Tell Me You Do: The Guy to Be Seen With / The Rebound Guy
Tell Me You Do: The Guy to Be Seen With / The Rebound Guy
Fiona Harper
From London to New York…with Love. Chloe Michaels is determined not to fall for new colleague Daniel Bradford – especially as he doesn’t remember rejecting her years ago! But London’s most infamous bachelor has other plans – one date with Chloe every month to deflect the media attention on his love life…and maybe just win her heart for real! After a hard last few years, Daniel’s sister Kelly just wants a steady life – and that means no dating! So she absolutely, categorically should not be fantasising about her boss Jason Knight. But a business trip to the Big Apple-and a rebound fling- could be just what Kelly needs to make her feel alive again…
As a child, FIONA HARPER was constantly teased for two things: having her nose in a book and living in a dream world. Things haven’t changed much since then, but at least she’s found a career that puts her runaway imagination to use!
Fiona loves dancing, so clear the floor if you’re ever at a party with her, and her current creative craze (one of a long list!) is jewellery making. She loves good books, good films and good food, especially anything cinnamon-flavoured, and she can always find room in her diet for chocolate or champagne!
Fiona loves to hear from readers and you can contact her through fiona@fionaharper.com, or find her on Facebook page (Fiona Harper Romance Author) or tweet her! (@FiHarperAuthor)
Tell Me
You Do
Fiona
Harper
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#ub4aa5759-5f06-574b-b10c-09eb449a900f)
About the Author (#u73b06b87-2b75-5de7-aaa7-a529d835ea5e)
Title Page (#ud2a82894-37fd-5a39-9a22-e545196dc292)
Chloe
Dedication (#u0adb1ad1-eee0-5461-af5f-dc5fb373fa29)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Kelly
Dedication (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chloe (#u33619845-840c-5dda-a8b5-4a5c124c81ad)
For Nikki,
an all-round inspiration and great gal to work with!
And for Andy, my own Indiana Jones
with secateurs. x
CHAPTER ONE (#u33619845-840c-5dda-a8b5-4a5c124c81ad)
DANIEL ALWAYS GRUMBLED that his mobile phone rang at the most inconvenient of moments, and it didn’t disappoint him now. Just as he was lifting a delicate Venus flytrap out of its pot, his hands full of roots and compost, his trouser pocket buzzed. Since he refused to assign fancy ring-tones to everyone in his contact list the double ring of an old-fashioned phone told him precisely nothing about the caller’s identity.
Once upon a time, he’d have ignored it—his hands being full of an uprooted Dionaea muscipula and all—but these days he could never quite push the thought from his mind that it might be his younger sister, telling him she was ill again. Or worse, a stranger telling him she’d collapsed and was in Accident and Emergency, and casually requesting he pick her kids up from pre-school.
Reluctantly, he shook the earth off his right hand, cupped the clump of roots and foliage in his left and fumbled in the thigh pocket of his cargo trousers for his phone. He balanced the handset on his shoulder and squeezed his cheek onto it to keep it in place as he attempted to brush more of the compost that caked his fingers off on the back of his trousers.
‘Yup.’
The phone started to slide and he quickly grabbed for it with his still-dirty hand.
‘Daniel Bradford?’ a deep yet annoyingly upbeat male voice asked.
‘Yup,’ he repeated, more focused on trying to replace the prize specimen in its pot with the use of only one hand. It wasn’t going well. He wasn’t planning on dividing this one for propagation yet but it was threatening to do just that.
‘Well, Daniel, this is Doug Harley and you’re live on Radio EROS, London’s most romantic radio station!’
Daniel stood up straight, then twisted round, scanning the tropical nursery at London’s famous Kew Gardens, expecting to see a group of snickering underlings hiding behind a palm in an adjacent room of the sprawling greenhouse. This had to be a prank, right? And, if there was one advantage of working in a place where ninety per cent of the buildings were made of glass, it was that there was nowhere to hide. He’d find them and make their lives hell for this.
But all he could see was a lone horticultural student, wheeling a trolley of seedlings past the door, plugged into his music and oblivious to the world. The rest of the multi-roomed greenhouse was unusually quiet.
‘Daniel?’ the silky smooth voice crooned in his ear.
He pulled the phone away from his head and stared at the display, seriously considering just hanging up. He didn’t have time for this.
‘What do you want?’ he barked at the man as he put the phone back up to his ear. ‘I’m busy.’
There was an equally smooth—and equally irritating—chuckle on the other end of the line. ‘Not too busy for this, Daniel. I promise you.’
He clenched his jaw. The over-familiar manner in which the DJ kept inserting his name into every sentence was getting on his nerves.
‘Convince me,’ he said.
The chuckle again. As if the man was the insider to some joke that Daniel didn’t know about. His eyes narrowed.
‘I’m sure you know what day it is today, Daniel?’
Confusion wrinkled his brow further. It was Tuesday. So what?
Oh.
He swore inside his head, remembering the collection of red and pink envelopes that had been sitting on his desk when he’d arrived for work this morning. He’d shaken his head, pushed them to one side unopened and had done his best to forget about them. Not just any Tuesday, but one slap-bang in the middle of February.
‘Or what year it is …’ the voice added.
Daniel let out a huff. He’d been right all along. A half-baked radio contest run by some sappy station he’d never heard of. He was pretty sure he didn’t want whatever prize this idiot was offering. Seriously, couldn’t they come up with a better question than what year it was? Even his four-year-old nephew could answer that one. He was just about to tell Mr Silky Smooth that when he was interrupted.
‘Of course, leap years have their perks,’ the man said, and a rumble of perfectly pitched deep laughter followed. ‘We know it’s a couple of weeks until the twenty-ninth, but we’ve got a Valentine’s surprise for you, Daniel. There’s a young lady who’d like to ask you something.’
Daniel looked down at the plant in his hand. Even in its current uprooted state, a fly was attracted to the sweet nectar oozing from the glands in its trap. It darted around, weaving in and out of the leaves, looking for somewhere to land.
‘Dan?’ This voice was soft and feminine. One he recognised instantly.
He froze. His brain told him what was coming, but he refused to believe it.
‘Georgia?’
That hadn’t come out right. He’d sounded grumpy and defensive, not pleasantly surprised, at hearing his girlfriend’s voice. He tried again. ‘What are you doing?’
Nope. That hadn’t been any better.
He heard her swallow in a great gulp of air. ‘Daniel … I know you’ve had a tough time recently, and I’ve been happy to be there for you … but things are looking up now and I really believe we could be good together.’
Daniel’s mouth moved but no words—not even any sounds—came out.
He wanted to close his eyes, as if doing so could block out the sound of her voice, but he was transfixed by the sight of the fly settling on the fleshy pad of one of the plant’s open traps. He shook his head, warning the insect off.
Fly away. Escape while you still can.
‘So, what I’m doing, Daniel …’ She paused, gave a little nervous laugh. ‘What I’m saying is … is that I’d like you to marry me.’
In one swift, smooth motion the flytrap closed over the fly. Not so much a snapping as an elegant but relentless squeezing. Daniel could hear the creature’s frantic buzzing, see it struggling in the trap as the teeth-like cilia closed tighter and tighter over its head.
Don’t. Struggling only makes it worse.
A terrible silence settled around him. All sound disappeared. Even the visitors to the botanical gardens, who could often still be heard from the private nurseries, had hushed. It seemed the whole of London was holding its breath, waiting for his answer.
‘Is this a joke, George?’ he croaked, a horrible pleading tone in his voice.
This wasn’t the Georgia he knew. The nice, uncomplicated, undemanding woman he’d been seeing for almost a year. His Georgia knew he didn’t have the emotional space for a proper relationship right now, let alone a marriage. His Georgia understood that and accepted that. So who was this, borrowing her voice and asking him out-of-the-blue questions—on the radio, for heaven’s sake? Not even person to person, face to face.
Who proposed in public, anyway? It should be done privately and quietly. Preferably to someone other than him.
He squeezed his teeth together to stop himself from demanding an explanation, right here, right now. He was suddenly furious with her for springing this on him, for changing the rules and moving the goalposts of their relationship while he hadn’t been looking. This wasn’t what they were about and she knew that.
At least, he’d thought she’d known that.
Silky Smooth chuckled again. ‘Well, Georgia, you seem to have rendered the poor man speechless! What do you say, Daniel? Are you going to put this gorgeous girl out of her misery or what?’
That doused his billowing temper quick smart.
What was he going to say?
He could imagine Georgia sitting there at the radio station, a fixed smile on her face and fear in her eyes, bravely trying to pretend it was all right, when really her heart was pounding and her eyes filling.
It wasn’t that Georgia wasn’t a lovely woman. She was determined and intelligent and sensible. Any man would be lucky to have her. He should want to say yes.
But he didn’t.
He really didn’t.
He wasn’t ever going to go down that road again, no matter how lovely the woman in question.
There was a crackle on the line and noise started filtering through again—the hiss of the automatic misting system in the nursery next door, the squeak of a door farther down the corridor, a plane flying low overhead on its way to Heathrow. And Daniel was suddenly very aware that more than a hundred thousand pairs of ears might be listening to this conversation, of just how public and complete his girlfriend’s humiliation would be if he gave her the wrong answer.
Unfortunately, where he and Georgia were concerned, the wrong answer was the right answer.
He didn’t love her. He wasn’t sure he ever would, and she deserved better than that. Gently, he balanced his phone on his shoulder again and carefully put the now-satisfied Venus flytrap plant back down in its pot.
He should have known their relationship wouldn’t stay in wonderful, comfortable stasis they’d created. In this world, things moved on, grew, or they decayed.
He’d first met Georgia when Kelly had been halfway through her chemo. She’d been easy to be around. She’d helped him forget that his little sister might not see another Christmas, to forget that his rat of a brother-in-law had run off with his personal trainer and left his shell-shocked wife to deal with a cancer diagnosis—and two under-fives—all on her own. Without Georgia, he’d have hunted Tim down and fed him, bit by bit, to the largest and ugliest Nepenthes in his collection.
Daniel shook his head. The Venus flytap was completely closed now; he couldn’t even see the squirming fly inside.
He should have known that, eventually, Georgia would get ideas. The awful situation they were in now was as much his fault as it was hers. She wasn’t really asking anything horrendous of him, was she? But she was asking for something he wasn’t capable of. Not any more. And he’d been very clear about that.
‘I’m sorry …’ he said, more for not paying attention to what had been growing right under his nose than for what he was about to say. ‘We weren’t heading for marriage, I thought you knew that … That’s what made our thing so perfect …’
Our thing … Subtle, Daniel.
He could hear her breathing on the other end of the line, and he wished he could see her face to face, explain, without listening ears hanging on every syllable.
‘It’s okay,’ she said, and he could hear the artificial brightness in her tone, could almost see the sheen in her eyes. He felt as if he’d been kicked in the chest by a horse.
He shook his head. No, it wasn’t okay. He was hurting her horribly, but that didn’t mean he could say yes and condemn them to a lie that would ultimately make them both unhappy. He had to do what was best for Georgia, for both of them. He had to set her free for someone who could give her what she wanted.
‘I can’t, Georgia. You know why I can’t say yes.’
There was a moment of ghastly silence and then the DJ began talking again, laughing nervously, trying to smooth things over. Daniel didn’t hear any of his words. He didn’t even notice when music started to play in his ear.
He felt like a worm.
No, worse than that, because worms were useful, at least, and they didn’t harm anything.
He picked up the unearthed flytrap, plastic pot and all, and flung it against the wall of the carnivorous plants nursery. It hit the glass with a resounding bang that echoed over half the gardens. The cracked pot fell away, and the frail plant followed, landing with an almost soundless thump on the floor. Compost that had smeared against the glass began to crumble away and rain down on top of it.
That was when the disadvantages of working in a greenhouse made themselves apparent. Half a dozen curious pairs of eyes stared at him from various parts of the nursery. They must have thought the Head of Tropical Plants had lost his mind.
Or worse. They might have been listening to the radio.
Daniel closed his eyes, ran his hand through his hair, then swore loudly when he realised his fingers had still been covered in peat and perlite.
He opened his lids to find no one had moved. He glared at each and every pair of staring eyes in turn. ‘What?’ he yelled and, as one mass, the underlings scurried away back into their holes.
All he wanted was for this awful, consumer-fuelled excuse of a day to be over, so he could get back to normal, live his life without anyone listening to what he was saying or spying on what he was doing.
God, he hated Valentine’s Day.
Daniel froze as he was crouched down, his hand on the papery flute of a Sarracenia. Sunlight streamed through the glass roof, warming his back, and around him visitors milled, casually inspecting the exotic plants of the Princess of Wales Conservatory, one of Kew’s modern glasshouses. All in all, it seemed like a normal March day.
Except that, as he worked, the fine hairs on his arms and the back of his neck lifted.
He stood up and glanced around. He was in a vast greenhouse with ten climate-controlled zones, so it would be stupid not to expect people to see him, but it was more than that. It felt as if someone was watching him.
Georgia’s flopped Valentine’s proposal had produced a flurry of unexpected media attention. More than once in the last month he’d found himself staring at the business end of a paparazzo’s lens as he was trying to work. But that hadn’t been the only unwanted side-effect of publicly humiliating his ex-girlfriend. Now there seemed to be eyes on him everywhere, watching him, judging him.
Until his sister’s illness had forced him to come back to England, he’d loved his job working from Kew’s base in Madagascar. He’d loved being a seed hunter—searching out rare plants to collect their treasure, tracking down nearly extinct species. But this bizarre media interest made him feel much more like the prey than a hunter, and he didn’t like that one bit. No, not a role reversal he was comfortable with.
He finished checking the fine white and green patterned flutes of the pitcher plant and pushed open the door of the small Temperate Carnivorous Plants area and entered the much larger Wet Tropics zone. Here the heat-and-moisture-loving tropical varieties grew, including a large draping display of green and warm purple hanging pitchers. He worked methodically through the twisting tendrils, looking for dried out pitchers that needed to be dead-headed, checking for disease and parasites.
That was when he heard them.
‘Do you think he looks like Harrison Ford?’ a feminine voice said in a not-so-quiet whisper. ‘I’m not sure. He’s more like that one from the spy series on BBC.’
Daniel froze and imagined a horrible, jungle-related death for the reporter who’d jokingly compared him to the film legend. While the journalist had obviously been quite pleased with his ‘Indiana Jones with secateurs’ crack, Daniel hadn’t heard the end of it from his mates.
‘Not sure,’ a second voice said thoughtfully, and just as loudly. ‘But he’s definitely got that brooding, intelligent-but-dangerous thing going on. Have you seen those arm muscles …?’
There was a muffled snort from the first speaker. ‘Arms? I was too busy checking out his nice, tight little—’
Right. That was it.
He was fed up of being treated like a piece of meat, something to be stalked and discussed and ogled. Perhaps he should just jump up on one of the earthy beds and sit there with the plants, because as far as he could see he’d stopped being one of the staff and had morphed into a prime attraction.
When would this end? It was bad enough that the London press had picked up on his and Georgia’s story and run with it like a greyhound on amphetamines. They’d been the subject of countless column inches, magazine features and chat show discussions—not that either of them had fuelled it in any way by agreeing to speak or be interviewed. It seemed the whole of the city had been split down the middle, divided into two camps, one supporting him and one supporting her.
But the whole situation had a nasty little side effect, too.
He’d now become The One That Got Away. An irresistible label to the female population of London, it seemed, because en masse they’d decided it was an open season. Every day for the first couple of weeks after the proposal they’d appeared in ones and twos like this, coming to the gardens specifically to track him down. But it had been quiet for almost a week, and he’d finally hoped it was all petering out. No such luck.
Not that a bit—or even a lot—of female interest bothered him in the slightest. He was as open to it as the next guy. But this was different. They didn’t know when to stop. They acted as if they hadn’t heard the proposal on the radio, as if they didn’t know he wasn’t in the market for love, let alone marriage. The whole thing was just stupid. And very irritating.
He was dragged back into the present by a heartfelt sigh behind him. They’d moved closer.
‘Shall I go and ask him for his autograph,’ one said.
That was it. Hunter or not, Daniel was out of there. He turned and walked briskly down the path, down the steps to the aquatic exhibit half hidden under a man-made ‘hill’ in the centre of the conservatory, and ducked through a short tunnel to come out on the other side of the zone. He then climbed the path that led him to the upper levels on top of the hill, then doubled back through the ferns and down some more stairs.
He knew this labyrinthine glasshouse like the back of his hand and it wasn’t more than a minute before he was crouching down and peering at the two women from a vantage point inside the orchid display. He could have left and gone back to the propagation greenhouses, he supposed, but he liked the idea of turning the tables, of watching them hunt fruitlessly for him, before disappearing for good. It would restore his sense of balance, of control.
Now he could see them, his eyes popped. They were over seventy, for goodness’ sake! All sensible shoes and nylon trousers. He could see them looking around, having a minor disagreement about which way they should go to pick up his trail.
He almost chuckled to himself. Almost.
At least, he might have done if those hairs on the back of his neck hadn’t prickled again.
Seriously? Another one?
He was tempted to turn round and let loose, but he knew he had a bit of a temper, and having a supposedly ‘dangerous’ edge didn’t mean he was allowed to attack paying visitors then use them for lovely, nutritious compost for his favourite plants. There were laws against that kind of thing. Unfortunately.
He was just going to have to bite his tongue and leave. However, if this Valentine’s fuelled media circus didn’t end soon, he’d be stuck in an office or a greenhouse, not able to go about his job as he pleased, and he’d hate that. It had been hard enough to leave the field and take this post in the first place; he’d only done it because Kelly had needed him to come home and help look after her and the boys.
‘Why, if it isn’t Indiana himself!’ a husky female voice drawled. ‘Although I was led to believe you’d swapped the whip for a pair of secateurs these days.’
Daniel swivelled around, still crouching. The first thing he saw was a pair of hot-pink kitten heels with polka dot bows on the front. Definitely not a pensioner, this one. His gaze was inevitably drawn up to a pair of slender ankles and then to shapely calves. For a moment, he forgot all thoughts of running.
Then there was the black pencil skirt. Tight round a pair of generous hips, hugging the thighs … He swallowed.
‘So where are they?’ she asked.
That was when he realised he was still half squatting. He looked up, past the form-fitting pink blouse to the face on top of it. Red lips. That was what he saw first. Vibrant red lips.
Who’d cut the water supply off from his throat? He swallowed again. ‘What?’
Stand up. You’re kneeling at her feet, looking like a drooling Neanderthal.
Thankfully, his brain cooperated this time, sending the message to his legs to straighten, and he stood. Finally, he was looking down at her instead of up. Only, it didn’t help much. From down below the view of her impressive cleavage hadn’t been so obvious. Now his brain was too busy working his eyeballs to do the talking thing.
‘The secateurs,’ she said with a slight twitch of one expertly plucked brow. ‘Are they in your pocket?’
Daniel nodded dumbly and pulled them out. She was blonde. Marilyn Monroe blonde. With shoulder length waves that curled around her face.
‘Shame,’ the lips said. ‘And there was I hoping you were just pleased to see me.’
His mouth hung open a little. Brain still struggling. Much to his disgust, he managed a faint grunt.
‘Sorry … couldn’t resist,’ she said, and offered her slim hand. ‘Don’t you just love Mae West?’
Daniel stared at the hand for a second or so, at the long red fingernails that matched her lips, then a movement at chest level distracted him. A staff pass on a lanyard was around her neck but, due to the impressive cleavage it was hanging just below, it was twirling gently in some unseen breeze, the photo and name obscured.
She frowned slightly. ‘Not a Mae fan, then.’
He nodded, but he wasn’t sure if he was agreeing or disagreeing.
‘Chloe Michaels,’ she said, grabbing his hand and shaking it firmly. ‘Orchid specialist and new girl at Kew.’
‘Daniel Bradford,’ he said, shaking back vigorously. Maybe a little too vigorously. He let go, but then he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hand. He stuffed it back in his pocket.
‘I know,’ she said, and a wry smile curved those red lips.
‘You’ve read the papers …’
She gave a little shrug. ‘Well, a girl would have to be dead to not have seen something of your recent press coverage. However, I knew who you were before that. I’ve got one of your books at home.’
Air emptied from his lungs and he felt his torso relax. Plants and horticulture. Finally, he’d come across a woman who could talk sense. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he said. And he genuinely meant it.
She just nodded and the smile grew brighter. ‘The guys in the tropical nursery said I’d find you here, and I just thought I’d come and introduce myself,’ she said, turning to leave.
Daniel had just started to feel somewhere close to normal again, but her exit gave him another view he hadn’t quite been ready for … The way that pencil skirt tightened round her backside was positively sinful.
She looked over her shoulder before she exited the temperate orchid display through the opposite door. Daniel snapped his gaze upwards. She hadn’t caught him checking her out, had she? That was a schoolboy error.
‘By the way,’ she said, nodding in his direction, ‘incoming at eleven o’clock.’
He hadn’t the faintest idea what she meant, but it wasn’t until she’d disappeared into the next zone that he even started to try and work it out.
A bang on the glass above him made him jump. He pivoted round and looked up to find his two pursuers in the fern enclosure at the top of the stairs, faces pressed up against the glass, grinning like mad.
Oh, heck.
One of them spotted the door further along the wall. Her eyes lit up and she started waving a pen and a notepad at him.
Daniel did what any sensible man in his position would have done.
He ran.
CHAPTER TWO (#u33619845-840c-5dda-a8b5-4a5c124c81ad)
A SKIRT THIS tight and heels this high did not help with an elegant exit, Chloe thought as she kept her back straight and cemented her gaze on the door. She’d thought she’d need the extra confidence her favourite pair of shoes gave her this morning but, when they were teamed with the skirt, every step was barely more than a hobble, and it took a torturously long time until she was out of the orchid display area and amidst the agaves and cacti of the adjoining section.
She paused for a heartbeat as the glass door swung shut behind her, then blinked a few times and carried on walking.
He hadn’t recognised her.
She’d been prepared to go in smiling, laugh that embarrassing incident in their past off and put it down to not being able to hold her liquor. In short, she’d planned to be every bit as sophisticated as her wardrobe suggested she could be.
But she hadn’t needed to.
She pressed a palm against her sternum. Her heart was fluttering like a hummingbird.
That was good, wasn’t it? That he hadn’t connected Chloe Michaels the horticultural student with Chloe Michaels, new Head Orchid Keeper. They could just start afresh, behave like mature adults.
Inwardly, Chloe winced as she continued walking along the metal-grilled flooring, past an array of spiky plants from across the globe.
Okay, last time they’d met, Daniel Bradford hadn’t had any problems behaving maturely and appropriately. Any misbehaving had been purely down to her. Her cheeks flushed at the memory, even all these years later.
She was being stupid. He must have taught loads of courses over the years, met hundreds of awestruck students. Why would he remember one frizzy-haired mouse who’d hidden her ample curves in men’s T-shirts and baggy trousers? He wouldn’t. It made sense he hadn’t even remembered her name.
Or her face.
That, too, made sense. She looked very different now.
This Cinderella hadn’t needed a fairy godmother to give her a makeover; she’d done it herself the summer she’d left horticultural college. No pumpkins, no fairy dust. Just the horrified look on Prince Charming’s face had been enough to shove her in the right direction. The Mouse was long gone; long live the new Chloe Michaels. And she’d been doing a very good job of reigning supreme for almost a decade.
Only …
A little part of her—a previously undiscovered masochistic part of her—had obviously been hoping he would remember, because now disappointment was sucking her insides flat like a deflated balloon. She sighed. She never had had any sense where the gorgeous Daniel Bradford had been concerned. But show her a human being with a double X chromosome who did.
It was something to do with those long legs, that lean physique, those pale green, almost glacial eyes. Add a hint of rawness to the package, the sense that he’d just barely made it back from the last expedition into a dark and remote jungle, and it tended to do strange things to a girl’s head.
Maybe that could explain the way she’d acted back there, the things she’d said …
Mae West? What had she been thinking?
While she knew the ‘new and improved’ Chloe had easy self-assurance, there was confidence and there was sheer recklessness. She’d intended to be calm and professional. She certainly hadn’t intended to tease him … flirt with him.
However, a little voice in her head had been pushing her, feeding her lines, especially when his eyeballs had all but popped out of his head when he’d been trying to read her spinning name tag. There had been something so satisfying about seeing him that close to drooling that she just hadn’t been able to stop herself.
It wouldn’t happen again, though. Couldn’t.
But Chloe’s lips curved as she pushed the main door of the conservatory open and walked out into the spring sunshine. She wiped the smile off her face—literally—with a manicured hand and shook her head.
It didn’t matter just how much saliva had pooled in the bottom of Daniel Bradford’s mouth when he’d looked at her, because she was never, ever going down that road again. And it didn’t matter just how ferocious the monster crush she’d had on him ten years ago had been, because there was one thing she was certain of …
She’d shoot herself before she got within kissing distance of him ever again.
Daniel hung from a spot halfway up the climbing wall at his local sports centre and peered down at the top of his friend’s helmet. ‘Hurry up, Al,’ he called out. ‘You’re out of shape. Must have spent too much time lolling on a sun lounger while you were on holiday.’
Alan eventually caught up. He wasn’t looking as chirpy as normal.
‘What’s up with you?’ he said, still panting. ‘You were up this wall like the hounds of hell were on your tail, and you only climb like that when trouble’s brewing—usually woman trouble.’
Daniel shrugged and pulled a face. ‘Of a sort.’
Alan grinned at him hopefully.
‘Georgia came by the gardens today.’
Alan stopped grinning and said a word Daniel thought most appropriate. ‘What did she want? She didn’t rush tearfully into your arms and beg for a second chance, did she?’
Daniel shook his head. ‘No, thank goodness.’
He realised how insensitive that sounded, but Alan understood. He was a guy.
Daniel shifted his hand grip. ‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘Maybe it never should have started.’
Alan shrugged. ‘I thought you had a good thing going there. All the perks and none of the drama.’
That was what Daniel had thought too, when he’d thought about it at all. That also sounded insensitive, he realised. But he and Georgia had been friends, her work at Kew’s millennium seed bank throwing them together occasionally, and somewhere along the line friendship had slipped into something more. At the time he’d hardly noticed it happening.
Normally, he was much more focused about his love life. He’d spot a woman that appealed to him, pick her out from the pack, and then he’d go about pursuing her, changing her mind … Because, if there was one contrary thing about him, it was that he liked the ones that were hard work, took a little chasing. It made the whole thing so much more fun.
But Kelly had been ill, vomiting half the day, and Daniel—apart from being scared out of his wits for his sister—had been thrown in the deep end of caring for two small boys. He supposed all his ‘chasing’ energy had been tied up elsewhere, and maybe that was why he’d slid into his easy relationship with Georgia.
He’d thought she’d wanted that too. Something with no complications, no dramas. Definitely no wedding rings.
He should have known. If a relationship lasted more than six months, that diamond encrusted time bomb was always there, ticking away in the background. And Daniel knew just how deep that glittery shrapnel could embed itself.
He started climbing again. ‘That’s not all, though,’ he said, glancing at Alan, who was now keeping pace. ‘She told me the radio station is holding her to the contract she signed with them.’
Alan looked shocked. ‘What? How can they do that? There’s no wedding to cover. You said no.’
Daniel nodded. ‘That’s what I said. But, for some unknown reason, she feels the need to reinvent herself, and they’re going to follow her around all year while she does it. The Year of Georgia, they’re calling it.’ As if he didn’t feel enough of a heel already.
Alan’s gift for expletives made itself known again.
But it wasn’t really the extra media coverage that warranted such a well-timed word. It was a horrible feeling that, by saying no to Georgia, he’d somehow broken her and now she thought she needed to fix herself.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. This was the very reason he chose women carefully, avoided commitment. He wasn’t looking for love and marriage. It was like his pitcher plants—a sticky, sweet-scented trap. Thankfully, unlike a mindless fly, Daniel had a well-developed urge for self-preservation and he usually prided himself on not falling for the lie and getting stuck.
Until Georgia, of course. A mistake he wouldn’t make again.
Damn her for seeming so self-sufficient and sensible when underneath she’d been horribly vulnerable. Damn himself for being too caught up in other things to see the truth.
‘This thing’s never going to end, is it?’ he asked Alan as he started off towards the top of the wall with renewed vigour.
Alan shook his head, more in disbelief than in judgement. ‘Look on the bright side,’ he said as he scrambled to keep up. ‘Most men I know would give their right arm to be where you are right now—women flinging themselves at you on a daily basis. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel …’
Daniel frowned as he swung a foot into place and pushed himself up over an overhang. He didn’t want to shoot fish in a barrel. That was the point!
He didn’t want wide-eyed adoration from a woman; she was likely to start wanting more than he was prepared to give. No, he liked to meet a woman on equal terms, play the game, have fun while it lasted and move on.
‘Most men you know are bloody idiots, then,’ he shouted back at Alan. ‘There’s interested and then there’s desperate and clingy. I know which I prefer.’ And then he shot away from his friend and headed for the top of the wall.
As he climbed the burning in his fingertips, in his shoulders and arms, soothed him. He forgot all about radio stations and marriage proposals and bloody Valentine’s Day. Instead, he concentrated on the physical sensations of foot meeting wall, fingers grasping hand hold, and after a while a different set of images—a much more appealing set of images—flitted through his brain.
A flash of a hot-pink shoe. The curve of that tight black skirt as it had gone in and out. The glint of the sun on pale blonde hair as it slanted through the conservatory roof. The wry and sexy curve of a pair of crimson lips as she teased him.
That staff pass, twirling gently underneath …
Daniel realised he’d run out of wall. He blinked and looked down. Alan was still struggling with that last overhang.
Hardly surprising his mind had turned to Chloe Michaels. He’d been thinking about that day in the Princess of Wales Conservatory a lot recently. Unfortunately, memories were all he had at the moment, because he’d hardly seen her at all lately. She was like the disappearing woman, always leaving a place just as he arrived.
‘Mate,’ Alan said, panting. ‘If you don’t sort out this woman trouble, you’re going to finish me off. You’ve got to let the whole Georgia thing go.’
Daniel nodded. Yes. Georgia. That was the only woman trouble he had at the moment. The only woman trouble he should have at the moment.
But that pair of crimson lips was laughing at him, breathing gently in his ear …
He shook his head. Bad idea, Daniel. Trap that thought and put it on hold.
He’d just jumped from the frying pan of one relationship—very publicly—and he wasn’t planning on landing in another romantic fire right now. He needed to sit back and take stock, give himself some breathing room. He shouldn’t be thinking of starting something new, no matter how prettily those little flames danced and invited him in.
He craned his neck to look at the ceiling. It was far too close to his head. He could do with at least another fifty feet of wall to conquer, something to help him shed this restless energy.
‘Women are the last thing on my mind at the moment,’ he told Alan. ‘It’s this wall that’s the problem. I’ve climbed it so many times it’s easy.’
Alan just grunted.
With one final look at the ceiling, Daniel started to rappel back down towards the floor. His friend followed suit, matching his pace. ‘I need some real rocks to climb. A proper mountain,’ Daniel added. ‘That’s all.’
Twenty minutes later, round the corner in The Railway pub near Kew Gardens station, Alan plopped a full pint glass in front of Daniel at the bar. ‘You miss it, don’t you?’ his friend said. ‘Being out in the field?’
Daniel stared at the tiny bubbles swirling and popping on the surface of his beer. His jaw jutted forwards. ‘I do,’ he replied. Not just the rocks, but the rain on his skin and the wind in his face. The feeling that he was totally free.
‘I’m grateful to you for letting me know when this job opened up,’ he said. ‘But it’s just maternity cover, remember? I’ll stick it out until your old boss is back. Kelly will be feeling better by then.’
He’d suggested his sister move into his house in Chiswick when she’d split up with her husband; he’d been happy to have someone watching over it when he’d been overseas. Before Madagascar, he’d worked at different bases all over South East Asia, collecting seeds, helping various universities and botanical gardens set up their own seed banks, searching for species that had yet to be named and catalogued.
But then the news had come about Kelly’s diagnosis, and he’d come home and moved in himself. There was no way Kelly could have managed through her surgery and chemotherapy without him.
The Head of Tropical Plants job had come up shortly afterwards and he’d jumped at it. The perfect solution while he stayed in London and helped his sister with her two rowdy boys, and while he enjoyed the chance to work closely with his favourite plants, to see if he couldn’t produce and name a new variation or two, it had just confirmed to him that Alan was right. This wasn’t what he wanted long-term.
‘It’s been over a year now,’ Alan said, ‘and Kelly’s looking pretty fine to me.’
While Alan’s face had been suspiciously blank, there had been a glint of something in his eyes that Daniel didn’t like. Instantly, he was on his feet. Much as he liked his college friend, he knew what Alan was like with women. ‘Don’t you even dare think about my sister that way,’ he said. ‘She’s off-limits.’
Alan held his hands up, palms outwards. ‘Whoa there, mate.’
Daniel sat down again. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. Maybe Alan was right about him being on edge about something. He knew he had a bit of a short fuse, but even the hint of a spark was setting him off these days. ‘She’s been through a lot, Al. The last thing she needs right now is more complications.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ Alan said, his tone full of mock offence. ‘That’s a very nice way to refer to your oldest mate—a complication.’
Daniel’s mouth twitched, despite himself. ‘You know what I mean.’
Alan just grinned at him. ‘Are you sure there’s not woman trouble somewhere on the horizon? Other than your over-enthusiastic ex, that is?’
He shook his head. ‘No, nothing like that.’
However, an image flashed across his brain: a saucy smile playing on bright red lips, the little wiggle in her hips as she’d walked away …
Alan downed a fair amount of his pint and put his glass back down on the bar. ‘In that case, I’d say you really need to get back out to the wilds of God-knows-where again soon.’
Daniel didn’t answer. He knew what he wanted, what he ached for, but as fine as Kelly looked these days she still tired very easily, and with two small boys to run around after that happened on a fairly regular basis. He reckoned he was here for another six months at the very least.
‘I will,’ he replied. ‘When I can. Besides … I’m trying to write a second book.’
The one he’d been planning for years and finally had time to concentrate on.
His friend just snorted. ‘Leave the book for when you’re old and grey. In the meantime, you should do something more than rock climbing to blow off steam.’ He took another sip of his beer. ‘How about deer stalking? One of my father’s old friends has invited us on a weekend at his Scottish castle. I can cadge you an invite.’
Daniel shook his head. Holed up in a draughty old castle with some big city businessmen for the weekend? He’d rather let the deer go free and shoot himself. ‘Not my kind of thing,’ he said firmly.
‘Rubbish,’ Alan replied. ‘We’re hunters, you and I. Oh, not in the traditional sense—but you’re always after that rare bit of green stuff no one else can locate. It’s buried deep in our genetic code, the desire to track and conquer …’
Daniel didn’t add that the tendency to become long-winded after only half a pint was also hard-wired into Alan’s DNA. The best thing to do when his friend got like this was to nod and sip his beer in silence, which was exactly what he did.
Alan made a large gesture with his free hand. ‘Men like us, we need the thrill of the chase!’
Daniel gave him a sideways look. ‘And when exactly do you hunt?’
Alan blinked. ‘I fish,’ he said, quite seriously. ‘But what I mean is that sitting in that nursery, with all those captive specimens neatly laid out in rows, must be driving you crazy.’
Maybe it was. Because how else could he explain falling into a comfortable relationship with Georgia, of not ending it when he should have? When had he ever been the one to take the path of least resistance? All this tame London living must be lulling him into a coma.
‘Don’t you worry about me,’ he told Alan as he drained the last of his beer. ‘I might not be up for tramping through damp heather after a bit of venison, but I’ll find something to keep me from going stir crazy. Anyway, there’s more than one way of hunting—the plants I work with have taught me that much.’
‘Bloody triffids,’ Alan said, waving his hand at the barmaid to order another beer. Alan wasn’t a fan. He preferred trees. Palms, mostly.
But Daniel could have told him that the majority of insectivorous plants had no moving parts at all. Perhaps, instead of taking his frustration at the currently slow pace of his life out on innocent climbing walls, he should follow their example: be patient, keep still and see what life brought his way.
And since, at the moment, life had brought him a nice cold beer, that was what he intended to concentrate on. He took another gulp and let the cool liquid run down the back of his throat.
‘Holy Moly,’ Alan suddenly said, swivelling his head towards the door. He slapped Daniel on the side of his arm to get his attention, and Daniel’s nice cold beer sloshed down his front. It seemed that what life gave with one hand it took with the other.
He swatted at the wet patch on his shirt, then looked past Alan to see what all the fuss was about.
Holy Moly was about right.
Chloe Michaels, the disappearing woman, had reappeared in time for after-work drinks with one of the other women from work—Emma, who was passionate about bamboo and eccentric as they came.
Surprisingly, Chloe doing casual work clothes was every bit as mouth-drying as Chloe Michaels doing smart ones. Those skinny black jeans worked on curves like that—boy, they really did. The ankle-high lace-up boots should have made him think of functional things, like mud and wheelbarrows, but the criss-cross laces brought corsets to mind instead. And then there was the softly clinging grey long-sleeved T-shirt and the leather jacket over the top …
Leather. In his present state of mind that was a very dangerous word.
An itch started, right deep inside him. He suddenly knew that he didn’t want to sit back and be patient, see what opportunities life brought his way. He’d spent too long running from the chaos in his life at the moment, letting circumstances chase him. Looking at Chloe Michaels as she glanced round the pub for a seat, her skin fresh, her lips glossy and pink, he knew what he wanted to do.
Alan was right. It was hard-wired into his Y chromosome.
He wanted to hunt.
Chloe’s heart had stuttered when she’d walked in the door of The Railway. Damn. She should have known it was a stupid idea to go somewhere so close to the gardens. Because there, not more than fifteen feet away, was Daniel Bradford—or Drop-Dead Daniel, as some of the social media sites were now calling him—hunched over a beer. And he was looking every bit as gorgeous as his new nickname suggested.
Nope, she told herself. You’re finished with that crush. It’d breathed its last breath ten years ago, and she wasn’t planning on resurrecting it. Still, there wasn’t any harm in hedging her bets and just keeping out of his way to make sure. She tugged at Emma’s sleeve, about to suggest they try the wine bar farther down the smart little parade of shops and cafés, but Daniel chose that moment to turn round.
Their gazes locked, and the heat filling his eyes short-circuited her vocal cords.
It also made her very angry.
His timing really sucked, didn’t it? Because if he’d looked at her like that a decade ago she wouldn’t be in this mess right now. She might have been in a whole different kind of mess, but at least she wouldn’t have been humiliated beyond belief.
‘Hi, Daniel!’ Now Emma was waving and making her way over to him. Great.
Chloe’s plan had been going so well. She’d been effortlessly avoiding Mr Drop Dead, but maybe she should have guessed it had all been too easy, that she would have to put her resolve to the test at some point. So she tipped her chin up, smiled and followed Emma towards the bar.
It was at that point she realised Daniel was with someone—a good-looking blond—so she transferred her gaze to him, offered him her smile instead. The grin he returned said he wasn’t ungrateful for it.
A dark thundercloud passed across Daniel’s expression and settled there. The skin on the backs of Chloe’s knees started to tingle and the smile on her face set. She didn’t let it drop, though. No need to panic. A quick chat with the two men and she and Emma would be on their way.
She nodded at him. ‘Hey there, Indiana.’
A flash of lightning left that thundercloud and zapped her right between the eyebrows.
She left Emma to gush at Daniel while she turned her attention back to the blond. ‘Who’s your friend?’ she asked, slightly disappointed that there was not even a hint of a tickle at the backs of her knees as she met his appreciative gaze, even though this man was every bit as good-looking as his friend.
‘You two know each other?’ the blond asked incredulously. ‘How come you’ve never introduced us before?’ He held out his hand. ‘Alan Harrison,’ he said, enfolding Chloe’s hand in his own, before turning back to Daniel. ‘And you call yourself a mate.’
‘You’ve only just got back from Greece,’ Daniel muttered. ‘She started while you were away.’
Chloe attempted to release her hand, but it seemed Alan wasn’t quite ready to let go of it yet. She smiled coolly. ‘I’m new at the botanical gardens.’
Alan’s eyes widened. ‘You’re another plant nerd, like us? I’d never have guessed.’
She flinched inwardly at his words, but her smile grew ever brighter on the surface. ‘Guilty as charged.’ Really guilty. So she’d got a good haircut, learned how to apply liquid eyeliner … Deep inside she was still as much of a plant nerd as she’d ever been.
Alan rested an elbow on the bar and casually looked her up and down. ‘You really don’t look like one,’ he said, a slightly wolfish glimmer creeping into his eyes.
Chloe kept her smile fixed. ‘Haven’t you heard?’ She nodded in Daniel’s direction. ‘Thanks to your pal there, plant nerd is the new sexy.’
‘Oh, it really is,’ Emma said in a breathy rush, looking at Daniel.
Chloe pressed her lips together to stop herself from laughing. Daniel’s expression had darkened further, but there was a hint of panic at the backs of his eyes, one she recognised from the day she’d met him hiding from his silver-haired fan club.
But then Daniel looked back at her, and that glint of something changed and warmed. Suddenly, she was the one panicking inside.
She didn’t want him to look at her like that, as if he’d like to …
She wasn’t going to finish that thought. It was far too X-rated. And far too dangerous.
‘What can we get you two ladies to drink?’ Alan asked.
Chloe tried to speak, tried to tell him that it was okay, that she and Emma were just going to find a quiet table in the corner and chat about bamboo, but nothing came out. Not quickly enough, anyway.
‘Gin and tonic, please,’ Emma said loudly.
Chloe didn’t have much of a choice now. It would look really rude if she refused. Still, Emma had to be away in half an hour. How bad could it be? She was going to have to work alongside Daniel occasionally. Maybe this would be good practice.
But she made the mistake of catching his eye as she cleared her throat and said, ‘White wine would be lovely.’ The tingling was back behind her knees, threatening to send rogue messages to her muscles stop keeping her upright and just … melt.
Thankfully, a group of people sitting at a table near them got up to leave. Alan stopped leaning on the bar and motioned in its direction. ‘Shall we?’ He walked over to the table, pulling out a chair for Emma first. Chloe decided she liked him a lot better for that.
She decided it was safer to sit on the same side of the rectangular table as Emma. Alan quickly bagged the seat opposite, which left Daniel no choice but to subject himself to Emma’s adoring gaze.
Chloe chuckled to herself while simultaneously breathing a sigh of relief. Emma was doing a very nice job of deflecting the attention from her. She could definitely handle a quick drink with these two men if her colleague kept this up.
In fact, Emma kept Daniel so completely monopolised with her barrage of questions about a new subspecies of bamboo he’d encountered in his previous job that Chloe was free to sit back, sip her wine and listen to a long story Alan was telling about his trip to Corfu.
Every so often she’d glance across at Daniel. He seemed quite happy to answer Emma’s queries, but when the other woman smiled and fiddled with her hair his expression remained neutral. When Emma leaned forward across the table, he leaned back. Chloe’s amusement at Daniel’s expense waned.
She knew what that was like. Knew just what it was like.
To want him so badly that you threw everything you had into getting him, letting your mouth run away with you, letting your body language go into overdrive. Emma seemed oblivious, though. She just kept ploughing on.
There was no doubt that she was attractive for her age, but as she talked Chloe just itched to suggest a girls’ night in so she could apply serum and a pair of straighteners to that hair. She took a sip of her wine. There were products on the market these days to combat that amount of frizz. If anyone should know, it was Chloe …
Her insides chilled.
There but for the grace of God …
She had not so much a flashback as a flash forward—to who she might have been, had she not subjected herself to that post-graduation makeover.
Stop, she wanted to tell Emma. Don’t do it. He’ll push you away, make you feel small and insignificant, not good enough for him.
She and Emma had chatted enough for her to know that the older woman was unhappily single. Chloe didn’t want her to go home that evening after her failed play for Daniel, look in the mirror and decide that if life handed out report cards, the overwhelming verdict would be could do better.
Should do better. Must do better.
Chloe knew how much that smarted.
She placed a hand on Emma’s arm, grasping at something she’d told her earlier. ‘Didn’t you say you needed to be out of here at seven-thirty?’ she said. ‘It’s almost that now.’
Well, seventeen minutes past, but who was counting?
Emma paused her interrogation and looked at her watch. ‘Oh, cripes! Yes, I almost completely forgot! And I booked this adult education course months ago—the waiting list was huge.’ She dragged her eyes from Daniel and sighed. ‘I’ll have to hear all about Mount Kinabalu another time,’ she said, a hint of trailing hopefulness in her voice.
Chloe stood up. ‘Come on,’ she told Emma, glancing through the vast window that looked over the empty platform. ‘The next train is due in a couple of minutes. I’ll wait with you.’
‘You can’t go yet,’ Alan said, leaning past her to place a couple of full glasses on the table. ‘I got you another wine.’ Chloe hadn’t even realised he’d left to go to the bar.
Emma glanced between Chloe and Alan and a little smile curved her lips. Chloe started to shake her head. No, she wasn’t interested in Alan, and she didn’t want Emma’s attempt at ‘subtle’ matchmaking to make him think otherwise. Unfortunately, despite her love of bamboo, it turned out that Emma wasn’t very good with sticks—because she’d obviously got the wrong end of this one.
‘No, you stay,’ her colleague said, grinning at Alan. ‘There’s no need for you to miss out because of me.’
‘Uh—’ Chloe didn’t get any further with that sentence, because Emma had scooped up her bag and her coat and was heading for the exit.
Alan pressed a full glass of wine into Chloe’s hand before calling after the disappearing Emma. ‘Another evening class?’ he shouted. ‘What is it this time?’ then he took another sip of his drink.
Emma stopped and turned in the middle of the room. Chloe could only half see her it was so crowded. ‘Pole dancing,’ she called back cheerily, and suddenly the whole pub was very quiet. Apart from the sound of Alan softly choking on his beer, of course.
CHAPTER THREE (#u33619845-840c-5dda-a8b5-4a5c124c81ad)
CHLOE LOOKED AT an equally flabbergasted Daniel and they both burst out laughing. Whether it was at Emma’s parting shot or Alan’s beer-fuelled snorting from the other side of the table, neither of them really knew. But the urge to giggle subsided quickly when she found herself staring across the table at Daniel Bradford. He wasn’t finding the whole thing funny any more, either.
She tugged at the collar of her leather jacket with a finger. Hot. That was what she was finding the whole thing now. Her feet were tingling and her cheeks felt flushed and a delicious warmth was spreading deep inside. And it had nothing to do with the therapeutic effects of having a good laugh.
She swallowed.
Unfortunately, it had everything to do with the not-so-therapeutic effects of staring deep into Daniel Bradford’s eyes and wondering what it would be like to kiss him.
She closed her eyes as she took her next sip of wine, breaking the connection.
Nope. Been there, done that, survived the train wreck. Just.
Alan, who had obviously now recovered from his coughing fit, came and sat in the seat beside her and draped a well-toned arm across the back of her chair. ‘You’re not joining her?’
Chloe had to admire the ego that allowed him to bounce back from having lager spurt out of his nose then continue to flirt as if nothing had happened. She shook her head and nudged her chair further away while pretending she was reaching for her handbag.
‘Don’t tell me …’ Alan said, leaning forward slightly ‘… you’re already proficient?’
This time it was Daniel’s turn to choke on his beer.
Too smooth for his own good, Chloe thought as she blinked and looked back at Alan. Still, it didn’t worry her. She could handle him. One of the key pieces of reasoning behind the ‘new and improved’ Chloe was that she’d decided she’d much rather be the kind of woman men ran after than the kind they ran away from. In the intervening decade she’d learned a thing or two about over-enthusiastic suitors—and the disposal thereof.
She just smiled mysteriously and looked away. ‘I doubt you’ll ever find out.’ No point telling him the only poles she was really proficient with were the little green canes she used to support her orchids.
This was her cue to exit. She half stood up and looked at both men in turn. ‘Thanks for the drinks, guys, but I really must be going.’
‘Must you?’ Alan said, half rising from his seat and sporting what he probably considered was his most appealing smile. Chloe glanced over at Daniel. Once again, her blood danced along in her veins to the beat of bongo drums.
Yep. She really must go—before things got totally out of hand.
But then a few things happened in tandem, and she never really got her suitably cool and aloof goodbye out of her mouth. Alan’s phone rang and he jumped up, pulled it out of his back trouser pocket and answered it. However, it seemed that Daniel thought Alan was making an ill-advised lunge for her, because he shot to his feet too, eyes flaming, and knocked the table in the process. Chloe’s half-finished wine landed in her lap and the glass rolled onto the floor with an almighty crash.
And then Chloe was also on her feet and wine was running down her T-shirt and trousers. Even her boots were wet. She’d be smelling like the back room of an off-licence on the walk home. Most attractive.
Once again, the whole pub had fallen quiet to watch the show. They were certainly getting their money’s worth tonight. She pushed past Alan—who was very gallantly continuing his phone conversation—shot a desperate look at Daniel and headed for the door.
From the way her audience’s eyes kept switching from her to something behind her, she could tell she was being pursued. She really didn’t know what would be worse: to turn round and discover it was Alan, or to turn round and discover it was Daniel, so she just kept weaving through the narrow tables until she could push her way through the crowd to reach the door.
Once outside, she breathed in a mouthful of cold March air and set off down the street. She lived within walking distance, anyway, and hopefully she’d dry off a little on the way home.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one hurrying down the street back towards the gardens. Her pursuer obviously wasn’t giving up. She decided to play ignorant. Perhaps, if she pretended she didn’t know someone was following her, they might just give up and go away.
It didn’t work. And with every step Chloe’s blood pressure rose until she thought her curls would stand on end. Eventually, she stopped and spun round so fast her pursuer almost crashed into her.
She was inches from a broad chest. ‘What?’ she asked it hoarsely.
The chest moved up and down and she could hear him breathing. She must have been walking a lot faster than she’d thought. He didn’t say anything, though, so she tilted her eyeballs upwards until she could see that it was Daniel Bradford staring back down at her.
He held up one of the little bar towels that all good pubs had stocked away somewhere. ‘You had wine on your jacket,’ he said gruffly.
‘Oh.’ She stared at him.
He was still holding up the towel. She was still not taking it.
Slowly, and with surprising gentleness, he took the towel and dabbed at the drips on her left arm, which had now run from biceps to wrist. When he picked up her hand to clean up her cuff, she stopped breathing. From the eerie silence in the dark street, she realised he had too. Simultaneously, they both stopped looking at her sleeve and looked at each other.
Go on, an evil little voice on her shoulder whispered. Pucker up and launch yourself at him again. It might work this time.
No!
No. She’d seen the way he’d looked at Emma that evening. How could she be thinking of taking it one step further? Did she have a strange psychotic illness no one had ever diagnosed? Bradforditis. One look at the man and she was all sorts of crazy.
She wriggled her hand out of his grasp, almost whimpering as the pads of his fingers brushed the soft underside of her wrist, and stepped away.
‘Thank you,’ she said, folding her arms across her chest as best she could. With the engineering marvel of a bra she was wearing, it wasn’t easy. ‘This is my favourite jacket.’
Daniel stepped forward. ‘Look … about Alan …’
She raised a hand, held him at bay. ‘No need. I’m quite used to taking care of myself. He didn’t offend me.’
‘When you ran out—’
She shook her head, cutting him off. Why had she run out? ‘I just … decided I’d rather clean up without an audience,’ she said. ‘Any more drama from our table and someone would have stood up in the corner and started selling ice creams.’
And then Daniel Bradford spoiled all her attempts at backing off and being sophisticated by crinkling up his pale green eyes and smiling at her.
Ping!
Yep. She was pretty sure another thread of her sanity had just snapped.
‘Do you fancy an ice cream?’ he said softly, still smiling.
Chloe let her arms drop by her sides. ‘You know what?’ she said. ‘I really do.’
‘Come on.’ He led her a few shops down to the little express supermarket that was still open. Once inside he strode over to the tiny freezer containing ice creams and slid the lid open. ‘Take your pick.’
She chose a decadent one: two layers of chocolate with caramel trapped between. Daniel grabbed something plainer. And once he’d paid they walked out of the shop, quickly rid the ice creams of their wrappers and walked down the street in silence, only the cracking of thin chocolate and the slurping of ice cream could be heard.
‘Thank you,’ she said, when they reached the end of the short parade of shops and stopped by an old horse trough, now filled with daffodils. ‘For the ice cream and the mop up job.’
He shrugged. ‘No problem.’
He was staring at her lips again. Chloe’s heart began to pound, but Daniel lifted a finger to the edge of his own mouth, not hers. ‘You’ve got a bit of …’
Pulse still thudding in her ears, she shot out her tongue and captured a bit of stray caramel that had stuck to the corner of her lip. Daniel Bradford seemed to be very interested in the process. In fact, he seemed to be leaning in closer to get a better look.
Run.
Don’t think about it, just run.
Ah. That must be the angel sitting on the opposite shoulder from the other little voice. About time it showed up and offered some sensible advice.
He cleared his throat, looked down intently at her. ‘I know this is a bit back to front, that we’ve just had what could be considered dessert …’
She licked her lips again. More out of nervousness than because of stray caramel.
‘But why don’t we round it all up by having a starter and a main course somewhere else?’ He smiled again, and Chloe discovered the caramel had travelled to her knees.
Oh, it was so tempting …
This was what she’d fantasised about, aged nineteen, on many a night in her student digs—Daniel Bradford, looking at her this way, asking her in that deep, earthy voice of his if they could go somewhere alone together.
She shook her head, and just that motion helped the next words out. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea … We’re colleagues. People will talk … and I want to get on at Kew because of what I can do,’ she said quietly, ‘not because people think I’m sleeping with the boss.’
His lips curved into the sexiest of smiles, telling her that he had an answer for that one. ‘There’s no rule against it,’ he said. ‘And we don’t have to broadcast it. It’ll be our secret.’
She shook her head. ‘With the attention you’re generating right now that’s nigh on impossible.’
She was a genius for coming up with that one! It was perfect.
He nodded, pressed his lips together in grim acceptance. ‘I can understand that. My life is a bit of a circus at present. But maybe later, when all the fuss has died down?’
Chloe knew she must be earning brownie points with someone somewhere, because she found the strength to shake her head again, her curls gently moving side to side.
‘Sorry, Indiana. Thank you, though. It was very sweet of you to ask.’
And then she turned and walked away, leaving him staring after her.
It should have felt like a victory.
Daniel marched the half mile from the Princess of Wales conservatory to the tropical nurseries in record time the following morning. He wasn’t in a good mood.
He passed The Orangery restaurant and headed up the main path towards the kids’ play area, then slipped through an iron gate next to the café and left the public area of the gardens behind in favour of the relative sanctuary of the propagation and research greenhouses.
A soursop tree was due to arrive this morning, part of a trade with the botanical gardens in St Lucia, and Daniel wanted to see the specimen for himself. Alan was standing back and supervising while a couple of horticultural students moved the waxy-leafed tree with its spiky fruit from a trolley onto the floor. He turned round when he heard Daniel approaching.
‘You okay?’ he said.
Daniel gave him a weary, having-one-heck-of-a-day nod. ‘Yup.’
A couple of people had asked him exactly the same thing this morning. Why did they keep doing that? It was most strange.
Alan issued a couple of final instructions to the students before shooing them away. When the two lads were gone and the sliding door of the nursery was closed, he turned to look at his boss.
‘There’s something you need to see.’ He gave Daniel a hooded look and pulled his smartphone from his back pocket. ‘I thought you needed to know before it goes viral.’
He punched a couple of buttons then twisted the phone round to show Daniel the screen. Daniel swore loudly and fluently, then snatched the phone from Alan’s hand. Unfortunately, seeing it up close and staring hard at it didn’t make the Internet news headline go away.
Valentine’s man finally trapped? it screamed, and underneath it was a picture of him and Chloe, obviously taken the night before, although he’d had no idea anyone had been walking past with a mobile phone to capture the moment. It must have been when he’d been wiping the wine off Chloe’s jacket, a very innocent pastime, he’d have thought, but this photo showed him holding her wrist and they were staring at each other, lost to everyone else. Chloe’s lips were parted and he was leaning in slightly, making it look as if he were about to kiss her.
Daniel closed his eyes and handed the phone back to his friend before opening them again.
‘This isn’t what it looks like,’ he said.
Alan just shrugged. ‘I knew the minute she walked in the door that you were toast. Can’t blame a guy for trying, though.’
Well, at least Alan was being philosophical about it. ‘Who’s seen this?’
Alan pressed his lips together and shook his head. ‘Not sure. The girls in the café had been cooing over it for half an hour when I stumbled upon them.’
Just when he thought his crazy life was getting back to normal.
‘So … what’s the story with Miss Fancy Knickers?’ Alan said, smiling a little.
Daniel forgot to look cross. ‘Who?’ he asked, genuinely confused.
‘That’s the nickname some of the students coined for Miss Orchid House.’ He held up his hands. ‘It’s not that I don’t appreciate the view, but those shoes and skirts she wears some days are hardly practical wear for a job like ours, even if she is just messing around with flowers instead of digging beds.’ He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘So … are they?’
Daniel’s voice was low and warning. ‘Are they what?’
Alan’s smile upgraded itself into a lascivious grin. ‘Fancy.’
‘Not you too!’ Daniel turned and pulled the sliding door open. ‘I believe the official phrase is: No comment,’ he said just before he slammed it closed again.
He strode away. A couple of the nursery team ducked for cover. Just as well, really. They’d obviously worked out that he was liable to assign the grottiest jobs to anyone who got in his way when he was feeling like this. And, with having to watch Kelly struggling through her chemo for months on end, there had been plenty of days when he’d been in a mood like this.
Fancy knickers. Humph.
No chance of him finding that out at present. He’d barely touched her, let alone got on first name terms with her underwear. And just thinking about said underwear was making it very difficult to calm down.
And it would have to be ‘no comment’ if anyone else asked him about Chloe, because he wasn’t about to tell anyone he’d asked her out and she’d turned him down. That would be too humiliating.
Like what you did to Georgia.
No. That wasn’t the same. Georgia had gone live on air and made the choice to publicise her ill-advised proposal. That hadn’t been his fault at all. He’d asked Chloe out in private, just the two of them. Or so he’d thought.
Still, if he was feeling a fraction of the mortification Georgia had felt on Valentine’s Day, it was no wonder it had taken her a month before she’d been able to face him in person. That must have been the pits.
Oh, heck.
Georgia.
He had a pretty good idea she hadn’t seen this yet, and when she did she was going to kill him. He’d been able to tell from her expression yesterday that she was still feeling raw, even if she agreed that ending it had been the best thing for both of them.
To Georgia it would look as if he’d taken her visit yesterday to go out and bed the nearest available hottie. It didn’t help to know he’d been on that train of thought himself last night, hardly stopping to think how it might look to anyone else. And Georgia had always had a bit of a thing about women like Chloe …
Oh, bloody hell. Chloe.
When Georgia was finished with him, Chloe would bring him back to life and make him suffer a second time. What a mess.
He yanked the greenhouse door open and strode out into the fresh air. There was only one thing to do: he had to talk to both of them before they found out about it from anyone else.
The morning had been a hectic one and Chloe decided to go and sit on a bench to eat her lunch. While it was cold enough to still need her coat, it was the best kind of day March could deliver, and she was determined to mop up as much sun as she could.
She’d always wanted to work at Kew, ever since she’d trained here. It was the most amazing place in the world as far as she was concerned. And who wanted to hide away in an office or a staff tearoom when there were acres of beautiful gardens on their doorstep?
An empty bench was waiting for her just away from one of the main paths. She made her way to it and sat down, trying to let the tranquillity seep into her, but she hardly took in the carpet of lilac-blue crocuses or the swathes of daffodils covering some of the sloping banks, because her mind was too busy living the events of the night before.
Half of her was screaming at the other half for having walked away from Daniel, and the other half congratulated itself on being safe and sensible. While the two continued to have a tug of war inside her skull, she closed her eyes and let her head slip back, enjoying the sun on her face.
She wasn’t sure how long she stayed like that, but the snap of a twig nearby disturbed her. She sat up quickly and opened her eyes. Her heart had started to pump a little faster when she’d heard that noise and now she knew why. Indiana Jones, minus his secateurs, had come to pay her a visit.
She snapped the lid back on her salad and looked him evenly in the eye. That was the sort of thing New Chloe did. That girl wasn’t scared of anything.
However, for the first time in years she was aware of another presence at the fringes of her consciousness. Deep down inside, another Chloe—the naive frizzy mouse—was huddled in a corner, twitching.
No, she thought. That sad, geeky girl is dead. Something far better has risen from her ashes. She clamped down hard on the ghostly presence. That was all it was. A memory. An echo.
‘Don’t suppose you have another ice cream on you?’ she asked, closing her eyes again briefly. ‘It’s more the weather for it today.’
He shook his head and silently pulled a smartphone with a large screen from his pocket. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said as he handed it to her. ‘This isn’t anywhere near as nice as ice cream.’
Chloe scrolled through the whole blog entry carefully, reading every word. It was the picture that did the most damage, though. In the grainy photograph she was looking up at Daniel as he leant towards her, her eyes wide, her lips … waiting.
She handed the phone back to him without saying anything, not wanting to see it any more. She must have made a face, because he shook his head and then said, ‘You’ve every right to be upset.’
It wasn’t that. She wasn’t upset that people thought she was romantically involved with Daniel Bradford. It might make her life at Kew a little more complicated, sure, but it was hardly anything to get her knickers in a twist about. No, what she was really worried about was that photograph.
‘How many people have seen this?’ she asked, looking straight ahead, eyes fixed on the Georgian orangery that now served as the gardens’ main restaurant.
She heard the fragments of pine cones and twigs beneath his feet crunch as he shifted his weight. ‘There’s no way of knowing, but I think we have to assume everyone.’
Chloe nodded. Okay. She could cope with this. People might see the picture, but they wouldn’t recognise it, wouldn’t know what it meant.
She turned her head to look at him, made her cheek muscles tighten to pull the corners of her lips upwards. Then she shifted along the bench and made room for him. He blinked, confusion etched into his features, and sat down.
He was probably expecting a scene. Lots of women did scenes. Luckily for him, New Chloe had banished them from her life. She only did confident and breezy and unfazed.
‘So … what do we do now?’ she asked, leaning back and feigning a relaxed posture.
He stared intently at her for a moment. ‘That’s up to you,’ he said. ‘I could contact the blog, make a statement …’
Chloe thought for a moment. ‘No … I don’t think it’s worth it.’
Unfortunately, the old adage was true: pictures did speak louder than words, and that one of her and Daniel was gabbling uncontrollably, contradicting any carefully worded denial they could come up with. There was no point.
‘Are you sure?’ The closed, slightly guarded look he’d been giving her softened. Chloe nodded brightly. She didn’t want his concern, didn’t want to see any more flashes of that warm, more caring side she’d just glimpsed of Daniel Bradford. Things were hard enough as it was.
She stood up and walked a little bit before turning back to face him. ‘It’d be like shouting into the wind. People will think what they want to think, no matter what we say.’
Daniel scowled. ‘We can’t just sit back and do nothing.’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t say we should do nothing. I just said we shouldn’t bother contacting the press to deny it. We don’t have to go on the offensive to beat this thing.’
He looked at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. To Daniel Bradford, she probably was. She smiled. Properly this time.
She walked over to him, slid the phone from his hand without touching his fingers and showed him the picture. ‘It’s not as if we’re in a full lip-lock,’ she said, ignoring the shiver that ran up her spine at the thought. ‘It’s innocent enough. I think we should just ignore it, go on as normal. People will soon realise there’s nothing in it.’
Daniel took the phone back from her, and this time their fingers did touch. And the way his eyes lit up, she guessed it wasn’t entirely an accident. She pulled her hand away and stuffed it in her coat pocket, where it continued to tingle.
‘No comment?’
‘No comment,’ she agreed. ‘Perfect. That’s exactly what people say in circumstances like this.’
Daniel stood up. ‘You’re saying you just want to ride whatever comes, ignore it?’
She nodded again. She was good at ignoring things.
Daniel shook his head as he put the phone back in his pocket.
‘You haven’t given an interview since Valentine’s Day, have you?’ she asked.
‘No …’ He looked away and then back at her. He was still frowning, but now she could tell he was turning her idea over instead of just resisting it. ‘I suppose you’re right. Starting a dialogue may just increase the frenzy.’
Chloe walked forward, sat down on the bench and picked up her salad box again. ‘Great. All sorted,’ she said, unclipping the lid.
Daniel stared at her, brow still furrowed. He seemed on the verge of saying something, but he finally said, ‘I’d better go and give Alan back his phone.’
She smiled back and waved her fork slightly before popping a cherry tomato in her mouth and swallowing it almost whole. ‘Well, if Alan is as addicted to his smartphone as I am to mine, you’d better hurry. He may already be having withdrawal symptoms.’
Daniel gave a wry smile and stared at the phone, as if he couldn’t quite believe in the seductive pull in that little bit of technology. ‘I appreciate you being understanding about this,’ he said as he put it back in his pocket.
‘No problem,’ she said, managing to sound fairly normal, although she was fairly sure that tomato had lodged itself somewhere in her throat. ‘And if Alan is shaking and sweating when you get back to him, I recommend an early lunch break. Half an hour of Vengeful Ducks should get him back on track.’
‘Let me thank you somehow,’ Daniel said, lowering his voice, and an irresistible little glimmer of naughtiness twitched his mouth into an off-centre smile. ‘How about dinner?’
Chloe blinked slowly and licked her lips. ‘I thought we talked about this last night,’ she said, looking at her salad and using her fork to tease a bit of carrot.
When she looked back up at Daniel he was still smiling at her. It took all she had not to fling her salad to one side and have him for lunch instead.
‘Can’t blame a guy for trying,’ he said, then nodded and headed back towards the nurseries.
When he was out of earshot Chloe let go of her intercostal muscles and allowed the coughing fit she’d been holding back to take over. Eventually, the tomato made its way down the right hole.
She put her salad box down on the bench beside her, put her elbows on her knees and rested her face in her hands. She really didn’t want to go back to who she’d been when she’d first met Daniel. That Chloe had been a nice enough girl, the class swot, always excelling at everything. She hadn’t cared that she hadn’t followed the latest fashion trends or had only a passing acquaintance with the opposite sex. Because that Chloe had known that everything came easy to her, that she’d hardly ever had to try to be good at anything.
And then Daniel Bradford had walked into her life and had shown her exactly where she’d been lacking.
She hadn’t realised she wasn’t any good at being a girl until he’d come along. And that was a pretty important thing when you were one.
For a girl who’d never failed at anything, crashing and burning so spectacularly in the male-female stakes had come not just as a shock, but a reality slap. That was what the grown-up world was all about. And nice-but-geeky Chloe just hadn’t been cutting it.
She couldn’t have that.
Right from an early age her parents had pushed their rather precocious only child to excel, to be the best at everything she did. So how had she failed at something so basic, something that was supposed to come naturally?
She drew in a breath and sat up. It didn’t matter any more. She’d fixed it. Now being not just a girl, but a woman, was something Chloe Michaels got top marks in, so she really shouldn’t worry.
A wisp of breeze curled itself around her, lifted a strand of hair and pushed it across her face. She brushed it aside. There was no point in dwelling on the past—she had a problem in the present that needed fixing.
Unfortunately, the root was the same: Daniel.
What was she going to do about him, about this stupid article?
Ignore it, she told herself firmly. That’s what you’ve got to do. Ignore the stupid blog. Ignore the way Indiana there makes your skin tighten and your pulse zing. Most of all, ignore that horrible photograph.
A cold feeling spiked through Chloe and she masked it by sitting up and spearing another vegetable, chewing it quickly then swallowing it fast.
Yes, ignore the fact that, despite the trademark blonde curls and the red lips, she hadn’t recognised herself in that photo. Not the version of herself she was today, anyway.
Because, in the grainy greyness of that mobile phone picture, it hadn’t been ‘new and improved’ Chloe staring up at Daniel all wide-eyed and breathy; it had been the Mouse.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u33619845-840c-5dda-a8b5-4a5c124c81ad)
DANIEL CAUGHT A flash of colour out of the corner of his eye as he flicked a paintbrush full of pollen over a plant he was trying to propagate. Instinctively, he swung round to find it again.
Just a brightly coloured plastic bag one of the staff had walked past the door of his nursery with. Not a pink shoe, or an emerald blouse or even a pair of smiling ruby lips.
He stood up and scrubbed a hand over his face.
He was losing it, wasn’t he?
Just a hint of colour, which he now seemed to associate with Chloe, because everyone else here wore variations of brown and green and navy blue, or a scent like her perfume—an easy mistake to make in a greenhouse full of flowers—and he’d react. He’d seek first and think later, making him just like the insects who were lured by the smell and hue of the plant he was tending. They couldn’t help it.
He couldn’t help it.
Another dash of soft pink at the edge of his peripheral vision. He turned immediately, then swore.
This time it was Chloe, popping her head in the door of one of the other rooms and asking one of the horticultural students something. She was wearing a top that clung in all the right places. She smiled at the two young men, was charming and poised. Just as she was with him. No difference.
No difference at all.
It was driving him mad.
He’d tried everything, every trick up his sleeve—every look, every line—and she was still completely unaffected.
He bowed his head and turned his attention back to the bulbous Nepenthes hamata he was working on. Most people thought of plants as pretty things, but this specimen was dark and fierce-looking. He thought it was beautiful, but with vicious-looking black teeth round the opening of the pitcher it resembled something out of a science-fiction movie more than a bloom fit for a bridal bouquet.
He was trying to cross it with another species that was a deep purply-black. If he succeeded, he’d have a plant that would give even Sigourney Weaver nightmares.
He glanced up again, but realised he was subconsciously searching for soft pink, and made himself focus on the plant instead.
Not her. This plant wouldn’t scare her. In fact, nothing seemed to rattle her, and he both admired and resented that ability. Chloe Michaels was like her own unique subspecies of womankind. Bred to resist him.
And, with all the lurid rumours flying round about them, her apathy just rubbed salt into the wound. Maybe it was just stubbornness on his part, an unwillingness to admit defeat?
A fly buzzed round the Nepenthes, alighting on the slippery edge of the plant’s mouth and climbing inside. Daniel knew that was the last he’d see of it. The waxy interior would prevent any escape.
He studied the plant once again. So beautiful, but so deadly, luring most unwitting insects in with the promise of sweetness but the reality of slow drowning and digestion.
He heard heels on the concrete floor, sensed a patch of pink walk past his nursery door, but, despite the urge to turn, he kept his eyes trained on the shiny black teeth at the gaping mouth of the pitcher.
Maybe he would do well to learn a lesson from that fly.
Emma slid into the empty chair next to Chloe in the Orangery restaurant. It was a bright May afternoon, temperatures approaching those of high summer.
‘So …’ Emma said, leaning in close and lowering her voice. ‘How are things going between you and the gorgeous Daniel?’
Chloe stopped chewing. If she had to say the equivalent of no comment just one more time she thought she’d scream. Even if it had been her clever idea.
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ she said, after swallowing her mouthful.
Emma just grinned at her. When the rumours about her and Daniel had first surfaced Emma had given her a wide berth, but now she’d decided to buddy up with Chloe and live vicariously through her colleague’s fictitious love life.
‘I know that’s the official line,’ Emma said, her eyes gleaming over the top of her soup bowl, ‘but everybody knows there’s more to it than that. Come on … just one juicy detail … please?’
Chloe’s eyebrows raised. ‘Everybody? Still?’
‘Pretty much,’ Emma said as she slurped butternut squash soup off her spoon.
Chloe stared at her sandwich in dismay. She’d hardly seen Daniel in the last few weeks, let alone spoken to him. This ‘deny everything’ tactic had given her the perfect excuse to keep her distance.
‘I don’t know how you’re managing to be so discreet,’ Emma added between mouthfuls, so enthusiastic she dribbled a big glob of orange soup down her front. ‘If I owned a man like that, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off him—at home or at work.’
Chloe closed her eyes. It didn’t matter what they did, did it? They were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. Keeping their distance, only nodding at each other in hallways when they passed, was just as much a confirmation of a steamy relationship as if they’d stripped naked and done it in the middle of the Palm House.
But it had worked. Media attention on Daniel and his ex had lulled. Thanks to that blog article, Daniel wasn’t The One Who Got Away any more; he was The One Who’d Been Snared. Nowhere near as appealing. The women of London were moving on to pastures new.
‘How’s the pole dancing going?’ she asked Emma, and thankfully her friend took the bait.
‘The course finished and I’ve switched to belly dancing. You should try it!’
And as Emma gushed on about her new hobby an idea solidified in Chloe’s head.
She would go and talk to Daniel, suggest they end this no comment nonsense. She felt as if invisible ropes, projected by other people’s minds, were tying the pair of them together, each day becoming tighter and tighter, and it was making her itchy. It was time to break free.
And, thankfully, since Alan had also mentioned that the carnivorous plant display in the Princess of Wales Conservatory was being updated today, she knew just where to find him.
When Chloe entered the Wet Tropics zone of the Princess of Wales Conservatory she almost bumped into a woman in a raincoat standing at the slope that led down to the lily-pad pool.
‘Sorry,’ she said, but the woman didn’t hear her. She was too busy staring at something on the other side of the pond. Chloe followed her gaze and quickly worked out why. Not bothering to wait for a ladder or any other suitable piece of equipment, Daniel had climbed outside the railing of the stepped walkway that led from the pond’s edge over the water to the upper level. His attempts to hook a recently planted basket of trailing pitchers from a chain suspended from the ceiling were drawing quite a crowd.
Chloe folded her arms and enjoyed the view. She knew he relished finding plants in inaccessible places, particularly mountainsides, and he seemed totally at home hanging off the walkway, his feet pressing down onto the edge of the concrete path and the taut muscles of his outstretched left arm gripping onto the railing. His T-shirt stretched tight across his back and when he leaned a little bit further, exposing a band of tanned skin between hem and belt, there was a collective female sigh from the crowd of onlookers.
Chloe almost joined in herself. This was what had attracted her to him in the first place as an impressionable young student. Not just the good looks, but his passion for his area of study, the way he flung himself wholeheartedly into everything.
She frowned. While present-day Daniel obviously still liked a physical challenge, if she compared him to the Daniel she’d crushed over in her student days she realised there were subtle differences too. A decade ago he’d smiled more, laughed more. Present-day Daniel seemed more tense, more self-contained. Less … happy.
The woman next to her made a funny noise. Chloe turned to look at her. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Oh, yes,’ the woman replied emphatically, her eyes still fixed on Daniel. ‘Just getting up my nerve.’
Chloe stared at her for a second and began to walk quickly towards the crowd by the pool. A strange tickling under her skin told her she needed to get to him, and she needed to get to him fast. As she neared the pool he disappointed the sighing onlookers by finishing his task and hopping back over the railing to stand on the walkway. The round of applause he received took him completely by surprise.
She was just trying to fight the tide of the dispersing crowd when the woman she’d bumped into earlier dashed past her and ran up the ramp towards Daniel. He was facing the other direction but he must have heard her approach, because when she was within a few feet of him he turned round.
The woman skidded to a halt, fiddled with the buttons of her raincoat, then ripped the flaps open.
Chloe pushed her way through the onlookers and ran up the ramp behind her. Even from that vantage point she could see there was way too much bare skin under that coat. Daniel just stared at the woman, eyes on stalks. And not in a good way.
Everything stopped. The only thing moving was Chloe and the only noise was the overhead misters, hissing their displeasure. Exactly why she was racing to Daniel’s side she wasn’t sure; she just knew she had to do something.
When she reached the woman, she noted—thank goodness—that it wasn’t as bad as she’d first feared. At least she was wearing a set of sexy black lingerie … and a message, written on what looked like permanent marker on her torso.
I do, Daniel, it read. Do you?
He just stared at the writing, a look of frozen horror on his face.
Chloe stared too, unable to work out just what kind of desperation drove a woman to do something like that, but then her gaze drifted from midriff to face. What she saw there was possibly even more shocking.
Not just desperation but longing.
The same kind of longing she’d seen in the mirror all those years ago when she’d first met Daniel. The agitation she’d felt while she’d been pushing her way through the crowd quickly turned to sympathy.
‘I … I …’ Daniel managed to stutter, and suddenly Chloe knew exactly what she had to do.
She hitched the fallen raincoat from round the woman’s elbows and draped it across her shoulders, then she went to stand beside Daniel. After taking a deep breath, she slid her fingers into his.
He did a good job of hiding his flinch of surprise, and a second later his larger, stronger hand closed firmly around hers.
The woman’s slightly glazed expression melted into one of horror. ‘You’re … you’re the girl in the picture,’ she said, her voice high and wavering, ‘on that website …’
Chloe nodded and moved close to Daniel, pressing herself into his side. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’
The woman nodded and clutched the coat around herself. ‘Oh, God,’ she muttered. ‘I feel so stupid.’
Chloe stepped forward, but it seemed Daniel was reluctant to let go of her hand. He still hadn’t moved and his jaw was set in a hard line. She shot him a work with me look and he unclenched his hand enough to let her wiggle her fingers free.
She put her arm around the woman and led her further along the walkway, high above the Wet Tropics zone and through a glass door into another section, away from the staring crowd.
‘I’m so sorry,’ the woman said. ‘I saw that picture of you two online, but there’d never been anything more. I didn’t realise you two … I thought he was available.’
‘It’s okay,’ Chloe said softly. ‘I understand. He … he has this weird effect on people. On women.’
He certainly had a weird effect on Chloe.
Tears slid from between the woman’s lashes. She nodded and looked at the floor. ‘He just looked like … seemed to be … I don’t know … the kind of man who’d really know how to look after a woman.’ Her head jerked up. ‘Is he?’ she asked, slightly desperately, her fierce gaze demanding Chloe made eye contact.
Chloe didn’t know what to say to that. She hardly knew Daniel, not really. And the truth was she’d been on the receiving end of one of the most humiliating and mortifying moments of her life at his hand. She certainly hadn’t felt very special or looked after at that moment.
But this woman didn’t need to hear that, and there was something in the tone of her question that begged for something positive to cling to from this whole sorry experience.
Chloe spotted a couple of the Kew constabulary slowly making their way towards them. She didn’t know what experiences this woman had had with the opposite sex to get herself in this state, but they couldn’t have been good ones. Maybe she just needed to know that all men weren’t rats, that there were some good ones out there.
She thought about the way Daniel tended his plants, how gentle and patient he could be. Now, if he could bring some of that into his personal life, he really would be a catch. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to give the right answer. She met the woman’s gaze.
‘Yes, he is,’ she said quietly. And as the two constables reached them she reached down and squeezed the woman’s hand.
‘I think she might just need a strong cup of tea and a sympathetic ear,’ she told the constables. ‘No harm done.’
The female officer of the pair smiled and nodded, and Chloe let out a breath. She really hoped the poor woman would get the help she needed.
As for Chloe? Well, maybe she was in need of a little help herself.
No harm done. Really?
She wasn’t so sure about that.
Because she knew that by her actions a few moments ago she’d announced to the onlookers, including Kew staff, and maybe even to the whole world—via the considerate people who’d silently recorded the whole episode on their smartphones—that she and Daniel Bradford were a couple.
The crowd, who were far too nosey to disperse, watched along with Daniel as Chloe re-entered the Wet Tropics zone and walked back towards him. Her chin was high and her make-up perfect. She looked so in control, so assured …
So different from that crazy woman in the raincoat.
The contrast soothed his soul.
At least, it did until she was right in front of him. Just as she reached him he saw a flicker of something else behind the perfection, something in her eyes as she looked up at him—uncertainty, blended with a pinch of nerves.
That shook him.
For weeks now she’d had him convinced that she was impervious, iron-clad. Chloe Michaels was merely a delectable package he was itching to unwrap. A prize to be won. So it was a shock to be reminded that she was a real woman, one maybe, that still had all the idiosyncrasies and puzzling insecurities they seemed to be preprogrammed with.
But then the something he’d seen was gone, and she was back to normal—all gloss and glamour. All colour and scent. He breathed out, relieved that she’d tucked whatever it was he’d seen away, out of reach, and he didn’t need to worry about it any more.
He didn’t say anything to her, just closed the distance between them, caught her hand in his, then led her out of the Princess of Wales Conservatory.
Once outside they kept walking, still joined, far away from the glasshouse, up the Broadwalk and on. They stopped briefly by the lake in front of the vast Palm House.
‘We need to talk,’ he said, ‘about what just happened back there.’
She nodded.
‘Somewhere private,’ he added.
They turned their heads in unison and looked at the Victorian marvel of curved white iron and thin panes of glass not more than a hundred feet away. Although it was one of the prime visitor spots at Kew, and unlikely to be empty, it was filled with drooping plants and massive leaves. Daniel knew there were plenty of places to hide if one knew where to go.
Once inside, he ignored the ‘No Entry’ sign at the bottom of one of the ornate spiral staircases that led from the floor of the Palm House to the gallery that ringed the dome. ‘They’ve just finished trimming the giant bamboo,’ he explained, ‘so we should be the only ones up here for now.’
Chloe nodded and let him pull her up the stairs, unable to say anything sensible. She’d been fine while the whole drama had been unfolding back in the Princess of Wales Conservatory, cool as the proverbial cucumber, but now, as the damp heat of the tropical greenhouse seeped beneath her clothes and moistened her skin, she couldn’t stop thinking about the woman in the raincoat.
The way the crowd had looked at her, with a mixture of curiosity and disgust … The poor woman had seemed so lost and desperate. How had she not known that what she was about to do would be a horrible mistake?
The heels of Chloe’s boots clanged on the scrollwork metal steps and she shifted her weight so she was treading on the balls of her feet. She felt as if she’d left her stomach on the iron-grated floor below them. The air grew hotter and wetter, making it hard to gulp it in as she climbed.
Ten years ago, was that how Daniel had seen her? Had he felt that same mix of revulsion and pity? She shivered at the thought.
They’d reached the top of the curling staircase and she paused, taking in a steadying breath before following Daniel down the narrow gallery until they were almost completely hidden from view by a giant palm and a bushy cannonball tree.
Daniel turned and looked at her.
Yes, this was the expression she wanted to see on his face. Not a hint of revulsion. Slighty perplexed, if anything, because he’d lost that perpetual frown and his expression was the most open she’d ever seen it.
‘Thank you for what you did back there. I had no idea how to handle that gracefully. After Georgia … I just didn’t want to say the wrong thing.’
Chloe couldn’t help but smile, just a little. Hanging off bridges and scaling mountains were what Daniel Bradford was graceful at. The interpersonal stuff, not so much.
He shook his head. ‘This whole thing, ever since that stupid radio show, has been crazy.’
‘I’m hoping today’s particular manifestation was a one-off,’ Chloe said, feeling less scorn for the woman than was coming out in her voice. For some reason, she didn’t want Daniel to know that she’d identified with the poor soul at all.
He shook his head, looked away for a second, and the tug on her hand as his weight shifted reminded her he hadn’t let go of it. She should step back, make it look natural, but she should break contact.
She should. But she didn’t.
‘I don’t know how I’m going to take nine more months of this.’
‘Nine months?’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘I didn’t realise there was a set timescale for Valentine’s-related insanity. Or an expiry date.’
One corner of his mouth twisted. ‘No, it’s not that. I’m getting out of here—going on the expedition with the South Asia team. Early next spring I’ll be back in Borneo and all this so-called civilisation will only be a distant nightmare.’
Nine months? Chloe didn’t like the way her chest squeezed at that thought.
‘It’ll die down,’ she said.
He frowned. ‘That’s what I thought at first but, if anything, it’s getting worse.’
‘I heard your ex on the radio yesterday,’ she said, ‘doing her monthly spot about her bounce-back year.’
Daniel looked thunderous. ‘I can’t really hold it against her—the radio station is making her do it—but it’s the broadcasting equivalent of a full moon. Brings out all the crazies …’ His expression softened. ‘You helped, though. That woman backed off when she thought we were together.’
Chloe nodded. ‘I guess the cat’s out of the bag—even if it was an illusory bag and an illusory cat. No comment isn’t going to cut it now.’
He gave her an uneven smile. ‘If today was anything to go by, No comment wasn’t cutting it anyway.’
There was that.
She sighed and gently slid her hand out of his. He didn’t stop her. Then she turned and rested her forearms on the gallery rail and stared out over the Palm House, even though, because of the secluded spot they’d chosen, much of what she could see was the dark waxy leaves of the bushy tree in front of her. It was so hot up here. Her jumper was starting to cling and her fringe was growing damp against her forehead.
‘So what do you want to do about it?’ he asked, then leant on the rail beside her, mirroring her pose.
For a long time neither of them said anything but, eventually, a seed of an idea dropped into Chloe’s brain from somewhere, floating on the wind. A few minutes later it had grown into a little green shoot of a plan, new and fresh and unexpected. She didn’t want to see any more women suffering the way that lady had today. And she didn’t think Daniel deserved the embarrassment, either.
She pushed her weight back onto her feet and straightened. ‘Let’s make it work for us,’ she said.
He turned to look at her, clearly unconvinced that was possible. ‘How?’
She took a deep breath. Her heart began to pump faster. This must be what it feels like for them, she thought, for the guys, when they’re gathering up the courage to ask a girl out.
But this wasn’t like that. Not really. Because she wasn’t really asking him out; she certainly wouldn’t risk being refused by Daniel a second time.
So she swallowed her nerves down, then looked him in the eye. ‘I have a proposal for you.’
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_798e0c00-897c-5128-8727-7c923f57956c)
ALARM FILLED DANIEL’S eyes. Chloe could practically hear the word proposal ringing round his head. He was feeling panicked? Good. At least that meant they were on even ground now.
‘Not that kind of proposal,’ she added wearily.
Daniel folded his arms across his chest and leaned back on the opposite railing, close to the curved glass of the Palm House’s roof. ‘What do you mean, then?’
Chloe swallowed. ‘Have dinner with me,’ she said, her heart pumping. ‘Or something else. Once a month—just before Georgia does her latest radio segment. Just like today, it might keep the crazies at bay.’
He blinked slowly. ‘You said you didn’t think it was a good idea to go out with me.’
She nodded. ‘I’m not suggesting we date, just that once in a while we let ourselves be seen together in public, let everyone join the dots. It won’t be our fault if they draw entirely the wrong picture.’
‘And at work?’
‘We do what we’ve been doing. Keep it cool and professional. People will think that we’re trying to be discreet.’
He stared at her for the longest time. Chloe held her breath and refused to fidget. No way was she going to let him see how nervous she felt. She was very glad she let go of his hands now, because her palms were sweating.
It’s not real. You’re not asking him out on a real date …
‘Why are you doing this for me?’ he asked warily.
She shook her head. She didn’t know, really. It was stupid. Crazy.
You do know, a little voice inside her head whispered. You want an excuse to spend time alone with Drop-Dead Daniel, so you can make believe, torment yourself …
No. That wasn’t it. She couldn’t let that be it.
‘Someone told me about your sister,’ she finally said. That was true. ‘Let’s just say I thought you could do with a break.’ That was also true. It just hadn’t been in her head when she’d put her proposition to Daniel.
His lips pressed together. ‘I don’t need your pity,’ he said coldly, and he pushed himself up from the railing and walked off down the gallery.
Chloe let out a huff of frustration and then trotted after him. Damn male pride …
‘It’s not pity,’ she said crossly as she closed in on him. ‘It’s a friend helping a friend. That’s all.’
He stopped, pivoted around to face her. ‘Friends? That’s all?’
She nodded, not trusting her mouth to toe the party line.
He looked beyond her, up to the vast curving glass and ironwork ceiling. Despite his knee-jerk temper, he seemed to be chewing it over.
‘I do confess I’m not being completely altruistic,’ she added, finally finding something sensible to say, something much more slick and smooth and Chloe to say. The sort of thing he’d come to expect from her—ambivalent, flirty, slightly mocking. ‘After all, you’ll be paying for dinner.’ And then she smiled brightly at him, just to prove there was nothing to worry about, that he needn’t be scared of her getting the wrong idea and joining the ranks of his stalkers.
Amusement warmed his previously stony expression. ‘Oh, I am, am I?’
She nodded again. This time because her mouth wasn’t working, not because she was scared it was about to take off on its own.
There was something about his manner that completely changed. One moment he had been closed off, cold, almost backing away from her. But now there was fire in his eyes and even though she’d swear he hadn’t moved he seemed to be getting closer.
Suddenly her cheeks felt very hot. She looked up at him, almost leaning over her.
‘D-Daniel? What are you doing?’
‘If it’s my money we’re going to be spending, my life we’re going to be messing around with, then I get to say what goes.’
Her chin bobbed up and down. She got that. Daniel had been completely blindsided by the morning’s events. He felt out of control. This request was just about reclaiming lost ground, that was all. She could let him have that much.
But then Daniel stepped towards her, pressing his body up against hers, pinning her between him and the wooden rail at her waist. His hands clutched the rail either side of her, his strong, taut arms preventing escape, and Chloe realised just how off her calculation of the situation had been.
It wasn’t lost ground he was about to claim, but her.
He paused for a moment, just as his lips were millimetres from her. Her pulse lurched and her breath came in uneven bursts.
And then he was kissing her, expertly wiping any protest away with his firm lips. Chloe clung to his shirt for support. The difference in their height meant she felt she was arching back over the railing, feeling as if she’d fall at any moment.
But even that fear was quickly erased by the sensations erupting through her body. Sweet heaven, this was better even than she’d imagined it would be. He knew just when to take, just when to tease … Just how to leave her breathless and dizzy, even without the use of his hands, which were still making sure she stayed right where he wanted her.
If Chloe had been able to string a coherent sentence together, she’d have been able to tell him it wasn’t necessary. As much as her brain was screaming for her to run, her body had been waiting too long for this. It was going to enjoy it while it lasted.
And enjoy it she did. Pretty soon her hands were unclenching from Daniel’s T-shirt, exploring his rather fine chest, reaching up to pull him closer so she could really lose herself in him. Suddenly, she was claiming him back. And, damn, if that didn’t just turn him on more. He moved his hands to her waist and for a second she thought he was going to lift her up and sit her on the rail. She grabbed him tighter, hoping he’d remember where they were, just how far she could fall if he lost concentration and let go.
She could feel him starting to lift her, his hands tightening around her ribs. She stiffened, and her eyes flew open, just in time to see him cock an eyelid. He pulled away, a decidedly wicked smile on his face, looking far more pleased with himself than a man had a right to after just such a stunt.
Even though she was pressing into him rather than leaning back over the railing, she still clutched onto him. At least she did until another noise filtered through her consciousness. She turned her head, slightly dazed, to find a small group of people on the ground staring up at them. Some of them were wearing the distinctive blue polo shirts with Kew’s embroidered logo.
Drat. She’d forgotten they’d moved out of the cover of their secluded little corner.
Smiling nervously, she lifted her hand and gave them a little wave. They responded with a round of applause and a couple of wolf whistles.
She turned back to Daniel, keeping her eyes on his chest, and carefully smoothed his T-shirt flat with her palms before gathering the courage to look up at him.
‘I thought the plan was to keep it discreet,’ she said shakily.
Daniel’s grin became even broader. Damn the man for enjoying this!
‘Plans change,’ he said, not in the least bit repentant. And then he stepped away and made tracks to the spiral staircase, whistling as he went.
Chloe walked forwards and rested her forehead against the misty glass on the other side of the gallery. Not only had she not kept her distance from Daniel Bradford, but she’d actually proposed spending more time with him. Alone. In what messed up universe did that idea make sense?
She pressed her fingertips to her lips. She’d never had much self-control where Daniel had been concerned, and now look where it had got her. She’d made herself a trap, and she had no idea how she was going to climb out of it.
He found her in the orchid nursery the next morning, working on a plant she’d been growing from a seed that had lost its label during a collections trip. They needed to confirm what species it was, but until the plant flowered it was impossible to know. This one was stubbornly refusing. But Chloe knew all about being stubborn, didn’t she?
The slight hesitation in her movement told him she’d heard him coming, but she carried on with her work. Not ignoring him, just finishing what she was doing. Indifferent, almost.
When she was ready she put the pot down and cocked an eyebrow. ‘Well, if it isn’t Indiana. Here to pound your chest?’
Daniel grinned at her. The way he was feeling this morning, a little chest pounding wouldn’t be amiss. ‘Don’t know what you mean.’
‘That’s what that kiss was about, right? Putting on a good show, some macho attempt to mark me as yours?’ She shook her head. ‘All those jungle plants you work with must have activated your dormant monkey brain.’
Ouch. He was used to her being witty; he just hadn’t realised she could be so cutting with it. But he liked cutting. It was way better than polite and impervious.
‘Pretty much,’ he said, looking her up and down. Today she was the smartest and slickest he’d ever seen. The pencil skirt had made a reappearance, along with a dark pink top and the trademark red lips.
He was lying, though. He hadn’t had a plan. Not of any shape or any kind. He’d kissed her because he’d wanted to, because she’d been driving him crazy for weeks and he hadn’t been able not to.
Since Valentine’s Day he’d been at the mercy of the situation not of his making and he hated that. And, while Chloe’s idea had merit, it felt an awful lot like being rescued. He hated that more. If anyone was going to be doing the rescuing it was going to be him.
So when the urge to kiss her had hit, he’d gone with it, had taken back control in one swift and delicious move. He wasn’t prepared to regret it. Not after the way she’d responded to him. That had been no play-acting for the audience below. She’d been right there with him, dragging him deeper.
Indifferent? Yeah, right.
Chloe Michaels might do a good job of painting it that way on the surface, but underneath she was as hungry for him as he was for her. She just didn’t want to admit it. Daniel didn’t really care why. Not now he knew it was game on again—and that he’d had the first victory.
‘Well, I’m glad that you got whatever it was out of your system,’ she said starchily and turned her attention back to her orchid.
He moved a little closer. ‘No action replays?’
She pursed her lips and scowled at him. ‘I know the London press thinks you’re God’s gift, Indiana, but I think it’s gone to your head. You’re starting to believe your own hype.’
Daniel just chuckled. He so wasn’t. But Chloe was acting as if he were as sexually neutral as that plant she was tending. He had a point to prove.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘If you don’t like my idea, we’ll scrap the whole thing. Good luck with the next raincoat flasher, though.’
‘I didn’t say I was backing out.’
Far from it.
‘Well, then. We keep it on my terms,’ she said. ‘Strictly platonic. No more stunts like the one in the Palm House yesterday.’
‘What if you cave and end up kissing me senseless?’
She made a scoffing noise. ‘Not going to happen.’
He shrugged. ‘Whatever you say. But if you give me the signals, I’m not going to ignore them.’
She let out a dry laugh. ‘You are so big-headed! And so wrong.’
He so wasn’t. But this was what he’d been waiting for from her. This was all part of the fun, the push and pull of the chase, letting her think she was in charge, when actually he was reeling her in bit by bit. She’d change her tune soon enough.
‘How about that little Italian restaurant for our next outing?’ he said.
Chloe’s expression reminded him of how his grandmother used to look at him over the top of her glasses. Even that made him want to whistle again. Oh, he was going to have so much fun with her. She was going to be worth every bit of this torturous wait.
Because he’d realised what he’d told Alan at the pub was true. There was more than one way to hunt. Chloe obviously didn’t respond to the more direct approach—that only sent her running—so he was going to have to be more clever, more subtle. Just like his plants, he was going to make himself so irresistible to her that she wouldn’t be able to help herself.
He thought of the species of Sarracenia whose tall pitchers contained narcotic liquor, drugging the insects it captured so they didn’t even consider escaping. Chloe would be like one of those happy little flies when he’d finished with her.
‘No Italian,’ she said. ‘I don’t think the grapevine needs any more convincing at present. Yesterday did the trick quite nicely.’ She picked up the pot and examined the moisture level. ‘When’s Georgia’s next on-air segment?’
‘I think it’s the first Tuesday of the month,’ he said.
She put the pot down again. ‘Well, call me in June, then.’
Daniel grinned at her attempt to dismiss him. He’d go, but only because it was part of a bigger plan. He couldn’t help letting her know that, though. He walked over to her, leaned in close and opened his mouth to whisper in her ear. She snapped the small green cane she was holding in half and every muscle in her body went taut.
So not indifferent.
‘Till June,’ he whispered, letting his breath warm the sensitive parts of the ear lobe, and he actually saw the moment she suppressed a shiver.
Two more dates and he’d have her eating out of his hand.
As May bled into June Chloe got more and more agitated. Stupid, stupid idea. What had she been thinking?
Well, obviously, she hadn’t.
She’d resorted to her old way of doing things, reacting on impulse rather than taking a measured decision. It was just that kind of behaviour that had got her into trouble with Daniel Bradford all those years ago, the sort of thing New Chloe didn’t do.
Thankfully, however stupid her plan was, however self-destructive, it actually looked as if it was working. There had been no more ‘raincoat’ incidents, and Daniel had reported a drop in interested female visitors. The plan had its downside too, though. After being so excited to get her dream job as Kew’s Head Orchid Keeper, Chloe now found her working days tense and stressful. She went home every evening with a headache.
It wasn’t that Daniel had repeated the kiss in the Palm House. He’d kept his distance, just as they planned. Physically. That didn’t mean he’d left her alone.
When they passed each other at work—which was often—he’d give her a smile he reserved just for her. Warm, intense … inviting. Just the sort of special smile lovers shared. It was messing with her head, big time. And he knew it.
Then, in early June, just as she’d suggested, Daniel’s phone call came. He wanted to come and pick her up at home, but she made an excuse about having to work late, so he came and collected her from her nursery at the allotted time instead.
They walked through the gardens together to the staff car park. Plenty of people noticed their exit. Chloe could almost hear the whispers as they passed, see the nods and winks behind their backs. It was almost a relief to slide into the passenger seat of his car and shut the world out again. Or it would have been, if the clunk of the door hadn’t created another little universe. A universe where the atmosphere became so hot the atoms danced and shimmered. A universe where she and Daniel were the only occupants. She faced forward and stared blindly at the windscreen. ‘Where are we going?’
He just put the car into gear and pulled away. ‘Somewhere lively,’ he said, and Chloe’s insides unclenched a little.
That was just what she needed. Somewhere busy, bustling with people. Somewhere she wouldn’t be left alone with him.
The car joined the rush-hour traffic through Kew and on into Chiswick. Chloe’s mood brightened further. There were some lovely restaurants here. She scanned the high street as they drove down it, wondering which one he’d picked.
Thai? French? Lebanese?
But when they turned into a side street he didn’t park, even though there were plenty of spaces. Instead he kept driving, turning this way and that until he stopped in a residential street. They were outside a smart brick house with a large bay window and a glossy black front door. He turned the engine off and got out, opened the door for her. Chloe stayed in her seat, clutching her handbag.
‘We’re here?’ she asked. ‘Where are we?’
Daniel did a little bow. ‘My house.’
She swallowed. ‘I thought you said we were going somewhere lively.’
Daniel just smiled. ‘You haven’t been inside yet.’
Run, something inside her shouted. Get out of the car and run.
It was probably her common sense making a last-ditch attempt to save her. She let it scream its frustration then sprint down the road without her.
He held out his hand and she took it, let him help her from the car. Then he ushered her up the garden path and she stood aside while he produced his keys from his pocket and opened the front door.
The minute he’d stepped into the hallway he was practically bowled over by two running bundles of energy. Chloe blinked. It took her a second to work out they were two small boys, one a slightly smaller version of the other, both with Daniel’s grey-green eyes.
He had …? They were …?
But then they both started shouting, ‘Uncle Dan! Uncle Dan!’ and the penny dropped. But the minute that puzzle had been solved another one elbowed its way in. This was where Daniel took girls on a date?
He turned and gave her a rueful smile, a small boy hanging off each arm, and led the way down the hall and into a kitchen-diner in the back of the house, with a lounge area under a conservatory at the far end. A tall, slender woman was stirring something on the hob. Same dark hair with a bit of a kink, same pale eyes. That had to be his sister.
‘Boys,’ she said, ‘try not to pull your uncle’s arms off.’ Then she looked up and smiled at Chloe. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ Chloe said.
‘Welcome to the madhouse,’ she said. ‘I’m Kelly.’ She indicated each of the boys in turn with her wooden spoon. ‘That’s Cal … That’s Ben. Say hello to Uncle Dan’s friend, boys.’
But the boys were too busy wrestling their uncle to the ground. For two people so small, they really knew what they were doing, Chloe thought, as Daniel’s knees buckled and he was felled with a thud.
‘They’ll calm down in a minute,’ Kelly said. ‘They do that every night when he comes in.’ She sighed. ‘Their father took a hike a couple of years ago and the lack of male influence makes them a little full on when they get the chance to do some “boy bonding”.’
Chloe’s eyebrows rose. ‘Beating each other half to death is boy bonding?’
Kelly grinned as she added some chopped tomatoes to the pan. ‘You don’t have brothers, do you?’
Chloe shook her head. Just her. And her doting, but rather hard to impress parents. It took a lot to carry the weight of all that parental expectation on one pair of shoulders. She’d often wished she’d had a sibling or two to share the load. ‘Why can’t they just paint each other’s nails and snivel their way through a good film, like normal people do?’
Kelly laughed. ‘Wow, it’s good to have a bit of sanity around here. I thought I was in danger of drowning in all the testosterone. This house has been a bit lacking in female company since Georgia—’ She bit her lip. ‘Sorry.’
Chloe held up her hands. ‘No, it’s okay. Me and Daniel, we’re just …’
Friends sounded so lame. In cahoots too much like a cheesy thriller. She settled for the safest option.
‘… colleagues.’
Kelly scrubbed the pan with the wooden spoon. Chloe thought she could see a bit of burnt onion refusing to behave. ‘Yep,’ she said, giving the mixture a vigorous stir that made Chloe realise that Daniel wasn’t the only one in the family who liked to get physical, ‘and I’m just Gordon Ramsay.’
Chloe didn’t say much after that. From the past couple of months at work, she knew it was no good to convince her otherwise. And it was an easy enough assumption to make. Why would Daniel be bringing her home otherwise?
The ruckus from the lounge end of the room was getting rather loud. Kelly handed the saucepan to Chloe and went to intervene.
‘Boys!’ she yelled. ‘Pyjamas! Now!’
Instantly, the knot of testosterone on the floor disentangled itself. Then, one by one, they headed towards the stairs, pouts pushing their bottom lips forward. Daniel brought up the rear, copying their expression, which only made them giggle again. The whole scene would have descended back into chaos if Kelly hadn’t given her big brother a clip round the ear.
The boys bounced in the doorway. ‘We want Uncle Dan to read us a story,’ they yelled repeatedly.
Uncle Dan looked up at Chloe, who was still holding the saucepan, and gave her an apologetic look. ‘Do you mind?’
She shook her head. She’d been trying to keep her distance from him for weeks now. Why would she mind if he volunteered to do just that?
Kelly came and took the saucepan from her. Just as well Chloe had heard the thunder of little—and big—feet on the stairs, because Kelly’s verdict on her own cooking was not for children’s ears. ‘I always was crap at cooking,’ she explained. ‘Dan said I should just get some posh stuff to reheat from the supermarket, but I had to decide to go all cordon bleu, didn’t I?’ She tipped the contents of the saucepan into the bin and banged it back down on the hob. Chloe quickly leaned forward and turned the gas off before another catastrophe occurred.
Kelly rummaged in a drawer and produced a fan of takeaway leaflets. ‘Curry, curry, Chinese or curry,’ she said brightly.
Chloe looked at the other ingredients lined up on the counter. Bacon, garlic, chilli flakes … ‘Amatriciana sauce, right?’
Kelly nodded, looking at Chloe as if she were the bearer of ancient and hallowed wisdom.
‘It’d be a shame to waste all that lovely fresh pasta,’ Chloe said. ‘Have you got another onion and more tomatoes? I’m sure I could help … if you wouldn’t mind?’
Kelly looked as if she was going to prostrate herself at Chloe’s feet. She grabbed Chloe’s hand. ‘Please marry him,’ she said, and then she added, ‘As you can see, my tact is as well developed as my culinary skills. Blame it on having two thickheaded brothers. Blunt and direct was what was required round our house when we were growing up. Never quite learned how to switch it off.’
Chloe grinned at her. She couldn’t help liking Kelly. Her say-whatever-fell-into-her-head approach was rather refreshing. There must be something lovely about going through life like that, not having to worry about saying the wrong thing or accidentally showing a part of yourself you’d rather other people didn’t know about.
‘I take it there is wine somewhere in this kitchen?’ she asked.
‘Do you need it for the sauce?’
‘No,’ said Chloe, smiling. ‘I need it in a glass. Now where are those tomatoes?’
Kelly provided both wine and tomatoes. ‘Forget marrying Dan,’ she said as she watched Chloe sweat some finely diced onion. ‘Move in and adopt me.’
Chloe chuckled, and they continued to chat as she made headway in making the pasta sauce. Kelly was more a hindrance than a help, though, and Chloe quickly suggested she put her feet up, saying that looking after pre-schoolers must be very tiring.
She nodded in the direction of the ceiling as Kelly collected her wine glass and flopped on the sofa. ‘He’s great with the boys.’
‘He is that.’ Kelly looked up, a soft smile on her face. ‘He’ll make a really good dad some—’ She froze, scratched her nose and looked away. ‘Forget I said that.’
Inside Chloe was frowning, but on the outside she batted Kelly’s stray comment away and smiled cheerfully back, mentally searching for something to say that would dispel the odd, slightly sad atmosphere that had settled on the other woman.
‘Well, there is one thing I can guarantee,’ Chloe said jokingly as she added some garlic to the pan. ‘It’s that I won’t ever be marrying your brother.’
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_796a11dd-a981-5389-9f4b-07ff962af9e9)
DANIEL PAUSED ON the stairs as he heard Chloe’s voice and smiled.
No marrying him. Ever. That was practically a guarantee.
He bounced back into the kitchen to find Chloe standing at the stove and Kelly lounging on the sofa sipping Merlot. What was wrong with that picture?
‘I invited you for dinner,’ he told Chloe, ‘not the other way round.’
Chloe shrugged. ‘I like cooking, and your sister …’
‘Your sister burnt the crap out of the first attempt,’ Kelly said helpfully. ‘I’ve been banished to the sofa. She won’t even let me help.’
Daniel gave his sister a very brotherly kind of look. ‘And I can see it’s just eating you up inside.’
Kelly held up her wine glass and toasted him with it before downing the remainder in one gulp. He shook his head and turned his attention to his guest.
‘That smells amazing,’ he said. ‘You must be pretty good at this.’
She bowed her head and looked at the wooden spoon as she stirred the sauce. ‘I like picking up new skills, perfecting them.’
Daniel smiled to himself as he and Kelly laid the table. His plan was working. He could tell from the way Chloe hummed to herself as she put the finishing touches to the pasta sauce that she was starting to relax. Just what he wanted.
He didn’t want a date with starchy, let’s-pretend-we’re-being-discreet-at-work Chloe. He wanted a date with the Chloe who’d been within a hair’s breadth of ripping his T-shirt off on the balcony of the Palm House. There was a girl who knew how to have fun.
He’d been given the job of cooking the pasta and she started teasing him when she realised it was overcooked and sticking to the bottom of the pan.
‘Honestly,’ she said, snatching it from him. ‘The pair of you are as bad as each other. I don’t know how those two poor children haven’t starved to death.’
‘I have extensive skills with a can opener and advanced microwave training,’ he told her, quite seriously.
Kelly, who was now sitting at the table, glass of wine in hand, also piped up. ‘And I make a mean chicken nuggets and oven chips.’
Chloe just shook her head.
‘I’ll bet you know how to make fancy pastry and everything,’ Kelly said mournfully as they dished up.
Chloe tried to act nonchalant, but he could see just a hint of self-satisfaction in her reply. ‘I’ve done a cookery course or two,’ she said quietly.
His sister slumped on the table. ‘Ugh. I hate women like you,’ she said dramatically, but the delivery just made Chloe laugh.
Daniel decided he was a genius. Kelly was probably his best weapon this evening. Chloe liked her, despite the fact that, beside his immaculately dressed and perfectly contained date, his sister seemed a little too loud and uncensored. It was like putting an elegant pink orchid and a dandelion in the same pot together: it shouldn’t work. But the two women were getting on like a house on fire and he wasn’t going to do anything to upset that.
Chloe was like one of her orchids, he decided as they chatted over the simple dinner. Beautiful. Poised. Aloof. Just like the graceful flowers she tended, she was almost too perfect to be true.
After dinner he moved to phase two of the plan. Kelly loaded the dishwasher, batting Chloe’s efforts to help away and telling her she’d better leave it to the expert. Daniel made the coffee. Fresh not instant. One thing in the kitchen he could do really well. Then Kelly put her coat on and picked up her handbag.
Chloe’s easy demeanour slipped a little. ‘You’re going?’
Kelly nodded. ‘Big brother here promised he’d babysit tonight. He owes me.’ She gave Daniel a knowing look. ‘First night out with the girls in weeks,’ she said, then she blew them both a kiss and hurried out of the front door before anyone could stop her.
Daniel brought Chloe a coffee and sat down at the table with her. He glanced at the comfy sofa in the conservatory, with ample room for two. That would have been his preferred location, but he sensed he needed to tread carefully now his secret weapon was off to the wine bar to drink cocktails with her girlfriends.
‘For a long time Kelly wouldn’t go anywhere,’ he told Chloe. ‘Too tired. Too self-conscious about her hair. It was very patchy when it first grew back.’
A look of pain crossed Chloe’s features and she absent-mindedly fiddled with the end of a loose ringlet. ‘How awful for her. Girls need their hair.’
He nodded, understanding that now. Personally, he wouldn’t have cared if his hair was down to his knees or in a marine buzz cut, but the wallop Kelly had given him when he’d suggested, very practically, that she should just borrow his clippers and even it all out had let him know just how differently men and women saw this issue.
He and Chloe chatted about easy things. Safe things. Work. Plants. Mutual acquaintances. When she drained her cup, Daniel stood up and reached for the wine bottle. ‘Another glass?’
She looked at him thoughtfully, and then she said, ‘Just half. It was rather drinkable.’
He got fresh glasses from the cupboard as, thanks to Kelly’s post-dinner clearing frenzy, the previous ones were already sloshing around in the dishwasher. But instead of joining her at the table he walked over and placed her glass on the table beside the sofa and then sprawled at the other end.
Chloe looked at him for a second and then stood up and came to join him, sitting neatly and very upright in the opposite corner. ‘No funny business,’ she said, and sipped her wine. ‘You promised.’
He just smiled at her. ‘I don’t think I actually promised, but I did say that it would be up to you to make the first move.’
Chloe’s shoulders relaxed a little, but her expression remained pinched. ‘As nice as dinner was, I don’t see how hiding away in your house is going to help us.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Well, it came about partly because I’d forgotten I’d told Kelly I’d babysit …’ He frowned. ‘In fact, sometimes I think she just pulls that one when she wants a night out, because I don’t remember the original request at all.’
Chloe chuckled, and he knew he was taking the right approach. ‘But then I realised it could help.’
Her eyebrows lifted.
‘Kelly works in the admin office,’ he told her.
‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’
‘News that you’ve been round for dinner will be all around Kew—and I mean the district, not just the gardens—by noon tomorrow.
‘The opening came up a couple of months ago. I saw the notice and suggested she apply. She needed something part-time—something that would fit around the boys and would help build confidence. And, as she told me quite pointedly, to stop her going insane after what seemed like months of being stuck indoors.’
Chloe had been clutching her wine glass against her chest and now she lowered it as she stared out of the windows at the darkening sky. ‘She’s very brave, isn’t she?’
Daniel stopped looking at Chloe, stopped gauging every action and reaction, and joined her in staring out of the window. ‘She says she’s had to be. Wasn’t her choice.’
He knew all about that. Knew all about surviving, not because he was strong and courageous, but because he was still alive and breathing, had found himself trudging onward with no choice about where to put his foot next. Sometimes survival wasn’t a choice but a sentence.
But he didn’t want to think about those dark days in his life. He wanted fun. He wanted to remember the joy in living.
A waft of Chloe’s floral perfume hit him, dragging him back into the present, filling his nostrils and making his pulse kick. He turned to look at her. This was what was important. Now. This night, this woman. What he wanted right now was Chloe Michaels.
He caught her gaze, leaned in closer …
But she wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. ‘I haven’t got any brothers or sisters,’ she said, just the faintest twinge of envy in her voice.
Her parents must have thought they’d won the lottery, then, Daniel thought as he let his eyes rove over her once again. She was beautiful, confident, clever. She’d been their only chance and they’d lucked out. While other people …
Sometimes their only chance was wiped out before it had hardly begun.
He looked away and downed a huge mouthful of wine.
No. He’d shut that door. Done his grieving. He really wasn’t going to think about it tonight. That would really be a buzz kill. He needed to get control of himself, of his thoughts.
But Chloe made it very difficult. He’d start on the track of conversation that seemed totally innocent, trying to get her to let down those polished walls a little more, and somehow he’d end up telling her things he didn’t normally reveal to anybody—like the fact he had a touch of dyslexia, leading to stories about ridiculous errors with Latin plant names during his student days, something that only another horticulturist would truly appreciate. Or how he’d once accidentally leaned against a macaw palm during an expedition and had been picking its thorny black spines out of his backside for a week.
Talking to her was easy. As it had been with Georgia.
A chill rippled through him.
No. Chloe was nothing like his ex. He needed to remember that. This one was smart and savvy and she knew the game. Georgia … hadn’t. But then he hadn’t been playing games with Georgia. As cruel as it sounded, he’d just been passing time. And so had Georgia, she’d just tried to tell herself there was more to it.
But what was he doing thinking about his almost fiancée? He was losing focus. He’d invited Chloe here tonight with one thing in mind: to move forwards in his plan, and while she was relaxed and smiling he should press on.
He put his wine glass down and went to fetch the bottle from the kitchen counter. He filled his glass first then reclaimed his spot on the sofa, a little closer to Chloe this time, and he leaned across to top her up. She trailed off, losing the thread of what she was talking about, and her eyes widened as the wine filled her glass.
He placed the empty bottle on the table behind her head, but didn’t move back. Their faces were only a couple of inches apart now. Unconsciously, she moistened her lips with her tongue, still staring at him.
He let go of the bottle and placed his hand on her shoulder, curling his fingers round her nape. She shivered slightly as his thumb brushed her neck and her gaze dropped to his lips. His core temperature rose.
He slid the glass from her fingers and put it next to the empty bottle. She let him.
He didn’t lean in and close the distance, though. Even though the air seemed to shimmer and thud between them. He’d told her the next move would be hers and he was going to stand by his word.
Okay, he hadn’t left it completely up to her. He’d made a hundred little moves to manoeuvre her to this point, but the final leap would be all hers. There’d be no backing out then. No more running away and pretending she wasn’t interested.
He heard, and felt, the shaky in-breath that parted her lips, watched her eyelids start to slide closed. He closed his eyes too, not wanting to distract himself in the sweet surrender he knew was coming …
There was a crash from the other side of the room, followed by a rhythmic thudding.
‘Uncle Daniel!’
He opened his eyes to find Cal standing almost as close to him as he was to Chloe, looking between the two of them with open curiosity.
Chloe pressed herself backwards into the corner of the sofa and looked away.
‘There’s a crocodile under my bed,’ Cal said, quite matter-of-factly. ‘He wants to eat my toes.’
‘Cal …’ Daniel warned, his voice a little sharper than he’d intended it to be.
‘He says he’s going to gobble me up, bit by bit.’ Cal blinked, the picture of childish innocence. Had Kelly put him up to this?
Daniel was still so close to Chloe that he could feel her chest shaking as she tried to suppress a laugh.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t finding this the least bit funny. He’d had his own plans for this evening. Maybe of a similar pattern—starting with the toes, and working his way up, bit by bit …
Just that thought alone made him ache.
Reluctantly, he got up off the sofa and took Cal back upstairs. A complete search—involving torches—was made of the under bed area, and it was only when Daniel had tucked the duvet in round his nephew and read him yet another story that Cal consented to lie down and close his eyes.
When he got back downstairs Chloe wasn’t on the sofa where he’d left her, but in the hallway, putting on her coat.
‘Thanks for a lovely evening,’ she said. The dazzling smile she wore informed him that whatever barriers he’d managed to coax down in the last half-hour had sprung up again while he’d been hunting for Cal’s crocodile.
Damn.
He couldn’t wait another month to try again. It would seem like an eternity.
‘Are you sure you don’t want another glass of wine?’
Chloe shook her head and her curls bounced. ‘I think I’ve had enough.’ The seriousness that crept into her eyes told him she wasn’t just talking about the Merlot. But he wasn’t quite ready to let her go that easily.
‘Think how much it would help our case if Kelly could tell everybody that you’d stayed for breakfast?’
Chloe sighed. ‘Daniel … That’s not the deal, and you know it.’
Damn again. So close.
‘Maybe,’ he said, smiling slowly. ‘But optimism is one of my most appealing traits.’
At least she laughed. ‘Of course it is,’ she said and patted him on the arm as if he were an elderly aunt. Ouch.
He wanted to ask her to stay, to give him another chance, but it sounded suspiciously like begging inside his head, and he didn’t do begging. Persuading, yes. Pursuing, definitely. But never begging.
The muffled hoot of a car horn outside took him by surprise.
‘That’s my cab,’ she said.
Her cab.
She’d called a cab?
Suddenly Daniel didn’t feel as firmly in control as he had been before. He liked the chase, but this quarry was intent on running him in new and unexpected directions. He couldn’t quite decide whether he loved it or hated it.
‘Night, Daniel,’ she murmured, and then, without a flicker of hesitation or nerves, she leaned in close and pressed her lips gently to his cheek.
And then she was gone into the balmy night air, her little handbag swinging off her fingers.
Daniel shut the door when the cab drove away and gave out a loud growl of frustration.
‘Uncle Daniel!’ The terrified shriek came from Cal’s room, and a few seconds later he was standing at the top of the stairs. ‘The crocodile’s back!’ he said between sobs. ‘And he’s really, really angry.’
Daniel rubbed a hand through his hair and tramped up the stairs, scooping up the small, snivelling boy when he got to the top.
‘Don’t want to sleep in my room,’ Cal hiccupped as Daniel headed across the landing. ‘Can’t I sleep with you?’
Daniel looked at the clock. Not even nine-thirty. When he’d dreamed of an early night, snuggling up with a warm body in his bed this evening, this was not what he’d had in mind.
He took his nephew into his darkened bedroom, making sure the landing light was on and the door wide, and he climbed on top of the covers while Cal slid underneath. It wasn’t ten minutes before he could hear small-boy snoring and the rhythmic smack of Cal’s lips against his stubby thumb.
Daniel lay there a little longer, just to make sure he didn’t wake his nephew when he carried him back to bed. He couldn’t be cross, not really. Both boys had been very clingy since their dad had left and Kelly had slipped into the habit of letting them sneak into her bed if they woke in the night.
As he lay there he stared at the wedge of orange light the street lamp had painted on his ceiling and let out a heavy breath. Chloe Michaels was a mystery to him. One minute she was all wide-eyed and trembling at his proximity, the next she was cool and detached and contained.
As much as he hated all those silly women turning up since George’s proposal, at least they proved something—that he wasn’t totally repellent. Quite the opposite. So why could Chloe resist him so easily? What made her so different? He just had to find out.
Thank goodness for small boys with crocodiles under their beds.
Chloe repeated the phrase to herself a hundred times as she got ready for work the next day.
Normally, she brushed her teeth on automatic, mind drifting, but this morning she watched herself in the mirror, her face free of make-up and her hair hidden beneath a twisted towel. She looked quite different from the woman who’d walked in the door last night.
She’d thought the Mouse was long gone, buried beneath years of being so cool and confident that play-acting had become reality. But she was still there. As Chloe brushed her teeth she occasionally caught a glimpse of her—something about a tightness in her jaw, a flicker of hesitancy in those eyes.
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Fiona Harper
From London to New York…with Love. Chloe Michaels is determined not to fall for new colleague Daniel Bradford – especially as he doesn’t remember rejecting her years ago! But London’s most infamous bachelor has other plans – one date with Chloe every month to deflect the media attention on his love life…and maybe just win her heart for real! After a hard last few years, Daniel’s sister Kelly just wants a steady life – and that means no dating! So she absolutely, categorically should not be fantasising about her boss Jason Knight. But a business trip to the Big Apple-and a rebound fling- could be just what Kelly needs to make her feel alive again…
As a child, FIONA HARPER was constantly teased for two things: having her nose in a book and living in a dream world. Things haven’t changed much since then, but at least she’s found a career that puts her runaway imagination to use!
Fiona loves dancing, so clear the floor if you’re ever at a party with her, and her current creative craze (one of a long list!) is jewellery making. She loves good books, good films and good food, especially anything cinnamon-flavoured, and she can always find room in her diet for chocolate or champagne!
Fiona loves to hear from readers and you can contact her through fiona@fionaharper.com, or find her on Facebook page (Fiona Harper Romance Author) or tweet her! (@FiHarperAuthor)
Tell Me
You Do
Fiona
Harper
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#ub4aa5759-5f06-574b-b10c-09eb449a900f)
About the Author (#u73b06b87-2b75-5de7-aaa7-a529d835ea5e)
Title Page (#ud2a82894-37fd-5a39-9a22-e545196dc292)
Chloe
Dedication (#u0adb1ad1-eee0-5461-af5f-dc5fb373fa29)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Kelly
Dedication (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chloe (#u33619845-840c-5dda-a8b5-4a5c124c81ad)
For Nikki,
an all-round inspiration and great gal to work with!
And for Andy, my own Indiana Jones
with secateurs. x
CHAPTER ONE (#u33619845-840c-5dda-a8b5-4a5c124c81ad)
DANIEL ALWAYS GRUMBLED that his mobile phone rang at the most inconvenient of moments, and it didn’t disappoint him now. Just as he was lifting a delicate Venus flytrap out of its pot, his hands full of roots and compost, his trouser pocket buzzed. Since he refused to assign fancy ring-tones to everyone in his contact list the double ring of an old-fashioned phone told him precisely nothing about the caller’s identity.
Once upon a time, he’d have ignored it—his hands being full of an uprooted Dionaea muscipula and all—but these days he could never quite push the thought from his mind that it might be his younger sister, telling him she was ill again. Or worse, a stranger telling him she’d collapsed and was in Accident and Emergency, and casually requesting he pick her kids up from pre-school.
Reluctantly, he shook the earth off his right hand, cupped the clump of roots and foliage in his left and fumbled in the thigh pocket of his cargo trousers for his phone. He balanced the handset on his shoulder and squeezed his cheek onto it to keep it in place as he attempted to brush more of the compost that caked his fingers off on the back of his trousers.
‘Yup.’
The phone started to slide and he quickly grabbed for it with his still-dirty hand.
‘Daniel Bradford?’ a deep yet annoyingly upbeat male voice asked.
‘Yup,’ he repeated, more focused on trying to replace the prize specimen in its pot with the use of only one hand. It wasn’t going well. He wasn’t planning on dividing this one for propagation yet but it was threatening to do just that.
‘Well, Daniel, this is Doug Harley and you’re live on Radio EROS, London’s most romantic radio station!’
Daniel stood up straight, then twisted round, scanning the tropical nursery at London’s famous Kew Gardens, expecting to see a group of snickering underlings hiding behind a palm in an adjacent room of the sprawling greenhouse. This had to be a prank, right? And, if there was one advantage of working in a place where ninety per cent of the buildings were made of glass, it was that there was nowhere to hide. He’d find them and make their lives hell for this.
But all he could see was a lone horticultural student, wheeling a trolley of seedlings past the door, plugged into his music and oblivious to the world. The rest of the multi-roomed greenhouse was unusually quiet.
‘Daniel?’ the silky smooth voice crooned in his ear.
He pulled the phone away from his head and stared at the display, seriously considering just hanging up. He didn’t have time for this.
‘What do you want?’ he barked at the man as he put the phone back up to his ear. ‘I’m busy.’
There was an equally smooth—and equally irritating—chuckle on the other end of the line. ‘Not too busy for this, Daniel. I promise you.’
He clenched his jaw. The over-familiar manner in which the DJ kept inserting his name into every sentence was getting on his nerves.
‘Convince me,’ he said.
The chuckle again. As if the man was the insider to some joke that Daniel didn’t know about. His eyes narrowed.
‘I’m sure you know what day it is today, Daniel?’
Confusion wrinkled his brow further. It was Tuesday. So what?
Oh.
He swore inside his head, remembering the collection of red and pink envelopes that had been sitting on his desk when he’d arrived for work this morning. He’d shaken his head, pushed them to one side unopened and had done his best to forget about them. Not just any Tuesday, but one slap-bang in the middle of February.
‘Or what year it is …’ the voice added.
Daniel let out a huff. He’d been right all along. A half-baked radio contest run by some sappy station he’d never heard of. He was pretty sure he didn’t want whatever prize this idiot was offering. Seriously, couldn’t they come up with a better question than what year it was? Even his four-year-old nephew could answer that one. He was just about to tell Mr Silky Smooth that when he was interrupted.
‘Of course, leap years have their perks,’ the man said, and a rumble of perfectly pitched deep laughter followed. ‘We know it’s a couple of weeks until the twenty-ninth, but we’ve got a Valentine’s surprise for you, Daniel. There’s a young lady who’d like to ask you something.’
Daniel looked down at the plant in his hand. Even in its current uprooted state, a fly was attracted to the sweet nectar oozing from the glands in its trap. It darted around, weaving in and out of the leaves, looking for somewhere to land.
‘Dan?’ This voice was soft and feminine. One he recognised instantly.
He froze. His brain told him what was coming, but he refused to believe it.
‘Georgia?’
That hadn’t come out right. He’d sounded grumpy and defensive, not pleasantly surprised, at hearing his girlfriend’s voice. He tried again. ‘What are you doing?’
Nope. That hadn’t been any better.
He heard her swallow in a great gulp of air. ‘Daniel … I know you’ve had a tough time recently, and I’ve been happy to be there for you … but things are looking up now and I really believe we could be good together.’
Daniel’s mouth moved but no words—not even any sounds—came out.
He wanted to close his eyes, as if doing so could block out the sound of her voice, but he was transfixed by the sight of the fly settling on the fleshy pad of one of the plant’s open traps. He shook his head, warning the insect off.
Fly away. Escape while you still can.
‘So, what I’m doing, Daniel …’ She paused, gave a little nervous laugh. ‘What I’m saying is … is that I’d like you to marry me.’
In one swift, smooth motion the flytrap closed over the fly. Not so much a snapping as an elegant but relentless squeezing. Daniel could hear the creature’s frantic buzzing, see it struggling in the trap as the teeth-like cilia closed tighter and tighter over its head.
Don’t. Struggling only makes it worse.
A terrible silence settled around him. All sound disappeared. Even the visitors to the botanical gardens, who could often still be heard from the private nurseries, had hushed. It seemed the whole of London was holding its breath, waiting for his answer.
‘Is this a joke, George?’ he croaked, a horrible pleading tone in his voice.
This wasn’t the Georgia he knew. The nice, uncomplicated, undemanding woman he’d been seeing for almost a year. His Georgia knew he didn’t have the emotional space for a proper relationship right now, let alone a marriage. His Georgia understood that and accepted that. So who was this, borrowing her voice and asking him out-of-the-blue questions—on the radio, for heaven’s sake? Not even person to person, face to face.
Who proposed in public, anyway? It should be done privately and quietly. Preferably to someone other than him.
He squeezed his teeth together to stop himself from demanding an explanation, right here, right now. He was suddenly furious with her for springing this on him, for changing the rules and moving the goalposts of their relationship while he hadn’t been looking. This wasn’t what they were about and she knew that.
At least, he’d thought she’d known that.
Silky Smooth chuckled again. ‘Well, Georgia, you seem to have rendered the poor man speechless! What do you say, Daniel? Are you going to put this gorgeous girl out of her misery or what?’
That doused his billowing temper quick smart.
What was he going to say?
He could imagine Georgia sitting there at the radio station, a fixed smile on her face and fear in her eyes, bravely trying to pretend it was all right, when really her heart was pounding and her eyes filling.
It wasn’t that Georgia wasn’t a lovely woman. She was determined and intelligent and sensible. Any man would be lucky to have her. He should want to say yes.
But he didn’t.
He really didn’t.
He wasn’t ever going to go down that road again, no matter how lovely the woman in question.
There was a crackle on the line and noise started filtering through again—the hiss of the automatic misting system in the nursery next door, the squeak of a door farther down the corridor, a plane flying low overhead on its way to Heathrow. And Daniel was suddenly very aware that more than a hundred thousand pairs of ears might be listening to this conversation, of just how public and complete his girlfriend’s humiliation would be if he gave her the wrong answer.
Unfortunately, where he and Georgia were concerned, the wrong answer was the right answer.
He didn’t love her. He wasn’t sure he ever would, and she deserved better than that. Gently, he balanced his phone on his shoulder again and carefully put the now-satisfied Venus flytrap plant back down in its pot.
He should have known their relationship wouldn’t stay in wonderful, comfortable stasis they’d created. In this world, things moved on, grew, or they decayed.
He’d first met Georgia when Kelly had been halfway through her chemo. She’d been easy to be around. She’d helped him forget that his little sister might not see another Christmas, to forget that his rat of a brother-in-law had run off with his personal trainer and left his shell-shocked wife to deal with a cancer diagnosis—and two under-fives—all on her own. Without Georgia, he’d have hunted Tim down and fed him, bit by bit, to the largest and ugliest Nepenthes in his collection.
Daniel shook his head. The Venus flytap was completely closed now; he couldn’t even see the squirming fly inside.
He should have known that, eventually, Georgia would get ideas. The awful situation they were in now was as much his fault as it was hers. She wasn’t really asking anything horrendous of him, was she? But she was asking for something he wasn’t capable of. Not any more. And he’d been very clear about that.
‘I’m sorry …’ he said, more for not paying attention to what had been growing right under his nose than for what he was about to say. ‘We weren’t heading for marriage, I thought you knew that … That’s what made our thing so perfect …’
Our thing … Subtle, Daniel.
He could hear her breathing on the other end of the line, and he wished he could see her face to face, explain, without listening ears hanging on every syllable.
‘It’s okay,’ she said, and he could hear the artificial brightness in her tone, could almost see the sheen in her eyes. He felt as if he’d been kicked in the chest by a horse.
He shook his head. No, it wasn’t okay. He was hurting her horribly, but that didn’t mean he could say yes and condemn them to a lie that would ultimately make them both unhappy. He had to do what was best for Georgia, for both of them. He had to set her free for someone who could give her what she wanted.
‘I can’t, Georgia. You know why I can’t say yes.’
There was a moment of ghastly silence and then the DJ began talking again, laughing nervously, trying to smooth things over. Daniel didn’t hear any of his words. He didn’t even notice when music started to play in his ear.
He felt like a worm.
No, worse than that, because worms were useful, at least, and they didn’t harm anything.
He picked up the unearthed flytrap, plastic pot and all, and flung it against the wall of the carnivorous plants nursery. It hit the glass with a resounding bang that echoed over half the gardens. The cracked pot fell away, and the frail plant followed, landing with an almost soundless thump on the floor. Compost that had smeared against the glass began to crumble away and rain down on top of it.
That was when the disadvantages of working in a greenhouse made themselves apparent. Half a dozen curious pairs of eyes stared at him from various parts of the nursery. They must have thought the Head of Tropical Plants had lost his mind.
Or worse. They might have been listening to the radio.
Daniel closed his eyes, ran his hand through his hair, then swore loudly when he realised his fingers had still been covered in peat and perlite.
He opened his lids to find no one had moved. He glared at each and every pair of staring eyes in turn. ‘What?’ he yelled and, as one mass, the underlings scurried away back into their holes.
All he wanted was for this awful, consumer-fuelled excuse of a day to be over, so he could get back to normal, live his life without anyone listening to what he was saying or spying on what he was doing.
God, he hated Valentine’s Day.
Daniel froze as he was crouched down, his hand on the papery flute of a Sarracenia. Sunlight streamed through the glass roof, warming his back, and around him visitors milled, casually inspecting the exotic plants of the Princess of Wales Conservatory, one of Kew’s modern glasshouses. All in all, it seemed like a normal March day.
Except that, as he worked, the fine hairs on his arms and the back of his neck lifted.
He stood up and glanced around. He was in a vast greenhouse with ten climate-controlled zones, so it would be stupid not to expect people to see him, but it was more than that. It felt as if someone was watching him.
Georgia’s flopped Valentine’s proposal had produced a flurry of unexpected media attention. More than once in the last month he’d found himself staring at the business end of a paparazzo’s lens as he was trying to work. But that hadn’t been the only unwanted side-effect of publicly humiliating his ex-girlfriend. Now there seemed to be eyes on him everywhere, watching him, judging him.
Until his sister’s illness had forced him to come back to England, he’d loved his job working from Kew’s base in Madagascar. He’d loved being a seed hunter—searching out rare plants to collect their treasure, tracking down nearly extinct species. But this bizarre media interest made him feel much more like the prey than a hunter, and he didn’t like that one bit. No, not a role reversal he was comfortable with.
He finished checking the fine white and green patterned flutes of the pitcher plant and pushed open the door of the small Temperate Carnivorous Plants area and entered the much larger Wet Tropics zone. Here the heat-and-moisture-loving tropical varieties grew, including a large draping display of green and warm purple hanging pitchers. He worked methodically through the twisting tendrils, looking for dried out pitchers that needed to be dead-headed, checking for disease and parasites.
That was when he heard them.
‘Do you think he looks like Harrison Ford?’ a feminine voice said in a not-so-quiet whisper. ‘I’m not sure. He’s more like that one from the spy series on BBC.’
Daniel froze and imagined a horrible, jungle-related death for the reporter who’d jokingly compared him to the film legend. While the journalist had obviously been quite pleased with his ‘Indiana Jones with secateurs’ crack, Daniel hadn’t heard the end of it from his mates.
‘Not sure,’ a second voice said thoughtfully, and just as loudly. ‘But he’s definitely got that brooding, intelligent-but-dangerous thing going on. Have you seen those arm muscles …?’
There was a muffled snort from the first speaker. ‘Arms? I was too busy checking out his nice, tight little—’
Right. That was it.
He was fed up of being treated like a piece of meat, something to be stalked and discussed and ogled. Perhaps he should just jump up on one of the earthy beds and sit there with the plants, because as far as he could see he’d stopped being one of the staff and had morphed into a prime attraction.
When would this end? It was bad enough that the London press had picked up on his and Georgia’s story and run with it like a greyhound on amphetamines. They’d been the subject of countless column inches, magazine features and chat show discussions—not that either of them had fuelled it in any way by agreeing to speak or be interviewed. It seemed the whole of the city had been split down the middle, divided into two camps, one supporting him and one supporting her.
But the whole situation had a nasty little side effect, too.
He’d now become The One That Got Away. An irresistible label to the female population of London, it seemed, because en masse they’d decided it was an open season. Every day for the first couple of weeks after the proposal they’d appeared in ones and twos like this, coming to the gardens specifically to track him down. But it had been quiet for almost a week, and he’d finally hoped it was all petering out. No such luck.
Not that a bit—or even a lot—of female interest bothered him in the slightest. He was as open to it as the next guy. But this was different. They didn’t know when to stop. They acted as if they hadn’t heard the proposal on the radio, as if they didn’t know he wasn’t in the market for love, let alone marriage. The whole thing was just stupid. And very irritating.
He was dragged back into the present by a heartfelt sigh behind him. They’d moved closer.
‘Shall I go and ask him for his autograph,’ one said.
That was it. Hunter or not, Daniel was out of there. He turned and walked briskly down the path, down the steps to the aquatic exhibit half hidden under a man-made ‘hill’ in the centre of the conservatory, and ducked through a short tunnel to come out on the other side of the zone. He then climbed the path that led him to the upper levels on top of the hill, then doubled back through the ferns and down some more stairs.
He knew this labyrinthine glasshouse like the back of his hand and it wasn’t more than a minute before he was crouching down and peering at the two women from a vantage point inside the orchid display. He could have left and gone back to the propagation greenhouses, he supposed, but he liked the idea of turning the tables, of watching them hunt fruitlessly for him, before disappearing for good. It would restore his sense of balance, of control.
Now he could see them, his eyes popped. They were over seventy, for goodness’ sake! All sensible shoes and nylon trousers. He could see them looking around, having a minor disagreement about which way they should go to pick up his trail.
He almost chuckled to himself. Almost.
At least, he might have done if those hairs on the back of his neck hadn’t prickled again.
Seriously? Another one?
He was tempted to turn round and let loose, but he knew he had a bit of a temper, and having a supposedly ‘dangerous’ edge didn’t mean he was allowed to attack paying visitors then use them for lovely, nutritious compost for his favourite plants. There were laws against that kind of thing. Unfortunately.
He was just going to have to bite his tongue and leave. However, if this Valentine’s fuelled media circus didn’t end soon, he’d be stuck in an office or a greenhouse, not able to go about his job as he pleased, and he’d hate that. It had been hard enough to leave the field and take this post in the first place; he’d only done it because Kelly had needed him to come home and help look after her and the boys.
‘Why, if it isn’t Indiana himself!’ a husky female voice drawled. ‘Although I was led to believe you’d swapped the whip for a pair of secateurs these days.’
Daniel swivelled around, still crouching. The first thing he saw was a pair of hot-pink kitten heels with polka dot bows on the front. Definitely not a pensioner, this one. His gaze was inevitably drawn up to a pair of slender ankles and then to shapely calves. For a moment, he forgot all thoughts of running.
Then there was the black pencil skirt. Tight round a pair of generous hips, hugging the thighs … He swallowed.
‘So where are they?’ she asked.
That was when he realised he was still half squatting. He looked up, past the form-fitting pink blouse to the face on top of it. Red lips. That was what he saw first. Vibrant red lips.
Who’d cut the water supply off from his throat? He swallowed again. ‘What?’
Stand up. You’re kneeling at her feet, looking like a drooling Neanderthal.
Thankfully, his brain cooperated this time, sending the message to his legs to straighten, and he stood. Finally, he was looking down at her instead of up. Only, it didn’t help much. From down below the view of her impressive cleavage hadn’t been so obvious. Now his brain was too busy working his eyeballs to do the talking thing.
‘The secateurs,’ she said with a slight twitch of one expertly plucked brow. ‘Are they in your pocket?’
Daniel nodded dumbly and pulled them out. She was blonde. Marilyn Monroe blonde. With shoulder length waves that curled around her face.
‘Shame,’ the lips said. ‘And there was I hoping you were just pleased to see me.’
His mouth hung open a little. Brain still struggling. Much to his disgust, he managed a faint grunt.
‘Sorry … couldn’t resist,’ she said, and offered her slim hand. ‘Don’t you just love Mae West?’
Daniel stared at the hand for a second or so, at the long red fingernails that matched her lips, then a movement at chest level distracted him. A staff pass on a lanyard was around her neck but, due to the impressive cleavage it was hanging just below, it was twirling gently in some unseen breeze, the photo and name obscured.
She frowned slightly. ‘Not a Mae fan, then.’
He nodded, but he wasn’t sure if he was agreeing or disagreeing.
‘Chloe Michaels,’ she said, grabbing his hand and shaking it firmly. ‘Orchid specialist and new girl at Kew.’
‘Daniel Bradford,’ he said, shaking back vigorously. Maybe a little too vigorously. He let go, but then he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hand. He stuffed it back in his pocket.
‘I know,’ she said, and a wry smile curved those red lips.
‘You’ve read the papers …’
She gave a little shrug. ‘Well, a girl would have to be dead to not have seen something of your recent press coverage. However, I knew who you were before that. I’ve got one of your books at home.’
Air emptied from his lungs and he felt his torso relax. Plants and horticulture. Finally, he’d come across a woman who could talk sense. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he said. And he genuinely meant it.
She just nodded and the smile grew brighter. ‘The guys in the tropical nursery said I’d find you here, and I just thought I’d come and introduce myself,’ she said, turning to leave.
Daniel had just started to feel somewhere close to normal again, but her exit gave him another view he hadn’t quite been ready for … The way that pencil skirt tightened round her backside was positively sinful.
She looked over her shoulder before she exited the temperate orchid display through the opposite door. Daniel snapped his gaze upwards. She hadn’t caught him checking her out, had she? That was a schoolboy error.
‘By the way,’ she said, nodding in his direction, ‘incoming at eleven o’clock.’
He hadn’t the faintest idea what she meant, but it wasn’t until she’d disappeared into the next zone that he even started to try and work it out.
A bang on the glass above him made him jump. He pivoted round and looked up to find his two pursuers in the fern enclosure at the top of the stairs, faces pressed up against the glass, grinning like mad.
Oh, heck.
One of them spotted the door further along the wall. Her eyes lit up and she started waving a pen and a notepad at him.
Daniel did what any sensible man in his position would have done.
He ran.
CHAPTER TWO (#u33619845-840c-5dda-a8b5-4a5c124c81ad)
A SKIRT THIS tight and heels this high did not help with an elegant exit, Chloe thought as she kept her back straight and cemented her gaze on the door. She’d thought she’d need the extra confidence her favourite pair of shoes gave her this morning but, when they were teamed with the skirt, every step was barely more than a hobble, and it took a torturously long time until she was out of the orchid display area and amidst the agaves and cacti of the adjoining section.
She paused for a heartbeat as the glass door swung shut behind her, then blinked a few times and carried on walking.
He hadn’t recognised her.
She’d been prepared to go in smiling, laugh that embarrassing incident in their past off and put it down to not being able to hold her liquor. In short, she’d planned to be every bit as sophisticated as her wardrobe suggested she could be.
But she hadn’t needed to.
She pressed a palm against her sternum. Her heart was fluttering like a hummingbird.
That was good, wasn’t it? That he hadn’t connected Chloe Michaels the horticultural student with Chloe Michaels, new Head Orchid Keeper. They could just start afresh, behave like mature adults.
Inwardly, Chloe winced as she continued walking along the metal-grilled flooring, past an array of spiky plants from across the globe.
Okay, last time they’d met, Daniel Bradford hadn’t had any problems behaving maturely and appropriately. Any misbehaving had been purely down to her. Her cheeks flushed at the memory, even all these years later.
She was being stupid. He must have taught loads of courses over the years, met hundreds of awestruck students. Why would he remember one frizzy-haired mouse who’d hidden her ample curves in men’s T-shirts and baggy trousers? He wouldn’t. It made sense he hadn’t even remembered her name.
Or her face.
That, too, made sense. She looked very different now.
This Cinderella hadn’t needed a fairy godmother to give her a makeover; she’d done it herself the summer she’d left horticultural college. No pumpkins, no fairy dust. Just the horrified look on Prince Charming’s face had been enough to shove her in the right direction. The Mouse was long gone; long live the new Chloe Michaels. And she’d been doing a very good job of reigning supreme for almost a decade.
Only …
A little part of her—a previously undiscovered masochistic part of her—had obviously been hoping he would remember, because now disappointment was sucking her insides flat like a deflated balloon. She sighed. She never had had any sense where the gorgeous Daniel Bradford had been concerned. But show her a human being with a double X chromosome who did.
It was something to do with those long legs, that lean physique, those pale green, almost glacial eyes. Add a hint of rawness to the package, the sense that he’d just barely made it back from the last expedition into a dark and remote jungle, and it tended to do strange things to a girl’s head.
Maybe that could explain the way she’d acted back there, the things she’d said …
Mae West? What had she been thinking?
While she knew the ‘new and improved’ Chloe had easy self-assurance, there was confidence and there was sheer recklessness. She’d intended to be calm and professional. She certainly hadn’t intended to tease him … flirt with him.
However, a little voice in her head had been pushing her, feeding her lines, especially when his eyeballs had all but popped out of his head when he’d been trying to read her spinning name tag. There had been something so satisfying about seeing him that close to drooling that she just hadn’t been able to stop herself.
It wouldn’t happen again, though. Couldn’t.
But Chloe’s lips curved as she pushed the main door of the conservatory open and walked out into the spring sunshine. She wiped the smile off her face—literally—with a manicured hand and shook her head.
It didn’t matter just how much saliva had pooled in the bottom of Daniel Bradford’s mouth when he’d looked at her, because she was never, ever going down that road again. And it didn’t matter just how ferocious the monster crush she’d had on him ten years ago had been, because there was one thing she was certain of …
She’d shoot herself before she got within kissing distance of him ever again.
Daniel hung from a spot halfway up the climbing wall at his local sports centre and peered down at the top of his friend’s helmet. ‘Hurry up, Al,’ he called out. ‘You’re out of shape. Must have spent too much time lolling on a sun lounger while you were on holiday.’
Alan eventually caught up. He wasn’t looking as chirpy as normal.
‘What’s up with you?’ he said, still panting. ‘You were up this wall like the hounds of hell were on your tail, and you only climb like that when trouble’s brewing—usually woman trouble.’
Daniel shrugged and pulled a face. ‘Of a sort.’
Alan grinned at him hopefully.
‘Georgia came by the gardens today.’
Alan stopped grinning and said a word Daniel thought most appropriate. ‘What did she want? She didn’t rush tearfully into your arms and beg for a second chance, did she?’
Daniel shook his head. ‘No, thank goodness.’
He realised how insensitive that sounded, but Alan understood. He was a guy.
Daniel shifted his hand grip. ‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘Maybe it never should have started.’
Alan shrugged. ‘I thought you had a good thing going there. All the perks and none of the drama.’
That was what Daniel had thought too, when he’d thought about it at all. That also sounded insensitive, he realised. But he and Georgia had been friends, her work at Kew’s millennium seed bank throwing them together occasionally, and somewhere along the line friendship had slipped into something more. At the time he’d hardly noticed it happening.
Normally, he was much more focused about his love life. He’d spot a woman that appealed to him, pick her out from the pack, and then he’d go about pursuing her, changing her mind … Because, if there was one contrary thing about him, it was that he liked the ones that were hard work, took a little chasing. It made the whole thing so much more fun.
But Kelly had been ill, vomiting half the day, and Daniel—apart from being scared out of his wits for his sister—had been thrown in the deep end of caring for two small boys. He supposed all his ‘chasing’ energy had been tied up elsewhere, and maybe that was why he’d slid into his easy relationship with Georgia.
He’d thought she’d wanted that too. Something with no complications, no dramas. Definitely no wedding rings.
He should have known. If a relationship lasted more than six months, that diamond encrusted time bomb was always there, ticking away in the background. And Daniel knew just how deep that glittery shrapnel could embed itself.
He started climbing again. ‘That’s not all, though,’ he said, glancing at Alan, who was now keeping pace. ‘She told me the radio station is holding her to the contract she signed with them.’
Alan looked shocked. ‘What? How can they do that? There’s no wedding to cover. You said no.’
Daniel nodded. ‘That’s what I said. But, for some unknown reason, she feels the need to reinvent herself, and they’re going to follow her around all year while she does it. The Year of Georgia, they’re calling it.’ As if he didn’t feel enough of a heel already.
Alan’s gift for expletives made itself known again.
But it wasn’t really the extra media coverage that warranted such a well-timed word. It was a horrible feeling that, by saying no to Georgia, he’d somehow broken her and now she thought she needed to fix herself.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. This was the very reason he chose women carefully, avoided commitment. He wasn’t looking for love and marriage. It was like his pitcher plants—a sticky, sweet-scented trap. Thankfully, unlike a mindless fly, Daniel had a well-developed urge for self-preservation and he usually prided himself on not falling for the lie and getting stuck.
Until Georgia, of course. A mistake he wouldn’t make again.
Damn her for seeming so self-sufficient and sensible when underneath she’d been horribly vulnerable. Damn himself for being too caught up in other things to see the truth.
‘This thing’s never going to end, is it?’ he asked Alan as he started off towards the top of the wall with renewed vigour.
Alan shook his head, more in disbelief than in judgement. ‘Look on the bright side,’ he said as he scrambled to keep up. ‘Most men I know would give their right arm to be where you are right now—women flinging themselves at you on a daily basis. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel …’
Daniel frowned as he swung a foot into place and pushed himself up over an overhang. He didn’t want to shoot fish in a barrel. That was the point!
He didn’t want wide-eyed adoration from a woman; she was likely to start wanting more than he was prepared to give. No, he liked to meet a woman on equal terms, play the game, have fun while it lasted and move on.
‘Most men you know are bloody idiots, then,’ he shouted back at Alan. ‘There’s interested and then there’s desperate and clingy. I know which I prefer.’ And then he shot away from his friend and headed for the top of the wall.
As he climbed the burning in his fingertips, in his shoulders and arms, soothed him. He forgot all about radio stations and marriage proposals and bloody Valentine’s Day. Instead, he concentrated on the physical sensations of foot meeting wall, fingers grasping hand hold, and after a while a different set of images—a much more appealing set of images—flitted through his brain.
A flash of a hot-pink shoe. The curve of that tight black skirt as it had gone in and out. The glint of the sun on pale blonde hair as it slanted through the conservatory roof. The wry and sexy curve of a pair of crimson lips as she teased him.
That staff pass, twirling gently underneath …
Daniel realised he’d run out of wall. He blinked and looked down. Alan was still struggling with that last overhang.
Hardly surprising his mind had turned to Chloe Michaels. He’d been thinking about that day in the Princess of Wales Conservatory a lot recently. Unfortunately, memories were all he had at the moment, because he’d hardly seen her at all lately. She was like the disappearing woman, always leaving a place just as he arrived.
‘Mate,’ Alan said, panting. ‘If you don’t sort out this woman trouble, you’re going to finish me off. You’ve got to let the whole Georgia thing go.’
Daniel nodded. Yes. Georgia. That was the only woman trouble he had at the moment. The only woman trouble he should have at the moment.
But that pair of crimson lips was laughing at him, breathing gently in his ear …
He shook his head. Bad idea, Daniel. Trap that thought and put it on hold.
He’d just jumped from the frying pan of one relationship—very publicly—and he wasn’t planning on landing in another romantic fire right now. He needed to sit back and take stock, give himself some breathing room. He shouldn’t be thinking of starting something new, no matter how prettily those little flames danced and invited him in.
He craned his neck to look at the ceiling. It was far too close to his head. He could do with at least another fifty feet of wall to conquer, something to help him shed this restless energy.
‘Women are the last thing on my mind at the moment,’ he told Alan. ‘It’s this wall that’s the problem. I’ve climbed it so many times it’s easy.’
Alan just grunted.
With one final look at the ceiling, Daniel started to rappel back down towards the floor. His friend followed suit, matching his pace. ‘I need some real rocks to climb. A proper mountain,’ Daniel added. ‘That’s all.’
Twenty minutes later, round the corner in The Railway pub near Kew Gardens station, Alan plopped a full pint glass in front of Daniel at the bar. ‘You miss it, don’t you?’ his friend said. ‘Being out in the field?’
Daniel stared at the tiny bubbles swirling and popping on the surface of his beer. His jaw jutted forwards. ‘I do,’ he replied. Not just the rocks, but the rain on his skin and the wind in his face. The feeling that he was totally free.
‘I’m grateful to you for letting me know when this job opened up,’ he said. ‘But it’s just maternity cover, remember? I’ll stick it out until your old boss is back. Kelly will be feeling better by then.’
He’d suggested his sister move into his house in Chiswick when she’d split up with her husband; he’d been happy to have someone watching over it when he’d been overseas. Before Madagascar, he’d worked at different bases all over South East Asia, collecting seeds, helping various universities and botanical gardens set up their own seed banks, searching for species that had yet to be named and catalogued.
But then the news had come about Kelly’s diagnosis, and he’d come home and moved in himself. There was no way Kelly could have managed through her surgery and chemotherapy without him.
The Head of Tropical Plants job had come up shortly afterwards and he’d jumped at it. The perfect solution while he stayed in London and helped his sister with her two rowdy boys, and while he enjoyed the chance to work closely with his favourite plants, to see if he couldn’t produce and name a new variation or two, it had just confirmed to him that Alan was right. This wasn’t what he wanted long-term.
‘It’s been over a year now,’ Alan said, ‘and Kelly’s looking pretty fine to me.’
While Alan’s face had been suspiciously blank, there had been a glint of something in his eyes that Daniel didn’t like. Instantly, he was on his feet. Much as he liked his college friend, he knew what Alan was like with women. ‘Don’t you even dare think about my sister that way,’ he said. ‘She’s off-limits.’
Alan held his hands up, palms outwards. ‘Whoa there, mate.’
Daniel sat down again. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. Maybe Alan was right about him being on edge about something. He knew he had a bit of a short fuse, but even the hint of a spark was setting him off these days. ‘She’s been through a lot, Al. The last thing she needs right now is more complications.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ Alan said, his tone full of mock offence. ‘That’s a very nice way to refer to your oldest mate—a complication.’
Daniel’s mouth twitched, despite himself. ‘You know what I mean.’
Alan just grinned at him. ‘Are you sure there’s not woman trouble somewhere on the horizon? Other than your over-enthusiastic ex, that is?’
He shook his head. ‘No, nothing like that.’
However, an image flashed across his brain: a saucy smile playing on bright red lips, the little wiggle in her hips as she’d walked away …
Alan downed a fair amount of his pint and put his glass back down on the bar. ‘In that case, I’d say you really need to get back out to the wilds of God-knows-where again soon.’
Daniel didn’t answer. He knew what he wanted, what he ached for, but as fine as Kelly looked these days she still tired very easily, and with two small boys to run around after that happened on a fairly regular basis. He reckoned he was here for another six months at the very least.
‘I will,’ he replied. ‘When I can. Besides … I’m trying to write a second book.’
The one he’d been planning for years and finally had time to concentrate on.
His friend just snorted. ‘Leave the book for when you’re old and grey. In the meantime, you should do something more than rock climbing to blow off steam.’ He took another sip of his beer. ‘How about deer stalking? One of my father’s old friends has invited us on a weekend at his Scottish castle. I can cadge you an invite.’
Daniel shook his head. Holed up in a draughty old castle with some big city businessmen for the weekend? He’d rather let the deer go free and shoot himself. ‘Not my kind of thing,’ he said firmly.
‘Rubbish,’ Alan replied. ‘We’re hunters, you and I. Oh, not in the traditional sense—but you’re always after that rare bit of green stuff no one else can locate. It’s buried deep in our genetic code, the desire to track and conquer …’
Daniel didn’t add that the tendency to become long-winded after only half a pint was also hard-wired into Alan’s DNA. The best thing to do when his friend got like this was to nod and sip his beer in silence, which was exactly what he did.
Alan made a large gesture with his free hand. ‘Men like us, we need the thrill of the chase!’
Daniel gave him a sideways look. ‘And when exactly do you hunt?’
Alan blinked. ‘I fish,’ he said, quite seriously. ‘But what I mean is that sitting in that nursery, with all those captive specimens neatly laid out in rows, must be driving you crazy.’
Maybe it was. Because how else could he explain falling into a comfortable relationship with Georgia, of not ending it when he should have? When had he ever been the one to take the path of least resistance? All this tame London living must be lulling him into a coma.
‘Don’t you worry about me,’ he told Alan as he drained the last of his beer. ‘I might not be up for tramping through damp heather after a bit of venison, but I’ll find something to keep me from going stir crazy. Anyway, there’s more than one way of hunting—the plants I work with have taught me that much.’
‘Bloody triffids,’ Alan said, waving his hand at the barmaid to order another beer. Alan wasn’t a fan. He preferred trees. Palms, mostly.
But Daniel could have told him that the majority of insectivorous plants had no moving parts at all. Perhaps, instead of taking his frustration at the currently slow pace of his life out on innocent climbing walls, he should follow their example: be patient, keep still and see what life brought his way.
And since, at the moment, life had brought him a nice cold beer, that was what he intended to concentrate on. He took another gulp and let the cool liquid run down the back of his throat.
‘Holy Moly,’ Alan suddenly said, swivelling his head towards the door. He slapped Daniel on the side of his arm to get his attention, and Daniel’s nice cold beer sloshed down his front. It seemed that what life gave with one hand it took with the other.
He swatted at the wet patch on his shirt, then looked past Alan to see what all the fuss was about.
Holy Moly was about right.
Chloe Michaels, the disappearing woman, had reappeared in time for after-work drinks with one of the other women from work—Emma, who was passionate about bamboo and eccentric as they came.
Surprisingly, Chloe doing casual work clothes was every bit as mouth-drying as Chloe Michaels doing smart ones. Those skinny black jeans worked on curves like that—boy, they really did. The ankle-high lace-up boots should have made him think of functional things, like mud and wheelbarrows, but the criss-cross laces brought corsets to mind instead. And then there was the softly clinging grey long-sleeved T-shirt and the leather jacket over the top …
Leather. In his present state of mind that was a very dangerous word.
An itch started, right deep inside him. He suddenly knew that he didn’t want to sit back and be patient, see what opportunities life brought his way. He’d spent too long running from the chaos in his life at the moment, letting circumstances chase him. Looking at Chloe Michaels as she glanced round the pub for a seat, her skin fresh, her lips glossy and pink, he knew what he wanted to do.
Alan was right. It was hard-wired into his Y chromosome.
He wanted to hunt.
Chloe’s heart had stuttered when she’d walked in the door of The Railway. Damn. She should have known it was a stupid idea to go somewhere so close to the gardens. Because there, not more than fifteen feet away, was Daniel Bradford—or Drop-Dead Daniel, as some of the social media sites were now calling him—hunched over a beer. And he was looking every bit as gorgeous as his new nickname suggested.
Nope, she told herself. You’re finished with that crush. It’d breathed its last breath ten years ago, and she wasn’t planning on resurrecting it. Still, there wasn’t any harm in hedging her bets and just keeping out of his way to make sure. She tugged at Emma’s sleeve, about to suggest they try the wine bar farther down the smart little parade of shops and cafés, but Daniel chose that moment to turn round.
Their gazes locked, and the heat filling his eyes short-circuited her vocal cords.
It also made her very angry.
His timing really sucked, didn’t it? Because if he’d looked at her like that a decade ago she wouldn’t be in this mess right now. She might have been in a whole different kind of mess, but at least she wouldn’t have been humiliated beyond belief.
‘Hi, Daniel!’ Now Emma was waving and making her way over to him. Great.
Chloe’s plan had been going so well. She’d been effortlessly avoiding Mr Drop Dead, but maybe she should have guessed it had all been too easy, that she would have to put her resolve to the test at some point. So she tipped her chin up, smiled and followed Emma towards the bar.
It was at that point she realised Daniel was with someone—a good-looking blond—so she transferred her gaze to him, offered him her smile instead. The grin he returned said he wasn’t ungrateful for it.
A dark thundercloud passed across Daniel’s expression and settled there. The skin on the backs of Chloe’s knees started to tingle and the smile on her face set. She didn’t let it drop, though. No need to panic. A quick chat with the two men and she and Emma would be on their way.
She nodded at him. ‘Hey there, Indiana.’
A flash of lightning left that thundercloud and zapped her right between the eyebrows.
She left Emma to gush at Daniel while she turned her attention back to the blond. ‘Who’s your friend?’ she asked, slightly disappointed that there was not even a hint of a tickle at the backs of her knees as she met his appreciative gaze, even though this man was every bit as good-looking as his friend.
‘You two know each other?’ the blond asked incredulously. ‘How come you’ve never introduced us before?’ He held out his hand. ‘Alan Harrison,’ he said, enfolding Chloe’s hand in his own, before turning back to Daniel. ‘And you call yourself a mate.’
‘You’ve only just got back from Greece,’ Daniel muttered. ‘She started while you were away.’
Chloe attempted to release her hand, but it seemed Alan wasn’t quite ready to let go of it yet. She smiled coolly. ‘I’m new at the botanical gardens.’
Alan’s eyes widened. ‘You’re another plant nerd, like us? I’d never have guessed.’
She flinched inwardly at his words, but her smile grew ever brighter on the surface. ‘Guilty as charged.’ Really guilty. So she’d got a good haircut, learned how to apply liquid eyeliner … Deep inside she was still as much of a plant nerd as she’d ever been.
Alan rested an elbow on the bar and casually looked her up and down. ‘You really don’t look like one,’ he said, a slightly wolfish glimmer creeping into his eyes.
Chloe kept her smile fixed. ‘Haven’t you heard?’ She nodded in Daniel’s direction. ‘Thanks to your pal there, plant nerd is the new sexy.’
‘Oh, it really is,’ Emma said in a breathy rush, looking at Daniel.
Chloe pressed her lips together to stop herself from laughing. Daniel’s expression had darkened further, but there was a hint of panic at the backs of his eyes, one she recognised from the day she’d met him hiding from his silver-haired fan club.
But then Daniel looked back at her, and that glint of something changed and warmed. Suddenly, she was the one panicking inside.
She didn’t want him to look at her like that, as if he’d like to …
She wasn’t going to finish that thought. It was far too X-rated. And far too dangerous.
‘What can we get you two ladies to drink?’ Alan asked.
Chloe tried to speak, tried to tell him that it was okay, that she and Emma were just going to find a quiet table in the corner and chat about bamboo, but nothing came out. Not quickly enough, anyway.
‘Gin and tonic, please,’ Emma said loudly.
Chloe didn’t have much of a choice now. It would look really rude if she refused. Still, Emma had to be away in half an hour. How bad could it be? She was going to have to work alongside Daniel occasionally. Maybe this would be good practice.
But she made the mistake of catching his eye as she cleared her throat and said, ‘White wine would be lovely.’ The tingling was back behind her knees, threatening to send rogue messages to her muscles stop keeping her upright and just … melt.
Thankfully, a group of people sitting at a table near them got up to leave. Alan stopped leaning on the bar and motioned in its direction. ‘Shall we?’ He walked over to the table, pulling out a chair for Emma first. Chloe decided she liked him a lot better for that.
She decided it was safer to sit on the same side of the rectangular table as Emma. Alan quickly bagged the seat opposite, which left Daniel no choice but to subject himself to Emma’s adoring gaze.
Chloe chuckled to herself while simultaneously breathing a sigh of relief. Emma was doing a very nice job of deflecting the attention from her. She could definitely handle a quick drink with these two men if her colleague kept this up.
In fact, Emma kept Daniel so completely monopolised with her barrage of questions about a new subspecies of bamboo he’d encountered in his previous job that Chloe was free to sit back, sip her wine and listen to a long story Alan was telling about his trip to Corfu.
Every so often she’d glance across at Daniel. He seemed quite happy to answer Emma’s queries, but when the other woman smiled and fiddled with her hair his expression remained neutral. When Emma leaned forward across the table, he leaned back. Chloe’s amusement at Daniel’s expense waned.
She knew what that was like. Knew just what it was like.
To want him so badly that you threw everything you had into getting him, letting your mouth run away with you, letting your body language go into overdrive. Emma seemed oblivious, though. She just kept ploughing on.
There was no doubt that she was attractive for her age, but as she talked Chloe just itched to suggest a girls’ night in so she could apply serum and a pair of straighteners to that hair. She took a sip of her wine. There were products on the market these days to combat that amount of frizz. If anyone should know, it was Chloe …
Her insides chilled.
There but for the grace of God …
She had not so much a flashback as a flash forward—to who she might have been, had she not subjected herself to that post-graduation makeover.
Stop, she wanted to tell Emma. Don’t do it. He’ll push you away, make you feel small and insignificant, not good enough for him.
She and Emma had chatted enough for her to know that the older woman was unhappily single. Chloe didn’t want her to go home that evening after her failed play for Daniel, look in the mirror and decide that if life handed out report cards, the overwhelming verdict would be could do better.
Should do better. Must do better.
Chloe knew how much that smarted.
She placed a hand on Emma’s arm, grasping at something she’d told her earlier. ‘Didn’t you say you needed to be out of here at seven-thirty?’ she said. ‘It’s almost that now.’
Well, seventeen minutes past, but who was counting?
Emma paused her interrogation and looked at her watch. ‘Oh, cripes! Yes, I almost completely forgot! And I booked this adult education course months ago—the waiting list was huge.’ She dragged her eyes from Daniel and sighed. ‘I’ll have to hear all about Mount Kinabalu another time,’ she said, a hint of trailing hopefulness in her voice.
Chloe stood up. ‘Come on,’ she told Emma, glancing through the vast window that looked over the empty platform. ‘The next train is due in a couple of minutes. I’ll wait with you.’
‘You can’t go yet,’ Alan said, leaning past her to place a couple of full glasses on the table. ‘I got you another wine.’ Chloe hadn’t even realised he’d left to go to the bar.
Emma glanced between Chloe and Alan and a little smile curved her lips. Chloe started to shake her head. No, she wasn’t interested in Alan, and she didn’t want Emma’s attempt at ‘subtle’ matchmaking to make him think otherwise. Unfortunately, despite her love of bamboo, it turned out that Emma wasn’t very good with sticks—because she’d obviously got the wrong end of this one.
‘No, you stay,’ her colleague said, grinning at Alan. ‘There’s no need for you to miss out because of me.’
‘Uh—’ Chloe didn’t get any further with that sentence, because Emma had scooped up her bag and her coat and was heading for the exit.
Alan pressed a full glass of wine into Chloe’s hand before calling after the disappearing Emma. ‘Another evening class?’ he shouted. ‘What is it this time?’ then he took another sip of his drink.
Emma stopped and turned in the middle of the room. Chloe could only half see her it was so crowded. ‘Pole dancing,’ she called back cheerily, and suddenly the whole pub was very quiet. Apart from the sound of Alan softly choking on his beer, of course.
CHAPTER THREE (#u33619845-840c-5dda-a8b5-4a5c124c81ad)
CHLOE LOOKED AT an equally flabbergasted Daniel and they both burst out laughing. Whether it was at Emma’s parting shot or Alan’s beer-fuelled snorting from the other side of the table, neither of them really knew. But the urge to giggle subsided quickly when she found herself staring across the table at Daniel Bradford. He wasn’t finding the whole thing funny any more, either.
She tugged at the collar of her leather jacket with a finger. Hot. That was what she was finding the whole thing now. Her feet were tingling and her cheeks felt flushed and a delicious warmth was spreading deep inside. And it had nothing to do with the therapeutic effects of having a good laugh.
She swallowed.
Unfortunately, it had everything to do with the not-so-therapeutic effects of staring deep into Daniel Bradford’s eyes and wondering what it would be like to kiss him.
She closed her eyes as she took her next sip of wine, breaking the connection.
Nope. Been there, done that, survived the train wreck. Just.
Alan, who had obviously now recovered from his coughing fit, came and sat in the seat beside her and draped a well-toned arm across the back of her chair. ‘You’re not joining her?’
Chloe had to admire the ego that allowed him to bounce back from having lager spurt out of his nose then continue to flirt as if nothing had happened. She shook her head and nudged her chair further away while pretending she was reaching for her handbag.
‘Don’t tell me …’ Alan said, leaning forward slightly ‘… you’re already proficient?’
This time it was Daniel’s turn to choke on his beer.
Too smooth for his own good, Chloe thought as she blinked and looked back at Alan. Still, it didn’t worry her. She could handle him. One of the key pieces of reasoning behind the ‘new and improved’ Chloe was that she’d decided she’d much rather be the kind of woman men ran after than the kind they ran away from. In the intervening decade she’d learned a thing or two about over-enthusiastic suitors—and the disposal thereof.
She just smiled mysteriously and looked away. ‘I doubt you’ll ever find out.’ No point telling him the only poles she was really proficient with were the little green canes she used to support her orchids.
This was her cue to exit. She half stood up and looked at both men in turn. ‘Thanks for the drinks, guys, but I really must be going.’
‘Must you?’ Alan said, half rising from his seat and sporting what he probably considered was his most appealing smile. Chloe glanced over at Daniel. Once again, her blood danced along in her veins to the beat of bongo drums.
Yep. She really must go—before things got totally out of hand.
But then a few things happened in tandem, and she never really got her suitably cool and aloof goodbye out of her mouth. Alan’s phone rang and he jumped up, pulled it out of his back trouser pocket and answered it. However, it seemed that Daniel thought Alan was making an ill-advised lunge for her, because he shot to his feet too, eyes flaming, and knocked the table in the process. Chloe’s half-finished wine landed in her lap and the glass rolled onto the floor with an almighty crash.
And then Chloe was also on her feet and wine was running down her T-shirt and trousers. Even her boots were wet. She’d be smelling like the back room of an off-licence on the walk home. Most attractive.
Once again, the whole pub had fallen quiet to watch the show. They were certainly getting their money’s worth tonight. She pushed past Alan—who was very gallantly continuing his phone conversation—shot a desperate look at Daniel and headed for the door.
From the way her audience’s eyes kept switching from her to something behind her, she could tell she was being pursued. She really didn’t know what would be worse: to turn round and discover it was Alan, or to turn round and discover it was Daniel, so she just kept weaving through the narrow tables until she could push her way through the crowd to reach the door.
Once outside, she breathed in a mouthful of cold March air and set off down the street. She lived within walking distance, anyway, and hopefully she’d dry off a little on the way home.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one hurrying down the street back towards the gardens. Her pursuer obviously wasn’t giving up. She decided to play ignorant. Perhaps, if she pretended she didn’t know someone was following her, they might just give up and go away.
It didn’t work. And with every step Chloe’s blood pressure rose until she thought her curls would stand on end. Eventually, she stopped and spun round so fast her pursuer almost crashed into her.
She was inches from a broad chest. ‘What?’ she asked it hoarsely.
The chest moved up and down and she could hear him breathing. She must have been walking a lot faster than she’d thought. He didn’t say anything, though, so she tilted her eyeballs upwards until she could see that it was Daniel Bradford staring back down at her.
He held up one of the little bar towels that all good pubs had stocked away somewhere. ‘You had wine on your jacket,’ he said gruffly.
‘Oh.’ She stared at him.
He was still holding up the towel. She was still not taking it.
Slowly, and with surprising gentleness, he took the towel and dabbed at the drips on her left arm, which had now run from biceps to wrist. When he picked up her hand to clean up her cuff, she stopped breathing. From the eerie silence in the dark street, she realised he had too. Simultaneously, they both stopped looking at her sleeve and looked at each other.
Go on, an evil little voice on her shoulder whispered. Pucker up and launch yourself at him again. It might work this time.
No!
No. She’d seen the way he’d looked at Emma that evening. How could she be thinking of taking it one step further? Did she have a strange psychotic illness no one had ever diagnosed? Bradforditis. One look at the man and she was all sorts of crazy.
She wriggled her hand out of his grasp, almost whimpering as the pads of his fingers brushed the soft underside of her wrist, and stepped away.
‘Thank you,’ she said, folding her arms across her chest as best she could. With the engineering marvel of a bra she was wearing, it wasn’t easy. ‘This is my favourite jacket.’
Daniel stepped forward. ‘Look … about Alan …’
She raised a hand, held him at bay. ‘No need. I’m quite used to taking care of myself. He didn’t offend me.’
‘When you ran out—’
She shook her head, cutting him off. Why had she run out? ‘I just … decided I’d rather clean up without an audience,’ she said. ‘Any more drama from our table and someone would have stood up in the corner and started selling ice creams.’
And then Daniel Bradford spoiled all her attempts at backing off and being sophisticated by crinkling up his pale green eyes and smiling at her.
Ping!
Yep. She was pretty sure another thread of her sanity had just snapped.
‘Do you fancy an ice cream?’ he said softly, still smiling.
Chloe let her arms drop by her sides. ‘You know what?’ she said. ‘I really do.’
‘Come on.’ He led her a few shops down to the little express supermarket that was still open. Once inside he strode over to the tiny freezer containing ice creams and slid the lid open. ‘Take your pick.’
She chose a decadent one: two layers of chocolate with caramel trapped between. Daniel grabbed something plainer. And once he’d paid they walked out of the shop, quickly rid the ice creams of their wrappers and walked down the street in silence, only the cracking of thin chocolate and the slurping of ice cream could be heard.
‘Thank you,’ she said, when they reached the end of the short parade of shops and stopped by an old horse trough, now filled with daffodils. ‘For the ice cream and the mop up job.’
He shrugged. ‘No problem.’
He was staring at her lips again. Chloe’s heart began to pound, but Daniel lifted a finger to the edge of his own mouth, not hers. ‘You’ve got a bit of …’
Pulse still thudding in her ears, she shot out her tongue and captured a bit of stray caramel that had stuck to the corner of her lip. Daniel Bradford seemed to be very interested in the process. In fact, he seemed to be leaning in closer to get a better look.
Run.
Don’t think about it, just run.
Ah. That must be the angel sitting on the opposite shoulder from the other little voice. About time it showed up and offered some sensible advice.
He cleared his throat, looked down intently at her. ‘I know this is a bit back to front, that we’ve just had what could be considered dessert …’
She licked her lips again. More out of nervousness than because of stray caramel.
‘But why don’t we round it all up by having a starter and a main course somewhere else?’ He smiled again, and Chloe discovered the caramel had travelled to her knees.
Oh, it was so tempting …
This was what she’d fantasised about, aged nineteen, on many a night in her student digs—Daniel Bradford, looking at her this way, asking her in that deep, earthy voice of his if they could go somewhere alone together.
She shook her head, and just that motion helped the next words out. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea … We’re colleagues. People will talk … and I want to get on at Kew because of what I can do,’ she said quietly, ‘not because people think I’m sleeping with the boss.’
His lips curved into the sexiest of smiles, telling her that he had an answer for that one. ‘There’s no rule against it,’ he said. ‘And we don’t have to broadcast it. It’ll be our secret.’
She shook her head. ‘With the attention you’re generating right now that’s nigh on impossible.’
She was a genius for coming up with that one! It was perfect.
He nodded, pressed his lips together in grim acceptance. ‘I can understand that. My life is a bit of a circus at present. But maybe later, when all the fuss has died down?’
Chloe knew she must be earning brownie points with someone somewhere, because she found the strength to shake her head again, her curls gently moving side to side.
‘Sorry, Indiana. Thank you, though. It was very sweet of you to ask.’
And then she turned and walked away, leaving him staring after her.
It should have felt like a victory.
Daniel marched the half mile from the Princess of Wales conservatory to the tropical nurseries in record time the following morning. He wasn’t in a good mood.
He passed The Orangery restaurant and headed up the main path towards the kids’ play area, then slipped through an iron gate next to the café and left the public area of the gardens behind in favour of the relative sanctuary of the propagation and research greenhouses.
A soursop tree was due to arrive this morning, part of a trade with the botanical gardens in St Lucia, and Daniel wanted to see the specimen for himself. Alan was standing back and supervising while a couple of horticultural students moved the waxy-leafed tree with its spiky fruit from a trolley onto the floor. He turned round when he heard Daniel approaching.
‘You okay?’ he said.
Daniel gave him a weary, having-one-heck-of-a-day nod. ‘Yup.’
A couple of people had asked him exactly the same thing this morning. Why did they keep doing that? It was most strange.
Alan issued a couple of final instructions to the students before shooing them away. When the two lads were gone and the sliding door of the nursery was closed, he turned to look at his boss.
‘There’s something you need to see.’ He gave Daniel a hooded look and pulled his smartphone from his back pocket. ‘I thought you needed to know before it goes viral.’
He punched a couple of buttons then twisted the phone round to show Daniel the screen. Daniel swore loudly and fluently, then snatched the phone from Alan’s hand. Unfortunately, seeing it up close and staring hard at it didn’t make the Internet news headline go away.
Valentine’s man finally trapped? it screamed, and underneath it was a picture of him and Chloe, obviously taken the night before, although he’d had no idea anyone had been walking past with a mobile phone to capture the moment. It must have been when he’d been wiping the wine off Chloe’s jacket, a very innocent pastime, he’d have thought, but this photo showed him holding her wrist and they were staring at each other, lost to everyone else. Chloe’s lips were parted and he was leaning in slightly, making it look as if he were about to kiss her.
Daniel closed his eyes and handed the phone back to his friend before opening them again.
‘This isn’t what it looks like,’ he said.
Alan just shrugged. ‘I knew the minute she walked in the door that you were toast. Can’t blame a guy for trying, though.’
Well, at least Alan was being philosophical about it. ‘Who’s seen this?’
Alan pressed his lips together and shook his head. ‘Not sure. The girls in the café had been cooing over it for half an hour when I stumbled upon them.’
Just when he thought his crazy life was getting back to normal.
‘So … what’s the story with Miss Fancy Knickers?’ Alan said, smiling a little.
Daniel forgot to look cross. ‘Who?’ he asked, genuinely confused.
‘That’s the nickname some of the students coined for Miss Orchid House.’ He held up his hands. ‘It’s not that I don’t appreciate the view, but those shoes and skirts she wears some days are hardly practical wear for a job like ours, even if she is just messing around with flowers instead of digging beds.’ He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘So … are they?’
Daniel’s voice was low and warning. ‘Are they what?’
Alan’s smile upgraded itself into a lascivious grin. ‘Fancy.’
‘Not you too!’ Daniel turned and pulled the sliding door open. ‘I believe the official phrase is: No comment,’ he said just before he slammed it closed again.
He strode away. A couple of the nursery team ducked for cover. Just as well, really. They’d obviously worked out that he was liable to assign the grottiest jobs to anyone who got in his way when he was feeling like this. And, with having to watch Kelly struggling through her chemo for months on end, there had been plenty of days when he’d been in a mood like this.
Fancy knickers. Humph.
No chance of him finding that out at present. He’d barely touched her, let alone got on first name terms with her underwear. And just thinking about said underwear was making it very difficult to calm down.
And it would have to be ‘no comment’ if anyone else asked him about Chloe, because he wasn’t about to tell anyone he’d asked her out and she’d turned him down. That would be too humiliating.
Like what you did to Georgia.
No. That wasn’t the same. Georgia had gone live on air and made the choice to publicise her ill-advised proposal. That hadn’t been his fault at all. He’d asked Chloe out in private, just the two of them. Or so he’d thought.
Still, if he was feeling a fraction of the mortification Georgia had felt on Valentine’s Day, it was no wonder it had taken her a month before she’d been able to face him in person. That must have been the pits.
Oh, heck.
Georgia.
He had a pretty good idea she hadn’t seen this yet, and when she did she was going to kill him. He’d been able to tell from her expression yesterday that she was still feeling raw, even if she agreed that ending it had been the best thing for both of them.
To Georgia it would look as if he’d taken her visit yesterday to go out and bed the nearest available hottie. It didn’t help to know he’d been on that train of thought himself last night, hardly stopping to think how it might look to anyone else. And Georgia had always had a bit of a thing about women like Chloe …
Oh, bloody hell. Chloe.
When Georgia was finished with him, Chloe would bring him back to life and make him suffer a second time. What a mess.
He yanked the greenhouse door open and strode out into the fresh air. There was only one thing to do: he had to talk to both of them before they found out about it from anyone else.
The morning had been a hectic one and Chloe decided to go and sit on a bench to eat her lunch. While it was cold enough to still need her coat, it was the best kind of day March could deliver, and she was determined to mop up as much sun as she could.
She’d always wanted to work at Kew, ever since she’d trained here. It was the most amazing place in the world as far as she was concerned. And who wanted to hide away in an office or a staff tearoom when there were acres of beautiful gardens on their doorstep?
An empty bench was waiting for her just away from one of the main paths. She made her way to it and sat down, trying to let the tranquillity seep into her, but she hardly took in the carpet of lilac-blue crocuses or the swathes of daffodils covering some of the sloping banks, because her mind was too busy living the events of the night before.
Half of her was screaming at the other half for having walked away from Daniel, and the other half congratulated itself on being safe and sensible. While the two continued to have a tug of war inside her skull, she closed her eyes and let her head slip back, enjoying the sun on her face.
She wasn’t sure how long she stayed like that, but the snap of a twig nearby disturbed her. She sat up quickly and opened her eyes. Her heart had started to pump a little faster when she’d heard that noise and now she knew why. Indiana Jones, minus his secateurs, had come to pay her a visit.
She snapped the lid back on her salad and looked him evenly in the eye. That was the sort of thing New Chloe did. That girl wasn’t scared of anything.
However, for the first time in years she was aware of another presence at the fringes of her consciousness. Deep down inside, another Chloe—the naive frizzy mouse—was huddled in a corner, twitching.
No, she thought. That sad, geeky girl is dead. Something far better has risen from her ashes. She clamped down hard on the ghostly presence. That was all it was. A memory. An echo.
‘Don’t suppose you have another ice cream on you?’ she asked, closing her eyes again briefly. ‘It’s more the weather for it today.’
He shook his head and silently pulled a smartphone with a large screen from his pocket. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said as he handed it to her. ‘This isn’t anywhere near as nice as ice cream.’
Chloe scrolled through the whole blog entry carefully, reading every word. It was the picture that did the most damage, though. In the grainy photograph she was looking up at Daniel as he leant towards her, her eyes wide, her lips … waiting.
She handed the phone back to him without saying anything, not wanting to see it any more. She must have made a face, because he shook his head and then said, ‘You’ve every right to be upset.’
It wasn’t that. She wasn’t upset that people thought she was romantically involved with Daniel Bradford. It might make her life at Kew a little more complicated, sure, but it was hardly anything to get her knickers in a twist about. No, what she was really worried about was that photograph.
‘How many people have seen this?’ she asked, looking straight ahead, eyes fixed on the Georgian orangery that now served as the gardens’ main restaurant.
She heard the fragments of pine cones and twigs beneath his feet crunch as he shifted his weight. ‘There’s no way of knowing, but I think we have to assume everyone.’
Chloe nodded. Okay. She could cope with this. People might see the picture, but they wouldn’t recognise it, wouldn’t know what it meant.
She turned her head to look at him, made her cheek muscles tighten to pull the corners of her lips upwards. Then she shifted along the bench and made room for him. He blinked, confusion etched into his features, and sat down.
He was probably expecting a scene. Lots of women did scenes. Luckily for him, New Chloe had banished them from her life. She only did confident and breezy and unfazed.
‘So … what do we do now?’ she asked, leaning back and feigning a relaxed posture.
He stared intently at her for a moment. ‘That’s up to you,’ he said. ‘I could contact the blog, make a statement …’
Chloe thought for a moment. ‘No … I don’t think it’s worth it.’
Unfortunately, the old adage was true: pictures did speak louder than words, and that one of her and Daniel was gabbling uncontrollably, contradicting any carefully worded denial they could come up with. There was no point.
‘Are you sure?’ The closed, slightly guarded look he’d been giving her softened. Chloe nodded brightly. She didn’t want his concern, didn’t want to see any more flashes of that warm, more caring side she’d just glimpsed of Daniel Bradford. Things were hard enough as it was.
She stood up and walked a little bit before turning back to face him. ‘It’d be like shouting into the wind. People will think what they want to think, no matter what we say.’
Daniel scowled. ‘We can’t just sit back and do nothing.’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t say we should do nothing. I just said we shouldn’t bother contacting the press to deny it. We don’t have to go on the offensive to beat this thing.’
He looked at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. To Daniel Bradford, she probably was. She smiled. Properly this time.
She walked over to him, slid the phone from his hand without touching his fingers and showed him the picture. ‘It’s not as if we’re in a full lip-lock,’ she said, ignoring the shiver that ran up her spine at the thought. ‘It’s innocent enough. I think we should just ignore it, go on as normal. People will soon realise there’s nothing in it.’
Daniel took the phone back from her, and this time their fingers did touch. And the way his eyes lit up, she guessed it wasn’t entirely an accident. She pulled her hand away and stuffed it in her coat pocket, where it continued to tingle.
‘No comment?’
‘No comment,’ she agreed. ‘Perfect. That’s exactly what people say in circumstances like this.’
Daniel stood up. ‘You’re saying you just want to ride whatever comes, ignore it?’
She nodded again. She was good at ignoring things.
Daniel shook his head as he put the phone back in his pocket.
‘You haven’t given an interview since Valentine’s Day, have you?’ she asked.
‘No …’ He looked away and then back at her. He was still frowning, but now she could tell he was turning her idea over instead of just resisting it. ‘I suppose you’re right. Starting a dialogue may just increase the frenzy.’
Chloe walked forward, sat down on the bench and picked up her salad box again. ‘Great. All sorted,’ she said, unclipping the lid.
Daniel stared at her, brow still furrowed. He seemed on the verge of saying something, but he finally said, ‘I’d better go and give Alan back his phone.’
She smiled back and waved her fork slightly before popping a cherry tomato in her mouth and swallowing it almost whole. ‘Well, if Alan is as addicted to his smartphone as I am to mine, you’d better hurry. He may already be having withdrawal symptoms.’
Daniel gave a wry smile and stared at the phone, as if he couldn’t quite believe in the seductive pull in that little bit of technology. ‘I appreciate you being understanding about this,’ he said as he put it back in his pocket.
‘No problem,’ she said, managing to sound fairly normal, although she was fairly sure that tomato had lodged itself somewhere in her throat. ‘And if Alan is shaking and sweating when you get back to him, I recommend an early lunch break. Half an hour of Vengeful Ducks should get him back on track.’
‘Let me thank you somehow,’ Daniel said, lowering his voice, and an irresistible little glimmer of naughtiness twitched his mouth into an off-centre smile. ‘How about dinner?’
Chloe blinked slowly and licked her lips. ‘I thought we talked about this last night,’ she said, looking at her salad and using her fork to tease a bit of carrot.
When she looked back up at Daniel he was still smiling at her. It took all she had not to fling her salad to one side and have him for lunch instead.
‘Can’t blame a guy for trying,’ he said, then nodded and headed back towards the nurseries.
When he was out of earshot Chloe let go of her intercostal muscles and allowed the coughing fit she’d been holding back to take over. Eventually, the tomato made its way down the right hole.
She put her salad box down on the bench beside her, put her elbows on her knees and rested her face in her hands. She really didn’t want to go back to who she’d been when she’d first met Daniel. That Chloe had been a nice enough girl, the class swot, always excelling at everything. She hadn’t cared that she hadn’t followed the latest fashion trends or had only a passing acquaintance with the opposite sex. Because that Chloe had known that everything came easy to her, that she’d hardly ever had to try to be good at anything.
And then Daniel Bradford had walked into her life and had shown her exactly where she’d been lacking.
She hadn’t realised she wasn’t any good at being a girl until he’d come along. And that was a pretty important thing when you were one.
For a girl who’d never failed at anything, crashing and burning so spectacularly in the male-female stakes had come not just as a shock, but a reality slap. That was what the grown-up world was all about. And nice-but-geeky Chloe just hadn’t been cutting it.
She couldn’t have that.
Right from an early age her parents had pushed their rather precocious only child to excel, to be the best at everything she did. So how had she failed at something so basic, something that was supposed to come naturally?
She drew in a breath and sat up. It didn’t matter any more. She’d fixed it. Now being not just a girl, but a woman, was something Chloe Michaels got top marks in, so she really shouldn’t worry.
A wisp of breeze curled itself around her, lifted a strand of hair and pushed it across her face. She brushed it aside. There was no point in dwelling on the past—she had a problem in the present that needed fixing.
Unfortunately, the root was the same: Daniel.
What was she going to do about him, about this stupid article?
Ignore it, she told herself firmly. That’s what you’ve got to do. Ignore the stupid blog. Ignore the way Indiana there makes your skin tighten and your pulse zing. Most of all, ignore that horrible photograph.
A cold feeling spiked through Chloe and she masked it by sitting up and spearing another vegetable, chewing it quickly then swallowing it fast.
Yes, ignore the fact that, despite the trademark blonde curls and the red lips, she hadn’t recognised herself in that photo. Not the version of herself she was today, anyway.
Because, in the grainy greyness of that mobile phone picture, it hadn’t been ‘new and improved’ Chloe staring up at Daniel all wide-eyed and breathy; it had been the Mouse.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u33619845-840c-5dda-a8b5-4a5c124c81ad)
DANIEL CAUGHT A flash of colour out of the corner of his eye as he flicked a paintbrush full of pollen over a plant he was trying to propagate. Instinctively, he swung round to find it again.
Just a brightly coloured plastic bag one of the staff had walked past the door of his nursery with. Not a pink shoe, or an emerald blouse or even a pair of smiling ruby lips.
He stood up and scrubbed a hand over his face.
He was losing it, wasn’t he?
Just a hint of colour, which he now seemed to associate with Chloe, because everyone else here wore variations of brown and green and navy blue, or a scent like her perfume—an easy mistake to make in a greenhouse full of flowers—and he’d react. He’d seek first and think later, making him just like the insects who were lured by the smell and hue of the plant he was tending. They couldn’t help it.
He couldn’t help it.
Another dash of soft pink at the edge of his peripheral vision. He turned immediately, then swore.
This time it was Chloe, popping her head in the door of one of the other rooms and asking one of the horticultural students something. She was wearing a top that clung in all the right places. She smiled at the two young men, was charming and poised. Just as she was with him. No difference.
No difference at all.
It was driving him mad.
He’d tried everything, every trick up his sleeve—every look, every line—and she was still completely unaffected.
He bowed his head and turned his attention back to the bulbous Nepenthes hamata he was working on. Most people thought of plants as pretty things, but this specimen was dark and fierce-looking. He thought it was beautiful, but with vicious-looking black teeth round the opening of the pitcher it resembled something out of a science-fiction movie more than a bloom fit for a bridal bouquet.
He was trying to cross it with another species that was a deep purply-black. If he succeeded, he’d have a plant that would give even Sigourney Weaver nightmares.
He glanced up again, but realised he was subconsciously searching for soft pink, and made himself focus on the plant instead.
Not her. This plant wouldn’t scare her. In fact, nothing seemed to rattle her, and he both admired and resented that ability. Chloe Michaels was like her own unique subspecies of womankind. Bred to resist him.
And, with all the lurid rumours flying round about them, her apathy just rubbed salt into the wound. Maybe it was just stubbornness on his part, an unwillingness to admit defeat?
A fly buzzed round the Nepenthes, alighting on the slippery edge of the plant’s mouth and climbing inside. Daniel knew that was the last he’d see of it. The waxy interior would prevent any escape.
He studied the plant once again. So beautiful, but so deadly, luring most unwitting insects in with the promise of sweetness but the reality of slow drowning and digestion.
He heard heels on the concrete floor, sensed a patch of pink walk past his nursery door, but, despite the urge to turn, he kept his eyes trained on the shiny black teeth at the gaping mouth of the pitcher.
Maybe he would do well to learn a lesson from that fly.
Emma slid into the empty chair next to Chloe in the Orangery restaurant. It was a bright May afternoon, temperatures approaching those of high summer.
‘So …’ Emma said, leaning in close and lowering her voice. ‘How are things going between you and the gorgeous Daniel?’
Chloe stopped chewing. If she had to say the equivalent of no comment just one more time she thought she’d scream. Even if it had been her clever idea.
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ she said, after swallowing her mouthful.
Emma just grinned at her. When the rumours about her and Daniel had first surfaced Emma had given her a wide berth, but now she’d decided to buddy up with Chloe and live vicariously through her colleague’s fictitious love life.
‘I know that’s the official line,’ Emma said, her eyes gleaming over the top of her soup bowl, ‘but everybody knows there’s more to it than that. Come on … just one juicy detail … please?’
Chloe’s eyebrows raised. ‘Everybody? Still?’
‘Pretty much,’ Emma said as she slurped butternut squash soup off her spoon.
Chloe stared at her sandwich in dismay. She’d hardly seen Daniel in the last few weeks, let alone spoken to him. This ‘deny everything’ tactic had given her the perfect excuse to keep her distance.
‘I don’t know how you’re managing to be so discreet,’ Emma added between mouthfuls, so enthusiastic she dribbled a big glob of orange soup down her front. ‘If I owned a man like that, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off him—at home or at work.’
Chloe closed her eyes. It didn’t matter what they did, did it? They were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. Keeping their distance, only nodding at each other in hallways when they passed, was just as much a confirmation of a steamy relationship as if they’d stripped naked and done it in the middle of the Palm House.
But it had worked. Media attention on Daniel and his ex had lulled. Thanks to that blog article, Daniel wasn’t The One Who Got Away any more; he was The One Who’d Been Snared. Nowhere near as appealing. The women of London were moving on to pastures new.
‘How’s the pole dancing going?’ she asked Emma, and thankfully her friend took the bait.
‘The course finished and I’ve switched to belly dancing. You should try it!’
And as Emma gushed on about her new hobby an idea solidified in Chloe’s head.
She would go and talk to Daniel, suggest they end this no comment nonsense. She felt as if invisible ropes, projected by other people’s minds, were tying the pair of them together, each day becoming tighter and tighter, and it was making her itchy. It was time to break free.
And, thankfully, since Alan had also mentioned that the carnivorous plant display in the Princess of Wales Conservatory was being updated today, she knew just where to find him.
When Chloe entered the Wet Tropics zone of the Princess of Wales Conservatory she almost bumped into a woman in a raincoat standing at the slope that led down to the lily-pad pool.
‘Sorry,’ she said, but the woman didn’t hear her. She was too busy staring at something on the other side of the pond. Chloe followed her gaze and quickly worked out why. Not bothering to wait for a ladder or any other suitable piece of equipment, Daniel had climbed outside the railing of the stepped walkway that led from the pond’s edge over the water to the upper level. His attempts to hook a recently planted basket of trailing pitchers from a chain suspended from the ceiling were drawing quite a crowd.
Chloe folded her arms and enjoyed the view. She knew he relished finding plants in inaccessible places, particularly mountainsides, and he seemed totally at home hanging off the walkway, his feet pressing down onto the edge of the concrete path and the taut muscles of his outstretched left arm gripping onto the railing. His T-shirt stretched tight across his back and when he leaned a little bit further, exposing a band of tanned skin between hem and belt, there was a collective female sigh from the crowd of onlookers.
Chloe almost joined in herself. This was what had attracted her to him in the first place as an impressionable young student. Not just the good looks, but his passion for his area of study, the way he flung himself wholeheartedly into everything.
She frowned. While present-day Daniel obviously still liked a physical challenge, if she compared him to the Daniel she’d crushed over in her student days she realised there were subtle differences too. A decade ago he’d smiled more, laughed more. Present-day Daniel seemed more tense, more self-contained. Less … happy.
The woman next to her made a funny noise. Chloe turned to look at her. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Oh, yes,’ the woman replied emphatically, her eyes still fixed on Daniel. ‘Just getting up my nerve.’
Chloe stared at her for a second and began to walk quickly towards the crowd by the pool. A strange tickling under her skin told her she needed to get to him, and she needed to get to him fast. As she neared the pool he disappointed the sighing onlookers by finishing his task and hopping back over the railing to stand on the walkway. The round of applause he received took him completely by surprise.
She was just trying to fight the tide of the dispersing crowd when the woman she’d bumped into earlier dashed past her and ran up the ramp towards Daniel. He was facing the other direction but he must have heard her approach, because when she was within a few feet of him he turned round.
The woman skidded to a halt, fiddled with the buttons of her raincoat, then ripped the flaps open.
Chloe pushed her way through the onlookers and ran up the ramp behind her. Even from that vantage point she could see there was way too much bare skin under that coat. Daniel just stared at the woman, eyes on stalks. And not in a good way.
Everything stopped. The only thing moving was Chloe and the only noise was the overhead misters, hissing their displeasure. Exactly why she was racing to Daniel’s side she wasn’t sure; she just knew she had to do something.
When she reached the woman, she noted—thank goodness—that it wasn’t as bad as she’d first feared. At least she was wearing a set of sexy black lingerie … and a message, written on what looked like permanent marker on her torso.
I do, Daniel, it read. Do you?
He just stared at the writing, a look of frozen horror on his face.
Chloe stared too, unable to work out just what kind of desperation drove a woman to do something like that, but then her gaze drifted from midriff to face. What she saw there was possibly even more shocking.
Not just desperation but longing.
The same kind of longing she’d seen in the mirror all those years ago when she’d first met Daniel. The agitation she’d felt while she’d been pushing her way through the crowd quickly turned to sympathy.
‘I … I …’ Daniel managed to stutter, and suddenly Chloe knew exactly what she had to do.
She hitched the fallen raincoat from round the woman’s elbows and draped it across her shoulders, then she went to stand beside Daniel. After taking a deep breath, she slid her fingers into his.
He did a good job of hiding his flinch of surprise, and a second later his larger, stronger hand closed firmly around hers.
The woman’s slightly glazed expression melted into one of horror. ‘You’re … you’re the girl in the picture,’ she said, her voice high and wavering, ‘on that website …’
Chloe nodded and moved close to Daniel, pressing herself into his side. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’
The woman nodded and clutched the coat around herself. ‘Oh, God,’ she muttered. ‘I feel so stupid.’
Chloe stepped forward, but it seemed Daniel was reluctant to let go of her hand. He still hadn’t moved and his jaw was set in a hard line. She shot him a work with me look and he unclenched his hand enough to let her wiggle her fingers free.
She put her arm around the woman and led her further along the walkway, high above the Wet Tropics zone and through a glass door into another section, away from the staring crowd.
‘I’m so sorry,’ the woman said. ‘I saw that picture of you two online, but there’d never been anything more. I didn’t realise you two … I thought he was available.’
‘It’s okay,’ Chloe said softly. ‘I understand. He … he has this weird effect on people. On women.’
He certainly had a weird effect on Chloe.
Tears slid from between the woman’s lashes. She nodded and looked at the floor. ‘He just looked like … seemed to be … I don’t know … the kind of man who’d really know how to look after a woman.’ Her head jerked up. ‘Is he?’ she asked, slightly desperately, her fierce gaze demanding Chloe made eye contact.
Chloe didn’t know what to say to that. She hardly knew Daniel, not really. And the truth was she’d been on the receiving end of one of the most humiliating and mortifying moments of her life at his hand. She certainly hadn’t felt very special or looked after at that moment.
But this woman didn’t need to hear that, and there was something in the tone of her question that begged for something positive to cling to from this whole sorry experience.
Chloe spotted a couple of the Kew constabulary slowly making their way towards them. She didn’t know what experiences this woman had had with the opposite sex to get herself in this state, but they couldn’t have been good ones. Maybe she just needed to know that all men weren’t rats, that there were some good ones out there.
She thought about the way Daniel tended his plants, how gentle and patient he could be. Now, if he could bring some of that into his personal life, he really would be a catch. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to give the right answer. She met the woman’s gaze.
‘Yes, he is,’ she said quietly. And as the two constables reached them she reached down and squeezed the woman’s hand.
‘I think she might just need a strong cup of tea and a sympathetic ear,’ she told the constables. ‘No harm done.’
The female officer of the pair smiled and nodded, and Chloe let out a breath. She really hoped the poor woman would get the help she needed.
As for Chloe? Well, maybe she was in need of a little help herself.
No harm done. Really?
She wasn’t so sure about that.
Because she knew that by her actions a few moments ago she’d announced to the onlookers, including Kew staff, and maybe even to the whole world—via the considerate people who’d silently recorded the whole episode on their smartphones—that she and Daniel Bradford were a couple.
The crowd, who were far too nosey to disperse, watched along with Daniel as Chloe re-entered the Wet Tropics zone and walked back towards him. Her chin was high and her make-up perfect. She looked so in control, so assured …
So different from that crazy woman in the raincoat.
The contrast soothed his soul.
At least, it did until she was right in front of him. Just as she reached him he saw a flicker of something else behind the perfection, something in her eyes as she looked up at him—uncertainty, blended with a pinch of nerves.
That shook him.
For weeks now she’d had him convinced that she was impervious, iron-clad. Chloe Michaels was merely a delectable package he was itching to unwrap. A prize to be won. So it was a shock to be reminded that she was a real woman, one maybe, that still had all the idiosyncrasies and puzzling insecurities they seemed to be preprogrammed with.
But then the something he’d seen was gone, and she was back to normal—all gloss and glamour. All colour and scent. He breathed out, relieved that she’d tucked whatever it was he’d seen away, out of reach, and he didn’t need to worry about it any more.
He didn’t say anything to her, just closed the distance between them, caught her hand in his, then led her out of the Princess of Wales Conservatory.
Once outside they kept walking, still joined, far away from the glasshouse, up the Broadwalk and on. They stopped briefly by the lake in front of the vast Palm House.
‘We need to talk,’ he said, ‘about what just happened back there.’
She nodded.
‘Somewhere private,’ he added.
They turned their heads in unison and looked at the Victorian marvel of curved white iron and thin panes of glass not more than a hundred feet away. Although it was one of the prime visitor spots at Kew, and unlikely to be empty, it was filled with drooping plants and massive leaves. Daniel knew there were plenty of places to hide if one knew where to go.
Once inside, he ignored the ‘No Entry’ sign at the bottom of one of the ornate spiral staircases that led from the floor of the Palm House to the gallery that ringed the dome. ‘They’ve just finished trimming the giant bamboo,’ he explained, ‘so we should be the only ones up here for now.’
Chloe nodded and let him pull her up the stairs, unable to say anything sensible. She’d been fine while the whole drama had been unfolding back in the Princess of Wales Conservatory, cool as the proverbial cucumber, but now, as the damp heat of the tropical greenhouse seeped beneath her clothes and moistened her skin, she couldn’t stop thinking about the woman in the raincoat.
The way the crowd had looked at her, with a mixture of curiosity and disgust … The poor woman had seemed so lost and desperate. How had she not known that what she was about to do would be a horrible mistake?
The heels of Chloe’s boots clanged on the scrollwork metal steps and she shifted her weight so she was treading on the balls of her feet. She felt as if she’d left her stomach on the iron-grated floor below them. The air grew hotter and wetter, making it hard to gulp it in as she climbed.
Ten years ago, was that how Daniel had seen her? Had he felt that same mix of revulsion and pity? She shivered at the thought.
They’d reached the top of the curling staircase and she paused, taking in a steadying breath before following Daniel down the narrow gallery until they were almost completely hidden from view by a giant palm and a bushy cannonball tree.
Daniel turned and looked at her.
Yes, this was the expression she wanted to see on his face. Not a hint of revulsion. Slighty perplexed, if anything, because he’d lost that perpetual frown and his expression was the most open she’d ever seen it.
‘Thank you for what you did back there. I had no idea how to handle that gracefully. After Georgia … I just didn’t want to say the wrong thing.’
Chloe couldn’t help but smile, just a little. Hanging off bridges and scaling mountains were what Daniel Bradford was graceful at. The interpersonal stuff, not so much.
He shook his head. ‘This whole thing, ever since that stupid radio show, has been crazy.’
‘I’m hoping today’s particular manifestation was a one-off,’ Chloe said, feeling less scorn for the woman than was coming out in her voice. For some reason, she didn’t want Daniel to know that she’d identified with the poor soul at all.
He shook his head, looked away for a second, and the tug on her hand as his weight shifted reminded her he hadn’t let go of it. She should step back, make it look natural, but she should break contact.
She should. But she didn’t.
‘I don’t know how I’m going to take nine more months of this.’
‘Nine months?’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘I didn’t realise there was a set timescale for Valentine’s-related insanity. Or an expiry date.’
One corner of his mouth twisted. ‘No, it’s not that. I’m getting out of here—going on the expedition with the South Asia team. Early next spring I’ll be back in Borneo and all this so-called civilisation will only be a distant nightmare.’
Nine months? Chloe didn’t like the way her chest squeezed at that thought.
‘It’ll die down,’ she said.
He frowned. ‘That’s what I thought at first but, if anything, it’s getting worse.’
‘I heard your ex on the radio yesterday,’ she said, ‘doing her monthly spot about her bounce-back year.’
Daniel looked thunderous. ‘I can’t really hold it against her—the radio station is making her do it—but it’s the broadcasting equivalent of a full moon. Brings out all the crazies …’ His expression softened. ‘You helped, though. That woman backed off when she thought we were together.’
Chloe nodded. ‘I guess the cat’s out of the bag—even if it was an illusory bag and an illusory cat. No comment isn’t going to cut it now.’
He gave her an uneven smile. ‘If today was anything to go by, No comment wasn’t cutting it anyway.’
There was that.
She sighed and gently slid her hand out of his. He didn’t stop her. Then she turned and rested her forearms on the gallery rail and stared out over the Palm House, even though, because of the secluded spot they’d chosen, much of what she could see was the dark waxy leaves of the bushy tree in front of her. It was so hot up here. Her jumper was starting to cling and her fringe was growing damp against her forehead.
‘So what do you want to do about it?’ he asked, then leant on the rail beside her, mirroring her pose.
For a long time neither of them said anything but, eventually, a seed of an idea dropped into Chloe’s brain from somewhere, floating on the wind. A few minutes later it had grown into a little green shoot of a plan, new and fresh and unexpected. She didn’t want to see any more women suffering the way that lady had today. And she didn’t think Daniel deserved the embarrassment, either.
She pushed her weight back onto her feet and straightened. ‘Let’s make it work for us,’ she said.
He turned to look at her, clearly unconvinced that was possible. ‘How?’
She took a deep breath. Her heart began to pump faster. This must be what it feels like for them, she thought, for the guys, when they’re gathering up the courage to ask a girl out.
But this wasn’t like that. Not really. Because she wasn’t really asking him out; she certainly wouldn’t risk being refused by Daniel a second time.
So she swallowed her nerves down, then looked him in the eye. ‘I have a proposal for you.’
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_798e0c00-897c-5128-8727-7c923f57956c)
ALARM FILLED DANIEL’S eyes. Chloe could practically hear the word proposal ringing round his head. He was feeling panicked? Good. At least that meant they were on even ground now.
‘Not that kind of proposal,’ she added wearily.
Daniel folded his arms across his chest and leaned back on the opposite railing, close to the curved glass of the Palm House’s roof. ‘What do you mean, then?’
Chloe swallowed. ‘Have dinner with me,’ she said, her heart pumping. ‘Or something else. Once a month—just before Georgia does her latest radio segment. Just like today, it might keep the crazies at bay.’
He blinked slowly. ‘You said you didn’t think it was a good idea to go out with me.’
She nodded. ‘I’m not suggesting we date, just that once in a while we let ourselves be seen together in public, let everyone join the dots. It won’t be our fault if they draw entirely the wrong picture.’
‘And at work?’
‘We do what we’ve been doing. Keep it cool and professional. People will think that we’re trying to be discreet.’
He stared at her for the longest time. Chloe held her breath and refused to fidget. No way was she going to let him see how nervous she felt. She was very glad she let go of his hands now, because her palms were sweating.
It’s not real. You’re not asking him out on a real date …
‘Why are you doing this for me?’ he asked warily.
She shook her head. She didn’t know, really. It was stupid. Crazy.
You do know, a little voice inside her head whispered. You want an excuse to spend time alone with Drop-Dead Daniel, so you can make believe, torment yourself …
No. That wasn’t it. She couldn’t let that be it.
‘Someone told me about your sister,’ she finally said. That was true. ‘Let’s just say I thought you could do with a break.’ That was also true. It just hadn’t been in her head when she’d put her proposition to Daniel.
His lips pressed together. ‘I don’t need your pity,’ he said coldly, and he pushed himself up from the railing and walked off down the gallery.
Chloe let out a huff of frustration and then trotted after him. Damn male pride …
‘It’s not pity,’ she said crossly as she closed in on him. ‘It’s a friend helping a friend. That’s all.’
He stopped, pivoted around to face her. ‘Friends? That’s all?’
She nodded, not trusting her mouth to toe the party line.
He looked beyond her, up to the vast curving glass and ironwork ceiling. Despite his knee-jerk temper, he seemed to be chewing it over.
‘I do confess I’m not being completely altruistic,’ she added, finally finding something sensible to say, something much more slick and smooth and Chloe to say. The sort of thing he’d come to expect from her—ambivalent, flirty, slightly mocking. ‘After all, you’ll be paying for dinner.’ And then she smiled brightly at him, just to prove there was nothing to worry about, that he needn’t be scared of her getting the wrong idea and joining the ranks of his stalkers.
Amusement warmed his previously stony expression. ‘Oh, I am, am I?’
She nodded again. This time because her mouth wasn’t working, not because she was scared it was about to take off on its own.
There was something about his manner that completely changed. One moment he had been closed off, cold, almost backing away from her. But now there was fire in his eyes and even though she’d swear he hadn’t moved he seemed to be getting closer.
Suddenly her cheeks felt very hot. She looked up at him, almost leaning over her.
‘D-Daniel? What are you doing?’
‘If it’s my money we’re going to be spending, my life we’re going to be messing around with, then I get to say what goes.’
Her chin bobbed up and down. She got that. Daniel had been completely blindsided by the morning’s events. He felt out of control. This request was just about reclaiming lost ground, that was all. She could let him have that much.
But then Daniel stepped towards her, pressing his body up against hers, pinning her between him and the wooden rail at her waist. His hands clutched the rail either side of her, his strong, taut arms preventing escape, and Chloe realised just how off her calculation of the situation had been.
It wasn’t lost ground he was about to claim, but her.
He paused for a moment, just as his lips were millimetres from her. Her pulse lurched and her breath came in uneven bursts.
And then he was kissing her, expertly wiping any protest away with his firm lips. Chloe clung to his shirt for support. The difference in their height meant she felt she was arching back over the railing, feeling as if she’d fall at any moment.
But even that fear was quickly erased by the sensations erupting through her body. Sweet heaven, this was better even than she’d imagined it would be. He knew just when to take, just when to tease … Just how to leave her breathless and dizzy, even without the use of his hands, which were still making sure she stayed right where he wanted her.
If Chloe had been able to string a coherent sentence together, she’d have been able to tell him it wasn’t necessary. As much as her brain was screaming for her to run, her body had been waiting too long for this. It was going to enjoy it while it lasted.
And enjoy it she did. Pretty soon her hands were unclenching from Daniel’s T-shirt, exploring his rather fine chest, reaching up to pull him closer so she could really lose herself in him. Suddenly, she was claiming him back. And, damn, if that didn’t just turn him on more. He moved his hands to her waist and for a second she thought he was going to lift her up and sit her on the rail. She grabbed him tighter, hoping he’d remember where they were, just how far she could fall if he lost concentration and let go.
She could feel him starting to lift her, his hands tightening around her ribs. She stiffened, and her eyes flew open, just in time to see him cock an eyelid. He pulled away, a decidedly wicked smile on his face, looking far more pleased with himself than a man had a right to after just such a stunt.
Even though she was pressing into him rather than leaning back over the railing, she still clutched onto him. At least she did until another noise filtered through her consciousness. She turned her head, slightly dazed, to find a small group of people on the ground staring up at them. Some of them were wearing the distinctive blue polo shirts with Kew’s embroidered logo.
Drat. She’d forgotten they’d moved out of the cover of their secluded little corner.
Smiling nervously, she lifted her hand and gave them a little wave. They responded with a round of applause and a couple of wolf whistles.
She turned back to Daniel, keeping her eyes on his chest, and carefully smoothed his T-shirt flat with her palms before gathering the courage to look up at him.
‘I thought the plan was to keep it discreet,’ she said shakily.
Daniel’s grin became even broader. Damn the man for enjoying this!
‘Plans change,’ he said, not in the least bit repentant. And then he stepped away and made tracks to the spiral staircase, whistling as he went.
Chloe walked forwards and rested her forehead against the misty glass on the other side of the gallery. Not only had she not kept her distance from Daniel Bradford, but she’d actually proposed spending more time with him. Alone. In what messed up universe did that idea make sense?
She pressed her fingertips to her lips. She’d never had much self-control where Daniel had been concerned, and now look where it had got her. She’d made herself a trap, and she had no idea how she was going to climb out of it.
He found her in the orchid nursery the next morning, working on a plant she’d been growing from a seed that had lost its label during a collections trip. They needed to confirm what species it was, but until the plant flowered it was impossible to know. This one was stubbornly refusing. But Chloe knew all about being stubborn, didn’t she?
The slight hesitation in her movement told him she’d heard him coming, but she carried on with her work. Not ignoring him, just finishing what she was doing. Indifferent, almost.
When she was ready she put the pot down and cocked an eyebrow. ‘Well, if it isn’t Indiana. Here to pound your chest?’
Daniel grinned at her. The way he was feeling this morning, a little chest pounding wouldn’t be amiss. ‘Don’t know what you mean.’
‘That’s what that kiss was about, right? Putting on a good show, some macho attempt to mark me as yours?’ She shook her head. ‘All those jungle plants you work with must have activated your dormant monkey brain.’
Ouch. He was used to her being witty; he just hadn’t realised she could be so cutting with it. But he liked cutting. It was way better than polite and impervious.
‘Pretty much,’ he said, looking her up and down. Today she was the smartest and slickest he’d ever seen. The pencil skirt had made a reappearance, along with a dark pink top and the trademark red lips.
He was lying, though. He hadn’t had a plan. Not of any shape or any kind. He’d kissed her because he’d wanted to, because she’d been driving him crazy for weeks and he hadn’t been able not to.
Since Valentine’s Day he’d been at the mercy of the situation not of his making and he hated that. And, while Chloe’s idea had merit, it felt an awful lot like being rescued. He hated that more. If anyone was going to be doing the rescuing it was going to be him.
So when the urge to kiss her had hit, he’d gone with it, had taken back control in one swift and delicious move. He wasn’t prepared to regret it. Not after the way she’d responded to him. That had been no play-acting for the audience below. She’d been right there with him, dragging him deeper.
Indifferent? Yeah, right.
Chloe Michaels might do a good job of painting it that way on the surface, but underneath she was as hungry for him as he was for her. She just didn’t want to admit it. Daniel didn’t really care why. Not now he knew it was game on again—and that he’d had the first victory.
‘Well, I’m glad that you got whatever it was out of your system,’ she said starchily and turned her attention back to her orchid.
He moved a little closer. ‘No action replays?’
She pursed her lips and scowled at him. ‘I know the London press thinks you’re God’s gift, Indiana, but I think it’s gone to your head. You’re starting to believe your own hype.’
Daniel just chuckled. He so wasn’t. But Chloe was acting as if he were as sexually neutral as that plant she was tending. He had a point to prove.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘If you don’t like my idea, we’ll scrap the whole thing. Good luck with the next raincoat flasher, though.’
‘I didn’t say I was backing out.’
Far from it.
‘Well, then. We keep it on my terms,’ she said. ‘Strictly platonic. No more stunts like the one in the Palm House yesterday.’
‘What if you cave and end up kissing me senseless?’
She made a scoffing noise. ‘Not going to happen.’
He shrugged. ‘Whatever you say. But if you give me the signals, I’m not going to ignore them.’
She let out a dry laugh. ‘You are so big-headed! And so wrong.’
He so wasn’t. But this was what he’d been waiting for from her. This was all part of the fun, the push and pull of the chase, letting her think she was in charge, when actually he was reeling her in bit by bit. She’d change her tune soon enough.
‘How about that little Italian restaurant for our next outing?’ he said.
Chloe’s expression reminded him of how his grandmother used to look at him over the top of her glasses. Even that made him want to whistle again. Oh, he was going to have so much fun with her. She was going to be worth every bit of this torturous wait.
Because he’d realised what he’d told Alan at the pub was true. There was more than one way to hunt. Chloe obviously didn’t respond to the more direct approach—that only sent her running—so he was going to have to be more clever, more subtle. Just like his plants, he was going to make himself so irresistible to her that she wouldn’t be able to help herself.
He thought of the species of Sarracenia whose tall pitchers contained narcotic liquor, drugging the insects it captured so they didn’t even consider escaping. Chloe would be like one of those happy little flies when he’d finished with her.
‘No Italian,’ she said. ‘I don’t think the grapevine needs any more convincing at present. Yesterday did the trick quite nicely.’ She picked up the pot and examined the moisture level. ‘When’s Georgia’s next on-air segment?’
‘I think it’s the first Tuesday of the month,’ he said.
She put the pot down again. ‘Well, call me in June, then.’
Daniel grinned at her attempt to dismiss him. He’d go, but only because it was part of a bigger plan. He couldn’t help letting her know that, though. He walked over to her, leaned in close and opened his mouth to whisper in her ear. She snapped the small green cane she was holding in half and every muscle in her body went taut.
So not indifferent.
‘Till June,’ he whispered, letting his breath warm the sensitive parts of the ear lobe, and he actually saw the moment she suppressed a shiver.
Two more dates and he’d have her eating out of his hand.
As May bled into June Chloe got more and more agitated. Stupid, stupid idea. What had she been thinking?
Well, obviously, she hadn’t.
She’d resorted to her old way of doing things, reacting on impulse rather than taking a measured decision. It was just that kind of behaviour that had got her into trouble with Daniel Bradford all those years ago, the sort of thing New Chloe didn’t do.
Thankfully, however stupid her plan was, however self-destructive, it actually looked as if it was working. There had been no more ‘raincoat’ incidents, and Daniel had reported a drop in interested female visitors. The plan had its downside too, though. After being so excited to get her dream job as Kew’s Head Orchid Keeper, Chloe now found her working days tense and stressful. She went home every evening with a headache.
It wasn’t that Daniel had repeated the kiss in the Palm House. He’d kept his distance, just as they planned. Physically. That didn’t mean he’d left her alone.
When they passed each other at work—which was often—he’d give her a smile he reserved just for her. Warm, intense … inviting. Just the sort of special smile lovers shared. It was messing with her head, big time. And he knew it.
Then, in early June, just as she’d suggested, Daniel’s phone call came. He wanted to come and pick her up at home, but she made an excuse about having to work late, so he came and collected her from her nursery at the allotted time instead.
They walked through the gardens together to the staff car park. Plenty of people noticed their exit. Chloe could almost hear the whispers as they passed, see the nods and winks behind their backs. It was almost a relief to slide into the passenger seat of his car and shut the world out again. Or it would have been, if the clunk of the door hadn’t created another little universe. A universe where the atmosphere became so hot the atoms danced and shimmered. A universe where she and Daniel were the only occupants. She faced forward and stared blindly at the windscreen. ‘Where are we going?’
He just put the car into gear and pulled away. ‘Somewhere lively,’ he said, and Chloe’s insides unclenched a little.
That was just what she needed. Somewhere busy, bustling with people. Somewhere she wouldn’t be left alone with him.
The car joined the rush-hour traffic through Kew and on into Chiswick. Chloe’s mood brightened further. There were some lovely restaurants here. She scanned the high street as they drove down it, wondering which one he’d picked.
Thai? French? Lebanese?
But when they turned into a side street he didn’t park, even though there were plenty of spaces. Instead he kept driving, turning this way and that until he stopped in a residential street. They were outside a smart brick house with a large bay window and a glossy black front door. He turned the engine off and got out, opened the door for her. Chloe stayed in her seat, clutching her handbag.
‘We’re here?’ she asked. ‘Where are we?’
Daniel did a little bow. ‘My house.’
She swallowed. ‘I thought you said we were going somewhere lively.’
Daniel just smiled. ‘You haven’t been inside yet.’
Run, something inside her shouted. Get out of the car and run.
It was probably her common sense making a last-ditch attempt to save her. She let it scream its frustration then sprint down the road without her.
He held out his hand and she took it, let him help her from the car. Then he ushered her up the garden path and she stood aside while he produced his keys from his pocket and opened the front door.
The minute he’d stepped into the hallway he was practically bowled over by two running bundles of energy. Chloe blinked. It took her a second to work out they were two small boys, one a slightly smaller version of the other, both with Daniel’s grey-green eyes.
He had …? They were …?
But then they both started shouting, ‘Uncle Dan! Uncle Dan!’ and the penny dropped. But the minute that puzzle had been solved another one elbowed its way in. This was where Daniel took girls on a date?
He turned and gave her a rueful smile, a small boy hanging off each arm, and led the way down the hall and into a kitchen-diner in the back of the house, with a lounge area under a conservatory at the far end. A tall, slender woman was stirring something on the hob. Same dark hair with a bit of a kink, same pale eyes. That had to be his sister.
‘Boys,’ she said, ‘try not to pull your uncle’s arms off.’ Then she looked up and smiled at Chloe. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ Chloe said.
‘Welcome to the madhouse,’ she said. ‘I’m Kelly.’ She indicated each of the boys in turn with her wooden spoon. ‘That’s Cal … That’s Ben. Say hello to Uncle Dan’s friend, boys.’
But the boys were too busy wrestling their uncle to the ground. For two people so small, they really knew what they were doing, Chloe thought, as Daniel’s knees buckled and he was felled with a thud.
‘They’ll calm down in a minute,’ Kelly said. ‘They do that every night when he comes in.’ She sighed. ‘Their father took a hike a couple of years ago and the lack of male influence makes them a little full on when they get the chance to do some “boy bonding”.’
Chloe’s eyebrows rose. ‘Beating each other half to death is boy bonding?’
Kelly grinned as she added some chopped tomatoes to the pan. ‘You don’t have brothers, do you?’
Chloe shook her head. Just her. And her doting, but rather hard to impress parents. It took a lot to carry the weight of all that parental expectation on one pair of shoulders. She’d often wished she’d had a sibling or two to share the load. ‘Why can’t they just paint each other’s nails and snivel their way through a good film, like normal people do?’
Kelly laughed. ‘Wow, it’s good to have a bit of sanity around here. I thought I was in danger of drowning in all the testosterone. This house has been a bit lacking in female company since Georgia—’ She bit her lip. ‘Sorry.’
Chloe held up her hands. ‘No, it’s okay. Me and Daniel, we’re just …’
Friends sounded so lame. In cahoots too much like a cheesy thriller. She settled for the safest option.
‘… colleagues.’
Kelly scrubbed the pan with the wooden spoon. Chloe thought she could see a bit of burnt onion refusing to behave. ‘Yep,’ she said, giving the mixture a vigorous stir that made Chloe realise that Daniel wasn’t the only one in the family who liked to get physical, ‘and I’m just Gordon Ramsay.’
Chloe didn’t say much after that. From the past couple of months at work, she knew it was no good to convince her otherwise. And it was an easy enough assumption to make. Why would Daniel be bringing her home otherwise?
The ruckus from the lounge end of the room was getting rather loud. Kelly handed the saucepan to Chloe and went to intervene.
‘Boys!’ she yelled. ‘Pyjamas! Now!’
Instantly, the knot of testosterone on the floor disentangled itself. Then, one by one, they headed towards the stairs, pouts pushing their bottom lips forward. Daniel brought up the rear, copying their expression, which only made them giggle again. The whole scene would have descended back into chaos if Kelly hadn’t given her big brother a clip round the ear.
The boys bounced in the doorway. ‘We want Uncle Dan to read us a story,’ they yelled repeatedly.
Uncle Dan looked up at Chloe, who was still holding the saucepan, and gave her an apologetic look. ‘Do you mind?’
She shook her head. She’d been trying to keep her distance from him for weeks now. Why would she mind if he volunteered to do just that?
Kelly came and took the saucepan from her. Just as well Chloe had heard the thunder of little—and big—feet on the stairs, because Kelly’s verdict on her own cooking was not for children’s ears. ‘I always was crap at cooking,’ she explained. ‘Dan said I should just get some posh stuff to reheat from the supermarket, but I had to decide to go all cordon bleu, didn’t I?’ She tipped the contents of the saucepan into the bin and banged it back down on the hob. Chloe quickly leaned forward and turned the gas off before another catastrophe occurred.
Kelly rummaged in a drawer and produced a fan of takeaway leaflets. ‘Curry, curry, Chinese or curry,’ she said brightly.
Chloe looked at the other ingredients lined up on the counter. Bacon, garlic, chilli flakes … ‘Amatriciana sauce, right?’
Kelly nodded, looking at Chloe as if she were the bearer of ancient and hallowed wisdom.
‘It’d be a shame to waste all that lovely fresh pasta,’ Chloe said. ‘Have you got another onion and more tomatoes? I’m sure I could help … if you wouldn’t mind?’
Kelly looked as if she was going to prostrate herself at Chloe’s feet. She grabbed Chloe’s hand. ‘Please marry him,’ she said, and then she added, ‘As you can see, my tact is as well developed as my culinary skills. Blame it on having two thickheaded brothers. Blunt and direct was what was required round our house when we were growing up. Never quite learned how to switch it off.’
Chloe grinned at her. She couldn’t help liking Kelly. Her say-whatever-fell-into-her-head approach was rather refreshing. There must be something lovely about going through life like that, not having to worry about saying the wrong thing or accidentally showing a part of yourself you’d rather other people didn’t know about.
‘I take it there is wine somewhere in this kitchen?’ she asked.
‘Do you need it for the sauce?’
‘No,’ said Chloe, smiling. ‘I need it in a glass. Now where are those tomatoes?’
Kelly provided both wine and tomatoes. ‘Forget marrying Dan,’ she said as she watched Chloe sweat some finely diced onion. ‘Move in and adopt me.’
Chloe chuckled, and they continued to chat as she made headway in making the pasta sauce. Kelly was more a hindrance than a help, though, and Chloe quickly suggested she put her feet up, saying that looking after pre-schoolers must be very tiring.
She nodded in the direction of the ceiling as Kelly collected her wine glass and flopped on the sofa. ‘He’s great with the boys.’
‘He is that.’ Kelly looked up, a soft smile on her face. ‘He’ll make a really good dad some—’ She froze, scratched her nose and looked away. ‘Forget I said that.’
Inside Chloe was frowning, but on the outside she batted Kelly’s stray comment away and smiled cheerfully back, mentally searching for something to say that would dispel the odd, slightly sad atmosphere that had settled on the other woman.
‘Well, there is one thing I can guarantee,’ Chloe said jokingly as she added some garlic to the pan. ‘It’s that I won’t ever be marrying your brother.’
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_796a11dd-a981-5389-9f4b-07ff962af9e9)
DANIEL PAUSED ON the stairs as he heard Chloe’s voice and smiled.
No marrying him. Ever. That was practically a guarantee.
He bounced back into the kitchen to find Chloe standing at the stove and Kelly lounging on the sofa sipping Merlot. What was wrong with that picture?
‘I invited you for dinner,’ he told Chloe, ‘not the other way round.’
Chloe shrugged. ‘I like cooking, and your sister …’
‘Your sister burnt the crap out of the first attempt,’ Kelly said helpfully. ‘I’ve been banished to the sofa. She won’t even let me help.’
Daniel gave his sister a very brotherly kind of look. ‘And I can see it’s just eating you up inside.’
Kelly held up her wine glass and toasted him with it before downing the remainder in one gulp. He shook his head and turned his attention to his guest.
‘That smells amazing,’ he said. ‘You must be pretty good at this.’
She bowed her head and looked at the wooden spoon as she stirred the sauce. ‘I like picking up new skills, perfecting them.’
Daniel smiled to himself as he and Kelly laid the table. His plan was working. He could tell from the way Chloe hummed to herself as she put the finishing touches to the pasta sauce that she was starting to relax. Just what he wanted.
He didn’t want a date with starchy, let’s-pretend-we’re-being-discreet-at-work Chloe. He wanted a date with the Chloe who’d been within a hair’s breadth of ripping his T-shirt off on the balcony of the Palm House. There was a girl who knew how to have fun.
He’d been given the job of cooking the pasta and she started teasing him when she realised it was overcooked and sticking to the bottom of the pan.
‘Honestly,’ she said, snatching it from him. ‘The pair of you are as bad as each other. I don’t know how those two poor children haven’t starved to death.’
‘I have extensive skills with a can opener and advanced microwave training,’ he told her, quite seriously.
Kelly, who was now sitting at the table, glass of wine in hand, also piped up. ‘And I make a mean chicken nuggets and oven chips.’
Chloe just shook her head.
‘I’ll bet you know how to make fancy pastry and everything,’ Kelly said mournfully as they dished up.
Chloe tried to act nonchalant, but he could see just a hint of self-satisfaction in her reply. ‘I’ve done a cookery course or two,’ she said quietly.
His sister slumped on the table. ‘Ugh. I hate women like you,’ she said dramatically, but the delivery just made Chloe laugh.
Daniel decided he was a genius. Kelly was probably his best weapon this evening. Chloe liked her, despite the fact that, beside his immaculately dressed and perfectly contained date, his sister seemed a little too loud and uncensored. It was like putting an elegant pink orchid and a dandelion in the same pot together: it shouldn’t work. But the two women were getting on like a house on fire and he wasn’t going to do anything to upset that.
Chloe was like one of her orchids, he decided as they chatted over the simple dinner. Beautiful. Poised. Aloof. Just like the graceful flowers she tended, she was almost too perfect to be true.
After dinner he moved to phase two of the plan. Kelly loaded the dishwasher, batting Chloe’s efforts to help away and telling her she’d better leave it to the expert. Daniel made the coffee. Fresh not instant. One thing in the kitchen he could do really well. Then Kelly put her coat on and picked up her handbag.
Chloe’s easy demeanour slipped a little. ‘You’re going?’
Kelly nodded. ‘Big brother here promised he’d babysit tonight. He owes me.’ She gave Daniel a knowing look. ‘First night out with the girls in weeks,’ she said, then she blew them both a kiss and hurried out of the front door before anyone could stop her.
Daniel brought Chloe a coffee and sat down at the table with her. He glanced at the comfy sofa in the conservatory, with ample room for two. That would have been his preferred location, but he sensed he needed to tread carefully now his secret weapon was off to the wine bar to drink cocktails with her girlfriends.
‘For a long time Kelly wouldn’t go anywhere,’ he told Chloe. ‘Too tired. Too self-conscious about her hair. It was very patchy when it first grew back.’
A look of pain crossed Chloe’s features and she absent-mindedly fiddled with the end of a loose ringlet. ‘How awful for her. Girls need their hair.’
He nodded, understanding that now. Personally, he wouldn’t have cared if his hair was down to his knees or in a marine buzz cut, but the wallop Kelly had given him when he’d suggested, very practically, that she should just borrow his clippers and even it all out had let him know just how differently men and women saw this issue.
He and Chloe chatted about easy things. Safe things. Work. Plants. Mutual acquaintances. When she drained her cup, Daniel stood up and reached for the wine bottle. ‘Another glass?’
She looked at him thoughtfully, and then she said, ‘Just half. It was rather drinkable.’
He got fresh glasses from the cupboard as, thanks to Kelly’s post-dinner clearing frenzy, the previous ones were already sloshing around in the dishwasher. But instead of joining her at the table he walked over and placed her glass on the table beside the sofa and then sprawled at the other end.
Chloe looked at him for a second and then stood up and came to join him, sitting neatly and very upright in the opposite corner. ‘No funny business,’ she said, and sipped her wine. ‘You promised.’
He just smiled at her. ‘I don’t think I actually promised, but I did say that it would be up to you to make the first move.’
Chloe’s shoulders relaxed a little, but her expression remained pinched. ‘As nice as dinner was, I don’t see how hiding away in your house is going to help us.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Well, it came about partly because I’d forgotten I’d told Kelly I’d babysit …’ He frowned. ‘In fact, sometimes I think she just pulls that one when she wants a night out, because I don’t remember the original request at all.’
Chloe chuckled, and he knew he was taking the right approach. ‘But then I realised it could help.’
Her eyebrows lifted.
‘Kelly works in the admin office,’ he told her.
‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’
‘News that you’ve been round for dinner will be all around Kew—and I mean the district, not just the gardens—by noon tomorrow.
‘The opening came up a couple of months ago. I saw the notice and suggested she apply. She needed something part-time—something that would fit around the boys and would help build confidence. And, as she told me quite pointedly, to stop her going insane after what seemed like months of being stuck indoors.’
Chloe had been clutching her wine glass against her chest and now she lowered it as she stared out of the windows at the darkening sky. ‘She’s very brave, isn’t she?’
Daniel stopped looking at Chloe, stopped gauging every action and reaction, and joined her in staring out of the window. ‘She says she’s had to be. Wasn’t her choice.’
He knew all about that. Knew all about surviving, not because he was strong and courageous, but because he was still alive and breathing, had found himself trudging onward with no choice about where to put his foot next. Sometimes survival wasn’t a choice but a sentence.
But he didn’t want to think about those dark days in his life. He wanted fun. He wanted to remember the joy in living.
A waft of Chloe’s floral perfume hit him, dragging him back into the present, filling his nostrils and making his pulse kick. He turned to look at her. This was what was important. Now. This night, this woman. What he wanted right now was Chloe Michaels.
He caught her gaze, leaned in closer …
But she wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. ‘I haven’t got any brothers or sisters,’ she said, just the faintest twinge of envy in her voice.
Her parents must have thought they’d won the lottery, then, Daniel thought as he let his eyes rove over her once again. She was beautiful, confident, clever. She’d been their only chance and they’d lucked out. While other people …
Sometimes their only chance was wiped out before it had hardly begun.
He looked away and downed a huge mouthful of wine.
No. He’d shut that door. Done his grieving. He really wasn’t going to think about it tonight. That would really be a buzz kill. He needed to get control of himself, of his thoughts.
But Chloe made it very difficult. He’d start on the track of conversation that seemed totally innocent, trying to get her to let down those polished walls a little more, and somehow he’d end up telling her things he didn’t normally reveal to anybody—like the fact he had a touch of dyslexia, leading to stories about ridiculous errors with Latin plant names during his student days, something that only another horticulturist would truly appreciate. Or how he’d once accidentally leaned against a macaw palm during an expedition and had been picking its thorny black spines out of his backside for a week.
Talking to her was easy. As it had been with Georgia.
A chill rippled through him.
No. Chloe was nothing like his ex. He needed to remember that. This one was smart and savvy and she knew the game. Georgia … hadn’t. But then he hadn’t been playing games with Georgia. As cruel as it sounded, he’d just been passing time. And so had Georgia, she’d just tried to tell herself there was more to it.
But what was he doing thinking about his almost fiancée? He was losing focus. He’d invited Chloe here tonight with one thing in mind: to move forwards in his plan, and while she was relaxed and smiling he should press on.
He put his wine glass down and went to fetch the bottle from the kitchen counter. He filled his glass first then reclaimed his spot on the sofa, a little closer to Chloe this time, and he leaned across to top her up. She trailed off, losing the thread of what she was talking about, and her eyes widened as the wine filled her glass.
He placed the empty bottle on the table behind her head, but didn’t move back. Their faces were only a couple of inches apart now. Unconsciously, she moistened her lips with her tongue, still staring at him.
He let go of the bottle and placed his hand on her shoulder, curling his fingers round her nape. She shivered slightly as his thumb brushed her neck and her gaze dropped to his lips. His core temperature rose.
He slid the glass from her fingers and put it next to the empty bottle. She let him.
He didn’t lean in and close the distance, though. Even though the air seemed to shimmer and thud between them. He’d told her the next move would be hers and he was going to stand by his word.
Okay, he hadn’t left it completely up to her. He’d made a hundred little moves to manoeuvre her to this point, but the final leap would be all hers. There’d be no backing out then. No more running away and pretending she wasn’t interested.
He heard, and felt, the shaky in-breath that parted her lips, watched her eyelids start to slide closed. He closed his eyes too, not wanting to distract himself in the sweet surrender he knew was coming …
There was a crash from the other side of the room, followed by a rhythmic thudding.
‘Uncle Daniel!’
He opened his eyes to find Cal standing almost as close to him as he was to Chloe, looking between the two of them with open curiosity.
Chloe pressed herself backwards into the corner of the sofa and looked away.
‘There’s a crocodile under my bed,’ Cal said, quite matter-of-factly. ‘He wants to eat my toes.’
‘Cal …’ Daniel warned, his voice a little sharper than he’d intended it to be.
‘He says he’s going to gobble me up, bit by bit.’ Cal blinked, the picture of childish innocence. Had Kelly put him up to this?
Daniel was still so close to Chloe that he could feel her chest shaking as she tried to suppress a laugh.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t finding this the least bit funny. He’d had his own plans for this evening. Maybe of a similar pattern—starting with the toes, and working his way up, bit by bit …
Just that thought alone made him ache.
Reluctantly, he got up off the sofa and took Cal back upstairs. A complete search—involving torches—was made of the under bed area, and it was only when Daniel had tucked the duvet in round his nephew and read him yet another story that Cal consented to lie down and close his eyes.
When he got back downstairs Chloe wasn’t on the sofa where he’d left her, but in the hallway, putting on her coat.
‘Thanks for a lovely evening,’ she said. The dazzling smile she wore informed him that whatever barriers he’d managed to coax down in the last half-hour had sprung up again while he’d been hunting for Cal’s crocodile.
Damn.
He couldn’t wait another month to try again. It would seem like an eternity.
‘Are you sure you don’t want another glass of wine?’
Chloe shook her head and her curls bounced. ‘I think I’ve had enough.’ The seriousness that crept into her eyes told him she wasn’t just talking about the Merlot. But he wasn’t quite ready to let her go that easily.
‘Think how much it would help our case if Kelly could tell everybody that you’d stayed for breakfast?’
Chloe sighed. ‘Daniel … That’s not the deal, and you know it.’
Damn again. So close.
‘Maybe,’ he said, smiling slowly. ‘But optimism is one of my most appealing traits.’
At least she laughed. ‘Of course it is,’ she said and patted him on the arm as if he were an elderly aunt. Ouch.
He wanted to ask her to stay, to give him another chance, but it sounded suspiciously like begging inside his head, and he didn’t do begging. Persuading, yes. Pursuing, definitely. But never begging.
The muffled hoot of a car horn outside took him by surprise.
‘That’s my cab,’ she said.
Her cab.
She’d called a cab?
Suddenly Daniel didn’t feel as firmly in control as he had been before. He liked the chase, but this quarry was intent on running him in new and unexpected directions. He couldn’t quite decide whether he loved it or hated it.
‘Night, Daniel,’ she murmured, and then, without a flicker of hesitation or nerves, she leaned in close and pressed her lips gently to his cheek.
And then she was gone into the balmy night air, her little handbag swinging off her fingers.
Daniel shut the door when the cab drove away and gave out a loud growl of frustration.
‘Uncle Daniel!’ The terrified shriek came from Cal’s room, and a few seconds later he was standing at the top of the stairs. ‘The crocodile’s back!’ he said between sobs. ‘And he’s really, really angry.’
Daniel rubbed a hand through his hair and tramped up the stairs, scooping up the small, snivelling boy when he got to the top.
‘Don’t want to sleep in my room,’ Cal hiccupped as Daniel headed across the landing. ‘Can’t I sleep with you?’
Daniel looked at the clock. Not even nine-thirty. When he’d dreamed of an early night, snuggling up with a warm body in his bed this evening, this was not what he’d had in mind.
He took his nephew into his darkened bedroom, making sure the landing light was on and the door wide, and he climbed on top of the covers while Cal slid underneath. It wasn’t ten minutes before he could hear small-boy snoring and the rhythmic smack of Cal’s lips against his stubby thumb.
Daniel lay there a little longer, just to make sure he didn’t wake his nephew when he carried him back to bed. He couldn’t be cross, not really. Both boys had been very clingy since their dad had left and Kelly had slipped into the habit of letting them sneak into her bed if they woke in the night.
As he lay there he stared at the wedge of orange light the street lamp had painted on his ceiling and let out a heavy breath. Chloe Michaels was a mystery to him. One minute she was all wide-eyed and trembling at his proximity, the next she was cool and detached and contained.
As much as he hated all those silly women turning up since George’s proposal, at least they proved something—that he wasn’t totally repellent. Quite the opposite. So why could Chloe resist him so easily? What made her so different? He just had to find out.
Thank goodness for small boys with crocodiles under their beds.
Chloe repeated the phrase to herself a hundred times as she got ready for work the next day.
Normally, she brushed her teeth on automatic, mind drifting, but this morning she watched herself in the mirror, her face free of make-up and her hair hidden beneath a twisted towel. She looked quite different from the woman who’d walked in the door last night.
She’d thought the Mouse was long gone, buried beneath years of being so cool and confident that play-acting had become reality. But she was still there. As Chloe brushed her teeth she occasionally caught a glimpse of her—something about a tightness in her jaw, a flicker of hesitancy in those eyes.
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Fiona Harper
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: From London to New York…with Love. Chloe Michaels is determined not to fall for new colleague Daniel Bradford – especially as he doesn’t remember rejecting her years ago! But London’s most infamous bachelor has other plans – one date with Chloe every month to deflect the media attention on his love life…and maybe just win her heart for real! After a hard last few years, Daniel’s sister Kelly just wants a steady life – and that means no dating! So she absolutely, categorically should not be fantasising about her boss Jason Knight. But a business trip to the Big Apple-and a rebound fling- could be just what Kelly needs to make her feel alive again…