An Unexpected Gift

He was clearly hiding something, though Katie couldn’t help feeling drawn to her handsome customer

- Jan Snook

Katie scanned the barcodes on the wrapping paper, gift tag and the gorgeous blue and green silk scarf, and smiled warmly at the man who was buying them.

‘Must be for someone really special,’ she said as she wrapped the scarf carefully in tissue paper, placed it in one of the gift shop’s elegant bags and counted out his change.

‘It is,’ he said with a delectably slow smile. No wonder he was buying such a lovely present for some lucky girl – he must have hundreds of girls chasing after him. And it wasn’t just because of his smile. The rest of him was very good-looking, too – he was tall with chocolatey brown eyes and curly hair. He wasn’t a man who’d ever be single for long, she imagined. And apparently not the sort of man to dash out and buy any old thing, either. She’d been watching him as he examined all their scarves, before at last choosing one. Not a last-minute merchant, like some men.

There was often a flurry of boyfriends and husbands who dashed into the shop two minutes before it closed, desperately grabbing the first card and box of chocolates they could see (sometimes even clutching a bunch of half-dead red roses – all that was left at the florist at the end of the day) because they’d suddenly remembered their anniversary or someone’s birthday. No. This customer wasn’t that sort of man at all.

Neither was her Tom, of course. Tom went to the other extreme. He didn’t believe any one day should be special, proclaiming loudly that if you loved someone you should spoil them every day, not just once a year. Which was probably true – just not very romantic. And it would be fine if he did spoil her every day. But he didn’t.