Heidi Rice - Call Me Cupid - The Guy to Be Seen With / The First Crush Is the Deepest / Too Close for Comfort

She smiled saucily. ‘Isn’t that a little vain? Picking your own book out from the bookshelf?’ Forgetting her urgent errand, she walked over to him. ‘The Secrets of Mount Kinabalu by Daniel Bedford,’ she read from the cover. ‘I got this as a student. Your description of the orchids is what fired my interest in them.’

He shook his head, both frowning and smiling at the same time. ‘I can’t believe you’ve got this,’ he said. ‘And it looks as if it’s been read a hundred times.’

Chloe stiffened slightly but then she smiled her cat-like smile again. ‘I lent it out to other people in my year. It was kind of a favourite.’

‘That’s a lot of people with a burning interest in carnivorous plants and other rare species,’ he said.

Chloe just laughed, reached out and turned the book over, where there was a horrible picture of him in khaki clothes and a wide-brimmed hat. ‘I think this is what some of them had the burning interest in,’ she said. ‘This is where the whole Indiana Jones thing started, wasn’t it?’

He nodded grimly. He hadn’t made the connection before, but he supposed it was. ‘Some fool publicist’s idea. I’ve always hated the stupid picture.’

‘I’ll bet you sold a load more books because of it, though. Didn’t I hear talk of a TV series once?’

Daniel snorted. ‘I knocked that one on the head pretty fast.’

She took the book from him and leafed through it, smiling as if she was remembering happy memories. She stopped at a colourful plate of a particularly rare slipper orchid. ‘Did you really take this picture? See it yourself?’

He gave her a one-sided smile and nodded.

‘I wish I could,’ she said wistfully. ‘I can’t think of anything more beautiful.’

He reached for her face, brushed a golden tendril away from her cheek and slid his fingers into her hair before pulling her closer for a soft, sweet kiss. ‘I’ve seen it for myself,’ he whispered, ‘but, believe me, it’s nothing compared to what’s in front of me right now.’

Chloe caught him by surprise. She threw her arms around his neck, gave him a hot, drawn-out kiss, promising all sorts of things that got him very excited indeed. And it hadn’t even been a line. He really did think she was more stunning than the speckles and stripes of the elusive flower.

When she finally pulled away, she rested her forehead against his and breathed out hard.

‘Didn’t you say you...had something to do?’ he said hoarsely.

She nodded wordlessly and he let his arms drop.

As much as he didn’t want to let her go, he didn’t want to interrupt things later on. Daniel didn’t want to be distracted by anything next time he had Chloe in his arms. Not for hours and hours and hours.

EIGHT

Chloe ran quickly and lightly down the narrow hallway that led to her bedroom. Once inside she pulled the duvet straight and plumped a pillow, then turned her attention to the other item that needed to be dealt with: the graduation photo sitting on her bedside table.

Ugh. Frizzy hair and badly applied eyeshadow.

She only displayed it in the privacy of her bedroom because she was really, really proud of her qualifications, even if the tight smiles of her parents standing behind her reminded her how they’d have preferred for her to go to a big-hitting university and get a ‘proper’ degree.

She couldn’t risk just putting it face down, so she pulled the underwear drawer of her dressing table open and stuffed the frame under the tangle of straps and things. But the sight of some of her better underwear sitting in the top of the drawer made her stop and think.

She hadn’t been planning on anyone seeing her underwear when she’d got dressed this morning. It was nude-coloured and functional. Nice enough, just not pretty like those were.

And you’re planning on someone seeing your underwear now?

Chloe thought for a moment.

Hell, yeah.

The problem was that her current bra was strapless and her dress had spaghetti straps. It would be weird if she changed into her eye-wateringly expensive silk and lace set and went out there with hot-pink straps showing. Not very subtle.

Forget subtle. Ditch the dress and go back out there in just the pink satin with the creamy lace trim.

Chloe let out a gasp. She couldn’t, could she? She’d never been quite that bold before—at least, not on a first night together. It wasn’t her.

Or was it?

The Chloe she’d invented for herself to grow into would do it. She was sassy and worldly-wise and confident. Maybe she never had before, but that was because she liked a man to do all the running, to prove he was interested. And, deep down, if she admitted it to herself, she liked it that way because then it was him not her who had to endure that horrible feeling of free fall once he’d made the first move and was waiting to see if she’d accept or reject him.

But this time it was different. The way Daniel had been looking at her...touching her... Well, she was pretty sure he wasn’t going to try and fend her off this time.

Maybe she needed to do this. Not to get him to prove anything, but to prove something to herself.

Quickly, before she could talk herself out of it, she stripped off her underwear and reached for the pink silk. Once it was on, she turned to inspect herself in the mirror.

There were a few lumps and bumps she wished weren’t there. After prodding her stomach, which jiggled a little, she looked longingly at the functional bra and knickers and sundress on the floor. There was something about walking out there as she was now that made her feel very...naked.

She looked herself in the eye and pulled herself up straight, sucked things in a little. That was what New Chloe would do. So she had a few curves, but Daniel didn’t seem to mind, and she wasn’t that blobby little nineteen-year-old any more. New Chloe knew she worked out, that she was toned. New Chloe knew she looked good.

She bent down, picked up her discarded clothes and threw them in the wardrobe. A pair of hot-pink heels winked at her from inside and she quickly reached for them and slid them on her feet. Then, without looking back, she strutted down the corridor back to the living room, reminding herself to breathe.

Since Daniel had picked up a framed photo of her on holiday last year, she took the opportunity of reaching for the dimmer switch and taking the lighting down to a more intimate level as she entered the room.

The change in brightness made him look up and round to where she was standing.

He dropped the frame.

It bounced on the floor but didn’t break.

The look on his face right then was all Chloe needed to wipe all those years of insecurity away. Never had she felt so feminine, so beautiful...so wanted.

She could pull this off, she really could. New Chloe had been a project that had worked from the outside in, but she had the feeling that after tonight that version of herself would no longer be a work in progress. One night with Daniel Bradford would banish the Mouse for ever and cement New Chloe into place. The transformation would be complete.

Since Daniel didn’t seem capable of movement at the moment, let alone speech, she walked slowly towards him, crouched to pick up the picture—aware that the angle of her knees and the high heels were doing amazing things for her legs—and handed it back to him and nodded towards the bookcase. He replaced it without taking his eyes off her.

And then, taking advantage of his paralysed state, which only gave her some kind of weird exultant power, she gave him a gentle shove and he sat down suddenly on the sofa. She had one knee on the sofa beside his leg, preparing to slide onto his lap, when he shifted slightly and reached beneath him. He pulled out the book—his book—that she’d thrown there earlier. Knowing they were definitely not going to be doing any reading in the next few hours, Chloe took it from his fingers and tossed it onto the adjacent sofa cushion.