by Fiona Harper
CHAPTER THREE
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.’