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It wasn’t that Georgia wasn’t a lovely woman. She was determined and intelligent and sensible. Any man would be lucky to have her. He should want to say yes.
But he didn’t.
He really didn’t.
He wasn’t ever going to go down that road again, no matter how lovely the woman in question.
There was a crackle on the line and noise started filtering through again—the hiss of the automatic misting system in the nursery next door, the squeak of a door farther down the corridor, a plane flying low overhead on its way to Heathrow. And Daniel was suddenly very aware that more than a hundred thousand pairs of ears might be listening to this conversation, of just how public and complete his girlfriend’s humiliation would be if he gave her the wrong answer.
Unfortunately, where he and Georgia were concerned, the wrong answer was the right answer.
He didn’t love her. He wasn’t sure he ever would, and she deserved better than that. Gently, he balanced his phone on his shoulder again and carefully put the now-satisfied Venus flytrap plant back down in its pot.
He should have known their relationship wouldn’t stay in wonderful, comfortable stasis they’d created. In this world, things moved on, grew, or they decayed.
He’d first met Georgia when Kelly had been halfway through her chemo. She’d been easy to be around. She’d helped him forget that his little sister might not see another Christmas, to forget that his rat of a brother-in-law had run off with his personal trainer and left his shell-shocked wife to deal with a cancer diagnosis—and two under-fives—all on her own. Without Georgia, he’d have hunted Tim down and fed him, bit by bit, to the largest and ugliest Nepenthes in his collection.
Daniel shook his head. The Venus flytap was completely closed now; he couldn’t even see the squirming fly inside.
He should have known that, eventually, Georgia would get ideas. The awful situation they were in now was as much his fault as it was hers. She wasn’t really asking anything horrendous of him, was she? But she was asking for something he wasn’t capable of. Not any more. And he’d been very clear about that.
‘I’m sorry …’ he said, more for not paying attention to what had been growing right under his nose than for what he was about to say. ‘We weren’t heading for marriage, I thought you knew that … That’s what made our thing so perfect …’
Our thing … Subtle, Daniel.
He could hear her breathing on the other end of the line, and he wished he could see her face to face, explain, without listening ears hanging on every syllable.
‘It’s okay,’ she said, and he could hear the artificial brightness in her tone, could almost see the sheen in her eyes. He felt as if he’d been kicked in the chest by a horse.
He shook his head. No, it wasn’t okay. He was hurting her horribly, but that didn’t mean he could say yes and condemn them to a lie that would ultimately make them both unhappy. He had to do what was best for Georgia, for both of them. He had to set her free for someone who could give her what she wanted.
‘I can’t, Georgia. You know why I can’t say yes.’
There was a moment of ghastly silence and then the DJ began talking again, laughing nervously, trying to smooth things over. Daniel didn’t hear any of his words. He didn’t even notice when music started to play in his ear.
He felt like a worm.
No, worse than that, because worms were useful, at least, and they didn’t harm anything.
He picked up the unearthed flytrap, plastic pot and all, and flung it against the wall of the carnivorous plants nursery. It hit the glass with a resounding bang that echoed over half the gardens. The cracked pot fell away, and the frail plant followed, landing with an almost soundless thump on the floor. Compost that had smeared against the glass began to crumble away and rain down on top of it.
That was when the disadvantages of working in a greenhouse made themselves apparent. Half a dozen curious pairs of eyes stared at him from various parts of the nursery. They must have thought the Head of Tropical Plants had lost his mind.
Or worse. They might have been listening to the radio.
Daniel closed his eyes, ran his hand through his hair, then swore loudly when he realised his fingers had still been covered in peat and perlite.
He opened his lids to find no one had moved. He glared at each and every pair of staring eyes in turn. ‘What?’ he yelled and, as one mass, the underlings scurried away back into their holes.
All he wanted was for this awful, consumer-fuelled excuse of a day to be over, so he could get back to normal, live his life without anyone listening to what he was saying or spying on what he was doing.
God, he hated Valentine’s Day.
Daniel froze as he was crouched down, his hand on the papery flute of a Sarracenia. Sunlight streamed through the glass roof, warming his back, and around him visitors milled, casually inspecting the exotic plants of the Princess of Wales Conservatory, one of Kew’s modern glasshouses. All in all, it seemed like a normal March day.
Except that, as he worked, the fine hairs on his arms and the back of his neck lifted.
He stood up and glanced around. He was in a vast greenhouse with ten climate-controlled zones, so it would be stupid not to expect people to see him, but it was more than that. It felt as if someone was watching him.
Georgia’s flopped Valentine’s proposal had produced a flurry of unexpected media attention. More than once in the last month he’d found himself staring at the business end of a paparazzo’s lens as he was trying to work. But that hadn’t been the only unwanted side-effect of publicly humiliating his ex-girlfriend. Now there seemed to be eyes on him everywhere, watching him, judging him.
Until his sister’s illness had forced him to come back to England, he’d loved his job working from Kew’s base in Madagascar. He’d loved being a seed hunter—searching out rare plants to collect their treasure, tracking down nearly extinct species. But this bizarre media interest made him feel much more like the prey than a hunter, and he didn’t like that one bit. No, not a role reversal he was comfortable with.
He finished checking the fine white and green patterned flutes of the pitcher plant and pushed open the door of the small Temperate Carnivorous Plants area and entered the much larger Wet Tropics zone. Here the heat-and-moisture-loving tropical varieties grew, including a large draping display of green and warm purple hanging pitchers. He worked methodically through the twisting tendrils, looking for dried out pitchers that needed to be dead-headed, checking for disease and parasites.
That was when he heard them.
‘Do you think he looks like Harrison Ford?’ a feminine voice said in a not-so-quiet whisper. ‘I’m not sure. He’s more like that one from the spy series on BBC.’
Daniel froze and imagined a horrible, jungle-related death for the reporter who’d jokingly compared him to the film legend. While the journalist had obviously been quite pleased with his ‘Indiana Jones with secateurs’ crack, Daniel hadn’t heard the end of it from his mates.
‘Not sure,’ a second voice said thoughtfully, and just as loudly. ‘But he’s definitely got that brooding, intelligent-but-dangerous thing going on. Have you seen those arm muscles …?’
There was a muffled snort from the first speaker. ‘Arms? I was too busy checking out his nice, tight little—’
Right. That was it.
He was fed up of being treated like a piece of meat, something to be stalked and discussed and ogled. Perhaps he should just jump up on one of the earthy beds and sit there with the plants, because as far as he could see he’d stopped being one of the staff and had morphed into a prime attraction.
When would this end? It was bad enough that the London press had picked up on his and Georgia’s story and run with it like a greyhound on amphetamines. They’d been the subject of countless column inches, magazine features and chat show discussions—not that either of them had fuelled it in any way by agreeing to speak or be interviewed. It seemed the whole of the city had been split down the middle, divided into two camps, one supporting him and one supporting her.
But the whole situation had a nasty little side effect, too.
He’d now become The One That Got Away. An irresistible label to the female population of London, it seemed, because en masse they’d decided it was an open season. Every day for the first couple of weeks after the proposal they’d appeared in ones and twos like this, coming to the gardens specifically to track him down. But it had been quiet for almost a week, and he’d finally hoped it was all petering out. No such luck.
Not that a bit—or even a lot—of female interest bothered him in the slightest. He was as open to it as the next guy. But this was different. They didn’t know when to stop. They acted as if they hadn’t heard the proposal on the radio, as if they didn’t know he wasn’t in the market for love, let alone marriage. The whole thing was just stupid. And very irritating.
He was dragged back into the present by a heartfelt sigh behind him. They’d moved closer.
‘Shall I go and ask him for his autograph,’ one said.
That was it. Hunter or not, Daniel was out of there. He turned and walked briskly down the path, down the steps to the aquatic exhibit half hidden under a man-made ‘hill’ in the centre of the conservatory, and ducked through a short tunnel to come out on the other side of the zone. He then climbed the path that led him to the upper levels on top of the hill, then doubled back through the ferns and down some more stairs.
He knew this labyrinthine glasshouse like the back of his hand and it wasn’t more than a minute before he was crouching down and peering at the two women from a vantage point inside the orchid display. He could have left and gone back to the propagation greenhouses, he supposed, but he liked the idea of turning the tables, of watching them hunt fruitlessly for him, before disappearing for good. It would restore his sense of balance, of control.
Now he could see them, his eyes popped. They were over seventy, for goodness’ sake! All sensible shoes and nylon trousers. He could see them looking around, having a minor disagreement about which way they should go to pick up his trail.
He almost chuckled to himself. Almost.
At least, he might have done if those hairs on the back of his neck hadn’t prickled again.
Seriously? Another one?
He was tempted to turn round and let loose, but he knew he had a bit of a temper, and having a supposedly ‘dangerous’ edge didn’t mean he was allowed to attack paying visitors then use them for lovely, nutritious compost for his favourite plants. There were laws against that kind of thing. Unfortunately.
He was just going to have to bite his tongue and leave. However, if this Valentine’s fuelled media circus didn’t end soon, he’d be stuck in an office or a greenhouse, not able to go about his job as he pleased, and he’d hate that. It had been hard enough to leave the field and take this post in the first place; he’d only done it because Kelly had needed him to come home and help look after her and the boys.
‘Why, if it isn’t Indiana himself!’ a husky female voice drawled. ‘Although I was led to believe you’d swapped the whip for a pair of secateurs these days.’
Daniel swivelled around, still crouching. The first thing he saw was a pair of hot-pink kitten heels with polka dot bows on the front. Definitely not a pensioner, this one. His gaze was inevitably drawn up to a pair of slender ankles and then to shapely calves. For a moment, he forgot all thoughts of running.
Then there was the black pencil skirt. Tight round a pair of generous hips, hugging the thighs … He swallowed.
‘So where are they?’ she asked.
That was when he realised he was still half squatting. He looked up, past the form-fitting pink blouse to the face on top of it. Red lips. That was what he saw first. Vibrant red lips.
Who’d cut the water supply off from his throat? He swallowed again. ‘What?’
Stand up. You’re kneeling at her feet, looking like a drooling Neanderthal.
Thankfully, his brain cooperated this time, sending the message to his legs to straighten, and he stood. Finally, he was looking down at her instead of up. Only, it didn’t help much. From down below the view of her impressive cleavage hadn’t been so obvious. Now his brain was too busy working his eyeballs to do the talking thing.
‘The secateurs,’ she said with a slight twitch of one expertly plucked brow. ‘Are they in your pocket?’
Daniel nodded dumbly and pulled them out. She was blonde. Marilyn Monroe blonde. With shoulder length waves that curled around her face.
‘Shame,’ the lips said. ‘And there was I hoping you were just pleased to see me.’
His mouth hung open a little. Brain still struggling. Much to his disgust, he managed a faint grunt.
‘Sorry … couldn’t resist,’ she said, and offered her slim hand. ‘Don’t you just love Mae West?’
Daniel stared at the hand for a second or so, at the long red fingernails that matched her lips, then a movement at chest level distracted him. A staff pass on a lanyard was around her neck but, due to the impressive cleavage it was hanging just below, it was twirling gently in some unseen breeze, the photo and name obscured.
She frowned slightly. ‘Not a Mae fan, then.’
He nodded, but he wasn’t sure if he was agreeing or disagreeing.
‘Chloe Michaels,’ she said, grabbing his hand and shaking it firmly. ‘Orchid specialist and new girl at Kew.’
‘Daniel Bradford,’ he said, shaking back vigorously. Maybe a little too vigorously. He let go, but then he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hand. He stuffed it back in his pocket.
‘I know,’ she said, and a wry smile curved those red lips.
‘You’ve read the papers …’
She gave a little shrug. ‘Well, a girl would have to be dead to not have seen something of your recent press coverage. However, I knew who you were before that. I’ve got one of your books at home.’
Air emptied from his lungs and he felt his torso relax. Plants and horticulture. Finally, he’d come across a woman who could talk sense. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he said. And he genuinely meant it.
She just nodded and the smile grew brighter. ‘The guys in the tropical nursery said I’d find you here, and I just thought I’d come and introduce myself,’ she said, turning to leave.
Daniel had just started to feel somewhere close to normal again, but her exit gave him another view he hadn’t quite been ready for … The way that pencil skirt tightened round her backside was positively sinful.
She looked over her shoulder before she exited the temperate orchid display through the opposite door. Daniel snapped his gaze upwards. She hadn’t caught him checking her out, had she? That was a schoolboy error.
‘By the way,’ she said, nodding in his direction, ‘incoming at eleven o’clock.’
He hadn’t the faintest idea what she meant, but it wasn’t until she’d disappeared into the next zone that he even started to try and work it out.
A bang on the glass above him made him jump. He pivoted round and looked up to find his two pursuers in the fern enclosure at the top of the stairs, faces pressed up against the glass, grinning like mad.
Oh, heck.
One of them spotted the door further along the wall. Her eyes lit up and she started waving a pen and a notepad at him.
Daniel did what any sensible man in his position would have done.
He ran.
CHAPTER TWO (#u33619845-840c-5dda-a8b5-4a5c124c81ad)
A SKIRT THIS tight and heels this high did not help with an elegant exit, Chloe thought as she kept her back straight and cemented her gaze on the door. She’d thought she’d need the extra confidence her favourite pair of shoes gave her this morning but, when they were teamed with the skirt, every step was barely more than a hobble, and it took a torturously long time until she was out of the orchid display area and amidst the agaves and cacti of the adjoining section.
She paused for a heartbeat as the glass door swung shut behind her, then blinked a few times and carried on walking.
He hadn’t recognised her.
She’d been prepared to go in smiling, laugh that embarrassing incident in their past off and put it down to not being able to hold her liquor. In short, she’d planned to be every bit as sophisticated as her wardrobe suggested she could be.
But she hadn’t needed to.
She pressed a palm against her sternum. Her heart was fluttering like a hummingbird.
That was good, wasn’t it? That he hadn’t connected Chloe Michaels the horticultural student with Chloe Michaels, new Head Orchid Keeper. They could just start afresh, behave like mature adults.
Inwardly, Chloe winced as she continued walking along the metal-grilled flooring, past an array of spiky plants from across the globe.
Okay, last time they’d met, Daniel Bradford hadn’t had any problems behaving maturely and appropriately. Any misbehaving had been purely down to her. Her cheeks flushed at the memory, even all these years later.
She was being stupid. He must have taught loads of courses over the years, met hundreds of awestruck students. Why would he remember one frizzy-haired mouse who’d hidden her ample curves in men’s T-shirts and baggy trousers? He wouldn’t. It made sense he hadn’t even remembered her name.
Or her face.
That, too, made sense. She looked very different now.
This Cinderella hadn’t needed a fairy godmother to give her a makeover; she’d done it herself the summer she’d left horticultural college. No pumpkins, no fairy dust. Just the horrified look on Prince Charming’s face had been enough to shove her in the right direction. The Mouse was long gone; long live the new Chloe Michaels. And she’d been doing a very good job of reigning supreme for almost a decade.
