LITMIR.BIZ

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when Ted showed her the designs; maybe there was something wanting to emerge, but downtrodden. Amelia frowned at him again. There was more to this man than she’d thought; there was nothing simple or straightforward about who he was.

      Trying another approach, Amelia leaned forward again in her chair. “When you relax, what do you do? Television?”

      He shook his head slightly. “Too loud. I read or draw.” The answer was prompt, Jared perhaps becoming a little more comfortable.

      “You draw every night? All the time?” That seemed like extraordinary dedication and she doubted anyone could sustain that sort of energy.

      For the first time Jared’s demeanour contained a little assertiveness. “I read more than I draw. There’s a second hand book store near me, I buy lots from there. But in notebooks I draw all the time; all sorts of things.”

      Having been given an opening, Amelia didn’t want him to retreat, and if she needed to keep him at this level of agitation, so be it. She folded her arms, maintaining the appearance of disbelief. “Even the most energetic designers I’ve known don’t have that much to get down.”

      The ploy backfired; instead of bristling further, Jared simply dropped his head and hunched over a little more, long locks falling across his forehead. Amelia felt immediately foolish; she couldn’t just open this man like a lock with the right key. Something had made him this way, this closed and insular, and it was going to take time to gain his trust.

      She pursed her lips. If she wanted his trust, that was.

      Why she was concentrating on this man? Somehow seeing him, with so much shrouded talent, languishing and timid, reminded her a little of what she’d done with her own life. Years of university, years of travel and itinerant work in Europe, coming back to focus on the hope of a family and a stable life, only to have it fall apart. Now, in her early forties, she felt the same frustration she had at eighteen, and an almost desperate need to make up for the time she’d lost.

      Trying again to identify the fascination Jared held for her, Amelia knew there was a simple nobility in his resolve to remain faceless. There was no desire for fame or glory or riches; he’d saved Coremade to keep a job, and given all the credit for the new range to a buffoon who didn’t know he’d been involved. In the end he’d only been uncovered because of a surreptitious glance.

      Amelia decided to abandon playing games to draw everything out of him immediately, and instead conceded that to learn his secrets would take much longer. “Jared, I’m not questioning whether you do what you say. I was just trying to get you to talk.” She took a deep breath and then returned her gaze to him. “I don’t want you to get anxious about this, but I’d like to talk to you again. I’m hoping you’ll see I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to, I just think there’s a quiet way you could help me make this company better.”

      For a brief moment his expression became unguarded again. “You want to talk to me again?”

      She nodded slowly. “I do. Yes.”

      Jared fidgeted in the chair again, like a cornered animal that was looking for any avenue to escape. As physical flight wasn’t readily available he made a clumsy attempt to use language. “I can’t do anything you need.”

      Amelia smiled. “Jared, don’t worry about anything. I just want you to try and relax a little. Just a bit. Try and talk to me.” She spread her hands. “You don’t even have to make conversation, I’ll just ask questions and you can answer them if you like, or I’ll keep asking different ones until we find one you like. Nothing else, I promise.”

      He screwed his face up into a frown. “Why would you waste your time on me?”

      She wasn’t agitated with him but she chose this moment to be firm. “I need you to listen to me, Jared. You have a talent, and it’s remarkable. I just want you to help me a little. If you trust me you’ll see it will hardly take any effort at all.”

      The waitress brought them coffee and the cheese platter. Jared kept his hands firmly anchored in his lap and Amelia watched his timid appraisal of the fare in front of them with amusement. Taking the cheese fork, she sliced through the corner of the cheddar, then the brie, dropping them onto a water cracker before handing it to him. “Please, try this.”

      She held it out towards him and when he realised she wouldn’t simply withdraw it and ignore him as he hoped, Jared finally glanced from side to side and then gingerly took the food from her. Quickly, Amelia fashioned another, and lifting it, she smiled and deposited the whole cracker in her mouth. Jared mimicked her action, and Amelia smiled at the first reluctant, then more eager approach.

      Amelia smiled. “How about in return for your talking to me I show you some of this place’s wonderful food?” She swallowed. “That sounds like a fair swap to me.” He looked anxious, perhaps at the thought that he’d have to come back here again, and she tried to assuage his fears. “It’s a nice friendly place, there’s never many people here, and you can do whatever you want.”

      Jared stopped chewing for a moment and regarded Amelia directly. A range of thoughts seemed to play through his mind, and then something inside him seemed to relinquish its grip and he looked around the restaurant with a more appraising demeanour. Whilst out of his comfort zone and unbalanced, the world hadn’t ended and remarkably, he was beginning to relax a little.

      “Just here, and I don’t have to walk in by myself?” The hesitant tone of his voice suggested the difficulty he had in revealing this nervousness.

      “Never by yourself.” Amelia cast a shrewd expression at the untouched latte next to him. “You said you drink coffee?”

      He nodded. “Sometimes.”

      “Instant though right?” At his imperceptible nod, she continued. “They make spectacular coffee here, try it.”

      Dutifully Jared’s hand edged across the table and he gently lifted the glass to his lips. After the first sip Amelia could see the approving expression on his face, and then he drained the rest of the small glass quickly. Licking the froth from his lips he said quietly, “That was good.”

      Lifting her own glass to her lips, Amelia described its qualities. “They use freshly ground Brazilian beans, the froth is light, the bubbles are tiny and even, and not too thin, and the milk isn’t burnt. Good coffee should always be cool enough to drink straight away.”

      They stayed for another fifteen minutes or so before Amelia acknowledged that Jared’s hiatus of agitation in the name of new sensations was steadily waning. Not wanting to push the fragile trust that she hoped was building, Amelia nodded towards the waitress for the bill.

      Jared frowned and the fidgeting returned in full force. “I don’t have very much money.”

      “Don’t worry about it, this won’t be very much.” Amelia slipped a folded note onto the plate when the waitress returned, careful that Jared wouldn’t see how much it had cost.

      He scuttled around the table after her as she left, and they travelled in silence back to Kensington. When they pulled up in front of the small supermarket again, Jared nodded in her direction briefly and gently eased the door open. Amelia turned to him. “Now are you going to be ok if I want to talk to you again?”

      Jared got out of the car and turned back before answering. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

      Amelia tried to look up at him and catch his gaze, but only just managed to meet his eyes briefly before he stood a little more upright. “If you can help me resolve some of these designs, even just a little, it will be worth it. I promise. Same time next Thursday? Right here at six, that way nobody ever has to know I’m talking to you.”

      Pushing the door shut, Jared mumbled a single word before it closed. “Ok.”

      Amelia watched his hunched posture as

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