Blind-Date Baby Read Online Free Page B

flicker of emotion passed across her face and she popped a piece of avocado in her mouth. Didn’t she want to tell him what she did for a living? It couldn’t be as bad as last Saturday’s date. A pet psychologist, for goodness’ sake!
    When Grace finished chewing, she mumbled, ‘I’m a barrister.’
    Not quite what he’d expected. He wondered if she’d be too tied down to her job to think about travelling with him. That might be a deal-breaker.
    ‘How about you? What do you do for a living?’
    He opened his mouth and closed it again. Time to learn from past mistakes. The moment he mentioned thrillers and novel-writing, the game was normally up. Noah wasn’t a particularly common name and people tended to guess the connection, even if he used his totally imaginative Noah Smith alias. And he didn’t want Grace to go all giggly and stupid like some women did.
    ‘You do have a job at the moment, don’t you?’ Grace said.
    ‘Of course I do. I’m a writer.’
    To his relief, Grace looked pleasantly unimpressed. ‘What kind of writer?’
    He shrugged. ‘I write about military stuff. Quite boring, actually.’ Another little detour.
    Grace dabbed her mouth with her napkin. ‘Are you pulling my leg?’
    Rats. She could tell he was fudging the issue. Just as well he hadn’t decided to be an actor instead of a novelist. At least his characters were convincing, even if he wasn’t.
    ‘No,’ he said with his best poker face.
    Grace looked at him long and hard. Had she guessed his secret? If she had, she wasn’t smiling and going all gooey, which was unusual.
    ‘So, tell me about your other dates,’ she said, her eyes never leaving his face. ‘What went wrong?’
    ‘Nothing.’ He took a deep breath and let his face relax out of his smile. ‘But it’s a serious business, finding a wife. I’m not going to trot off down the aisle with just anyone.’
    She put her knife and fork down and stared at her salad for a few seconds. ‘You’re really looking for a wife on an Internet dating site?’
    Why did his dates seem to find that so hard to believe? After all, the site in question was Blinddatebrides.com. It kind of gave the game away.
    ‘Aren’t you looking for a husband?’
    Grace shook her head hard to loosen her hairdo a little.
    ‘What are you looking for, then? Love? A soulmate?’
    She dropped her chin and gave him an Are you serious? look from under her lashes.
    Good. She didn’t believe in those things either.
    ‘I’m glad we’re on the same wavelength,’ he said before taking a sip of wine.
    Grace pursed her lips. ‘It’s not that I don’t believe in thosethings. Just that I’m not expecting to find them at Blinddatebrides.com. Nor do I want to. I mean, the whole Romeo and Juliet, all-consuming passion thing really only works for teenagers, don’t you think?’
    He raised his eyebrows in what he hoped was a non-committal way. He wasn’t sure what this ‘in love’ thing was. Oh, he’d thought he’d found it once, but it had turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. What people sang about in love songs or wept over at the cinema wasn’t real. It was all an illusion—one he bought into about as much as he had the chick with the AK47.
    His parents didn’t do all that hearts and flowers nonsense and they had been perfectly happy for almost fifty years. If it could work for them, it could work for him.
    The evening passed quickly. Too quickly.
    As Noah dug into his dessert, he decided he’d seen enough of Grace to know she wasn’t what Harry termed a ‘WAG wannabe’ in disguise—definitely not a gold-digger! There was a recital at one of the local arts centres next week that he’d planned on going to, and he was going to ask Grace if she’d like to go with him.
    He cleared his throat. ‘Grace?’
    She looked up at him, a chocolate-dipped spoon half in her mouth. Slowly, and while Noah’s mouth began to water, she pulled it out, sucking the last of the rich brown mousse