Tell Me You Do: The Guy to Be Seen With / The Rebound Guy

‘He says he’s going to gobble me up, bit by bit.’ Cal blinked, the picture of childish innocence. Had Kelly put him up to this?

Daniel was still so close to Chloe that he could feel her chest shaking as she tried to suppress a laugh.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t finding this the least bit funny. He’d had his own plans for this evening. Maybe of a similar pattern—starting with the toes, and working his way up, bit by bit …

Just that thought alone made him ache.

Reluctantly, he got up off the sofa and took Cal back upstairs. A complete search—involving torches—was made of the under bed area, and it was only when Daniel had tucked the duvet in round his nephew and read him yet another story that Cal consented to lie down and close his eyes.

When he got back downstairs Chloe wasn’t on the sofa where he’d left her, but in the hallway, putting on her coat.

‘Thanks for a lovely evening,’ she said. The dazzling smile she wore informed him that whatever barriers he’d managed to coax down in the last half-hour had sprung up again while he’d been hunting for Cal’s crocodile.

Damn.

He couldn’t wait another month to try again. It would seem like an eternity.

‘Are you sure you don’t want another glass of wine?’

Chloe shook her head and her curls bounced. ‘I think I’ve had enough.’ The seriousness that crept into her eyes told him she wasn’t just talking about the Merlot. But he wasn’t quite ready to let her go that easily.

‘Think how much it would help our case if Kelly could tell everybody that you’d stayed for breakfast?’

Chloe sighed. ‘Daniel … That’s not the deal, and you know it.’

Damn again. So close.

‘Maybe,’ he said, smiling slowly. ‘But optimism is one of my most appealing traits.’

At least she laughed. ‘Of course it is,’ she said and patted him on the arm as if he were an elderly aunt. Ouch.

He wanted to ask her to stay, to give him another chance, but it sounded suspiciously like begging inside his head, and he didn’t do begging. Persuading, yes. Pursuing, definitely. But never begging.

The muffled hoot of a car horn outside took him by surprise.

‘That’s my cab,’ she said.

Her cab.

She’d called a cab?

Suddenly Daniel didn’t feel as firmly in control as he had been before. He liked the chase, but this quarry was intent on running him in new and unexpected directions. He couldn’t quite decide whether he loved it or hated it.

‘Night, Daniel,’ she murmured, and then, without a flicker of hesitation or nerves, she leaned in close and pressed her lips gently to his cheek.

And then she was gone into the balmy night air, her little handbag swinging off her fingers.

Daniel shut the door when the cab drove away and gave out a loud growl of frustration.

‘Uncle Daniel!’ The terrified shriek came from Cal’s room, and a few seconds later he was standing at the top of the stairs. ‘The crocodile’s back!’ he said between sobs. ‘And he’s really, really angry.’

Daniel rubbed a hand through his hair and tramped up the stairs, scooping up the small, snivelling boy when he got to the top.

‘Don’t want to sleep in my room,’ Cal hiccupped as Daniel headed across the landing. ‘Can’t I sleep with you?’

Daniel looked at the clock. Not even nine-thirty. When he’d dreamed of an early night, snuggling up with a warm body in his bed this evening, this was not what he’d had in mind.

He took his nephew into his darkened bedroom, making sure the landing light was on and the door wide, and he climbed on top of the covers while Cal slid underneath. It wasn’t ten minutes before he could hear small-boy snoring and the rhythmic smack of Cal’s lips against his stubby thumb.

Daniel lay there a little longer, just to make sure he didn’t wake his nephew when he carried him back to bed. He couldn’t be cross, not really. Both boys had been very clingy since their dad had left and Kelly had slipped into the habit of letting them sneak into her bed if they woke in the night.

As he lay there he stared at the wedge of orange light the street lamp had painted on his ceiling and let out a heavy breath. Chloe Michaels was a mystery to him. One minute she was all wide-eyed and trembling at his proximity, the next she was cool and detached and contained.

As much as he hated all those silly women turning up since George’s proposal, at least they proved something—that he wasn’t totally repellent. Quite the opposite. So why could Chloe resist him so easily? What made her so different? He just had to find out.

Thank goodness for small boys with crocodiles under their beds.

Chloe repeated the phrase to herself a hundred times as she got ready for work the next day.

Normally, she brushed her teeth on automatic, mind drifting, but this morning she watched herself in the mirror, her face free of make-up and her hair hidden beneath a twisted towel. She looked quite different from the woman who’d walked in the door last night.

She’d thought the Mouse was long gone, buried beneath years of being so cool and confident that play-acting had become reality. But she was still there. As Chloe brushed her teeth she occasionally caught a glimpse of her—something about a tightness in her jaw, a flicker of hesitancy in those eyes.