Read Online Mr Right for the Night by Marisa Mackle - Free Book Online Page A

she was there for.
    ‘That oul lad on the dance floor?’ she giggled. ‘He’s not my boyfriend.’
    ‘Right.’ He blew a perfectly formed smoke ring. Anna watched it drift towards the ceiling.
    ‘Where’s your girlfriend?’ Anna decided to play him at his own game.
    ‘I don’t have one,’ he said, ‘yet.’
    She was glad the club was so dark. Dark enough for him not to notice the scarlet rash rapidly disfiguring the side of her neck. The heat was something else.
    ‘Who was the girl on the dance floor, so?’ Anna decided to be direct.
    ‘A friend.’
    God, he didn’t give much away, did he? But to be fair he was neither sleazy nor smarmy, more smouldering and sharp. Anna wasn’t smitten. Of course she wasn’t. But she could see how other girls could be.
    ‘Listen,’ he looked at her levelly, ‘I could stand here for half an hour and tell you you’re the most beautiful girl in the world and that I’m not like other men and all that crap, right?’
    ‘Right,’ said Anna, wondering where on earth this could be leading.
    ‘Or I could be honest.’
    Honest. It was a word Anna liked. Although admittedly she wasn’t too familiar with it.
    ‘Yes?’ she emitted faintly.
    ‘Look, I like you. Or at least I think I do. I saw you on the dance floor. I thought, “Hey, not bad!” Now here I am. I’d like your number. If you don’t want to give it to me, I’ll give you mine.’
    ‘No, I’ll give you mine,’ Anna said. ‘I don’t ring men,’ she added untruthfully. Well, it wasn’t a complete lie. She did try very hard not to ring men. Especially those who quite obviously never rang back. But she was learning. These days when a guy failed to ring, she’d try them maybe only . . . say, three times (an improvement on bygone days!) just to be one hundred per cent sure that they were sure they never wanted to see her again.
    He asked the barman for a pen and scribbled her number on the back of his hand.
    ‘Thanks,’ he surprised her with a quick peck on the cheek, ‘I’ll be in touch.’
    ‘But . . . where are you going ?’ Anna was alarmed. He had to see her home. He had to. She couldn’t be seen leaving the club alone. There was nothing more humiliating than leaving a club on your own.
    ‘It’s my er . . . friend. She’s had a lot to drink and is in a bad way. I can’t leave her on her own.’
    ‘Well, we could drop her off and go on somewhere,’ Anna said in a little voice and nearly bit her own tongue off. What was she like? God, she might as well stand on top of one of the speakers and scream DESPERATE! Stay cool, she told herself. ‘Actually,’ she resumed her cool exterior, ‘on second thoughts, you’d better go. My friends would kill me if I just left without saying goodbye.’
    ‘Where are they?’ He looked round expectantly as if a group of screaming girls might suddenly jump out at him from behind the DJ’s box.
    ‘Oh, they’re over at the other bar,’ Anna said, quick as lightning. ‘The queues are something else.’
    ‘Right.’ He gave her a quick peck again. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
    He was gone!
    So much for a night of fun and frolic. Anna examined her chipped Revlon red nails under the flashing disco lights. She now knew the profound meaning of loneliness in a crowd. She had to get out of there. A single girl had no business staying in a nightclub alone until the early hours of Sunday morning. But she couldn’t leave yet, of course. Like a prisoner she felt trapped behind the nightclub’s imaginary bars. It was sad, she knew, but if she bumped into that guy and his friend on her way out her cover would be blown. God, she didn’t even know his name. She fished out the shoddy piece of paper from her bag. Rick. His name was scrawled above his mobile number. He shouldn’t have bothered giving her his number too. As if she was going to ring him! Jesus, he’d better be worth all this hassle.
    Anna wandered unhappily around the club aiming for nowhere in