My Perfect Stranger: A hilarious love story by the bestselling author of One Day in December

‘What will it take to make you give me that whisky?’ he grumbled.

Honey raised her eyebrows, nodding philosophically into her hands. That was how it was going to be then.

‘Ah you know. Nothing much. A bit of neighbourly chat, maybe?’

More movement from behind the door, and then his whisky and cigarettes voice again, only lower this time. Closer. As if he were sitting on the other side of the door.

‘I don’t chat.’

‘No?’ Honey said casually, not even sure why she was trying to engage him in conversation. She felt like someone trying to entice a kitten into their home with a saucer of milk. ‘Maybe you could just listen then, because I’ve had a pig of a day and I could do with offloading.’

‘So what, you thought you’d bribe your blind neighbour with whisky to make him listen? Don’t you have any friends?’

Honey half smiled. Was it masochistic that she enjoyed his grouchiness? Glancing at her watch, she tapped the face with her fingertip. ‘Something like that. Ten minutes of your time and you get the whisky.’

His exaggerated sigh was unmissable. ‘I’m not opening the door.’

‘Whatever. Just don’t go and do something else while I’m speaking.’

His harsh laugh told her that her comment had struck a chord. ‘You mean I can’t go back to screwing the horny blonde in my bedroom? I could keep it quiet.’

‘In your dreams, rock star.’ Honey wrapped her arms around her knees. ‘So … I just had to tell two old ladies that they might be homeless soon.’

A pause. ‘It’s not just my life you’re intent on screwing up then,’ Hal said.

‘It’s not my fault.’ Honey knew he didn’t care, but felt the need to make him understand anyway. ‘I manage the charity shop attached to the home they live in. They volunteer in the shop most days. They’re my friends, and I feel like shit.’

‘Did you tell me already why you’re making them homeless?’

‘I’m not the one making them homeless. The home is under threat of closure within six months because of lack of funds, the shop too. I’ll lose my job, and all of the residents will lose their homes. None of them are a day under eighty.’

‘Look on the bright side. They’re old. They might not make it through the next six months.’

Honey sucked in a sharp breath, taken aback by his harshness. ‘You weren’t kidding when you said you don’t do chat, were you?’

‘If you were looking for Oprah you knocked the wrong door, sweetheart.’

The term of endearment landed soft and hard at the same time. Hal had managed to deliver it with a heavy side order of sarcasm that stripped out any potential kindness. But something made Honey wonder how it would feel to hear him say it under different circumstances, in a different tone of voice.

‘Is it too soon to ask for that whisky?’ he asked into the lengthening silence following his last remark.

Honey glanced at her watch. Three minutes. Seven to go. ‘Yup. Want to tell me about your day instead?’

‘Fuck off, Honeysuckle,’ he shot back, just as she’d expected that he would. Had she needled him on purpose? Potentially, and if she had it had backfired, because the way he’d said her name made it sound like … She let the pause extend this time.

‘Come on then, Mother Teresa. Tell me some more about this job you’re about to lose.’

‘It’s not so much my job I’m worried about. Well I am, obviously, but it’s Lucille and Mimi mostly, and all of the other residents.’ She paused and bit the inside of her lip. ‘They want me to spearhead a big campaign to fight the closure.’

She thought she heard him half laugh. ‘I hope you’re photogenic for the newspapers. Will you wear your girl guide uniform?’

‘Do you have to be such a cock all the time? This is the most serious thing that’s ever happened to me.’

She heard him sigh, deep and melancholy, and then the soft thud of something against the door, most probably his forehead as he leaned against it.

‘You don’t know how fucking lucky you are if this is the worst that life’s thrown at you, Honeysuckle.’

His voice was close to her ear, and she let the side of her head tip against the door. Against his voice. If the door were to magically disappear, they’d have found themselves sitting shoulder to shoulder, his mouth against her hair.

‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to be insensitive,’ she whispered, feeling a fool and checking her watch and finding that they still had five minutes to fill.

‘You weren’t insensitive. I was being a cock. It’s kind of been my way since the accident.’

It was the most genuine thing he’d said to her since she’d met him. ‘Want this whisky now?’

‘Does that mean our therapy session’s up?’

The ghost of a smile tipped her lips. ‘I’ll let you have this one on the house, rock star.’

‘Does that mean you’ve written me off as a hopeless case, Honeysuckle?’

Unexpected prickles of awareness stroked over the back of Honey’s neck. He’d practically whispered in her ear, sexy and velvet soft words softened with the hint of a smile. If the guy was ever inclined he could have a killer career on the radio, his voice had the capacity to stop a woman in her tracks. Even a woman who didn’t especially like him.

She found herself smiling too. ‘The jury’s out, Hal. Maybe I’ll come by again tomorrow to fill you in some more on my soap opera life.’

‘It’ll beat the shit out of Coronation Street. Do people really watch that bollocks?’

Honey laughed lightly. ‘You mean you don’t?’ As soon as the words left her lips, she wanted to suck them straight back in again. ‘Shit Hal, I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘Twice in five minutes is pretty rubbish, isn’t it?’

‘Just give me the whisky and I’ll forgive you.’

Honey could still hear the trace of humour and breathed out in relief. He was a hard man to read; angry when it seemed unreasonable to be so, yet cool about things that might well have flared the temper of someone else in his position. She could hear him moving behind the door and drew herself up onto her feet, the whisky in her hand. She wouldn’t make the mistake of leaving obstacles in his path a second time.

As he opened his door and leaned against the frame, she found herself reassessing his appearance. He was as dishevelled as yesterday, maybe more so. A washed-out, rumpled grey t-shirt hung over his chest, in places not quite meeting the waist of his slouchy dark jeans. His dark stubble told her that today was another day when he hadn’t had a hot date with his shaver, and his slightly too-long hair looked as if he’d pushed his hands through it all day, or else spent the day in bed with that horny blonde he’d alluded to.

‘Hey, rock star.’

Hal didn’t speak for a second, silent and inscrutable until she started to feel disconcerted, as if he were staring at her behind those glasses, which of course she knew he wasn’t. What was going through his head? Did she need to do something?

‘You smell of strawberries again.’

Of all of the things she’d expected him to say, that wasn’t it.

‘It must be my shampoo,’ she murmured, bewildered, touching her hair by reflex with her empty hand. ‘It’s strawberry scented.’

He nodded slightly, as if he’d sussed that much already.

‘What colour is it?’