‘That is true,’ he said. ‘Or, you could just give it to me.’
‘You want me to give you my new key holder? The key holder that I found, from in amongst all those stalls – my pearl in a pile of old oyster shells. You want me to just hand it over?’
Finn folded his arms, his T-shirt becoming even tighter as the damp material was pulled downwards.
‘It will make up for not sending me a message – and for pretending that you were going to.’
‘I was!’ she insisted.
Finn was shaking his head and tutting now, his mouth still open in a smile. His features were so alive – there was so much expression in his face, and playfulness in his eyes.
‘I have changed my mind – you can keep it,’ he said, his head cocked at a slight angle. ‘In exchange for a drink.’
‘You’re incorrigible.’ Pepper zipped up her bag.
Finn shone his headlight-beam smile.
‘I know where we can go, there is a good place not very far from here.’
Pepper peered out at the continuing downpour.
‘You mean right now?’
‘Yes, now.’
‘We’ll get drenched – even more drenched!’
‘OK, so we get wet. So what?’
He was even worse than Josephine when it came to accepting no for an answer.
‘Come on.’ Finn held out his hand. ‘I know a shortcut.’
There was a beat or two where Pepper considered refusing, telling him thanks, but no thanks – that she had to be somewhere and it couldn’t wait. But then another feeling stole through her, one that she had been doing her best to bury ever since she first saw him.
Hope.
Chapter 10
When it came to relationships, Pepper had always struggled.
It wasn’t that the boys – and later men – she dated were all bad people, more that the elusive connection she so longed to find never seemed to materialise. Once those heady first few weeks were over, her feelings started to slowly but surely drain away. And it wasn’t always the partners she chose that let her down, so much as herself. The little niggles that she tried so hard to suppress always squirmed through and demanded to be heard. Sure, they would say, this man is nice and everything, but are there fireworks going off in your heart? Do you long for him every moment of every day? Do you feel like the heroine in a romantic film?
The answer was always no.
She had laid out a challenge to the universe yesterday after bumping into Finn, telling both Josephine and herself that this time, she was not prepared to give chase. This time she wanted a concrete assurance that fate was pulling the strings, and that the stars were finally ready to align in her favour.
The universe, it seemed, had been listening.
She and Finn sought refuge from the rain in a tiny café, where they ordered a large pot of fresh mint tea to share and sat facing each other on low stools. Finn’s bare knee kept brushing against Pepper’s whenever he shifted position, and every time, she felt currents of tantalising warmth trickle through her body. Their conversation was mostly polite at first, but because they could not stop smiling at each other, every other reply was punctuated by tinkling laughter. Finn was open yet interested – and unlike many of the men Pepper had met, he really listened when she spoke.
‘Tell me about your family,’ he said now, lifting a hand to push his still-drying fringe off his forehead. Pepper admired his symmetrical features – a wide expressive mouth, large but pleasingly shaped nose and deep-set smiling eyes – and wondered where to begin.
‘There isn’t all that much to tell,’ she said. ‘There’s just me and my parents. Dad left when I was a teenager and has had a series of younger women in his life ever since, and my mum . . .’ She paused, debating how much to tell him.
‘She has remarried?’ Finn asked.
‘No.’ Pepper cast her mind back over the few men her mother had dated since her divorce. All of them had been nice enough, none had lasted beyond a few months. ‘Not yet, anyway.’
‘So, you are an only child like me?’
‘Yes.’ Pepper coughed to mask the croak in her voice. ‘But I didn’t used to be. I had a younger sister. She died a long time ago.’
‘Ah.’ Finn looked momentarily downcast. ‘Sorry.’
‘What about you?’ she replied, keen to divert attention away from the subject of Bethan.
‘I am an Army brat,’ he told her. ‘My father was a captain in the Royal Engineers – he is English – while my mama is German. I was born in Hamburg, but I spent some time in England as a boy. We moved around the place quite often.’
‘That must have been hard?’ she guessed, but Finn seemed nonplussed.
‘Not especially. I think, when you are a child, you are more adaptable to change. I travel a lot still – I like to discover new places, see new things.’
‘Is that why you’re here in Lisbon?’ Pepper fished a mint leaf out of her cup and laid it carefully on the saucer. ‘Just a holiday?’
‘Partly.’ Finn gave her a half-smile. ‘But also, to do some work.’
‘What do you do?’
‘What do you think that I do?’
Pepper sat back on her stool, her hands raised.
‘I have no idea!’ she exclaimed. ‘I barely know you after all.’
‘You know me enough to make a guess,’ Finn said. ‘I will give you three questions, then you must make your guess.’
‘Same deal for you?’ she checked, and he nodded.
‘Ja – why not?’
Pepper thought for a moment, allowing herself the luxury of looking him up and down, examining his hands, his clothes, and his expression for clues. Then she remembered how much he had liked the ceramic key holder she’d bought from the flea market.
‘Would you describe your job as creative?’ she asked, waiting while he mulled this over.
‘Ja – at least a little bit. But I am no artist. I appreciate art, and when I was younger, I tried to become good at it. But some people are not born with the right talent.’
‘Talent can be taught.’
Finn looked across at her, his beam now back to full capacity.
‘I know a lot of artists who would disagree with you,’ he said.
‘Are you a gallery owner?’
‘Nein.’
‘Gah! As if I just wasted a whole question with that guess.’
‘One question remaining,’ he prompted.
Pepper wracked her brain, searching in vain for something to ask. Finn was far too clean and well-groomed to work with animals or machinery. He didn’t give off a teacherly vibe, or a particularly outdoorsy one either. Despite his upbringing, there wasn’t so much as a whiff of the military about him, and she doubted very much that he did anything as beige as real-estate agenting or insurance brokering.
‘My turn,’ he said then, taking his time to scrutinise Pepper as she had him.
‘You are a designer,’ he decided. ‘Perhaps you make prints and patterns for clothes, or logos for big businesses.’
He wasn’t exactly wrong, but he hadn’t guessed quite right either. Pepper drank some tea.
‘Sort of,’ she told him. ‘But also, no – and no.’