CHLOE WALKED INTO the tropical nurseries with her head held high and went straight to her section, looking neither to the left nor the right. She didn’t care where Daniel was. If she ran into him, she ran into him. But she wasn’t going to give the other staff a show by confronting him. She knew what they called her behind her back, but today she was going to be Classy Knickers instead of Fancy Knickers.
She reached her section and began checking out the various orchids she was propagating. Still that one Paphiopedilum she’d grown from an unidentified seed refused to flower, no matter what she did. She’d noticed from the package that it had come from Georgia Stone at the Millennium Seed Bank. Daniel’s ex.
Perhaps it was absorbing all her pent up guilt at wanting him after he’d ditched the other woman so publicly. Georgia needn’t worry, though. Now Chloe was part of the same exclusive club. As humiliating as being turned down live on air must have been, at least she hadn’t been wearing just her underwear. Underwear supposedly guaranteed to provoke an entirely different reaction in the male of the species.
Chloe shook her head and tried to banish those thoughts by searching for tips on the Internet and emailing other enthusiasts, but she couldn’t lose herself in her work as she normally did. Every sense—especially her hearing—was on full alert. In the backstage area of her brain she was straining to hear his deep, rich voice. And whatever it was that was working overtime just didn’t seem to have an off switch.
In the end she gave up trying. Every sound had her jumping out of her skin. As much as she told herself she didn’t care if she saw him, she really did. She was just dreading seeing that same look of disgust in his eyes, telling her she was pointless and pathetic.
She decided to get some fresh air, go down to the Princess of Wales Conservatory and check on her orchids. There was something soothing about the two rooms filled with logs and ferns and perfect flowers. She and Daniel had discussed doing a joint display around the little boggy pool in the Temperate Orchid section—long-fluted pitcher plants mixed with delicate woodland orchids—but that obviously wasn’t going to happen now, so she might as well head down there and get some new ideas.
Walking back through the network of nurseries to the entrance was skin-crawlingly embarrassing. Not many people had seen her arrive, but now word must have gone round because they were certainly watching her leave. Every time she passed a door the noise level dropped as those inside stopped what they were doing.
It only made her tip her chin higher, straighten her spine further.
They’d be calling her Iron Knickers by the end of the day, because she’d be blasted if she’d let any of them see her crumble. It had been bad enough to have Daniel witness her steady disintegration. She didn’t need their pity. Didn’t want it.
The short walk to the conservatory was like an oasis in a desert of stress. Though there were a handful of Kew employees around, they were rolling wheelbarrows or chopping down trees. None of them stopped and stared. The gossip obviously hadn’t reached the tree gang or the bedding crew yet, but it would.
She’d walked via the quieter paths to the south entrance of the glasshouse, and then she zigzagged down its angular paths, keeping to the side routes as much as possible. She was within feet of one of the orchid enclosures when she saw a figure she recognised coming from the offices hidden under the earth and foliage.
Emma. But instead of saying something totally inappropriate, the other woman merely laid a sympathetic hand on her arm. ‘How are you doing?’
The contact seemed to burn like acid. Chloe had a sudden and horrifying flashback to the day the woman in the raincoat had pounced on Daniel. They were standing in almost exactly the same spot where she’d rubbed the woman’s arm and spoke comforting words. Never in a million years had Chloe expected to be on the receiving end of the same pitying looks.
Poor Chloe. Just another one of Drop-Dead Daniel’s corpses …
She stiffened under Emma’s touch. ‘Okay.’
The other woman studied her face. ‘Really?’
Chloe’s stomach dropped like a plummeting lift and she nodded dumbly. ‘I don’t really want to talk about it,’ she said scratchily.
Emma just nodded sympathetically and returned to her work. None of the usual platitudes, but that wasn’t really Emma. Nothing about the healing properties of time, or alternative fishing locations. Nothing about Chloe being too good for him anyway.
Because everyone knew that wasn’t true.
Especially Daniel.
She walked stiffly to the plate glass door that led to the orchid enclosure, relishing the climate-controlled cool air on her skin after the humidity of the Wet Tropics zone. Once there she stared into one of the display cases—rarer specimens protected by a wall of glass—and exhaled.
She’d been so stupid, hadn’t she?
For a decade she’d been turning herself into a turbo-charged, bionic version of herself, determined to never be the sort of woman a man like Daniel could ever reject, and it hadn’t worked.
He’d run from the frizzy-haired mouse.
He’d also run from New Chloe. Twice as fast.
She didn’t know what to do now, didn’t know who to be. Her best just hadn’t been good enough, not by a long shot, and she didn’t have the energy to build better and higher. Not yet.
She turned around, pressed her back against the glass and let her knees buckle under her until she was crouching on the floor. The display across the enclosure was beautiful, rocks and logs, dripping with colourful blooms. It was like salve to her jagged emotions.
Perhaps she would just be the girl who loved orchids for a while, the girl who loved their fragile and ostentatious beauty, because, at the moment, it was the only thing she thought she was good at.
Chloe stood nervously outside Daniel’s smart black door and looked for somewhere to place the gift bag in her hands so she could disappear back into the twilight. Somewhere Kelly would see it if she opened the door or came back home, but not somewhere inviting enough that someone on the street might see it and pinch it.
There was a small alcove on one side of the small tiled porch, offering some cover from anyone walking along the pavement. She was just reaching over to place the bag on the floor next to some empty milk bottles when the door opened—just a notch. Chloe froze.
She looked up to find Cal blinking at her. She pressed a finger to her lips, began to back away, but he suddenly threw his head back and yelled, ‘There’s someone at the door,’ in the full-volumed way only a four-year-old could.
Chloe barely had time to back away before the door was yanked wide and she was staring at a broad, T-shirted chest.
Oh, poop.
She hadn’t seen him much since that night on her boat. A glimpse of him here and there over the last week, always glaring at her, as if she had no right to be in his nursery, be one of his staff. It had got right on her nerves.
And then everything had gone quiet. People at work had seemed to relax a little, had stopped scanning the corridors when either she or Daniel was around, waiting for the other one to appear. When she’d told Emma, the other woman explained that Daniel had asked for emergency leave—something to do with his sister.
That news had made Chloe go cold all over. That could only mean one thing: Daniel was required to look after the boys because something had happened to Kelly. After his sister’s recent health scares, she didn’t even dare imagine what. It was too awful.
She and Daniel might not be getting along at the moment—she guffawed mentally at the understatement—but she liked Kelly, had admired how strong she seemed after all she’d been through. So she’d gone out and bought some pampering things, just some nice body lotion and some bath soak. The plan had been to pop it on the doorstep and sneak away before anyone spotted her.
The plan had obviously been flawed.
He folded his arms across his chest. ‘What in hell’s name are you doing here?’ he said in a low, menacing whisper.
‘I … Ah …’
Body not working. Brain not working. Lips definitely not working. She was going for the full house here.
Instead she dived for the bag, meaning to just take it and flee, but unfortunately Daniel lunged for it at the same time and their skulls produced a beautiful clear cracking sound as they made contact. Chloe staggered back, clutching her crown. Daniel, however, must have had an iron-capped skull, because he didn’t seem to be in quite as much pain, although the swear word he uttered was very colourful.
Then a little voice from behind his knees repeated it beautifully, with the same intonation and gusto.
‘Cal,’ he said, and she could hear the strain that told her he was hanging onto his last thread of patience, ‘just go back inside and see what Ben is up to, will you?’
‘Okay, Uncle Daniel,’ the voice said chirpily, and then Chloe could hear him skipping off down the hall, testing his new word out all the way.
Still holding her head, she straightened and came eye to eye with a rather angry Daniel Bradford. Good. She was angry too.
Angry at being made to feel like a pariah in her workplace. Angry that every time he’d set eyes on her since that night he’d looked as if he’d like to set fire to her with his glare. Angry that he hadn’t let her explain, and that she’d known instinctively that he wouldn’t have listened.
‘I asked you a question,’ he growled.
Chloe smoothed her T-shirt down with her free hand. ‘I was just dropping these off for—’
He made a dismissive gesture towards the bag in her hand but, unfortunately, the edge of his hand caught it and the bottles went flying. His first reaction was shock, but then his expression hardened again. ‘I don’t want anything you’ve got to give me.’
Unfortunately, since Chloe had bought Kelly some rather nice lotions, the bottles were glass not plastic. One bounced on the small lawn, but the other one hit the path and smashed.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’ she shouted.
She knew it was pointless, but she reached out to pick up the bits from amidst the fragrant, snowy white lotion now oozing into the dirt. She couldn’t leave it there. One of the boys might tread on it.
‘You really are unhinged, aren’t you?’ a superior voice said from above her. ‘I had no idea how bad it was.’
‘Listen, you egotistical jerk—ow!’ Chloe flinched away as her fingertip met glass. Instinctively, she stuck her finger in her mouth but instantly spat it out again. That lotion definitely did not taste as good as it smelled.
He let out a frustrated sigh. ‘I’m sorry you’ve hurt yourself, but this can’t continue … I don’t need any of your gifts. And I don’t want you hanging around outside my house.’
Chloe’s lips twitched, then a high-pitched laugh burst out of her mouth. And once she’d started she couldn’t stop. She clamped her good hand over her mouth to muffle the noise. This man was priceless! He actually thought she was stalking him? Just how vain could a man get?
She looked up at him, the look of twisted confusion on his features at her sudden outburst, and that just made her laugh all the harder.
When she could finally manage a sentence in one go, she said, ‘This wasn’t for you, Daniel. It was for Kelly.’
The look of astonishment on his face was almost worth the pain in her finger.
‘For Kelly …’ he repeated slowly.
‘Yes,’ said Chloe, feeling her hilarity subside and her temper rise again. ‘You know—tall, dark-haired female who lives with you and shares a gene pool, God help her.’
‘Why …?’ he said. ‘Why are you bringing presents for Kelly? It’s not her birthday.’
A week ago, if she’d seen Daniel Bradford rendered defenceless by confusion like this, she’d have thought it was sweet. Now Chloe just revelled in it. He was so full of himself, thought he knew who she was and what she was capable of, did he?
‘I heard you’d had to take leave because of Kelly,’ she said. ‘I thought she might be … well, you know, that she might have found out …’ She shoved the undamaged bottle in Daniel’s direction. ‘Look, I just thought she might need some girly pampering to cheer her up, okay? It’s hardly a crime.’
His mouth worked. ‘But I thought …’
‘Yes, I know what you thought,’ she said. ‘And, believe me, I’ve got much better things to do with my time than stalk you. You made it abundantly clear you’re not interested.’
Daniel’s gaze drifted to her finger. The blob of lotion on her hand was now looking like raspberry-ripple ice cream, with a swirl of red amongst the thick white. ‘You’d better come inside.’
Chloe shook her head. ‘Not likely. I’m not giving you any more ammunition than I have already. Next thing I know you’ll have the police down here.’
‘Don’t be idiotic,’ he said, regaining some of his usual charm.
Chloe started to laugh again, a dry, airless sound. ‘You’ve destroyed your sister’s gift and accused me of stalking you, and I’m the one who’s idiotic?’
He folded his arms again. ‘Well, after the other night …’
‘For goodness’ sake! All I did was get a little friendly with a man I thought was interested. And now I’m a stalker? Haven’t you ever made a pass at the wrong person before? It didn’t make you an evil monster, did it?’
His mouth moved, but Chloe was very satisfied to discover that he had no words to rebut her valid argument. It just spurred her on.
‘And, up until that moment, I didn’t hear you complaining one bit. Quite the reverse.’
He glared down at her. ‘Are you quite finished?’
Chloe sucked in air through her nostrils and let it out through her mouth. ‘Actually, I think I am.’ And she was feeling much better now.
Daniel was staring at her finger again. It was starting to drip.
‘I really think you’d better come inside,’ he said.
Looking at her finger, Chloe did too. ‘Okay. But as long as you understand that it’s only for medical attention and you will in no way be applying for a restraining order if I step foot over that threshold for a few minutes.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Done.’
So Chloe gathered up her courage, and her pride, and followed him inside.
Daniel fetched the first-aid kit from the kitchen cupboard and placed it on the kitchen table, thereby avoiding any need for physical contact. Whose benefit that was for, he wasn’t sure. Despite Chloe’s recent behaviour, his brain had not got the message through to his libido that she was better left alone. What business did she have looking so soft and approachable, even when she was staring up at him defiantly and telling him just how badly he’d got it wrong?
‘There are plasters and disinfectant in there,’ he said.
Chloe gave him a withering look. ‘I haven’t lost my IQ in the last week, you know,’ she said. ‘I have a fairly good grasp on the contents of a first-aid kit.’
Daniel squeezed his teeth together and said nothing.
Chloe ran her finger under the tap, attempting to clean the thick lotion away so she could see the damage. ‘It’s not very deep,’ she said, moving it back and forth under the stream of water, ‘just bleeding impressively. A plaster should do it.’
Daniel handed her a clean towel. She took it without looking at him. As she dried her finger she shook her head gently.
‘We spent a lot of time together over the last couple of months, but you don’t know me at all.’
‘That’s hardly surprising, since you were pretending to be something you’re not.’
Much to his surprise, Chloe laughed softly. ‘No, I wasn’t. I just didn’t look like the silly nineteen-year-old you remembered, but I’m still the same person on the inside. You didn’t look deep enough—now or then—to see the truth.’ She dabbed her finger with the towel, decorating it with tiny red smears. ‘You were just fixated on the outside package. You didn’t care what was underneath. And you’re still fixated on the outside package. All you can see now is one of those silly women who follow you around, and I’m not one of them, either.’
A look of relief washed over her face as she said that last sentence. She inhaled and the hint of a smile played on her lips.
Daniel frowned. He didn’t want to think about whether she was right about that. Anyway, she hadn’t acted perfectly in the situation, either. ‘You should have been upfront and honest with me, right from the start. It would have stopped me—’
She laughed. ‘What? Making a fool of yourself? Welcome to the club, Daniel.’
He supposed she had him there. However stupid he must have felt knowing he hadn’t realised who she was, she must have felt ten times as bad when he’d stormed off her boat the previous week.
‘Why hide it?’ he asked. ‘If you were okay with it?’
She checked her finger and clamped the towel back around it. ‘I didn’t.’ She looked down at the red-flecked towel, and then she met his eyes. ‘At least, I didn’t plan to. That first day when I came to find you, I was making a pre-emptive strike. I’d planned to ‘fess up and make light of it, let you know I’d grown up and moved on … But you didn’t remember me. As far as I knew, you didn’t remember that night either.’
‘So you lied.’
Chloe shook her head and sighed. ‘Oh, how wonderful it must be to live in that perfect black-and-white world of yours. I didn’t lie, I just decided not to dredge it up if you’d forgotten the whole thing. How would you have reacted if I’d said: “Hi, Daniel! Remember that tubby student who launched herself at you a few years back? That was me! Aren’t you thrilled?”’
Okay, he kind of saw her point.
She pulled the towel away from her hand and inspected the cut. It wasn’t oozing any more, so, forgetting about the not touching thing, Daniel reached for a plaster, unpeeled its wrapper and stuck it over the cut, winding the ends firmly round her finger.
Chloe didn’t say anything while he did this, but when he stepped away again she said, ‘I just thought the past could stay in the past, where it belonged—neither of us are the same people we were back then—and that we could work together as sensible adults. That was my plan, and I stuck to it. It was you who tipped everything on its head!’
Daniel straightened and stared at her. ‘Me?’
That twinkle of humour that he now recognised as a precursor to one of Chloe’s stinging truths appeared in her eyes. ‘Yes, you, Indiana. Who was it who decided to kiss me in the Palm House, to flirt with me continually? Who was it that was trying to woo me?’
‘I did not woo,’ he said, slightly affronted. That term made him think of lovesick idiots who couldn’t help themselves.
‘Yes, you certainly did woo. What was that picnic about, then? Or the cosy dinner with your family to get me to let my guard down …?’ She saw the expression on his face and carried on vindicated. ‘Oh, yes, I’m wise to the way you operate now, and you can’t chalk all that up as my desperate behaviour. I didn’t engineer any of those things, you did. You know what …?’
He wasn’t really sure he did want to know, but she was on a roll now.
‘In fact,’ she said, ‘if I was a man and you were a woman, you’d be the stalker and I’d be the stud. How fair is that?’
Not fair at all. But Daniel wasn’t going to tell her that. Not when he was remembering just how much he had wooed. Just how much he hadn’t been able to help himself, how desperate he’d been to make her his. In the physical sense, of course. It had nothing to do with her bright personality and quick humour, the way he felt lighter—freer—when he was with her.
Chloe inspected her finger and seemed pleased with it. She zipped the little green first-aid kit back up and put it on the table with a slight lift of one eyebrow. Copying him. Mocking him.
‘I’m not obsessed with you,’ she said. ‘And rest assured I will not attempt to seduce you ever again.’
Why did his body tighten in response to her words, rather than back away?
‘I think it’s a good idea if we just steer clear of each other from now on,’ she added.
‘Okay.’ Daniel nodded, but he didn’t really like that idea for some reason. There’d been a great deal of satisfaction in striding round the tropical plant nursery like a bear with a sore head, feeling the injured party. It had blocked out all those niggling little regrets he’d had about that night: how he’d spoken to her. Even worse, how he wished he’d stayed …
‘Let’s just be calm and professional. That way everyone at work can go back to minding their own business again—no drama to see—and we can get on with our jobs and our lives.’
‘Okay …’
Her brow wrinkled, and Daniel couldn’t help remember how, when she’d been sitting on his lap, all but naked, she’d made the same face as his lips trailed down her neck and across her shoulder, how it had seemed she’d been lost in concentrating on every touch and taste.
‘It sounds as if there’s a but in there somewhere.’
‘No,’ he said, mildly confused with all the conflicting messages his body and brain were sending him. One was saying run; one was telling him to make her make that slightly pained look of pleasure again. ‘It’s just that I’m not used to—’
‘Women being so reasonable around you?’ she interjected saucily. ‘Using their silly heads instead of being ramped up on their hormones and acting desperate?’
She waited for him to answer, but he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.
‘I know you’ve had to put up with some weird behaviour since Valentine’s Day,’ she said, her demeanour softening slightly, ‘but, honestly, you need to get over yourself. Not every woman you meet wants to marry you, Daniel. But, one day, somebody might, and if you don’t calm down you’re going to scare her off.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m never getting married,’ he said emphatically. Maybe too emphatically, because Chloe suddenly looked at him with a mixture of realisation and pity. He hated the pity the most. But he needn’t have worried. It quickly clouded over with a darker emotion.
‘Then you’re a coward as well as a bighead,’ she said.
Ouch.
‘What is the big, bad, adventuring Daniel Bradford scared of?’
‘Nothing,’ he said blandly.
She backed away towards the door. ‘Now who’s the liar?’ she said softly. ‘Okay, I got it wrong—I made a move on the wrong person—but at least I had the guts to try. I made myself vulnerable, took a chance. I’ll never find the right man for me if I don’t.’
He must have had horror written all over his face at her words, because he saw her read him, saw her muscles tighten and her jaw clench.
‘Yes, I want to get married … some day,’ she said, lifting her chin. ‘What’s so wrong with that? Millions of people do every year. But you …’ The look she gave him made his insides wither. It reminded him of another look, another woman, another barrage of accusations he hadn’t been able to defend himself against. Rather than crumble under the weight of them, Daniel fired up his temper to match hers.
‘You,’ she continued, her voice shaking slightly, ‘you’re too scared to even try. A wedding ring won’t melt your finger like acid, you know! One conquest after the next … Is that really what you want? Does that really make you happy?’
No! he wanted to yell at her.
So he did.
‘No, but I’ve been down the other path and I’m not going back there!’
There was a flicker of hesitation in her self-righteous expression and it fuelled him further. He couldn’t let her be right about everything, couldn’t let her make him seem shallow and pathetic.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, ‘What “other path”?’
He marched over to her, stared her down, let her know he wasn’t scared of her and her words. He’d lived through far worse. ‘I mean,’ he said, his voice low and silky, ‘that I once had a wife and a son. I did the whole marriage thing, the whole ‘til-death-do-us-part thing and it didn’t work out so well.’
When he mentioned the word death her lashes blinked rapidly and she swallowed. ‘She died?’ she asked, barely more than whispering.
‘No,’ Daniel said, turning away, hardly able to look at Chloe again. He hated the fact that a tiny voice had piped up inside his head, telling him it might have been better that way. ‘No, it was until “death do us part” but it wasn’t hers.’ His voice dried and he had to swallow to get it back. ‘My son. Cot death. Six months old.’
He turned back to Chloe. He’d thought he’d feel vindicated, but the look of complete shock on her face actually made him feel a little queasy. He could tell she was searching for words. There weren’t any. He knew that for a fact.
‘Something as fragile as a marriage can’t handle that,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t even there … I was off in some jungle, being the big explorer.’
He let out a huff of dry laughter.
‘ She never forgave me, you know. It killed everything we had. So, no, I don’t want to get married again. Excuse me for that.’
Chloe’s eyes filled with tears. She swallowed them down, stepped forward and reached for him. ‘Oh, Daniel … I’m so sorry.’
He shook his head, backed away until his backside met the counter. He didn’t want her pity. ‘Thank you for Kelly’s present,’ he said calmly. ‘She’s fine, by the way. A last-minute opportunity to go on a training course that she couldn’t pass up. Nothing to worry about.’ He looked at the paper bag with its drooping string handles, still where he’d left it in the centre of the kitchen table. ‘If you’ll tell me where you got it, I’ll replace the broken one.’
She shook her head.
So she didn’t want to owe him anything now, not even that. Maybe it was for the best.
‘Daniel …’
He turned to stare out of the window, down the garden. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Let’s just steer clear of each other. Calm and professional.’
For a long time she didn’t move; he could hear her breathing softly, a slight catch in the rhythm now and then. He screwed up his face, desperately trying to hold onto the churning chaos inside that he’d called up with his admission. Eventually, he heard the rustle of the paper bag as she lifted it off the table, her heels on the tiled hallway, the soft thud of the front door being closed gently.
And then Daniel let go of the breath he’d been holding and did something he hadn’t done in years. He cried.