THE HUSBAND HUNTERS Read Online Free PDF Page B

look as though your cat has just died.’
    ‘It’s worse than that,’ I moaned, pulling off my jacket, sitting down on my swivel chair. ‘I’ve got to get a date with this guy.’
    Nick laughed. ‘I’m sure he’d be thrilled to see your face now, at the prospect of meeting him. Who are you dating, Hannibal Lector?’
    I told Nick about Paul, and how I’d first dated him twelve months back, but now the HHC thought he was going to be my Mr Right, so I had got back in touch with him.
    Nick looked confused. ‘You mean you’ve got your friends to judge your boyfriends to make sure you find Mr Right, instead of doing it yourself? But that’s not how it should be done.’
    ‘Yes, I know that,’ I snapped. ‘But I’ve done such a crap job myself over the years, and so have they.’
    I told him about Rach’s boyfriend sleeping with her sister, about Soph’s failed wedding, how Kazza’s boyfriend had hit her, and Tash’s penchant for married men, especially teachers. The explanations took most of the afternoon, and by the end of it, Nick’s eyeballs were nearly popping out of his head.
    ‘Yes, I see,’ was all he could say when I finished explaining about all our disastrous love lives. ‘I agree you could all do with a little help - to say the least. But do you really have proper meetings about it, with progress reports and minutes. Are you serious, or are you having me on?”
    I know it sounded a far-fetched idea, but as I explained to Nick, it was the only way that we could do it properly. I told him about our regular meetings in the Italian, and how Kaz always typed up the minutes the following day.
    ‘You lot are mental,’ he said, but there was a look of admiration in his eyes. ‘But if it works - who cares,’ he added, picking up the phone as it started to ring.
    I didn’t care if Nick thought I’d lost the plot. If it got me Mr Right, then I was prepared to do anything it took.
    Nick had known me for years anyway. We had both started working at the model agency at the same time, and he had a great sense of humour. The girls had teased me about him when I first started at the agency, as we sat next to each other all day. But Nick just wasn’t my type, as I patiently explained to all of them, as they had clustered around me, desperate for some gossip. He was ten years older than me, and his hair had already started to turn grey at the temples. But it wasn’t attractively greying like George Clooney - it stuck out at all angles, as he never went to a salon to have it cut. His mate Danny did it with an electric shaver for him once every few months.
    Nick didn’t care what he looked like, which isn’t great for a photographer at a model agency. He still wore a short ‘eighties-style leather jacket that he’d bought when he’d been at university twenty years earlier. I had nearly vomited when I first saw it hanging on the back of his chair. It was a really unattractive pale brown colour, with a motorbike motif stitched on the back. Scarlett’s boyfriend Simon had actually asked to borrow it for an ‘eighties fancy dress party once, and Nick had said. ‘Yeah, sure,’ and had handed it over. He hadn’t even seen the funny side of it. Simon had put it on, and Scarlett and I had nearly wet ourselves laughing at him. Nick still didn’t understand what we were laughing at, even when Simon started prancing campishly around our living room.
    When Nick first started at the agency, he had teamed the hideous jacket with some tight pale-blue jeans and black t-shirts, which he seemed to have a constant stack of. The only thing I’d ever managed to achieve with his dress sense was to eventually get him out of those tight jeans and into some trendier baggier dark blue ones.
    Nick had had various girlfriends over the years, and a few months ago, had just started seeing a student from the local university. I teased him mercilessly over it as she was only twenty-two and in her final year.
    ‘You’re