Read Online Improper English by Katie MacAlister - Free Book Online Page B

me down Rose Street to the ivy-covered pub and up a dark flight of stairs to a charming little restaurant. We squeezed into one of the last tables, ordered gin and tonics (Isabella’s with a twist of lemon, mine with half a lime—I have a little weakness for limes), decided on lunch, then sat back to enjoy the people-watching.
    “That couple over there are tourists,” Isabella said quietly, nodding toward a man and woman in their mid thirties who were seated in the middle of the room.
    I swiveled around to look at them. They weren’t wearinganything that immediately stood up and shouted tourist. “How do you know that?”
    A tiny smile touched her lips. “Watch them. They’re so busy looking around at the pub and everyone in it, they are hardly speaking to each other.”
    I stopped gawking at everyone and everything in the pub and turned back to Isabella with a wry, “Sorry.”
    She smiled an honest smile. “Don’t apologize, you’re not quite that bad.”
    “It’s just that there’s so much to see,” I tried to explain. “I’ve never been anywhere except Disneyland, and this is so… exotic to me! I mean, I’m halfway around the world from home! In another country! I can’t quite wrap my mind around the distance issue.”
    Isabella shrugged and took a sip of her gin and tonic. “Distance is all relative. What you think of as being halfway around the world is really just a phone call or e-mail away from your family and friends.”
    I flinched a bit at that. I was supposed to have set up an Internet account as soon as I got settled, but hesitated to do so because it would mean my mother had instant access to me. Although she had telephoned after I first arrived, she told me she wasn’t going to waste good money calling when she could contact me for free via e-mail. I wasn’t about to tell Isabella about my embarrassing relationship with my mother, however. I was twenty-nine years old, not sixteen. I had been married, divorced, lived by myself, and had jobs. I just hadn’t done any of it with success.
    I dragged my mind from contemplation of the mess that was my life, and did an experimental little head bob to feel the soft sweep of hair at the top of my neck. Manuel had trimmed it jaw length in the front, a bit higherin the back, and took out some of the bulk by snipping it into a few soft layers. It was curly, cute, and totally unlike any other hairstyle I’d ever had.
    “He was worth the ninety pounds,” I replied to Isabella’s knowing smile, and tackled my roast beef with gusto. “I can’t wait to show it to Alex.”
    The words were out of my mouth before I even realized it. I stared at Isabella in surprise and horror. “That is—I just want to show him that everything ended up all right. After last night, I mean.”
    A flush crept up my face as Isabella set her fork down carefully. “Oh?”
    There was something possessive about that “Oh,” something that made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Surely she couldn’t be having an affair with more than one man? If she was doin’ the nasty with Mr. Perfect Karl, she couldn’t be playing squishy-squishy with Alex, too. Or could she?
    “Um…Isabella…”
    She leaned over and touched my arm, her eyes glittering with emotion. “Alexander means a great deal to me, Alix. He is a very close, very dear friend.”
    Right. No further warning was needed. That was the clearest hands off I’d ever had leveled at me. Now it was obvious why she wanted to pair me up with Karl—she wanted to dump him for Detective Inspector Hunk.
    “When I said ‘last night,’ I meant last night when my hair caught on fire,” I clarified, nodding my head for emphasis. “Not last night when we got ice cream all over each other.”
    I clapped a hand over my mouth while she toyed with the slight bit of lemon skin in her drink.
    “It sounds like you had a much more adventuresomeevening than I had imagined. I take it you and Alexander—”
    “No, of