British Bachelors: Perfect and Available: Mr

‘What do you think?’ Allegra asked anxiously. ‘Can you do something with Max?’

For answer, Dickie spun on his heel and clapped his hands at his minions, who had been waiting subserviently, talking to each other in hushed voices as they waited for the great man to pronounce.

‘Bring out ze shirts,’ he ordered.

‘Behave,’ Allegra whispered in Max’s ear.

‘I am behaving!’

‘You’re not. You’re glaring at Dickie. Do you want me glaring at Bob Laskovski over that dinner?’

‘No,’ he admitted.

‘Well, then.’

Allegra could see Max balking as racks of clothes surrounded him like wagons and Dickie started snapping his fingers at his assistants, who leapt forward and held up shirts side by side. Max’s eyes were rolling nervously like a spooked horse and he practically had his ears flattened to his head, but Allegra stood behind Dickie and mouthed ‘remember the dinner’ at him until he sulkily complied and agreed to try on some shirts.

Unbuttoning his cuffs, he hooked his fingers into the back of his shirt and dragged it over his head and Allegra and Dickie both drew a sharp breath. Who would have guessed that Max had such a broad, smooth, sexy back beneath that dull shirt? Allegra felt quite...unsettled.

Dragging her eyes away, she made a big deal of making notes of Dickie’s choices in her notebook, but her gaze kept snagging on the flex of Max’s muscles as he shrugged in and out of shirts. Dickie kept turning him round—deliberately, Allegra was sure—so sometimes she saw his shoulders, sometimes his chest. And then they brought on the trousers, and there were his bare legs. Why had she never noticed before what great legs Max had?

‘Allegra!’ Dickie snapped his fingers in front of her face, startling her. ‘What do you think?’

Allegra looked at Max. He wore a darkly flowered button-down shirt with a striped tie that clashed and yet complemented the colours perfectly. Trousers and jacket were beautifully cut, shoes discreet. If it hadn’t been for the mutinous expression, he would have looked super-cool.

‘I love it,’ she said. ‘He’s really rocking that flowered shirt.’

Max hunched a shoulder. ‘I feel like a prat.’

‘Well, you don’t look like one for once,’ she said.

‘He needs an ’aircut of course,’ said Dickie, eyeing Max critically.

Allegra checked her list. ‘That’s booked in next.’

‘And a manicure.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Max, backing away. ‘No, no, no, no, no!’

‘Yes, indeed.’ Allegra smiled blandly at him. ‘Now don’t make a fuss. It won’t hurt at all.’ She pretended to consult her list again. ‘Although I’m not sure I can say the same for the back, sack and crack wax we’ve got you booked in for after the manicure...’

‘Back, sack...?’ Aghast, Max opened and closed his mouth before obviously spotting the dent in her cheek where she was desperately trying not to laugh. ‘Why, you...’ Grinning with relief, he playfully shoved at her arm.

Allegra was giggling, but tailed off when she realised everyone was standing around staring at them. How uncool of her.

She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, well, take that outfit off for now. Let’s do something about that hair.’

* * *

Max ran his finger around his collar. His flowery collar. He felt ridiculous. His hair had been washed and conditioned and cut and it was just as well it hadn’t been any longer or that fool of a barber—excuse him, hairstylist—would have had it flopping all over his face. He had been shaved too, swathed in hot towels. Actually that hadn’t been too bad—until they had slapped on some cologne without his say-so. His eyes were still watering.

If any of his mates saw him now, or caught him stinking like a tart’s boudoir, he would never hear the end of it. Thank God this was the last place he would meet anyone he knew. The dimly lit bar was crowded, but if anyone else in there was an engineer, they weren’t like any civil engineers Max had ever met. Everyone seemed to be at least ten years younger than him and half of them were outrageously dressed. Unbelievably, his own absurd shirt didn’t stand out at all compared to what everyone else was wearing. He might have to forgive Allegra for it after all. He’d been so certain that she’d deliberately manoeuvred Dickie into choosing the flowery shirt as a joke.

‘Isn’t this place fab?’ Across the table, Allegra was bright-eyed as she surveyed the crowd. Dom, the photographer, was sitting next to her and together they were keeping up a running commentary on celebrities they had spotted and what everyone was wearing. Max had tuned out after a while. He hoped Darcy King would turn up soon and make this purgatory worthwhile.

‘Don’t look now...’ Allegra leant forward with a little squeal of excitement ‘...but that’s Chris O’Donnell sitting behind you!’

‘No! Not Chris! Squeeeee!’

She looked at him. ‘You don’t know who Chris O’Donnell is, do you?’ Without waiting for his reply, she turned to Dom. ‘He doesn’t know who Chris O’Donnell is.’

Dom stared at Max. ‘You just jetted in from Mars or something, man?’

‘Chris O’Donnell is the ultimate bad boy rocker,’ said Allegra, apparently shocked to her core by the depths of Max’s ignorance. ‘He just got voted sexiest man in the country, and he’d certainly have had my vote...’ She sighed wistfully.

Max raised his brows. ‘I didn’t know you had a taste for bad boy rockers, Legs. Not your usual type, surely? I don’t see your mother approving.’

Allegra flushed. ‘I wouldn’t want him as a boyfriend or anything, but you’ve got to admit he’s smokin’ hot...’

‘So have you told Flick about your major new assignment?’ Max said, not wanting to get into a discussion about which men Allegra thought were hot. He was fairly sure the list wouldn’t include a civil engineer, flowery shirt or not.

Not that he cared about that. It was just uncomfortable to talk about that kind of stuff with someone he’d known for so long. It would be like discussing sex with his sister.

‘I rang her last night.’ Allegra’s brightness dimmed slightly.

‘Was she pleased to hear about your big break?’

‘Well, you know Flick.’ Her smile was painful to watch and Max cursed himself for asking. He should have known Flick would disappoint her. ‘She did say “Well done” when I explained that it might mean a promotion if the article was a success. But she’s writing about the political implications of the economic crisis; you can’t blame her for not being impressed by my piece on whether it’s possible to create the perfect boyfriend. I suspect she thinks it’s a bit silly.’

Max had thought precisely the same thing but now, perversely, he was outraged at Flick’s dismissal of Allegra’s assignment. ‘Did you tell her all that stuff you told me, about how these were the kind of issues that really matter to a lot of young women?’

Allegra sighed. ‘I don’t think boyfriend trouble quite ranks with the global downturn in the economy in my mother’s scheme of things.’ She squared her shoulders, sat up straighter. ‘And she’s right, of course. I should take more interest in political issues.’

She was nothing if not loyal to her mother, Max thought, still irrationally annoyed by Flick’s response. Would it have killed her to have encouraged her daughter for once? Poor Allegra tried so hard to get her mother’s approval. She had to want it bad to feign an interest in politics, given that he’d never heard her or Libby utter a word on the subject.

And she was going to find it hard, as demonstrated by the fact that barely had her resolve to be more politically aware fallen from her lips than her attention was caught by a girl teetering past in ludicrously high shoes. ‘Omigod, I am totally stealing that vampire chic look!’

Max was obscurely pleased to see her revert to her frivolous self. ‘Vampire chic?’ he echoed, knowing the disbelief in his voice would annoy her, and sure enough, she gave him the flat-eyed look she and Libby had perfected when they were twelve.

Back to normal. Good.

‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ she said. ‘Look at you! We bring you to the hottest place in town, and you sit there like you were wishing you were in some grotty pub!’

‘There’s no “like” about it. I am wishing I was in a pub.’

‘Here, have a drink.’ Allegra passed him the drinks list. ‘Maybe that’ll cheer you up—and no, you can’t have a pint.’

Morosely, Max scanned the list and choked when he saw the prices. ‘They want how much for a cocktail?’