At least, Tazzy presumed it was a man. It was a little hard to tell when he—she?—was carrying the hugest bouquet of red roses Tazzy had ever seen in her life!
‘The gentleman has instructions to deliver the roses personally,’ Mrs Brown, the housekeeper, explained apologetically.
Tazzy turned accusing eyes on Ross Valentine; she knew that he dated occasionally, but none of those women seemed to last very long—which begged the question, which one of them had sent him this huge bouquet of red roses for Valentine’s Day? Honestly, it was totally out of—
‘Miss Darling?’ the delivery man prompted as he looked at her hopefully.
Tazzy turned slowly to look at the man, her tone wary as she answered him. ‘Yes…?’
The man nodded his satisfaction with her answer. ‘Then these are for you.’ He placed the bouquet into her unresisting arms. ‘Whoever he is, he must have it real bad!’ he added, giving a knowing wink in Tazzy’s direction before departing the room, Mrs Brown following behind him.
Tazzy didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Could only stare at what had to be dozens of deep red roses in her arms.
There had to have been some sort of mistake. These flowers couldn’t possibly be for her. She never received roses, on Valentine’s Day, or any other day.
But thinking of Valentine…
She glanced across at her employer, a blush warming her cheeks as she saw he was looking straight back at her, dark brows raised in a question.
That look was enough to shake Tazzy out of the daze she had lapsed into on being presented with the red roses. ‘I think there must have been some mistake, and these were meant for you.’ She grimaced as she held out the flowers to him.
Ross shook his head, making no effort to take the blood-red blooms from her. ‘He distinctly said they were for Miss Darling, and as we both know that’s you…’ He strolled over to pluck out the white card that nestled amongst the roses. “‘To Anastasia. Much love,”’ he read out. ‘No, they’re definitely for you, Tazzy.’ He grinned teasingly. ‘As the man said, someone’s got it bad,’ he added with an appreciative glance at the dozens of roses.
To Anastasia. Much love…
The card attached to the kitten earlier this morning had read, ‘To Anastasia. With love.’ The messages were so similar that it was impossible not to wonder if the kitten and the roses hadn’t been sent to her by the same person. But if so, who could that person be?
She had no idea!
She really didn’t. Oh, several of the men she had met while travelling with Ross had flirted with her or paid her compliments, but she was certain that none of them knew her name was Anastasia.
The postman occasionally paid her a compliment when she went to the door to collect the mail from him, as did the young man from the courier service they habitually used, but as there had to be at least fifty red roses here, delivered on Valentine’s Day too, Tazzy would hazard a guess at such an extravagant gesture of love being out of either of their financial leagues. No, she really had no idea who could have sent them to her.
Neither did she appreciate their being delivered here at her place of work, in front of Ross, of all people; on today’s evidence he was going to believe there was someone serious in her life!
‘Have you been holding out on me, Miss Darling?’ Ross’s next words seemed to confirm that particular worry. ‘You aren’t thinking of leaving me in order to get married, by any chance?’ he asked.
‘Certainly not!’ Tazzy dropped the roses down onto her desktop as if she had been pricked by one of their thorns. ‘I think someone must be playing a practical joke on me,’ she excused lamely.
‘An expensive practical joke,’ Ross disagreed with a shake of his head. ‘No, Tazzy—Miss Darling,’ he corrected himself as she gave him a pointed look, ‘I think you should look at the distinct possibility that you have a secret admirer.’ He lightly touched one of the velvety soft flowers.
Then whoever it was had kept it such a secret that she didn’t have a clue as to who it could possibly be!
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she snapped, deciding that office protocol had been broken enough for one day. ‘I have some work to do,’ she added pointedly when Ross still made no effort to leave but continued to look at her speculatively.
‘I think, Miss Darling,’ he finally murmured consideringly, ‘that you and I ought to have lunch together today in order to discuss the possibility of someone stealing you away from me, don’t you?’
She glared at him. ‘I told you, there is nothing to discuss!’
Ross shook his head. ‘I disagree.’
Oh, great, not only did she not know who was indulging in these ridiculous Valentine pranks, but now she had to try and explain it to her employer!
She gave a heavy sigh. ‘I’ll ask Mrs Brown to make us both some sandwiches.’ It would be far from the first time Tazzy had worked through her lunch-hour.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
Tazzy gave a puzzled frown. ‘You would prefer me to ask her to prepare something else?’ A cooked lunch would save her the problem of cooking for herself this evening when she got home. In view of the fact that she had to do something about the kitten, that arrangement could work out quite well.
Ross smiled as he shook his head. ‘I would prefer it if we went out somewhere to eat. What’s the name of that little place you occasionally go to with that friend of yours—Anne, isn’t it?—that sometimes calls for you here?’
‘Luigi’s?’ Tazzy supplied with a frown.
‘That’s the place!’ His smile deepened. ‘We’ll go there for lunch.’
For one thing, Luigi’s was a small Italian bistro, hardly the sort of place Ross usually frequented, with his accumulated wealth and preference for French cuisine. For another, she did not relish the idea of going there with Ross only to bump into her friend Anne—who did go to Luigi’s often. Knowing Anne, she would demand to know all the details the next time the two of them met! What was wrong with Mrs Brown’s cooking anyway? It had always been good enough before!
Then she remembered…
‘Have you forgotten what day it is today?’ she reminded Ross.
‘That would be a little difficult, wouldn’t it, when your office is full of red roses?’ He gave the long-stemmed blooms a pointed look.
Tazzy felt the warmth in her cheeks. ‘Hardly full,’ she said, shifting the bouquet to one side of her desk. ‘I was actually trying to point out to you that there is no way we will get a table at Luigi’s for lunch today. He was fully booked weeks ago.’
‘He was?’ Ross looked startled by this information.
Tazzy found it quite endearing that it obviously hadn’t even occurred to him that almost all restaurants would be fully booked today, both at lunch-time and this evening; apparently he had never tried to take anyone out to lunch on Valentine’s Day before!
‘Okay, forget Luigi’s,’ Ross dismissed impatiently.
Tazzy nodded. ‘Shall I ask Mrs Brown to get us both a sandwich, after all?’
‘Certainly not!’ he said firmly. ‘I invited you out to lunch, and out we will most definitely go.’
‘But—’
‘Leave it to me,’ Ross interrupted. ‘I’ll book us a table somewhere for lunch.’
Her eyes widened. ‘You will?’
‘I will.’ He nodded, his expression becoming mocking at her obvious surprise. ‘Tazzy, believe it or not, before the advent of your undoubtedly efficient self into my life, I was quite capable of telephoning a restaurant myself and booking my own table!’
She knew that he still did that if he was taking a woman out to dinner. Something, in view of her own feelings towards him, she had always been grateful for.
But that wasn’t the point she had been about to make; it was the fact that this didn’t sound like a business lunch to her, and the two of them having lunch together under any other circumstances was not a good idea…
‘I’m sure you were,’ she soothed. ‘It’s just
that—’
‘I said leave it to me, Tazzy,’ Ross insisted, moving towards the connecting door.
‘Use the intercom the next time you need something,’ Tazzy was stung into advising him sharply as he was closing the door, inwardly wondering when the strangeness of today was going to end!
The door opened again, Ross grimacing across at her. ‘I loathe that damned intercom,’ he muttered. ‘I rue the day I ever let you persuade me into having it installed.’
She was well aware of Ross’s feelings concerning the intercom system between their two offices. But, for her part, it was yet another move to keep their relationship on a businesslike footing; before the intercom had been installed Ross had been altogether too fond of just wandering into her office whenever he felt like it, sitting on the side of her desk to discuss whatever problem was bothering him at the time. And in the process usually managing to upset Tazzy’s equilibrium for at least half an hour after he had left—by which time he had usually wandered back in again! The intercom system had stopped all of that. At least…until today, it had…
‘Nevertheless, it’s there to be used,’ she insisted primly.
‘So was the guillotine!’ Ross pointed out. ‘And we all know what use that was put to! Not all machines are progress, you know, Tazzy.’
This sounded more than slightly ridiculous coming from a man who specialized in clearing any glitch or bug that might attack a computer or its software!
He had also called her by her first name yet again! It was way past time this familiarity was put to an end!
‘I’m afraid I really can’t have lunch with you today,’ she told him determinedly. ‘I have to go and check on the kitten,’ she explained as he gave her a frowning look.
His brow cleared. ‘We’ll both go,’ he offered. ‘We can go on to the restaurant from there.’
Tazzy stared at him. Never once during the eighteen months she’d worked for him had there been a need for him to go to her home. ‘I don’t think—’
‘Oh, come on, Tazzy,’ he encouraged. ‘After all, I might end up taking the kitten off your hands.’
‘I told you, I haven’t decided yet whether or not I’m going to keep it myself!’ she came back defensively.
‘Going to wait and see who gave him to you first, is that it?’ Ross teased, brown eyes definitely laughing at her.
‘Certainly not,’ she denied crossly. ‘Oh, very well, you can come with me at lunch-time,’ she capitulated. ‘You’ll just have to excuse the mess,’ she added ungraciously, knowing there was no mess, that she kept her home as tidy as she kept her office.
But the thought of Ross in her home, the one place she never had to remember him having been, was not a pleasant one. Her little terraced house was her sanctuary. A sanctuary that was about to be invaded!
‘I’ll do that.’ Ross grinned knowingly. ‘While we’re there, you could also change into something a little less…businesslike,’ he added before continuing on his way to his own office.
Tazzy glared at the now closed door between the two rooms. She had no intention of changing into something less businesslike! Businesslike was how she liked to be whenever she was around Ross, and she had no intention of ever changing that.
Whoever the practical joker was who had sent her first the kitten, and then these roses, had a lot to answer for. Because she had no doubts that it was the anonymous gifts she had received today that had prompted Ross into inviting her out to lunch, if only to try and find out from Tazzy exactly how serious the relationship was.
When there was no relationship!
CHAPTER THREE
‘PIERRE will be more than pleased to see us both at about one-thirty,’ Ross told Tazzy with satisfaction as he strolled back into her office a couple of hours later.
Pierre Gaston owned one of the most select restaurants in London, with extortionate prices to go along with that prestige; no doubt he would be pleased to see another two customers in his restaurant at lunchtime!
But, Tazzy noted with a certain inner smugness, it had taken Ross almost two hours to come up with a restaurant that had availability.
Although the fact that it was Pierre’s meant she might just have to rethink her decision not to change out of the grey suit and white blouse she had worn for work today. The women that frequented such a restaurant had a totally different idea of ‘power dressing’ from the one she had: designer suits and diamonds, probably!
‘You were right about everywhere being full,’ Ross admitted with a grimace as he came over to sit on the side of her desk. ‘I tried Pierre’s as a last resort.’
That was one of the endearing qualities about Ross that so made her love him; he hadn’t needed to admit to her that he had found difficulty, after all, but he had done so anyway.
‘Not that you aren’t worth it,’ he hastened to add with a boyish smile. ‘I just had somewhere a little more—well, less formal, let’s say—in mind.’
‘There really is no need to take me out at all,’ she assured him, calmer now than she had been a couple of hours ago. Everything was back under control, even the red roses were out of the way on top of a filing cabinet in a couple of vases she had borrowed from Mrs Brown; she simply hadn’t the heart to throw such beautiful flowers in the bin—whoever they might have come from! ‘I can promise you, I’m not involved in a relationship, and have no intention of letting anyone “steal me away” from your employment,’ she added impatiently.
He shrugged. ‘The roses say differently.’
Admittedly, the roses, five dozen of them in all—Tazzy had counted them as she’d put them in the vases!—must have cost someone a small fortune, especially today of all days, but, as she couldn’t even take a wild guess at who might have sent them, the gesture was totally wasted on her!
She shook her head. ‘Couldn’t you just take my word for it that they don’t? It would save you having to go to the expense of taking me out to lunch.’
‘No, I said I was taking you out, and that’s what I’m going to do,’ Ross insisted. ‘So we had better leave here—’ He broke off as the second knock of the morning sounded on Tazzy’s office door, a rather bemused Mrs Brown once again the perpetrator, another man trailing in her wake.
Tazzy had tensed the moment the knock had sounded on the door, and as she saw the enormous box of chocolates the man carried in his hands—a red heart-shaped box of chocolates, tied up with a red ribbon—she knew she was right to feel that way!
She closed her eyes, hoping—and praying!—that the chocolates hadn’t come from her mystery admirer too, that they weren’t even for her. Although perhaps, in the circumstances, that would be hoping for too much!
Mrs Brown looked even more bemused than she had earlier. ‘This gentleman has instructions to deliver the chocolates personally, too,’ she told them.
‘Miss Darling?’ The man looked at Tazzy enquiringly.
‘Yes,’ she confirmed abruptly, unable to even look at Ross this time as the delivery man crossed the room to place the box of chocolates into her hands—goodness knew what Ross was making of all this! ‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly.
The man grinned. ‘Eleven o’clock the man said, and eleven o’clock it is,’ he said with satisfaction.
Tazzy’s gaze narrowed. ‘What man?’
‘Oh, the office didn’t tell me that, love,’ the man replied jovially, shaking his head. ‘I’m just the delivery man, you see.’
No help there, then, with the identity of this mystery admirer. Pity. For a moment there—
‘Here.’ Ross moved forward to tip the man.
‘Oh, no, guv’nor, that was already taken care of when the chocolates were given to us for delivery,’ the man explained.
Tazzy was so stunned by this second Valentine delivery to her place of work that she hadn’t even thought about tipping the man. The fact that he refused Ross’s attempt to do so, because he had already received a tip, was doubly odd. The mystery admirer was taking no chances on having his
identity discovered, was he?
Which was strange in itself. Surely the whole point of gifts on Valentine’s Day was that the person receiving them should eventually realize who they had come from? After all, there wasn’t a lot of point to the exercise otherwise.
But it wasn’t even lunch-time yet, Tazzy reminded herself; plenty of time left yet today for the man to somehow show himself as the giver of these gifts.
‘Thank you,’ she told the delivery man once again before he left with Mrs Brown, still unable to actually look at Ross as he stood silently across the room, wishing that he hadn’t been in the room when this second delivery had been made.
At least then she might have stood some chance of hiding these chocolates from him—although quite where she would be able to hide such a huge box, she had no idea!
This was all so ridiculous. She felt ridiculous. And she couldn’t even begin to guess at Ross’s feelings!
‘Aren’t you going to open them?’ he encouraged hopefully. ‘They’re my favourites. And we aren’t going to be having lunch for at least another couple of hours.’
Tazzy didn’t answer him immediately, staring down at the white card that had been tucked beneath the red ribbon. ‘To Anastasia. With affection and love.’ Affection as well as love now!
Strangely, she found the claim of affection more confusing than the love; surely to feel affection for someone they had to know that person rather well? Which begged the question, how could some man feel this way about her and she not even know about it?
Well, she knew about it now—and she wished that she didn’t.
‘You open them.’ She thrust the box across the desk towards Ross. ‘I’m starting to think that whoever this man is he must be some sort of a crackpot!’
A kitten, red roses, and now a heart-shaped box of chocolates; where was it all going to end?
Ross chuckled as he began to undo the ribbon that secured the box. ‘I’m sure most women don’t think that when they receive gifts from a man.’
She wasn’t ‘most women,’ and it was the fact that she had no idea who the man was that made her feel so confused. Besides, if this continued, Ross was never going to believe her when she kept insisting there was no one serious in her life!
His Darling Valentine Page 2