Chapter Eleven

Erin padded into the kitchen and stopped dead in her tracks.

“Morning sleepyhead, coffee’s brewed, want one?”

Richie was sat at the kitchen table fully dressed. He had on tight jeans, a black tee shirt, cowboy boots with a pair of sunglasses sat on the table next to his coffee mug.

“Have I overslept?” she asked, completely puzzled as to why he was dressed already.

“Nope, I just couldn’t sleep very well. To be honest I feel really bad about the other night and I wanna take you out to say sorry.” he said, looking directly at her as she stood, sipping her coffee.

“That’s ok, you don’t have to, really.” she replied.

Richie stood and walked over to her. He placed his hands on her shoulders and looked directly into her eyes, noting the vulnerability that lay there.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you and I’m sorry. I took advantage of you and I shouldn’t have. Forgive me?” he said sincerely.

Erin was completely taken aback at his volte face. She hadn’t seen him for 2 days and now this? She could feel the warmth of him radiating through the thin tee shirt she was wearing and wanted nothing more than for him to kiss her again.

She looked up into his deep chocolate brown eyes and took a deep breath. He had just apologised and obviously wanted to get back to just a working relationship. She knew she should be relieved so why did she feel so disappointed?

“Of course I do. It’s partly my fault, I shouldn’t have just reached out and grabbed your hair like that. It was totally unprofessional of me.” she said, smiling up at him as she moved out of his reach.

Richie smiled, “Well, go and get dressed then, cause I’m taking you shopping.” His tone brook no argument and she hurried upstairs.

The smile faded as she left the kitchen. He knew he ought to be relieved that she had accepted his apology and things were going to get back to a working relationship so why did he feel cheated?

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“Richie you can’t buy me that!” Erin said, shocked as he picked up a delicate but very expensive silver and diamond bracelet.

“I can and I will.” he smirked, “Don’t forget, you agreed to come with me as my date to this charity thing, so you’ve gotta look like you belong.”

“But it’s too expensive!” She paled at the price tag of £2,700.

He just shrugged and ordered the sales assistant to wrap it up.

They were in Bond Street and had been shopping for the best part of three hours. Erin had discovered that he loved to shop and had lost count of the amount of times she’d given her opinion on an item of clothing as he modelled them for her. She’d learned from him that he never usually went out clothes shopping by himself as he was red green colour blind and if left to his own devices would come home with the most awful mismatched clothes. After the first half an hour of watching him model clothes for her she’d relaxed into it and had really enjoyed watching him swirl around before her, especially when he’d done a really awful impression of Right Said Fred and had started humming ‘I’m too sexy.’ She’d laughed so hard tears had run down her cheeks.


“So, we’ve got shoes, bracelet, necklace, all we need now is a killer dress. Thanks again for agreeing to this Charity Event, I hate going to them, especially on my own.” he said as he handed the packages to Erin.

“That’s ok, it’s not like it’s a date or anything is it? I’m just accompanying you to an event.” she smiled, a part of her reverently wishing it was a date.

“Er well you see darlin’ they think you are my date.”

“What?” her eyes widened.

“Erm, when the event was planned I was sorta dating someone.” he looked at her, a sheepish grin on his face.

She looked up into his handsome face and frowned slightly. She began to think about whether it would be a good idea or not when her brain apparently took a long over due vacation and her heart kicked in. She was attracted to him; had been since she’d bumped into him and she wasn’t going to let her brain spoil things for her, even if he wasn’t that interested in her.

“That’s ok, that’s fine. I’m sure we can pull this off.” she smiled as they headed off to find a killer dress.