Tell Me You Do

by Fiona Harper

  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.

  CHAPTER TEN

  AND THAT WAS what Daniel and Chloe did for the next few months, through the bright days of August, the balmy warmth of an Indian Summer and into the rusts and golds of October. They steered clear of each other. Not too much, of course, because that would have created even more tension and gossip, but they were cordial and professional and those around them eventually lost interest.

  Chloe also discovered a pleasing side effect of being Daniel’s supposed ex—her nickname died out, and some of the female staff who’d previously kept their distance made an effort to befriend her, asked her out after work sometimes. It seemed everyone had a story to tell about a failed crush on Daniel Bradford. She and Georgia weren’t the only members of that club. But with her credentials, Chloe thought she should be president. Or possibly queen …

  But maybe it also had something to do with the fact that, as the trees lost their leaves, Chloe also shed some of her less practical work clothes. She swapped skirts for trousers, left the uncomfortable shoes for the weekends. One morning she’d just found herself staring in the mirror, red lipstick in hand. What was the point now? Who was she trying to impress?

  Not Daniel, even though he was constantly in her thoughts.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d told her. No wonder he avoided anything approaching intimacy. No wonder a woman who looked as if she might cling on and never let go was a threat. She understood it all now. And she ached for him because, while she understood it, she knew he was closing every open door around himself, and one day he’d wake up old and lonely. It was a sad future for a man who was so energetic and fearless in other areas of his life, a man who had such passion.

  One morning Chloe checked her email before starting work and found a message from Kew’s PR team. She’d been summoned to a meeting regarding the upcoming orchid festival. Every February, when the grounds outside were still grey and brown, when only the tips of the first crocuses were pushing through the grass, the Princess of Wales Conservatory became a riot of colour and beauty. Chloe had been looking forward to it all year; it would be her chance to really shine, show her superiors what she could do. And she desperately needed something in her life to go right at the moment.

  At the appointed hour, she made her way to the PR offices and knocked on Sarah Milton’s door. When she entered the office, however, she got a surprise. She wasn’t the only one who’d been summoned. Daniel was also there, sitting in one of the chairs opposite Sarah’s desk.

  Chloe shook Sarah’s hand, smiling, and then did the same to Daniel, figuring it would look odd if she treated him differently. It had been the first time they’d really touched since that awful night on her houseboat, and she’d hoped that all residual attraction would have faded by now. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Instead, her skin leapt to life, tingling all the way up her arm. As if her nerve-endings had been lying dormant, waiting for something to wake them up. Waiting for him to wake them up.

  She sat down in the remaining vacant chair and folded her hands in her lap.

  Sarah, an elegant woman in her late forties, smiled at both of them and leaned forward on her desk, lacing her fingers together. ‘I heard the two of you had plans for a combined display in the Princess of Wales,’ she said, raising her eyebrows slightly.

  She and Daniel looked at each other, then back at Sarah. ‘Yes, but we kind of … put it on hold,’ Chloe said.

  The minuscule nod of Sarah’s head said she knew that—and exactly why.

  ‘We’d like you to resurrect the idea for this year’s orchid festival in February,’ she said. ‘We’re thinking of calling the festival something like “Beauty and the Beast” or “Savage Beauty”. It’ll be great for PR to do something a little different this year.’

  Chloe sneaked a look at Daniel. His expression told her just how enthused he was by that idea.

  ‘The last thing I need is more media attention,’ he said.

  Sarah just smiled at him, a long, thin, lizard’s smile. ‘Well, it’s not really about you, is it, Daniel? It’s supposed t
o be about the plants.’

  Daniel just glared back at her.

  Chloe found she just couldn’t sit there and say nothing. ‘I know it should be about the plants, but we all know the media will get any story they can out of it, the juicier the better. You have to admit that Daniel will be a target.’

  Now Daniel was glaring at her instead. Great.

  Sarah, however, wasn’t fazed. ‘We’re going to run the festival for a week, with an auction for some of the display pieces on the last day to raise money for the Kew foundation,’ she said. ‘So book the fourteenth off in your diaries.’

  ‘The fourteenth?’ she and Daniel said in unison.

  Daniel shook his head. ‘But that’s exactly one year on from—’

  ‘Look, there’s going to be media interest anyway,’ Sarah said quickly. ‘We might as well do it on our terms. What do you think?’

  Chloe exhaled. What did she think about it? She loved the idea, knowing that the orchids and pitcher plants would look amazing together, but it would mean working with Daniel. She tipped her head a little and looked across at him again. His expression was unreadable, features set like stone. But saying no to the powers that be on her very first festival would not go down well. She’d waited years for this job, and she didn’t want to jeopardise her future here by being labelled as difficult.

  ‘I think we can make it work,’ she said, knowing that Daniel had just transferred his caustic gaze from Sarah to her once again. She turned and met him head-on. ‘There’s no reason we can’t work calmly together.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Sarah said, looking a little smug. ‘Daniel?’

  Chloe leaned forward a little, towards Daniel. He watched her, but didn’t move back. ‘She’s right, you know. About the media. At least this way you can talk about the plants, get some good media coverage for the gardens … Do a good enough job of it and no one is going to have time to ask you about your love life.’

  At least, that was what Chloe was hoping. Especially as she’d been the one blip on his radar all year—as far as she knew.

  Something in his eyes changed. ‘Okay,’ he said, looking back at Sarah.

  ‘Great,’ Sarah said, reaching for her mouse and giving her computer screen a glance. They were effectively dismissed. ‘I’ll leave you two to work out some more details, then we’ll catch up again in a couple of weeks to see how things are coming along.’

  Daniel worked his way through the Orangery restaurant to a table in the corner. Chloe was already there, head bent over a notepad. She couldn’t possibly have heard him through the dull hum of afternoon tea, but she lifted her head and looked at him while he was still ten feet away.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  He nodded in return.

  Her voice had been calm and even, her expression neutral, but he sensed she was more nervous than she was letting on.

  It was strange. It was as if Chloe were a two-way mirror and, for a long time, all he’d been able to see was what she reflected back to him on the surface. But someone had now switched a switch somewhere or turned a light on, and suddenly he could see everything she’d been hiding behind. Was it just that he hadn’t been looking properly before? Could he have seen this all along if only he’d tried?

  She wore dark jeans, boots and a sweatshirt. Her hair was still curled as usual, but she hardly looked as if she had any make-up on at all. She looked fresh and young, an odd mix of the woman he’d pursued so relentlessly and the student who’d got her timing wrong. How he hadn’t recognised her the instant he’d seen her again, he didn’t know.

  He sat down. ‘Do you want another drink?’

  She shook her head, even though her cup was nearly empty. ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘So … Beauty and the Beast …’ He shrugged. ‘I reckon we all know who’s who in that scenario.’

  Her lips flattened and her brows lowered. ‘We’ve managed just fine for months without any name-calling—’

  He shook his head, leaned forward a little. ‘I didn’t mean you were the Beast,’ he said. ‘I thought it was obvious I was talking about me … that you were the …’ He trailed off and didn’t finish his sentence. Coward.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and the resulting confusion on her face made her look younger still, very much like the girl he remembered. ‘That’s very … Thank you.’

  She stared down at her notebook for a second.

  ‘You’re not … flirting … with me, are you? Because I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  He hadn’t meant to, but then he hadn’t meant to say anything like that at all. It had just popped out. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It was just my backhanded way of saying I didn’t handle things very well back in the summer.’ He shrugged. ‘You’ve met my sister, so you know subtlety is not a strong family trait.’

  That earned him the beginnings of a smile. He could live with that.

  What surprised him was the tug inside telling him it wasn’t enough, that he wanted to see her eyes light up and her lips stretch the way he had done before, back when things had been easy between them, back when she’d still been a potential something to him.

  He decided to ignore it and gestured towards the sketch pad. ‘You have some ideas?’

  She nodded, but didn’t flap it over to show him. Not yet. It took her a couple of seconds before she worked up the nerve. And he didn’t blame her. He’d been a complete pig to her, belittled everything she was. He didn’t have to lie, though, when he saw her sketches and notes; she had some really good ideas. Chloe was much more imaginative than he’d realised.

  Oh, you realised. When her hands were on your chest and her teeth were nipping your neck, you knew just how creative she had the potential to be.

  Daniel wiped that thought away. He shouldn’t think about her that way any more.

  Okay, he was in trouble already, because he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her that way nowadays. But he needed to try. If he didn’t, he’d be facing a sexual harassment suit. No way was Chloe Michaels ever going to let him within touching distance of her ever again. And he was supposed to be pleased about that.

  He pulled the tatty piece of paper out of his jeans pocket. It was stained and crumpled, even though he’d only scratched his ideas on it about an hour ago, nothing as neat as Chloe’s little black book with the elastic strap and colour-coded markers.

  For the next half-hour they talked designs and specimens, discussed how to use different areas of the vast Wet Tropics zone of the Princess of Wales Conservatory. It was usual to have a large display by the lily-pad pool, but Chloe had ideas about how to use some of the smaller nooks and crannies of the area too. Together they worked on an idea of contrasting the ugliest and most vicious-looking plants in the collection with the most fragile and colourful orchids. She wanted hanging displays and islands in the ponds, great towers of orchids in spiralling colours. It was going to look stunning.

  Eventually, she closed her notebook and looked around. While they’d been talking a couple of the other nursery staff had wandered over to see what they were planning, but she’d always found a way to lean over her notebook or distract them from its contents. ‘I want this to be a surprise,’ she said. ‘I know we’ll need a huge team of helpers closer to the date, but for now I’d like to keep this just between ourselves.’

  He couldn’t help smiling a little. ‘Need to know basis only. Got it. Anyone finds out too much and we deal with them.’

  Her lips twitched. ‘Exactly. There’s some rather hungry piranhas in the aquatic display. I’m sure they’d appreciate the nutritional supplement.’ And then she grew more serious again. ‘I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, Daniel, but … Do you think we could meet somewhere less … public … next time?’

  ‘I’m not taking it the wrong way,’ he said. How could he? For the last three months she’d been true to her word. She hadn’t so much as looked at him with a flicker of interest. There’d been no text messages, no voicemails, no scented envelop
es in the post. All completely what he’d asked for. So he shouldn’t really mind, should he?

  She’d moved on. Got over him. So maybe she was right: maybe he was big-headed, because he wasn’t liking the fact it had been so easy for her. The fact that she’d dealt with the whole situation with poise and dignity—much more than he had—only made him admire her more.

  But there was where the problem lay: usually, when he admired a woman, he let her know, he pursued her. He didn’t quite know what to do with all these new, noble feelings he was having for Chloe that meant it wasn’t going to end with a good night in bed. It was most unsettling.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘How about meeting at my house next Thursday?’

  She opened her mouth and he could tell she was about to knock him back.

  ‘I’ll ask Kelly to hang around,’ he added, knowing they’d struck up a friendship of late. ‘She usually has some pithy opinions on my great plans.’

  Chloe relaxed a little and nodded. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay.’

  A cute little line appeared between her brows. ‘We can do this, can’t we? We can act like professionals and make this thing a success. Because I really want this thing to be a success.’

  He nodded. ‘Sure.’

  But as she walked away he drew in a deep breath and held it. He made himself turn to the wall and look at the white-painted plaster rather than at her rather fine retreating backside in its denim covering.

  See? He could do it. He was practically being a saint.

  Okay. Well, he was going to try his best. That was all anyone could ask.

  Chloe closed her notebook, leaned back in one of Daniel’s dining-room chairs and sighed. ‘Finally, I think we have a handle on this thing,’ she said, and then she smiled, just a little. ‘You know this is going to be the best festival yet, don’t you?’

  Daniel grinned at her. Chloe smiled more than just a little.

  She lifted her tote bag off the floor and placed her notebook inside before pushing her chair back, getting ready to stand up. ‘Wait?’ he asked softly.