Second Chances Boxed Set: 7 Sweet & Sexy Romances in 1 Book

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Second Chances Boxed Set: 7 Sweet & Sexy Romances in 1 Book Page 77

by Tracey Alvarez


  She knew he was watching her through the rear view mirror. She could feel his eyes on her, could feel his curious stare and she knew she looked hideous because she felt hideous. Her hair was still wet and she wore no make up. She was barefoot.

  She was hideous.

  “Are you alright back there?” he asked.

  Daisy dabbed at her nose. “I’m alright."

  “You just broke up with your boyfriend?”

  Daisy stared out the window. Was Joel her boyfriend? She hadn’t thought of him that way.

  If he was, he wasn't any more.

  She buried her face in a new wad of tissues. “How did you know?”

  “I know tears from tears, and yours are tears.”

  She was crying? She fumbled around in her bag, found her mirror, and realized her eyes were as wet as the seas around Golden Grove. Her face was red. Tear streaked.

  The driver asked, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Thanks for asking but yes. I am fine.” Daisy blew again, coughed to clear her throat and met the cab driver’s concerned gaze in the mirror. She gave him a not-too-genuine smile. “I’m fine. I just need to get home.”

  The car pulled up at a red light and Daisy glanced out the window and blinked rapidly as tears - no denying what they were now - pricked her eyes. It was official. She went for smart men, the kind of men who could never respect her back the way she wanted, the way she needed. The kind she couldn't keep a hold of and never would.

  She spied a grocery shop, drew a shuddery breath and leant toward the driver. “Could you pull over here for a moment, please? I won’t be long.”

  The driver stopped the car and Daisy jumped out and was back in a minute. In her hand she clutched a substantial bar of chocolate.

  They drove on and Daisy pulled off the wrapper and bit into it. It didn’t take all the pain away but it did something. She bit off some more, flopped against the back of the seat, let the chocolate melt over her tongue and she closed her eyes. She promptly opened them again. They stung from the tears.

  She stared out the window and wondered what Joel was doing. Was he as miserable as she, or just glad to get shot of her now she couldn't hold him back? Now he could pursue his incredible career without Daisy to stall him.

  “Been going out with him long?”

  She met the driver’s eyes. “Sorry?”

  “You and your bloke? Long time?”

  She looked again in the mirror. ‘Hideous’ was understating it. No romantically tragic eyes glistening mournfully at anyone who wanted to look.

  “It's a strange situation," she admitted weakly.

  "I've heard them all." He gave her a sympathetic smile through the rear view mirror. "Get it off your chest if you want to. So to speak."

  She hesitated. She had to tell someone. At least with a total stranger she wouldn't have to live with the tut-tuts, the "I told you so's," of her family. It was cheap therapy, she decided.

  She cleared her throat. “I went on a TV dating show and I won a date. With the guy. And we went away for the weekend to a resort. We clicked. Big time. Only I didn't know him. Not really.”

  The taxi driver whistled, a knowing look in his eyes. “So it’s over before it began?”

  “Pretty much." They turned onto Ponsonby Road and as they headed along, she gave him her street.

  As they turned in to it, she leant forward. "Can you stop here?" She could see the store down the road and she didn't want to get off outside. "I'll walk down. I don’t want to get out by my place.”

  She paid the taxi driver and as he took her bag from the car boot, he said, “You want my advice?”

  She shrugged. “Might as well. I need all the help I can get.”

  “Go inside and have a drink. Brandy will do the trick. Then sleep on it. It’s never as bad in the morning.”

  As she began to pull her bag down the road, down to her shop, she thought, no. He is so wrong.

  Because it will be worse. Much, much worse.

  From the coffee shop up near the corner, Rob held a book up to his face in a pathetic attempt at a disguise and peered over the top at Daisy Miller.

  What the blazes was she doing? She'd got out of a taxi opposite the cafe and now she was walking down the street looking miserable as sin. He moved closer to the front window to watch as she approached the door to her apartment. She let herself in, and he watched as the door closed finally behind her. That she hadn’t even gone next door to Poppy’s – Dreams by Poppy – was just as strange.

  He gulped down the last of his coffee and picked up the Poppy’s bag with the books Michelle had picked out for Kate. He sprinted across the road, debated whether to knock on Daisy’s door, then spotted the taxi driver about to pull away from the curb.

  He threw open the back door and climbed in, ignoring the startled look of the driver who protested, "Hey, mate, I've got a job to head to."

  “The woman who left your taxi just now?”

  The taxi driver looked at him with suspicion. "What about her? What's it to you?"

  "I'm curious," Rob said vaguely.

  “Yeah, I dropped her off."

  "She looked upset."

  "You could say that. She just broke up with her man.”

  Her man. What man?

  “Gutsed down half a bar of chocolate in the back seat.” The driver adjusted his mirror for his appreciative audience.

  Rob felt like clutching his head. What on earth was going on?

  "Listen." He fished in his pocket for his wallet and said, "I need to get across town." He gave him Joel's address and the driver's eyes bulged. "That's just where I came from."

  What the hell. Rob flopped back in the seat. "Can you get me there now?"

  The driver altered his meter. "My next fare's at Shed 21 on the viaduct. No problem."

  Rob belted himself up and as the driver headed up towards Ponsonby Road, Rob said, “So what else did she say?”

  The intercom buzzed and Joel knew not to consider it was Daisy.

  Daisy would be pouring her heart out to her girlfriends and telling them what a lying, rotten, insensitive arsehole he was.

  The intercom buzzed again and again. Joel checked the camera. It was Rob.

  Figured.

  He buzzed him up and when Rob stepped through the door, he glared at Joel as though he were from another planet. His gaze went to his bare feet, his jeans, up to his chest and back down to the broken glass on the floor.

  “What the hell," he demanded, "happened to you? You look bloody awful.”

  Joel sidestepped the glass and went over to the kitchen. Rob followed.

  Joel pulled another bottle of red from the rack. “Want a drink?”

  Rob picked up the empty bottle on the counter. “Please don't tell me you've drunk all this on your own?”

  Joel handed him a glass. “Daisy and I did.”

  Rob glanced up at him. “Daisy?”

  "She was here." Joel took his seat and rubbed one weary hand over his eyes. “She went home.”

  Rob settled down in the chair opposite. “So she came here when you got back?"

  Joel nodded. His mind was fuzzy. He’d had far too much to drink. He supposed he should eat something but the thought made him want to throw up. For good measure he took another gulp of wine.

  “You’ve lost me somewhere, Joel. What happened?”

  Joel stared at the red liquid and watched it swirl against the glass. Stormy and fiery. Courtesy of his own stupidity.

  “We argued." He shook his head. "I said things. Stupid things. She left."

  "And why," Rob said slowly, "did you come back here? Why did she do that?"

  "So we could continue where we left off at Golden Grove." He set the glass down.

  Rob’s eyes bulged.

  Joel buried his head in his hands. "In the sack."

  Rob spluttered into his glass. "I had no idea you were that fast. Sheesh. This isn't like you. At all."

  “Never met anyone I liked e
nough to..." Wreck my career he thought grimly. Make me look like a dog on heat. He picked up his glass and slugged down more wine.

  Rob said, “What happened on Golden Grove?”

  Joel shifted in his chair. Wine sloshed over the edge of his glass. He made no move to clean it up. “It was all good on the island. That resort is amazing. Honestly?" He let out a breath, and stared up at the ceiling. "Perfect.”

  “So forgive me for asking the freaking obvious but why the hell do you look like crap? What sort of argument did you have and what the heck did you say to insult her?"

  Joel shut his eyes. He didn’t want to think about it even though he’d been rehashing it in his head for the past hour and it all came down to one thing.

  He had said the worst possible thing to her and hadn't even realized he'd been saying it.

  He had called her stupid.

  And even worse, was the thought that deep down, deep down where he wasn't even sure what went on, deep down he had to wonder. Did he really think that? That's what horrified him. Was he so wrapped up in his own career, his own life, that he had become like Vanderlay and Burke? That he'd become that much of an arrogant, condescending arse?

  He fell back against the couch. "This is such a freaking mess."

  "I think," Rob said, confusion in his voice, “that you better tell me the whole story. And start at the beginning. I want all the details from the moment you got on that flight to Golden Grove."

  Joel took a long gulp of wine, slumped back in the seat, and began to talk.

  Twenty four hours later at the TV studio, Rob stepped into his office with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

  He stared glumly ahead of him. Joel Benjamin was hurting and he was more than a friend. He was his brother-in-law and long before Rob had met Kate, he and Joel had bonded like brothers.

  Rob had been there to help Joel lose weight, work his arse off to get first class honours for his Masters, and been there the day he'd been capped with his PhD.

  Rob sank on to a chair and looked straight ahead, deep in thought.

  There was a knock at the door. It was Kelly Brown.

  She stalked in and wasting no time, announced, “We’ve got a potential problem.”

  "Another one?" Rob said wryly.

  Kelly perched on the edge of Rob’s desk. “We got a call from a taxi driver with Custom Cabs last night who wanted to know what the story was between Joel Benjamin and Daisy Miller."

  Rob stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  “He claims he took them home from the airport yesterday and he dropped them both off at Joel Benjamin’s apartment.”

  “So?”

  “So it just so happened that an hour later, a colleague of his on the rank down from the Benjamin apartment, gets Daisy in his car and takes her back to her place. She was a wreck."

  Rob groaned. He should’ve figured that if a taxi driver would tell him, a complete stranger, what he’d seen, then it sure as hell meant he’d be blabbing it to his taxi driver colleagues.

  “I wouldn’t have brought it to your attention,” Kelly went on, “except that, frankly, word seems to be getting around. If there’s anything going on between Daisy and Joel then I think we should know so we can plan a strategy if we need one."

  She pulled a packet of cigarettes from her bag.

  "Don't light that thing up in here," Rob growled. "You'll set off the fire alarm for one."

  She pulled a cigarette from the packet. "I don't give a crap." She took a lighter and lit up.

  "Sheesh, Kelly, its illegal and it's my friggin' office!"

  "Do I care when it's your brother-in law driving me to it?" She took two long, heavy drags, gave a sigh, dragged a few more then dropped the glowing cigarette in a takeaway cup with a dreg of coffee still in it.

  "Rob, I hate to be dramatic about this but we may well find we have a situation on our hands.” The cigarette hissed. “The public might jump to conclusions. If the Twitterverse gets hold of it, or that gossip mongering cow at the morning paper, or anyone who gets wind of the fact that Daisy and Joel – and I think we can safely assume this – spent time together intimately, that she leaves his place barely dressed, upset, her hair still wet and there are no swimming pools at his complex so we're not even going to consider it was anything other than she was in his shower, and as a woman, I am telling you, we do not like using the bathrooms of men we are barely acquainted with..." She didn’t need to finish.

  “Oh hell,” Rob muttered.

  Kelly stood up. “Joel’s your friend. I've spoken to Bill and he wants reassurance that he can leave this with you for the time being.”

  Rob nodded grimly. "He's got it."

  Kelly squeezed his shoulder. "Celebrity Mystery Date was a ratings winner and the next show is on in 48 hours. We need to get this sorted before it gets out of hand."

  Kelly exited the room, leaving only a faint trace of cigarette smoke in her wake, and Rob, with the weight of the world lying even heavier on his shoulders, reached for the phone.

  Rob met Joel at DJs.

  “You’re looking better than yesterday,” Rob commented.

  Joel shrugged. “I phoned Poppy’s twice today. I heard her voice and hung up. Twice. Even I didn't think I could be that pathetic.”

  Rob had to agree. He'd never known Joel to be this affected by a woman. Especially one like Daisy Miller. He'd have thought Joel would have gone for an intellectual. A fellow lecturer. Or some beauty like Christiane Lautrec who, it seemed, had after all just been some actress he'd dated a few times.

  Joel Benjamin was clearly smitten and it was not a good look.

  “Look, Joel, there's a reason I asked you here.” He paused to order coffee from the waitress, then leant his arms on the table. “I’ll cut to the chase on this. People know Daisy was with you at your apartment. They know she left your place and she was upset."

  Joel narrowed his eyes. “And how do these people know this?”

  “There were a couple of cab drivers. Some chick goes on TV, wins a trip with a guy, goes away with him to a glamorous resort for the weekend, heads back to his place when they touch down on home soil, then an hour later leaves his house distraught, and she confides that the guy was a total creep."

  Creep. Joel went still. "She said I was a creep?"

  "No, I don't think she did, but that's what the taxi driver came up with. They’ve put two and two together and word is getting around that something happened between you and Daisy.”

  Vanderlay and Burke were going to have a field day with this one. “Does Daisy know?”

  “I haven’t spoken to her. I’m speaking to you first. What are you going to do about it?”

  “What can I do? It happened. If it was witnessed then so be it.”

  “You’re not thinking,” Rob growled. “Twitter? Gossip columns? Left wing bloggers? Right wing bloggers? Do you know what a meal they’ll have over this? Your own career could be in tatters. Mystery Date would lose its credibility. It's damned serious and we’ve got to do something.”

  Their coffee arrived and Joel said, "You don't think you're over reacting to this? It's all hearsay at this point."

  Rob leant back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest and eyed Joel. “Mate. I wish I was but I’ve been able to think of little else since Kelly spoke to me. Stand back from the situation for a moment, analyze it. Objectively. A soon to be Professor of Ancient History–" He held up his hand as Joel began to protest. "He goes on a TV dating show and wins a weekend with a woman. They spend three nights on an island, come back and head to his house. A half hour later she's taking a taxi home looking like a wreck. In tears.”

  Joel narrowed his gaze. "She was crying?"

  Rob nodded. "The creep made her cry."

  Joel massaged his temples as Rob said, “You get what this could mean to the show?"

  "Yeah. I get what this means."

  "But there is a solution."

  Joel's eyebrows rose.

 
Rob placed his hands on the table. "We announce you had the time of your life on Golden Grove. Romance blossomed. If anything comes up about Daisy leaving your place, we address it. It was a lover’s tiff. You made up. We play it down because you’re back together and it doesn’t matter what was in the past. Every lover has a tiff now and then. If the tabloids start making out you’re the villain, the people out there won’t believe it because you and Daisy are happy. There’s nothing to explain."

  Joel nodded. Crazy as it was, he was following this. Just.

  “There’s more though,” Rob went on. “Saying it is one thing but you have to prove it. You should be seen in public together, to put any rumors out to pasture before they take root.”

  Joel scratched his chin thoughtfully. “I suppose Daisy would agree to go out with me for dinner one night. What are you thinking? Snapping a photograph and putting it on Facebook?"

  “Are you insane?” Rob barked. “I’m not talking about any lame-arsed dinner. I’m talking about you and Daisy coming back on Mystery Date. Like tomorrow for the second episode. We’ll slot it in to the show.”

  “What the–" Joel clutched his coffee cup tighter. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “It’s the perfect solution. A special ‘Joel and Daisy’ update. We’ve already had calls from people wanting to know what happened to you guys and how the weekend went. Now we can show them. Tomorrow when you declare your love to the world."

  Rob pushed himself up from the chair.

  "That is madness," Joel growled.

  "No, it's not." Rob looked apologetically down at Joel. "Oh, hell. Yeah, it is madness. It's insanity. But it's the only thing we've got. We need to pre-empt here, Joel, and that's all there is to it."

  He pulled his visa out of his wallet. "I'll get the coffee, and don't worry about Daisy." He was already walking up to pay as he called out, "I'll speak to her this afternoon."

  Daisy agreed to go on the show but only because it seemed, from what Rob had claimed, it was the only way of making sure this whole thing didn't get out of hand.

 

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