Call Me Cupid. Heidi Rice
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stood up. ‘You’re saying you just want to ride whatever comes, ignore it?’
She nodded again. She was good at ignoring things.
Daniel shook his head as he put the phone back in his pocket.
‘You haven’t given an interview since Valentine’s Day, have you?’ she asked.
‘No...’ He looked away and then back at her. He was still frowning, but now she could tell he was turning her idea over instead of just resisting it. ‘I suppose you’re right. Starting a dialogue may just increase the frenzy.’
Chloe walked forward, sat down on the bench and picked up her salad box again. ‘Great. All sorted,’ she said, unclipping the lid.
Daniel stared at her, brow still furrowed. He seemed on the verge of saying something, but he finally said, ‘I’d better go and give Alan back his phone.’
She smiled back and waved her fork slightly before popping a cherry tomato in her mouth and swallowing it almost whole. ‘Well, if Alan is as addicted to his smartphone as I am to mine, you’d better hurry. He may already be having withdrawal symptoms.’
Daniel gave a wry smile and stared at the phone, as if he couldn’t quite believe in the seductive pull in that little bit of technology. ‘I appreciate you being understanding about this,’ he said as he put it back in his pocket.
‘No problem,’ she said, managing to sound fairly normal, although she was fairly sure that tomato had lodged itself somewhere in her throat. ‘And if Alan is shaking and sweating when you get back to him, I recommend an early lunch break. Half an hour of Vengeful Ducks should get him back on track.’
‘Let me thank you somehow,’ Daniel said, lowering his voice, and an irresistible little glimmer of naughtiness twitched his mouth into an off-centre smile. ‘How about dinner?’
Chloe blinked slowly and licked her lips. ‘I thought we talked about this last night,’ she said, looking at her salad and using her fork to tease a bit of carrot.
When she looked back up at Daniel he was still smiling at her. It took all she had not to fling her salad to one side and have him for lunch instead.
‘Can’t blame a guy for trying,’ he said, then nodded and headed back towards the nurseries.
When he was out of earshot Chloe let go of her intercostal muscles and allowed the coughing fit she’d been holding back to take over. Eventually, the tomato made its way down the right hole.
She put her salad box down on the bench beside her, put her elbows on her knees and rested her face in her hands. She really didn’t want to go back to who she’d been when she’d first met Daniel. That Chloe had been a nice enough girl, the class swot, always excelling at everything. She hadn’t cared that she hadn’t followed the latest fashion trends or had only a passing acquaintance with the opposite sex. Because that Chloe had known that everything came easy to her, that she’d hardly ever had to try to be good at anything.
And then Daniel Bradford had walked into her life and had shown her exactly where she’d been lacking.
She hadn’t realised she wasn’t any good at being a girl until he’d come along. And that was a pretty important thing when you were one.
For a girl who’d never failed at anything, crashing and burning so spectacularly in the male-female stakes had come not just as a shock, but a reality slap. That was what the grown-up world was all about. And nice-but-geeky Chloe just hadn’t been cutting it.
She couldn’t have that.
Right from an early age her parents had pushed their rather precocious only child to excel, to be the best at everything she did. So how had she failed at something so basic, something that was supposed to come naturally?
She drew in a breath and sat up. It didn’t matter any more. She’d fixed it. Now being not just a girl, but a woman, was something Chloe Michaels got top marks in, so she really shouldn’t worry.
A wisp of breeze curled itself around her, lifted a strand of hair and pushed it across her face. She brushed it aside. There was no point in dwelling on the past—she had a problem in the present that needed fixing.
Unfortunately, the root was the same: Daniel.
What was she going to do about him, about this stupid article?
Ignore it, she told herself firmly. That’s what you’ve got to do. Ignore the stupid blog. Ignore the way Indiana there makes your skin tighten and your pulse zing. Most of all, ignore that horrible photograph.
A cold feeling spiked through Chloe and she masked it by sitting up and spearing another vegetable, chewing it quickly then swallowing it fast.
Yes, ignore the fact that, despite the trademark blonde curls and the red lips, she hadn’t recognised herself in that photo. Not the version of herself she was today, anyway.
Because, in the grainy greyness of that mobile phone picture, it hadn’t been ‘new and improved’ Chloe staring up at Daniel all wide-eyed and breathy; it had been the Mouse.
Daniel caught a flash of colour out of the corner of his eye as he flicked a paintbrush full of pollen over a plant he was trying to propagate. Instinctively, he swung round to find it again.
Just a brightly coloured plastic bag one of the staff had walked past the door of his nursery with. Not a pink shoe, or an emerald blouse or even a pair of smiling ruby lips.
He stood up and scrubbed a hand over his face.
He was losing it, wasn’t he?
Just a hint of colour, which he now seemed to associate with Chloe, because everyone else here wore variations of brown and green and navy blue, or a scent like her perfume—an easy mistake to make in a greenhouse full of flowers—and he’d react. He’d seek first and think later, making him just like the insects who were lured by the smell and hue of the plant he was tending. They couldn’t help it.
He couldn’t help it.
Another dash of soft pink at the edge of his peripheral vision. He turned immediately, then swore.
This time it was Chloe, popping her head in the door of one of the other rooms and asking one of the horticultural students something. She was wearing a top that clung in all the right places. She smiled at the two young men, was charming and poised. Just as she was with him. No difference.
No difference at all.
It was driving him mad.
He’d tried everything, every trick up his sleeve—every look, every line—and she was still completely unaffected.
He bowed his head and turned his attention back to the bulbous Nepenthes hamata he was working on. Most people thought of plants as pretty things, but this specimen was dark and fierce-looking. He thought it was beautiful, but with vicious-looking black teeth round the opening of the pitcher it resembled something out of a science-fiction movie more than a bloom fit for a bridal bouquet.
He was trying to cross it with another species that was a deep purply-black. If he succeeded, he’d have a plant that would give even Sigourney Weaver nightmares.
He glanced up again, but realised he was subconsciously searching for soft pink, and made himself focus on the plant instead.
Not her. This plant wouldn’t scare her. In fact, nothing seemed to rattle her, and he both admired and resented that ability. Chloe Michaels was like her own unique subspecies of womankind. Bred to resist him.
And, with all the lurid rumours flying round about them, her apathy just rubbed salt into the wound. Maybe it was just stubbornness on his part, an unwillingness to admit defeat?
A fly buzzed round the Nepenthes, alighting on the slippery edge of the