Czytaj książkę: «Tell Me You Do»

For Nikki,

an all-round inspiration and great gal to work with!

And for Andy, my own Indiana Jones

with secateurs. x

CHAPTER ONE

DANIEL ALWAYS GRUMBLED that his mobile phone rang at the most inconvenient of moments, and it didn’t disappoint him now. Just as he was lifting a delicate Venus flytrap out of its pot, his hands full of roots and compost, his trouser pocket buzzed. Since he refused to assign fancy ring-tones to everyone in his contact list the double ring of an old-fashioned phone told him precisely nothing about the caller’s identity.

Once upon a time, he’d have ignored it—his hands being full of an uprooted Dionaea muscipula and all—but these days he could never quite push the thought from his mind that it might be his younger sister, telling him she was ill again. Or worse, a stranger telling him she’d collapsed and was in Accident and Emergency, and casually requesting he pick her kids up from pre-school.

Reluctantly, he shook the earth off his right hand, cupped the clump of roots and foliage in his left and fumbled in the thigh pocket of his cargo trousers for his phone. He balanced the handset on his shoulder and squeezed his cheek onto it to keep it in place as he attempted to brush more of the compost that caked his fingers off on the back of his trousers.

‘Yup.’

The phone started to slide and he quickly grabbed for it with his still-dirty hand.

‘Daniel Bradford?’ a deep yet annoyingly upbeat male voice asked.

‘Yup,’ he repeated, more focused on trying to replace the prize specimen in its pot with the use of only one hand. It wasn’t going well. He wasn’t planning on dividing this one for propagation yet but it was threatening to do just that.

‘Well, Daniel, this is Doug Harley and you’re live on Radio EROS, London’s most romantic radio station!’

Daniel stood up straight, then twisted round, scanning the tropical nursery at London’s famous Kew Gardens, expecting to see a group of snickering underlings hiding behind a palm in an adjacent room of the sprawling greenhouse. This had to be a prank, right? And, if there was one advantage of working in a place where ninety per cent of the buildings were made of glass, it was that there was nowhere to hide. He’d find them and make their lives hell for this.

But all he could see was a lone horticultural student, wheeling a trolley of seedlings past the door, plugged into his music and oblivious to the world. The rest of the multi-roomed greenhouse was unusually quiet.

‘Daniel?’ the silky smooth voice crooned in his ear.

He pulled the phone away from his head and stared at the display, seriously considering just hanging up. He didn’t have time for this.

‘What do you want?’ he barked at the man as he put the phone back up to his ear. ‘I’m busy.’

There was an equally smooth—and equally irritating—chuckle on the other end of the line. ‘Not too busy for this, Daniel. I promise you.’

He clenched his jaw. The over-familiar manner in which the DJ kept inserting his name into every sentence was getting on his nerves.

‘Convince me,’ he said.

The chuckle again. As if the man was the insider to some joke that Daniel didn’t know about. His eyes narrowed.

‘I’m sure you know what day it is today, Daniel?’

Confusion wrinkled his brow further. It was Tuesday. So what?

Oh.

He swore inside his head, remembering the collection of red and pink envelopes that had been sitting on his desk when he’d arrived for work this morning. He’d shaken his head, pushed them to one side unopened and had done his best to forget about them. Not just any Tuesday, but one slap-bang in the middle of February.

‘Or what year it is …’ the voice added.

Daniel let out a huff. He’d been right all along. A half-baked radio contest run by some sappy station he’d never heard of. He was pretty sure he didn’t want whatever prize this idiot was offering. Seriously, couldn’t they come up with a better question than what year it was? Even his four-year-old nephew could answer that one. He was just about to tell Mr Silky Smooth that when he was interrupted.

‘Of course, leap years have their perks,’ the man said, and a rumble of perfectly pitched deep laughter followed. ‘We know it’s a couple of weeks until the twenty-ninth, but we’ve got a Valentine’s surprise for you, Daniel. There’s a young lady who’d like to ask you something.’

Daniel looked down at the plant in his hand. Even in its current uprooted state, a fly was attracted to the sweet nectar oozing from the glands in its trap. It darted around, weaving in and out of the leaves, looking for somewhere to land.

‘Dan?’ This voice was soft and feminine. One he recognised instantly.

He froze. His brain told him what was coming, but he refused to believe it.

‘Georgia?’

That hadn’t come out right. He’d sounded grumpy and defensive, not pleasantly surprised, at hearing his girlfriend’s voice. He tried again. ‘What are you doing?’

Nope. That hadn’t been any better.

He heard her swallow in a great gulp of air. ‘Daniel … I know you’ve had a tough time recently, and I’ve been happy to be there for you … but things are looking up now and I really believe we could be good together.’

Daniel’s mouth moved but no words—not even any sounds—came out.

He wanted to close his eyes, as if doing so could block out the sound of her voice, but he was transfixed by the sight of the fly settling on the fleshy pad of one of the plant’s open traps. He shook his head, warning the insect off.

Fly away. Escape while you still can.

‘So, what I’m doing, Daniel …’ She paused, gave a little nervous laugh. ‘What I’m saying is … is that I’d like you to marry me.’

In one swift, smooth motion the flytrap closed over the fly. Not so much a snapping as an elegant but relentless squeezing. Daniel could hear the creature’s frantic buzzing, see it struggling in the trap as the teeth-like cilia closed tighter and tighter over its head.

Don’t. Struggling only makes it worse.

A terrible silence settled around him. All sound disappeared. Even the visitors to the botanical gardens, who could often still be heard from the private nurseries, had hushed. It seemed the whole of London was holding its breath, waiting for his answer.

‘Is this a joke, George?’ he croaked, a horrible pleading tone in his voice.

This wasn’t the Georgia he knew. The nice, uncomplicated, undemanding woman he’d been seeing for almost a year. His Georgia knew he didn’t have the emotional space for a proper relationship right now, let alone a marriage. His Georgia understood that and accepted that. So who was this, borrowing her voice and asking him out-of-the-blue questions—on the radio, for heaven’s sake? Not even person to person, face to face.

Who proposed in public, anyway? It should be done privately and quietly. Preferably to someone other than him.

He squeezed his teeth together to stop himself from demanding an explanation, right here, right now. He was suddenly furious with her for springing this on him, for changing the rules and moving the goalposts of their relationship while he hadn’t been looking. This wasn’t what they were about and she knew that.

At least, he’d thought she’d known that.

Silky Smooth chuckled again. ‘Well, Georgia, you seem to have rendered the poor man speechless! What do you say, Daniel? Are you going to put this gorgeous girl out of her misery or what?’

That doused his billowing temper quick smart.

What was he going to say?

He could imagine Georgia sitting there at the radio station, a fixed smile on her face and fear in her eyes, bravely trying to pretend it was all right, when really her heart was pounding and her eyes filling.

It wasn’t that Georgia wasn’t a lovely woman. She was determined and intelligent and sensible. Any man would be lucky to have her. He should want to say yes.

But he didn’t.

He really didn’t.

He wasn’t ever going to go down that road again, no matter how lovely the woman in question.

There was a crackle on the line and noise started filtering through again—the hiss of the automatic misting system in the nursery next door, the squeak of a door farther down the corridor, a plane flying low overhead on its way to Heathrow. And Daniel was suddenly very aware that more than a hundred thousand pairs of ears might be listening to this conversation, of just how public and complete his girlfriend’s humiliation would be if he gave her the wrong answer.

Unfortunately, where he and Georgia were concerned, the wrong answer was the right answer.

He didn’t love her. He wasn’t sure he ever would, and she deserved better than that. Gently, he balanced his phone on his shoulder again and carefully put the now-satisfied Venus flytrap plant back down in its pot.

He should have known their relationship wouldn’t stay in wonderful, comfortable stasis they’d created. In this world, things moved on, grew, or they decayed.

He’d first met Georgia when Kelly had been halfway through her chemo. She’d been easy to be around. She’d helped him forget that his little sister might not see another Christmas, to forget that his rat of a brother-in-law had run off with his personal trainer and left his shell-shocked wife to deal with a cancer diagnosis—and two under-fives—all on her own. Without Georgia, he’d have hunted Tim down and fed him, bit by bit, to the largest and ugliest Nepenthes in his collection.

Daniel shook his head. The Venus flytap was completely closed now; he couldn’t even see the squirming fly inside.

He should have known that, eventually, Georgia would get ideas. The awful situation they were in now was as much his fault as it was hers. She wasn’t really asking anything horrendous of him, was she? But she was asking for something he wasn’t capable of. Not any more. And he’d been very clear about that.

‘I’m sorry …’ he said, more for not paying attention to what had been growing right under his nose than for what he was about to say. ‘We weren’t heading for marriage, I thought you knew that … That’s what made our thing so perfect …’

Our thing … Subtle, Daniel.

He could hear her breathing on the other end of the line, and he wished he could see her face to face, explain, without listening ears hanging on every syllable.

‘It’s okay,’ she said, and he could hear the artificial brightness in her tone, could almost see the sheen in her eyes. He felt as if he’d been kicked in the chest by a horse.

He shook his head. No, it wasn’t okay. He was hurting her horribly, but that didn’t mean he could say yes and condemn them to a lie that would ultimately make them both unhappy. He had to do what was best for Georgia, for both of them. He had to set her free for someone who could give her what she wanted.

‘I can’t, Georgia. You know why I can’t say yes.’

There was a moment of ghastly silence and then the DJ began talking again, laughing nervously, trying to smooth things over. Daniel didn’t hear any of his words. He didn’t even notice when music started to play in his ear.

He felt like a worm.

No, worse than that, because worms were useful, at least, and they didn’t harm anything.

He picked up the unearthed flytrap, plastic pot and all, and flung it against the wall of the carnivorous plants nursery. It hit the glass with a resounding bang that echoed over half the gardens. The cracked pot fell away, and the frail plant followed, landing with an almost soundless thump on the floor. Compost that had smeared against the glass began to crumble away and rain down on top of it.

That was when the disadvantages of working in a greenhouse made themselves apparent. Half a dozen curious pairs of eyes stared at him from various parts of the nursery. They must have thought the Head of Tropical Plants had lost his mind.

Or worse. They might have been listening to the radio.

Daniel closed his eyes, ran his hand through his hair, then swore loudly when he realised his fingers had still been covered in peat and perlite.

He opened his lids to find no one had moved. He glared at each and every pair of staring eyes in turn. ‘What?’ he yelled and, as one mass, the underlings scurried away back into their holes.

All he wanted was for this awful, consumer-fuelled excuse of a day to be over, so he could get back to normal, live his life without anyone listening to what he was saying or spying on what he was doing.

God, he hated Valentine’s Day.

Daniel froze as he was crouched down, his hand on the papery flute of a Sarracenia. Sunlight streamed through the glass roof, warming his back, and around him visitors milled, casually inspecting the exotic plants of the Princess of Wales Conservatory, one of Kew’s modern glasshouses. All in all, it seemed like a normal March day.

Except that, as he worked, the fine hairs on his arms and the back of his neck lifted.

He stood up and glanced around. He was in a vast greenhouse with ten climate-controlled zones, so it would be stupid not to expect people to see him, but it was more than that. It felt as if someone was watching him.

Georgia’s flopped Valentine’s proposal had produced a flurry of unexpected media attention. More than once in the last month he’d found himself staring at the business end of a paparazzo’s lens as he was trying to work. But that hadn’t been the only unwanted side-effect of publicly humiliating his ex-girlfriend. Now there seemed to be eyes on him everywhere, watching him, judging him.

Until his sister’s illness had forced him to come back to England, he’d loved his job working from Kew’s base in Madagascar. He’d loved being a seed hunter—searching out rare plants to collect their treasure, tracking down nearly extinct species. But this bizarre media interest made him feel much more like the prey than a hunter, and he didn’t like that one bit. No, not a role reversal he was comfortable with.

He finished checking the fine white and green patterned flutes of the pitcher plant and pushed open the door of the small Temperate Carnivorous Plants area and entered the much larger Wet Tropics zone. Here the heat-and-moisture-loving tropical varieties grew, including a large draping display of green and warm purple hanging pitchers. He worked methodically through the twisting tendrils, looking for dried out pitchers that needed to be dead-headed, checking for disease and parasites.

That was when he heard them.

‘Do you think he looks like Harrison Ford?’ a feminine voice said in a not-so-quiet whisper. ‘I’m not sure. He’s more like that one from the spy series on BBC.’

Daniel froze and imagined a horrible, jungle-related death for the reporter who’d jokingly compared him to the film legend. While the journalist had obviously been quite pleased with his ‘Indiana Jones with secateurs’ crack, Daniel hadn’t heard the end of it from his mates.

‘Not sure,’ a second voice said thoughtfully, and just as loudly. ‘But he’s definitely got that brooding, intelligent-but-dangerous thing going on. Have you seen those arm muscles …?’

There was a muffled snort from the first speaker. ‘Arms? I was too busy checking out his nice, tight little—’

Right. That was it.

He was fed up of being treated like a piece of meat, something to be stalked and discussed and ogled. Perhaps he should just jump up on one of the earthy beds and sit there with the plants, because as far as he could see he’d stopped being one of the staff and had morphed into a prime attraction.

When would this end? It was bad enough that the London press had picked up on his and Georgia’s story and run with it like a greyhound on amphetamines. They’d been the subject of countless column inches, magazine features and chat show discussions—not that either of them had fuelled it in any way by agreeing to speak or be interviewed. It seemed the whole of the city had been split down the middle, divided into two camps, one supporting him and one supporting her.

But the whole situation had a nasty little side effect, too.

He’d now become The One That Got Away. An irresistible label to the female population of London, it seemed, because en masse they’d decided it was an open season. Every day for the first couple of weeks after the proposal they’d appeared in ones and twos like this, coming to the gardens specifically to track him down. But it had been quiet for almost a week, and he’d finally hoped it was all petering out. No such luck.

Not that a bit—or even a lot—of female interest bothered him in the slightest. He was as open to it as the next guy. But this was different. They didn’t know when to stop. They acted as if they hadn’t heard the proposal on the radio, as if they didn’t know he wasn’t in the market for love, let alone marriage. The whole thing was just stupid. And very irritating.

He was dragged back into the present by a heartfelt sigh behind him. They’d moved closer.

‘Shall I go and ask him for his autograph,’ one said.

That was it. Hunter or not, Daniel was out of there. He turned and walked briskly down the path, down the steps to the aquatic exhibit half hidden under a man-made ‘hill’ in the centre of the conservatory, and ducked through a short tunnel to come out on the other side of the zone. He then climbed the path that led him to the upper levels on top of the hill, then doubled back through the ferns and down some more stairs.

He knew this labyrinthine glasshouse like the back of his hand and it wasn’t more than a minute before he was crouching down and peering at the two women from a vantage point inside the orchid display. He could have left and gone back to the propagation greenhouses, he supposed, but he liked the idea of turning the tables, of watching them hunt fruitlessly for him, before disappearing for good. It would restore his sense of balance, of control.

Now he could see them, his eyes popped. They were over seventy, for goodness’ sake! All sensible shoes and nylon trousers. He could see them looking around, having a minor disagreement about which way they should go to pick up his trail.

He almost chuckled to himself. Almost.

At least, he might have done if those hairs on the back of his neck hadn’t prickled again.

Seriously? Another one?

He was tempted to turn round and let loose, but he knew he had a bit of a temper, and having a supposedly ‘dangerous’ edge didn’t mean he was allowed to attack paying visitors then use them for lovely, nutritious compost for his favourite plants. There were laws against that kind of thing. Unfortunately.

He was just going to have to bite his tongue and leave. However, if this Valentine’s fuelled media circus didn’t end soon, he’d be stuck in an office or a greenhouse, not able to go about his job as he pleased, and he’d hate that. It had been hard enough to leave the field and take this post in the first place; he’d only done it because Kelly had needed him to come home and help look after her and the boys.

‘Why, if it isn’t Indiana himself!’ a husky female voice drawled. ‘Although I was led to believe you’d swapped the whip for a pair of secateurs these days.’

Daniel swivelled around, still crouching. The first thing he saw was a pair of hot-pink kitten heels with polka dot bows on the front. Definitely not a pensioner, this one. His gaze was inevitably drawn up to a pair of slender ankles and then to shapely calves. For a moment, he forgot all thoughts of running.

Then there was the black pencil skirt. Tight round a pair of generous hips, hugging the thighs … He swallowed.

‘So where are they?’ she asked.

That was when he realised he was still half squatting. He looked up, past the form-fitting pink blouse to the face on top of it. Red lips. That was what he saw first. Vibrant red lips.

Who’d cut the water supply off from his throat? He swallowed again. ‘What?’

Stand up. You’re kneeling at her feet, looking like a drooling Neanderthal.

Thankfully, his brain cooperated this time, sending the message to his legs to straighten, and he stood. Finally, he was looking down at her instead of up. Only, it didn’t help much. From down below the view of her impressive cleavage hadn’t been so obvious. Now his brain was too busy working his eyeballs to do the talking thing.

‘The secateurs,’ she said with a slight twitch of one expertly plucked brow. ‘Are they in your pocket?’

Daniel nodded dumbly and pulled them out. She was blonde. Marilyn Monroe blonde. With shoulder length waves that curled around her face.

‘Shame,’ the lips said. ‘And there was I hoping you were just pleased to see me.’

His mouth hung open a little. Brain still struggling. Much to his disgust, he managed a faint grunt.

‘Sorry … couldn’t resist,’ she said, and offered her slim hand. ‘Don’t you just love Mae West?’

Daniel stared at the hand for a second or so, at the long red fingernails that matched her lips, then a movement at chest level distracted him. A staff pass on a lanyard was around her neck but, due to the impressive cleavage it was hanging just below, it was twirling gently in some unseen breeze, the photo and name obscured.

She frowned slightly. ‘Not a Mae fan, then.’

He nodded, but he wasn’t sure if he was agreeing or disagreeing.

‘Chloe Michaels,’ she said, grabbing his hand and shaking it firmly. ‘Orchid specialist and new girl at Kew.’

‘Daniel Bradford,’ he said, shaking back vigorously. Maybe a little too vigorously. He let go, but then he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hand. He stuffed it back in his pocket.

‘I know,’ she said, and a wry smile curved those red lips.

‘You’ve read the papers …’

She gave a little shrug. ‘Well, a girl would have to be dead to not have seen something of your recent press coverage. However, I knew who you were before that. I’ve got one of your books at home.’

Air emptied from his lungs and he felt his torso relax. Plants and horticulture. Finally, he’d come across a woman who could talk sense. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he said. And he genuinely meant it.

She just nodded and the smile grew brighter. ‘The guys in the tropical nursery said I’d find you here, and I just thought I’d come and introduce myself,’ she said, turning to leave.

Daniel had just started to feel somewhere close to normal again, but her exit gave him another view he hadn’t quite been ready for … The way that pencil skirt tightened round her backside was positively sinful.

She looked over her shoulder before she exited the temperate orchid display through the opposite door. Daniel snapped his gaze upwards. She hadn’t caught him checking her out, had she? That was a schoolboy error.

‘By the way,’ she said, nodding in his direction, ‘incoming at eleven o’clock.’

He hadn’t the faintest idea what she meant, but it wasn’t until she’d disappeared into the next zone that he even started to try and work it out.

A bang on the glass above him made him jump. He pivoted round and looked up to find his two pursuers in the fern enclosure at the top of the stairs, faces pressed up against the glass, grinning like mad.

Oh, heck.

One of them spotted the door further along the wall. Her eyes lit up and she started waving a pen and a notepad at him.

Daniel did what any sensible man in his position would have done.

He ran.

CHAPTER TWO

A SKIRT THIS tight and heels this high did not help with an elegant exit, Chloe thought as she kept her back straight and cemented her gaze on the door. She’d thought she’d need the extra confidence her favourite pair of shoes gave her this morning but, when they were teamed with the skirt, every step was barely more than a hobble, and it took a torturously long time until she was out of the orchid display area and amidst the agaves and cacti of the adjoining section.

She paused for a heartbeat as the glass door swung shut behind her, then blinked a few times and carried on walking.

He hadn’t recognised her.

She’d been prepared to go in smiling, laugh that embarrassing incident in their past off and put it down to not being able to hold her liquor. In short, she’d planned to be every bit as sophisticated as her wardrobe suggested she could be.

But she hadn’t needed to.

She pressed a palm against her sternum. Her heart was fluttering like a hummingbird.

That was good, wasn’t it? That he hadn’t connected Chloe Michaels the horticultural student with Chloe Michaels, new Head Orchid Keeper. They could just start afresh, behave like mature adults.

Inwardly, Chloe winced as she continued walking along the metal-grilled flooring, past an array of spiky plants from across the globe.

Okay, last time they’d met, Daniel Bradford hadn’t had any problems behaving maturely and appropriately. Any misbehaving had been purely down to her. Her cheeks flushed at the memory, even all these years later.

She was being stupid. He must have taught loads of courses over the years, met hundreds of awestruck students. Why would he remember one frizzy-haired mouse who’d hidden her ample curves in men’s T-shirts and baggy trousers? He wouldn’t. It made sense he hadn’t even remembered her name.

Or her face.

That, too, made sense. She looked very different now.

This Cinderella hadn’t needed a fairy godmother to give her a makeover; she’d done it herself the summer she’d left horticultural college. No pumpkins, no fairy dust. Just the horrified look on Prince Charming’s face had been enough to shove her in the right direction. The Mouse was long gone; long live the new Chloe Michaels. And she’d been doing a very good job of reigning supreme for almost a decade.

Only …

A little part of her—a previously undiscovered masochistic part of her—had obviously been hoping he would remember, because now disappointment was sucking her insides flat like a deflated balloon. She sighed. She never had had any sense where the gorgeous Daniel Bradford had been concerned. But show her a human being with a double X chromosome who did.

It was something to do with those long legs, that lean physique, those pale green, almost glacial eyes. Add a hint of rawness to the package, the sense that he’d just barely made it back from the last expedition into a dark and remote jungle, and it tended to do strange things to a girl’s head.

Maybe that could explain the way she’d acted back there, the things she’d said …

Mae West? What had she been thinking?

While she knew the ‘new and improved’ Chloe had easy self-assurance, there was confidence and there was sheer recklessness. She’d intended to be calm and professional. She certainly hadn’t intended to tease him … flirt with him.

However, a little voice in her head had been pushing her, feeding her lines, especially when his eyeballs had all but popped out of his head when he’d been trying to read her spinning name tag. There had been something so satisfying about seeing him that close to drooling that she just hadn’t been able to stop herself.

It wouldn’t happen again, though. Couldn’t.

But Chloe’s lips curved as she pushed the main door of the conservatory open and walked out into the spring sunshine. She wiped the smile off her face—literally—with a manicured hand and shook her head.

It didn’t matter just how much saliva had pooled in the bottom of Daniel Bradford’s mouth when he’d looked at her, because she was never, ever going down that road again. And it didn’t matter just how ferocious the monster crush she’d had on him ten years ago had been, because there was one thing she was certain of …

She’d shoot herself before she got within kissing distance of him ever again.

Daniel hung from a spot halfway up the climbing wall at his local sports centre and peered down at the top of his friend’s helmet. ‘Hurry up, Al,’ he called out. ‘You’re out of shape. Must have spent too much time lolling on a sun lounger while you were on holiday.’

Alan eventually caught up. He wasn’t looking as chirpy as normal.

‘What’s up with you?’ he said, still panting. ‘You were up this wall like the hounds of hell were on your tail, and you only climb like that when trouble’s brewing—usually woman trouble.’

Daniel shrugged and pulled a face. ‘Of a sort.’

Alan grinned at him hopefully.

‘Georgia came by the gardens today.’

Alan stopped grinning and said a word Daniel thought most appropriate. ‘What did she want? She didn’t rush tearfully into your arms and beg for a second chance, did she?’

Daniel shook his head. ‘No, thank goodness.’

He realised how insensitive that sounded, but Alan understood. He was a guy.

Daniel shifted his hand grip. ‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘Maybe it never should have started.’

Alan shrugged. ‘I thought you had a good thing going there. All the perks and none of the drama.’

That was what Daniel had thought too, when he’d thought about it at all. That also sounded insensitive, he realised. But he and Georgia had been friends, her work at Kew’s millennium seed bank throwing them together occasionally, and somewhere along the line friendship had slipped into something more. At the time he’d hardly noticed it happening.

Normally, he was much more focused about his love life. He’d spot a woman that appealed to him, pick her out from the pack, and then he’d go about pursuing her, changing her mind … Because, if there was one contrary thing about him, it was that he liked the ones that were hard work, took a little chasing. It made the whole thing so much more fun.

But Kelly had been ill, vomiting half the day, and Daniel—apart from being scared out of his wits for his sister—had been thrown in the deep end of caring for two small boys. He supposed all his ‘chasing’ energy had been tied up elsewhere, and maybe that was why he’d slid into his easy relationship with Georgia.

He’d thought she’d wanted that too. Something with no complications, no dramas. Definitely no wedding rings.

He should have known. If a relationship lasted more than six months, that diamond encrusted time bomb was always there, ticking away in the background. And Daniel knew just how deep that glittery shrapnel could embed itself.

He started climbing again. ‘That’s not all, though,’ he said, glancing at Alan, who was now keeping pace. ‘She told me the radio station is holding her to the contract she signed with them.’

Alan looked shocked. ‘What? How can they do that? There’s no wedding to cover. You said no.’

Daniel nodded. ‘That’s what I said. But, for some unknown reason, she feels the need to reinvent herself, and they’re going to follow her around all year while she does it. The Year of Georgia, they’re calling it.’ As if he didn’t feel enough of a heel already.

Alan’s gift for expletives made itself known again.

But it wasn’t really the extra media coverage that warranted such a well-timed word. It was a horrible feeling that, by saying no to Georgia, he’d somehow broken her and now she thought she needed to fix herself.

He scrubbed a hand over his face. This was the very reason he chose women carefully, avoided commitment. He wasn’t looking for love and marriage. It was like his pitcher plants—a sticky, sweet-scented trap. Thankfully, unlike a mindless fly, Daniel had a well-developed urge for self-preservation and he usually prided himself on not falling for the lie and getting stuck.

Until Georgia, of course. A mistake he wouldn’t make again.

Damn her for seeming so self-sufficient and sensible when underneath she’d been horribly vulnerable. Damn himself for being too caught up in other things to see the truth.

‘This thing’s never going to end, is it?’ he asked Alan as he started off towards the top of the wall with renewed vigour.

Alan shook his head, more in disbelief than in judgement. ‘Look on the bright side,’ he said as he scrambled to keep up. ‘Most men I know would give their right arm to be where you are right now—women flinging themselves at you on a daily basis. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel …’

Daniel frowned as he swung a foot into place and pushed himself up over an overhang. He didn’t want to shoot fish in a barrel. That was the point!

He didn’t want wide-eyed adoration from a woman; she was likely to start wanting more than he was prepared to give. No, he liked to meet a woman on equal terms, play the game, have fun while it lasted and move on.

‘Most men you know are bloody idiots, then,’ he shouted back at Alan. ‘There’s interested and then there’s desperate and clingy. I know which I prefer.’ And then he shot away from his friend and headed for the top of the wall.

As he climbed the burning in his fingertips, in his shoulders and arms, soothed him. He forgot all about radio stations and marriage proposals and bloody Valentine’s Day. Instead, he concentrated on the physical sensations of foot meeting wall, fingers grasping hand hold, and after a while a different set of images—a much more appealing set of images—flitted through his brain.

A flash of a hot-pink shoe. The curve of that tight black skirt as it had gone in and out. The glint of the sun on pale blonde hair as it slanted through the conservatory roof. The wry and sexy curve of a pair of crimson lips as she teased him.

That staff pass, twirling gently underneath …

Daniel realised he’d run out of wall. He blinked and looked down. Alan was still struggling with that last overhang.

Hardly surprising his mind had turned to Chloe Michaels. He’d been thinking about that day in the Princess of Wales Conservatory a lot recently. Unfortunately, memories were all he had at the moment, because he’d hardly seen her at all lately. She was like the disappearing woman, always leaving a place just as he arrived.

‘Mate,’ Alan said, panting. ‘If you don’t sort out this woman trouble, you’re going to finish me off. You’ve got to let the whole Georgia thing go.’

Daniel nodded. Yes. Georgia. That was the only woman trouble he had at the moment. The only woman trouble he should have at the moment.

But that pair of crimson lips was laughing at him, breathing gently in his ear …

He shook his head. Bad idea, Daniel. Trap that thought and put it on hold.

He’d just jumped from the frying pan of one relationship—very publicly—and he wasn’t planning on landing in another romantic fire right now. He needed to sit back and take stock, give himself some breathing room. He shouldn’t be thinking of starting something new, no matter how prettily those little flames danced and invited him in.

He craned his neck to look at the ceiling. It was far too close to his head. He could do with at least another fifty feet of wall to conquer, something to help him shed this restless energy.

‘Women are the last thing on my mind at the moment,’ he told Alan. ‘It’s this wall that’s the problem. I’ve climbed it so many times it’s easy.’

Alan just grunted.

With one final look at the ceiling, Daniel started to rappel back down towards the floor. His friend followed suit, matching his pace. ‘I need some real rocks to climb. A proper mountain,’ Daniel added. ‘That’s all.’

Twenty minutes later, round the corner in The Railway pub near Kew Gardens station, Alan plopped a full pint glass in front of Daniel at the bar. ‘You miss it, don’t you?’ his friend said. ‘Being out in the field?’

Daniel stared at the tiny bubbles swirling and popping on the surface of his beer. His jaw jutted forwards. ‘I do,’ he replied. Not just the rocks, but the rain on his skin and the wind in his face. The feeling that he was totally free.

‘I’m grateful to you for letting me know when this job opened up,’ he said. ‘But it’s just maternity cover, remember? I’ll stick it out until your old boss is back. Kelly will be feeling better by then.’

He’d suggested his sister move into his house in Chiswick when she’d split up with her husband; he’d been happy to have someone watching over it when he’d been overseas. Before Madagascar, he’d worked at different bases all over South East Asia, collecting seeds, helping various universities and botanical gardens set up their own seed banks, searching for species that had yet to be named and catalogued.

But then the news had come about Kelly’s diagnosis, and he’d come home and moved in himself. There was no way Kelly could have managed through her surgery and chemotherapy without him.

The Head of Tropical Plants job had come up shortly afterwards and he’d jumped at it. The perfect solution while he stayed in London and helped his sister with her two rowdy boys, and while he enjoyed the chance to work closely with his favourite plants, to see if he couldn’t produce and name a new variation or two, it had just confirmed to him that Alan was right. This wasn’t what he wanted long-term.

‘It’s been over a year now,’ Alan said, ‘and Kelly’s looking pretty fine to me.’

While Alan’s face had been suspiciously blank, there had been a glint of something in his eyes that Daniel didn’t like. Instantly, he was on his feet. Much as he liked his college friend, he knew what Alan was like with women. ‘Don’t you even dare think about my sister that way,’ he said. ‘She’s off-limits.’

Alan held his hands up, palms outwards. ‘Whoa there, mate.’

Daniel sat down again. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. Maybe Alan was right about him being on edge about something. He knew he had a bit of a short fuse, but even the hint of a spark was setting him off these days. ‘She’s been through a lot, Al. The last thing she needs right now is more complications.’

‘Gee, thanks,’ Alan said, his tone full of mock offence. ‘That’s a very nice way to refer to your oldest mate—a complication.’

Daniel’s mouth twitched, despite himself. ‘You know what I mean.’

Alan just grinned at him. ‘Are you sure there’s not woman trouble somewhere on the horizon? Other than your over-enthusiastic ex, that is?’

He shook his head. ‘No, nothing like that.’

However, an image flashed across his brain: a saucy smile playing on bright red lips, the little wiggle in her hips as she’d walked away …

Alan downed a fair amount of his pint and put his glass back down on the bar. ‘In that case, I’d say you really need to get back out to the wilds of God-knows-where again soon.’

Daniel didn’t answer. He knew what he wanted, what he ached for, but as fine as Kelly looked these days she still tired very easily, and with two small boys to run around after that happened on a fairly regular basis. He reckoned he was here for another six months at the very least.

‘I will,’ he replied. ‘When I can. Besides … I’m trying to write a second book.’

The one he’d been planning for years and finally had time to concentrate on.

His friend just snorted. ‘Leave the book for when you’re old and grey. In the meantime, you should do something more than rock climbing to blow off steam.’ He took another sip of his beer. ‘How about deer stalking? One of my father’s old friends has invited us on a weekend at his Scottish castle. I can cadge you an invite.’

Daniel shook his head. Holed up in a draughty old castle with some big city businessmen for the weekend? He’d rather let the deer go free and shoot himself. ‘Not my kind of thing,’ he said firmly.

‘Rubbish,’ Alan replied. ‘We’re hunters, you and I. Oh, not in the traditional sense—but you’re always after that rare bit of green stuff no one else can locate. It’s buried deep in our genetic code, the desire to track and conquer …’

Daniel didn’t add that the tendency to become long-winded after only half a pint was also hard-wired into Alan’s DNA. The best thing to do when his friend got like this was to nod and sip his beer in silence, which was exactly what he did.

Alan made a large gesture with his free hand. ‘Men like us, we need the thrill of the chase!’

Daniel gave him a sideways look. ‘And when exactly do you hunt?’

Alan blinked. ‘I fish,’ he said, quite seriously. ‘But what I mean is that sitting in that nursery, with all those captive specimens neatly laid out in rows, must be driving you crazy.’

Maybe it was. Because how else could he explain falling into a comfortable relationship with Georgia, of not ending it when he should have? When had he ever been the one to take the path of least resistance? All this tame London living must be lulling him into a coma.

‘Don’t you worry about me,’ he told Alan as he drained the last of his beer. ‘I might not be up for tramping through damp heather after a bit of venison, but I’ll find something to keep me from going stir crazy. Anyway, there’s more than one way of hunting—the plants I work with have taught me that much.’

‘Bloody triffids,’ Alan said, waving his hand at the barmaid to order another beer. Alan wasn’t a fan. He preferred trees. Palms, mostly.

But Daniel could have told him that the majority of insectivorous plants had no moving parts at all. Perhaps, instead of taking his frustration at the currently slow pace of his life out on innocent climbing walls, he should follow their example: be patient, keep still and see what life brought his way.

And since, at the moment, life had brought him a nice cold beer, that was what he intended to concentrate on. He took another gulp and let the cool liquid run down the back of his throat.

‘Holy Moly,’ Alan suddenly said, swivelling his head towards the door. He slapped Daniel on the side of his arm to get his attention, and Daniel’s nice cold beer sloshed down his front. It seemed that what life gave with one hand it took with the other.

He swatted at the wet patch on his shirt, then looked past Alan to see what all the fuss was about.

Holy Moly was about right.

Chloe Michaels, the disappearing woman, had reappeared in time for after-work drinks with one of the other women from work—Emma, who was passionate about bamboo and eccentric as they came.

Surprisingly, Chloe doing casual work clothes was every bit as mouth-drying as Chloe Michaels doing smart ones. Those skinny black jeans worked on curves like that—boy, they really did. The ankle-high lace-up boots should have made him think of functional things, like mud and wheelbarrows, but the criss-cross laces brought corsets to mind instead. And then there was the softly clinging grey long-sleeved T-shirt and the leather jacket over the top …

Leather. In his present state of mind that was a very dangerous word.

An itch started, right deep inside him. He suddenly knew that he didn’t want to sit back and be patient, see what opportunities life brought his way. He’d spent too long running from the chaos in his life at the moment, letting circumstances chase him. Looking at Chloe Michaels as she glanced round the pub for a seat, her skin fresh, her lips glossy and pink, he knew what he wanted to do.

Alan was right. It was hard-wired into his Y chromosome.

He wanted to hunt.

Chloe’s heart had stuttered when she’d walked in the door of The Railway. Damn. She should have known it was a stupid idea to go somewhere so close to the gardens. Because there, not more than fifteen feet away, was Daniel Bradford—or Drop-Dead Daniel, as some of the social media sites were now calling him—hunched over a beer. And he was looking every bit as gorgeous as his new nickname suggested.

Nope, she told herself. You’re finished with that crush. It’d breathed its last breath ten years ago, and she wasn’t planning on resurrecting it. Still, there wasn’t any harm in hedging her bets and just keeping out of his way to make sure. She tugged at Emma’s sleeve, about to suggest they try the wine bar farther down the smart little parade of shops and cafés, but Daniel chose that moment to turn round.

Their gazes locked, and the heat filling his eyes short-circuited her vocal cords.

It also made her very angry.

His timing really sucked, didn’t it? Because if he’d looked at her like that a decade ago she wouldn’t be in this mess right now. She might have been in a whole different kind of mess, but at least she wouldn’t have been humiliated beyond belief.

‘Hi, Daniel!’ Now Emma was waving and making her way over to him. Great.

Chloe’s plan had been going so well. She’d been effortlessly avoiding Mr Drop Dead, but maybe she should have guessed it had all been too easy, that she would have to put her resolve to the test at some point. So she tipped her chin up, smiled and followed Emma towards the bar.

It was at that point she realised Daniel was with someone—a good-looking blond—so she transferred her gaze to him, offered him her smile instead. The grin he returned said he wasn’t ungrateful for it.

A dark thundercloud passed across Daniel’s expression and settled there. The skin on the backs of Chloe’s knees started to tingle and the smile on her face set. She didn’t let it drop, though. No need to panic. A quick chat with the two men and she and Emma would be on their way.

She nodded at him. ‘Hey there, Indiana.’

A flash of lightning left that thundercloud and zapped her right between the eyebrows.

She left Emma to gush at Daniel while she turned her attention back to the blond. ‘Who’s your friend?’ she asked, slightly disappointed that there was not even a hint of a tickle at the backs of her knees as she met his appreciative gaze, even though this man was every bit as good-looking as his friend.

‘You two know each other?’ the blond asked incredulously. ‘How come you’ve never introduced us before?’ He held out his hand. ‘Alan Harrison,’ he said, enfolding Chloe’s hand in his own, before turning back to Daniel. ‘And you call yourself a mate.’

‘You’ve only just got back from Greece,’ Daniel muttered. ‘She started while you were away.’

Chloe attempted to release her hand, but it seemed Alan wasn’t quite ready to let go of it yet. She smiled coolly. ‘I’m new at the botanical gardens.’

Alan’s eyes widened. ‘You’re another plant nerd, like us? I’d never have guessed.’

She flinched inwardly at his words, but her smile grew ever brighter on the surface. ‘Guilty as charged.’ Really guilty. So she’d got a good haircut, learned how to apply liquid eyeliner … Deep inside she was still as much of a plant nerd as she’d ever been.

Alan rested an elbow on the bar and casually looked her up and down. ‘You really don’t look like one,’ he said, a slightly wolfish glimmer creeping into his eyes.

Chloe kept her smile fixed. ‘Haven’t you heard?’ She nodded in Daniel’s direction. ‘Thanks to your pal there, plant nerd is the new sexy.’

‘Oh, it really is,’ Emma said in a breathy rush, looking at Daniel.

Chloe pressed her lips together to stop herself from laughing. Daniel’s expression had darkened further, but there was a hint of panic at the backs of his eyes, one she recognised from the day she’d met him hiding from his silver-haired fan club.

But then Daniel looked back at her, and that glint of something changed and warmed. Suddenly, she was the one panicking inside.

She didn’t want him to look at her like that, as if he’d like to …

She wasn’t going to finish that thought. It was far too X-rated. And far too dangerous.

‘What can we get you two ladies to drink?’ Alan asked.

Chloe tried to speak, tried to tell him that it was okay, that she and Emma were just going to find a quiet table in the corner and chat about bamboo, but nothing came out. Not quickly enough, anyway.

‘Gin and tonic, please,’ Emma said loudly.

Chloe didn’t have much of a choice now. It would look really rude if she refused. Still, Emma had to be away in half an hour. How bad could it be? She was going to have to work alongside Daniel occasionally. Maybe this would be good practice.

But she made the mistake of catching his eye as she cleared her throat and said, ‘White wine would be lovely.’ The tingling was back behind her knees, threatening to send rogue messages to her muscles stop keeping her upright and just … melt.