouth over mine. She must have put down her bagel because her hands slid to my chest and grasped my shirt as I deepened the kiss, drawing her closer to me.

“Oh! Tarquin, come away from there!” The woman’s voice cut through my haze of lust and we broke apart, flinching when we realised a small figure was standing right in front of us.

“You was kissin’,” the toddler said accusingly, his stubby finger pointed at us and a deep scowl on his face.

“Hi,” Lottie said softly. “Yes, we were kissing.”

“Molly Henderson wants to kiss me, but I runs away,” he told Lottie, then turned to me. “You should try running away. I had to climb up a tree. There’s one there what’s good for climbing.”

“Thanks, mate,” I said seriously. “I’ll remember that if she tries to kiss me again.”

“Tarquin!” the harassed-looking mum had made it over and grabbed Tarquin’s hand. “So sorry,” she said to both of us, her face now pink with embarrassment. “Carry on.” She pulled Tarquin away with her, but as he was leaving, he turned back and mouthed, “Run away,” to me, tilting his head toward the tree he had identified as good climbing potential earlier. I snorted a laugh, then turned back to Lottie. She was smiling after Tarquin but her eyes had clouded over.

“You should, you know,” she said softly. Although her smile was still in place, her voice seemed somehow sad.

“I should what?”

“Run away.” She laughed again. “Tarquin’s given you some solid advice there.”

“Why would I want to do that?” I muttered against her temple before pressing my lips there in a kiss. She took a deep breath in and let it out slowly.

“Apart from the fact that I don’t fit in your world filled with Tarquins and mums in activewear that probably cost as much as my rent for a month?”

“Of course you fit in my world.”

She snorted. “Well, apart from that, I’m complicated. I’ve got all sorts of baggage, Ollie.”

“I don’t care about your baggage. There’s nothing that would put me off. You can be as complicated as you like.” She smiled up at me, and I thought I’d settled it.

But just before she took another bite out of her bagel, I heard her mutter in a barely-there whisper. “We’ll see.”