Tell Me You Do

by Fiona Harper

  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.’