The Little Shop of Hopes and Dreams

Nicole blinked. ‘Why didn’t I what?’

He stepped forward. She started to feel more than a little claustrophobic. ‘Call me,’ he replied, and then he waited, a hint of a lopsided smile pulling at one corner of his mouth.

She swallowed. It was one thing fibbing to Peggy when she got too nosy, but it was another thing entirely to lie to the man himself. Her mouth felt dry, despite the fact she’d been sipping her wine and it was already half gone.

But she couldn’t tell him the truth, couldn’t tell him she’d been too much of a coward to call him, because something about him made her feel out of her depth, like she was a drowning woman trying to surface and gasp in some air. She didn’t want to ever feel that way again with a man.

It was happening now. She tried to come up with a smooth, polished answer, but the only things inside her head were jumbled syllables, like a multitude of jigsaw pieces, none of which seemed to connect to the rest. ‘Um…’ she said and looked away. When she looked back he was still smiling at her, a hint of satisfaction in his gaze.

That was when it hit her like a slap. He was playing with her. He was enjoying seeing her like this. That thought alone sobered her enough to thread a few of those syllables together.

‘I don’t know if you noticed…’ she began, finding it easier with every word that slid from between her lips, suddenly finding an excuse she might be able to use to her advantage, ‘…but I was a little bit tiddly that evening.’

The grin she got in return told her he knew exactly how tiddly she’d been and that he hadn’t minded one bit.

She closed her eyes momentarily, licked her lips.

Focus, Nicole.

She breathed in, turned her internal thermostat down a notch. She had to get a grip on herself. ‘I lost your number…and I didn’t know your name, either. There wasn’t much I could have done.’

There. Smooth. Silky. Giving him back as good as she got. That was the Nicole she knew and loved, not that gibbering idiot who’d look into a man’s eyes and believe every lie he told her.

He nodded. ‘True. But you didn’t seem too bothered about finding out before you pinned me up against that wall and had your wicked way with me.’

Although she tried not to, Nicole felt herself blush right down to her perfectly manicured toenails. She could feel heat radiating from him like a force field, and while one part of her—the sane part—was telling her to back away, excuse herself and get on with what she’d come here to do, she couldn’t deny that a completely separate part was telling her to launch herself onto him again.

And he knew it. Damn him. Payback was a bitch.

‘I tried to find you, you know…?’ he said, keeping his voice deliberately low, so she was tempted to sway closer.

‘You did?’ She’d aimed for cool and unaffected. Husky and mildly perturbed would just have to do.

He nodded. ‘When you didn’t call I talked to friends who were there that night, the bar staff…I even called a lookalike agency. But you didn’t leave me much to go on, just a naughty twinkle in your eyes and a fake name.’ He reached out and touched the end of her plait, which was draped over her shoulder. ‘I didn’t even know if this was your real hair. You could have been wearing a wig.’

Nicole flicked her braid out of his fingers by turning to look at the picture to her left. Peggy would say this was fate intervening, that she shouldn’t waste a second chance like this. Peggy was clearly a lunatic.

Yes, she was attracted to him. Yes, he knew it, the smug so-and-so…But that didn’t mean she had to do anything about it. Guys like this were definitely not part of the plan she had for her life.

There was only one thing she could do—she was going to have to blow him off a second time.

She glanced at the photograph. It was a dark and moody shot of one of the giant monoliths at Stonehenge. ‘Wonderful use of light, don’t you think?’ she said, trying to keep her tone breezy, searching for an ‘out’ so she could float off and talk to someone else. Anyone. As long as it wasn’t him.

He chuckled deep in his throat. ‘I think so, but I’m glad you do too.’

Nicole was too busy trying to spot a likely victim to analyse his reply. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she added and then focused on the picture properly. The shot had been taken slightly from below, making the huge lump of rock seem even more solid and ancient. Storm clouds hung low on the horizon, but a beam of light broke through, lighting up one side of the stone, revealing its pitted and lichen-covered surface in sharp detail. She found once she started looking at it, she couldn’t stop.

She’d said it was beautiful without thinking, and it really was. Almost too beautiful. But she didn’t tell him that. Somehow that felt as if she’d be giving something important away.

‘I waited four hours in the rain for that shot, but it was worth the week-long cold that followed.’

Forgetting she was supposed to be finding an exit ramp for this conversation, Nicole swung round sharply. ‘This is your exhibition?’

A wry smile played on his lips for a moment. ‘And there was me thinking you’d seen a flyer and come because you’d finally found me after all these months of tireless searching.’ The humour in his eyes told her he was still teasing, but had turned it on himself. She’d just about pigeonholed him as a strutting peacock, but his self-mockery shot a hole in that idea. Damn. She liked a little humility in a man. And if it came with a dry and self-deprecating sense of humour it was doubly as potent.

‘I…I…’

So it was back to this. Great.

His eyes sparkled with mischief as he looked down at her, inviting her to join him, to turn the joke back on herself and see the funny side. Unfortunately, Nicole couldn’t stand even the hint that someone might be laughing at her and she stiffened, feeling both superior and hypocritical at the same time.

Wow. This guy really brought out the best in her, didn’t he?

Which was why she was getting out before things deteriorated any further. She should have listened to her gut instinct and done it minutes ago. ‘I’m sure you’re far too busy and important to be standing around gassing to me,’ she said, a little snippily. ‘I should let you go and talk to some of your other guests.’

She moved to walk past him, pretending she was heading round the corner to a section of the exhibition she had yet to visit, but his hand shot out and his fingers lightly circled her wrist. ‘Not so fast, Holly.’

She stopped dead. His touch was light and she knew she could pull away easily if she wanted to, which she did, but for some reason she didn’t move a millimetre.

‘This time I need a name at least.’

Nicole blew out a shaky breath. That wouldn’t be a good idea. As gorgeous as he was, he wasn’t her type, and he probably had ‘drifter’ stamped all the way through him like Brighton rock. Still, she wasn’t rude enough to completely snub him. Her parents had brought her up better than that.

‘Nicole,’ she said, gently easing her wrist from his grasp and circling it with her own fingers. ‘Nicole Harrison.’

He nodded. ‘And what do you do, Nicole Harrison, when you’re not driving men crazy by disappearing into the night air never to be found again?’

Her stomach bottomed out. For the last ten minutes she’d completely forgotten why she was here. She’d forgotten all about Saffron and her fiancé-to-be. She’d forgotten all about Hopes & Dreams and why this job was so darn important. She needed to stop chit-chatting and find Alex Black. The easiest way was to stop sparring with this man and just roll over and answer his questions.

‘I’m a journalist,’ she said quickly, then frowned at herself. She didn’t know why she’d said that. It would have been okay to tell him the truth. But maybe, because she’d been all prepped to come out with a cover story this evening, that was what had left her mouth first.

‘And what are you working on now? Not covering the show, are you?’

She shook her head. ‘No, this is just for fun…’

Torture, more like.

‘Actually, I’m doing a piece on…a piece on…’

He raised his eyebrows again. And the smile was back. The one where she thought he might be laughing at her.

‘On weddings,’ she blurted out. It was all she’d been able to think of. ‘For Beautiful Weddings magazine.’

‘Really?’ he said and waited, clearly expecting her to elaborate.

Nicole’s brain flew in three directions at once, and none of them useful. See? This was why she didn’t like veering from her careful plans. Everything turned out messy and unpredictable.

She had to say something. Something that was easy to understand and wouldn’t require further interrogation. Something to do with weddings. Something that would work for a magazine feature.