Fiona Harper - Tell Me You Do - The Guy to Be Seen With / The Rebound Guy

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.