Read Online All Bets Are On by Charlotte Phillips - Free Book Online Page A

don’t know,’ he said. ‘That look has merit—I was actually thinking I’d like to get you out of those wet clothes. But then that would be a bit of a leap ahead in the dating process.’
    She laughed and blushed at the same time and his stomach flipped. He hadn’t counted on her having a sense of humour. It was an unexpected discovery after the ice-cool exterior she kept in place at work.
    ‘Do you really think I’d bail?’ he said.
    ‘You can’t blame me for thinking you’d end it after one date,’ she said, standing up. ‘Especially after the way it’s turned out. You have been known to do that, you know.’
    ‘Only when it stops being fun.’
    ‘And it’s still fun? Despite my tipping us both in the lake?’
    He grinned. The boating-lake date had a good track record for success, which was why he’d chosen it. If it went well he simply followed it up with dinner and then back to his place. Easy. No thought required.
    For some bonkers reason, after what had happened today the repetitiveness of that process now felt dull. He had no idea what might happen next with her, and in spite of the soaking-wet clothes and the public stares, he found himself enjoying the expectation of that.
    ‘It’s still fun,’ he said.
    ‘What I don’t understand is the appeal,’ she said, looping her arm through his as they walked back through the park. His shoes squelched hideously as he steered her away from the shade and tried to walk her in the sunshine as much as possible.
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘Haven’t you ever had a longer-than-five-minutes relationship? Don’t you find all the chopping and changing exhausting?’
    ‘No, I find it liberating.’
    He glanced sideways at her for a moment, deciding whether to elaborate.
    ‘In answer to your question, yes, I have had one or two longer relationships. Not much longer though, maybe a couple of months. Believe it or not I didn’t really date much before I moved to London.’
    ‘Where were you before?’
    ‘Bath.’
    ‘Girls there not good enough?’ She tilted her head towards him and screwed her eyes up against the sun.
    ‘No. I just had more on my plate back then. Since I moved here I only have to look out for myself. Why would I want to complicate things all over again?’
    Right on cue his mind played the age-old flash of memory. His parents in the kitchen, at each other’s throats as usual, and Susie creeping into his room to hide from the row, relying on him to make it go away, to look out for her. It hadn’t been easy.
    ‘Who else did you have to look out for?’
    He shrugged the question off quickly. He certainly didn’t need to be discussing the depths of his family life with her.
    ‘Family ties,’ he said vaguely. ‘You know.’
    ‘Not really. I don’t have many of those.’ She looked straight ahead. ‘My family are all...’
    He waited.
    ‘Very independent.’ She shrugged. ‘Like I said before, I don’t see much of them.’
    He could tell by the throwaway comment followed by the bright smile that there was a lot more to it than that.
    * * *
    ‘So what’s your success rate, then?’ she asked him as he drove back to her house. ‘With the boating-lake date.’
    He grinned, not taking his eyes off the road.
    ‘A hundred per cent.’
    ‘Does that include me?’
    ‘You’re a work in progress. You don’t count yet. But I’m kind of working off-plan now. No one’s made swimming part of the outing before.’
    She laughed.
    ‘At least I can’t be accused of being boring.’
    ‘No,’ he said, glancing across at her and smiling his gorgeous smile. ‘You certainly couldn’t be accused of being that.’
    Something in the depth of his voice caused a dizzying flip of anticipation in her stomach, followed up by crazy racing of her heart, and Tilly’s comment from the other night flashed suddenly into her mind.
    Just when would a guy like him go in for the first kiss?

    Rule #5 First Kiss. A player will want to move things towards the