Island Girl Book 2

The trouble with Ex's

Alison discovered she quite liked Italian food, and demanded to know what was in the dishes that were served to her, Paul was only too happy to oblige. She was beginning to realise how passionate he was about food.

It was nice to realise she was still discovering things about him, and there was so much more she wanted to know. So she was happy to sit back and eat her meal and listen to Harvey and Paul telling her how they had first met.

It seemed that Harvey had first wanted Paul’s father to be his client, but when Enzio had refused Paul had approached Harvey to let him know he was interested. Harvey had then realised the potential when noticing how popular Paul was becoming, especially with the females.. So he had signed him up.

Paul admitted it had been a bit of a stormy relationship, There were times Harvey had tried to rein him in from some of his crazy ways, he had even rebelled against him. Paul then Informed Alison that his reputation and his behaviour would probably have been more damaged and out of control if it hadn’t been for Harvey keeping him in line a lot of the time.

But once the meal was finished Harvey informed them that he had to go, as he had a meeting with another client. He kissed Alison on the cheek, telling her once more that he was delighted to see her again, and he hoped they could meet up again before she returned back to Ireland.

Downstairs the restaurant was starting to close down for the night so Paul thought it was the perfect opportunity to show Alison around the place properly, without all the hustle and bustle of customers coming and going.

Alison,having had the privilege of having a free meal from the kitchen, which she had enjoyed; she was more curious about the place and wanted to find out more

Some of the staff were doing the last of the cleaning up before leaving for the night as she accompanied Paul downstairs into the main restaurant. It was all very quiet now compared to earlier in the evening when she had arrived.

The staff were stacking the chairs on top the tables which were now stripped of the table clothes, and they were getting ready to mop and brush the dark blue tiled floor

Alison now glanced around the restaurant, admiring the décor of the pale blue panels with little mock Victorian style gold gilt lamps around the walls, Paul informed her he was planning to revamp the place again in a more up to date fashion once he finished televising his last series

Alison noticed the female staff that were cleaning up around them, kept shooting her little curious glances, and when they caught her eye, she smiled at them with such friendliness that they their expressions showed slight surprise that she was even acknowledging their presence, some even smiled back, which Alison found encouraging.

Not wanting to be in their way, because she was aware when she had to clean down the bakery before closing, how annoying it was when last minute customers came in whilst you were trying to get your job finished. She didn’t linger too long as Paul showed her around, so they could get on with the job and get home.

Then Paul informed her he had to have a word with Joe before leaving, Alison let him go ahead and get on with it.

But she didn’t like standing around idly waiting for him to return

Alison approached one of the young fair haired woman who appeared to be around the same age as herself, who was wearily stacking the chairs on the tables, looking too tired to even pay her any attention.

"Excuse me, do you want me give you a hand with that?" she then offered

The young woman stopped what she was doing, her green eyes assessed Alison a little uncertainly, she was not sure how to respond to this unexpected offer of help.