The Tanglewood Flower Shop

by The Tanglewood Flower Shop (retail) (epub)

  He sat so he could see the door, and opened the menu, holding it up so it almost covered his face, with just his eyes showing. He felt like a stalker, and not a very good one at that, so he lowered it again and glanced at it at while letting the sounds of the restaurant wash over him.

  How much? For a single rump steak? And that was without any sauce. If he wanted a splash of peppercorn sauce to go with it, it would cost an additional £3.50. He checked out the rest of the items on the list and was glad he had no intention of ordering anything.

  He was too nervous to eat, and although he’d had nothing since his coffee and croissant earlier that day, he didn’t feel in the least bit hungry. Actually, he still felt a little sick, his stomach doing a strange flip every so often. He did order a drink, though, a soft one. He really could have done with a pint, but he suspected it mightn’t be a good idea.

  A man’s voice coming from the Budding Stars table filtered into his thoughts.

  ‘Shall we order? It doesn’t look like Leanne’s joining us. Seven thirty, the itinerary said, and it’s quarter to eight now. I’m absolutely starving.’

  Rex’s ears pricked up.

  ‘Yeah, well, I bet she’s seeing Jarred. It wouldn’t be the first time,’ a female voice said. ‘If she wins, it’ll be a fix. Talk about sleeping your way to the top.’

  ‘Now, Desiree, we’ve got no proof that’s what she’s doing.’

  The woman snorted. ‘What else are they going to be doing? Playing Scrabble?’

  ‘Well…’ The first speaker sounded doubtful.

  Rex slowly put his menu down, then stood up and walked out of the restaurant. ‘Charge the drink to my room,’ he called to the maître d’ on the way out.

  So, Leanne was with Jarred Townsend, was she? From what he could remember, he was sure she had told him that neither the judges nor the presenter, Rory, stayed in the same hotel as the contestants. Which meant she would have to walk back through the hotel’s front entrance at some point tonight (or tomorrow morning, a sly little voice said).

  Rex picked a comfy-looking chair that gave him a good view of the revolving doors and settled down to wait.

  He wanted to be here when she returned, because there was no way he was letting her go without a fight.

  Chapter 52

  Leanne was exhausted. Although it wasn’t late, she’d been up since goodness knows what time. Actually, she’d not slept much at all last night, and her walk to the beavers’ dam this morning seemed like days ago. Time seemed to have become distorted and stretched, and she had the impression she was living two days for every one that passed. She guessed her strange thoughts were the result of tiredness, nerves and unhappiness. It was going to take her a long time to recover from Rex.

  Jarred had insisted on escorting her into the hotel foyer, leaving his car parked illegally directly outside the building and not caring one hoot. He was totally driven and focused when it came to his work, but anything else was treated with a distinct lack of care. It made for an interesting mix, and Leanne had a feeling she would enjoy working for him (alongside him?) even if he was demanding, exacting and had impossibly high standards.

  She wondered if he was going to kiss her on the cheek, and she paused just inside the revolving doors, bracing herself. She was relieved when he held out a hand instead. Taking it in her own slightly damp palm, she returned his firm handshake.

  ‘Good luck for tomorrow,’ he said. ‘You’ll need it.’

  She would?

  ‘You all will,’ he continued. ‘There’s hardly anything to choose between the three of you. It will all come down to how you perform on the day.’

  They’d been told the very same thing numerous times. No matter how brilliant a person was last week, if they bombed this week then they were out of the competition.

  Jarred patted her on the shoulder and gave her a smile and a nod. ‘See you on set in the morning. I’ll let the winner have his or her glory at the party tomorrow, and announce my new business venture the day after.’

  Leanne blew out her cheeks as she watched him walk away. This was all moving so fast that she wondered if she’d be able to keep up. A little voice in the depths of her mind wished she didn’t have to.

  * * *

  Despite his best intentions, Rex was only half awake. The foyer was overly warm, and the chair was deep and squishy. He’d been up since the crack of dawn and hadn’t slept too well the night before, then he’d been on the go all day looking for missing Billy Morrow, and that was without the mental toll that such a search exacted. Add to that the emotional roller coaster he was riding when it came to Leanne, his mad dash to London and the news that she was probably with Jarred Townsend, and it was no wonder he was shattered. On the one hand, he felt he could sleep for a week, but on the other, his brain refused to switch off, and every time his heavy lids drooped, images of soft brown eyes and a gorgeous smile popped into his head.

  As if thinking about Leanne had made her magically appear, there she was, walking into the hotel, Jarred Townsend at her side, his hand on her elbow, almost like a policeman escorting a prisoner. Did the man think she was about to run away?

  When they stopped and turned to each other, Rex could no longer watch, convinced he was about to see the pair of them kissing. He closed his eyes, wishing he’d never come to London, wishing he’d stayed in Tanglewood with his memories, because these new ones were definitely not to his liking.

  Unable to stop himself, and thinking he must like pain because why else would he do something so silly, he opened his eyes.

  Leanne and Jarred weren’t kissing.

  He rubbed his face and squinted. They were shaking hands. He blinked, trying to get his head around this new development. Actually, it wasn’t a new development at all, he realised, because he already knew Leanne was going to work for Jarred. Shaking hands was perfectly reasonable. Believing a bit of idle gossip was his own fault.

  He could understand why the other two contestants thought the way they did, though. It would never have occurred to them that Jarred Townsend had offered Leanne Green a job. He would have jumped to the same conclusion as them if he had been in their shoes.

  He watched Jarred pat Leanne on the arm and walk away, then studied Leanne’s expression. She was giving nothing away – her face was inscrutable.

  He got to his feet and walked slowly over to where she stood waiting for the lift, debating whether to announce his presence now, or to follow her to her room and speak to her in private.

  Deciding on the latter, he waited for her to step into the lift, then made a mad dash for the stairs, bounding up them three at a time. He felt like a cop or a secret agent, chasing the bad guy through a hotel, but he was already panting when he reached the next floor, falling through the fire door and into the corridor.

  The lift was still going up.

  He repeated the performance three more times, feeling less and less like an action hero with each floor he reached.

  When the lift finally stopped ascending, he heard the ping as the doors opened before he’d put his foot on the top step, and used the handrail to drag his weary body onto the landing. He wasn’t cut out for all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, he thought, as he cautiously opened the door to the hallway and peered around it.

  There she was, walking away from him, her key card in her hand. He made a note of which door she stopped at, then waited for her to unlock it and go inside.

  Room 406.

  His heart thumping, his breathing loud in his ears, he wondered if maybe it would be better to wait for a minute, to compose himself and get his breath back. He didn’t want to try to tell her he loved her while sounding like a steam engine with a cold. Besides, he was scared of what might happen next. He had an awful feeling she might take one look at him and slam the door in his face, and he’d have to resort to shouting into the crack between the door and the floor.

  When he realised his breathing wasn’t so much to do with having pelted up several flights of
stairs, and that his heartbeat wasn’t about to return to a more sedate rhythm any time soon, he knew he had to do it now.

  Taking a deep breath, he lifted his hand and knocked.

  * * *

  Leanne changed into her PJs. She was tired, irritable and overwhelmed, and felt out of her depth and excited all at the same time. The only thing she wanted to do was to fall into bed and sleep for a week, even though she strongly suspected she wouldn’t be able to sleep much at all.

  She should be concentrating on the competition tomorrow, but all she could think about was her conversation with Jarred. He had been pleased when she’d accepted the job, as she’d hoped he would be, and had wanted to start planning her role right away, filling her already overloaded brain with talk of advertising, bottom lines, executive markets and other stuff that sounded like a foreign language to her befuddled mind.

  She knew it had been a mistake to tell him tonight; she should have waited until the winner had been announced, because she had trouble finding room for both the competition and the job in her mind right now, especially when there were still so many thoughts of Rex in it.

  She washed her face, revelling in the feel of the fluffy towel as she patted her skin dry, then turned back the covers and sat on the edge of the bed.

  Please, please let me get some sleep tonight, she prayed as she kicked off the complimentary hotel slippers, swung her legs onto the bed and slid them under the sheet.

  Someone knocked on her door, and she paused in the act of pulling the covers up to her chin. She wasn’t expecting anyone, and she wondered if it was actually the room next door and the sound had travelled.

  The knock came again.

  Surely it couldn’t be for her?

  When the knock came for a third time, she swore, and threw back the bedclothes. Whoever it was wasn’t going to go away, and they’d better have a good reason for disturbing her at this time of night. She had a competition to win tomorrow.

  Hesitating with her hand on the handle, she wondered if it might be Jarred, and if so, what he could possibly want. Uneasy now, but deciding to get on with it and see who it was, she opened the door, and gasped.

  * * *

  Rex’s first thought when the door opened was that Leanne looked delectable. She was standing there in pink PJs with little white dogs all over them, her hair ruffled and her eyes sleepy. The sleepiness evaporated like steam from a kettle when she saw him, and her mouth became a round O of shock.

  ‘Rex?’ she gasped, clutching one hand to her chest, the other firmly on the door handle.

  ‘That’s me,’ he said.

  ‘I can see that.’ She sounded cross and put out. ‘What I meant was, what are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to see you.’

  ‘Why?’

  It didn’t look as though she was going to invite him in any time soon, so he asked if she wanted to go somewhere more public to talk. She looked slowly down at her PJs, then back up at him.

  ‘Maybe not,’ he amended. ‘OK, I’ll say what I’ve got to say out here and then I’ll leave you in peace.’

  Wordlessly she stood to one side, holding the door open, and he sidled past her. As soon as he was inside, he halted and turned to face her.

  ‘I wanted to tell you how I feel about you. I know you probably don’t feel the same way…’ He grimaced. ‘You told me as much the other night. I know you’ve got a fantastic job opportunity and a whole new life ahead of you, but I had to come here and explain things to you.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘The weekend I visited my parents, I know I was a bit offhand, and you might have thought I was ignoring you, or that I didn’t care, but I had a lot going on. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I did think that,’ she said levelly, neither her tone nor her expression giving anything away.

  ‘Will you let me explain? Will it do any good?’

  He studied her as she worried at her lip with her teeth, and he wanted nothing more than to gather her in his arms and kiss the haunted expression off her face.

  She nodded. ‘It might.’

  Gathering his resolve, he carried on. ‘It all started when I found out that my ex-girlfriend, Jules, was pregnant,’ he began, speaking quickly, trying to get his story out before Leanne lost patience and told him to leave. From the expression on her face, she didn’t appear to be all that happy with what she’d heard so far.

  Without meeting her gaze, he soldiered on, leaving nothing out.

  And when he’d finished his story, he ended with the only words that mattered.

  * * *

  Leanne couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Poor Rex, he must have been so hurt when he discovered the girl he’d once loved had cheated on him, and so confused about the baby and everything. She let him speak, saying nothing, unable to find the words to express the indignation and sadness she felt on his behalf. She wanted to reach out and gather him into her arms, but she sensed he needed to finish his tale, that unburdening himself to her was the best thing for him.

  She could hardly bear to think about that poor little baby, facing the first few days of his life with the possibility of never knowing his mother. There was something very endearing about the way Rex had half fallen in love with the child, without even knowing if Lyall was his or not. He’d make a fantastic dad, she knew, and a shiver went down her spine at the image that popped into her head – a little auburn-haired boy with eyes like hers. It almost made her cry.

  When he finally ground to a halt, his story done, she swallowed convulsively, trying to hold back the threatened tears.

  Then he said the only thing she wanted to hear from him.

  ‘I love you.’

  He looked so earnest and so loving, yet utterly terrified.

  She took her time replying. Not because she wanted to make him suffer, but because she had to be certain that she was doing what she was about to do for the right reasons. What she was thinking of was momentous, and would change her life forever. She never wanted to look back and regret the decision she was about to make, so she nodded once, slowly, while she searched her heart and scoured her soul, and made certain she was choosing the path that was truly right for her. For both of them.

  Finally she met his gaze. He’d been watching her, and she noticed that the hope had slowly faded from his eyes. He seemed cast adrift, lost, empty, as if he had pinned everything on coming here tonight and putting his heart in her keeping.

  ‘I love you too,’ she said.

  ‘But?’

  ‘No buts,’ she replied firmly. Definitely, absolutely, positively no buts. She’d never been more certain about anything in her life as she was about that. No strings, no provisos, no conditions – nothing except love.

  Rex continued to stare at her, but his expression was no longer the hurt, guarded, defeated one of a few moments ago; now it was full of wild hope and brimming with love.

  ‘I don’t think I realised exactly what I’d almost lost until I thought I’d lost it,’ he said.

  ‘You should have told me earlier. I thought you were about to end our relationship, so I got in there first.’

  ‘I think I was scared of what you might say,’ he admitted. ‘When I did pluck up the courage, you told me it wasn’t working out between us.’

  ‘We’re a right pair of idiots,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘We certainly are.’ He crossed the room in three strides and Leanne sank into his embrace, his arms tight around her, promising to never let go.

  For the first time in ages, she felt at peace. This was where she belonged, and this was where she intended to stay.

  When Rex’s mouth claimed hers, his kiss swept her away, and she went with joy in her heart and gladness in her soul.

  Chapter 53

  The competition was over. Done.

  Leanne hadn’t seen Rex all day, not until the three contestants had been ushered off set and sent back to their hotel, where Rex was waiting nervously for her in the lounge.

>   ‘Well?’ he demanded, after sweeping her into his arms and kissing her soundly.

  Leanne chuckled when Desiree tutted at the sight of them embracing.

  ‘She thinks you’re sleeping with Jarred Townsend,’ Rex told her, kissing her nose.

  She shrugged. ‘I guessed as much. She must think I’m awful. First Jarred, now you.’

  ‘She’ll think even worse of you when you win. And just you wait until Jarred announces that you’re going to be working for him!’

  ‘Oh, don’t.’ Leanne shuddered. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about. Besides, I might not win.’

  ‘Of course you will. You’re the best by far.’

  She giggled. ‘How do you know?’ she protested. ‘You haven’t seen what the other two can do.’

  He let go of her and led her to a couple of free seats. She sank down into hers gratefully. Last night had been yet another night with very little sleep, but for a far more wonderful reason.

  They had talked into the wee small hours, neither of them quite yet able to believe that the other truly loved them, then kissed a lot and talked some more, until Rex told her he was off to bed to let her get some rest before the final in a few hours’ time.

  Leanne hadn’t realised how exhausted she was until she closed the door behind him, with promises to meet him for breakfast, and leaned against it, almost too tired to move. She didn’t care – she was happier than she could ever remember being. Now all she needed to do was to win this darned competition.

  But it hadn’t been the competition that had been on her mind when she slipped into sleep; it had been Rex, and her heart sang with happiness.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘Only a few more hours and it will all be over. Why don’t you have a nap, followed by a long soak in the bath before you get your glad rags on? I’ll do the same, and come for you at about seven?’