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

She couldn’t have that.

Right from an early age her parents had pushed their rather precocious only child to excel, to be the best at everything she did. So how had she failed at something so basic, something that was supposed to come naturally?

She drew in a breath and sat up. It didn’t matter any more. She’d fixed it. Now being not just a girl, but a woman, was something Chloe Michaels got top marks in, so she really shouldn’t worry.

A wisp of breeze curled itself around her, lifted a strand of hair and pushed it across her face. She brushed it aside. There was no point in dwelling on the past—she had a problem in the present that needed fixing.

Unfortunately, the root was the same: Daniel.

What was she going to do about him, about this stupid article?

Ignore it, she told herself firmly. That’s what you’ve got to do. Ignore the stupid blog. Ignore the way Indiana there makes your skin tighten and your pulse zing. Most of all, ignore that horrible photograph.

A cold feeling spiked through Chloe and she masked it by sitting up and spearing another vegetable, chewing it quickly then swallowing it fast.

Yes, ignore the fact that, despite the trademark blonde curls and the red lips, she hadn’t recognised herself in that photo. Not the version of herself she was today, anyway.

Because, in the grainy greyness of that mobile phone picture, it hadn’t been ‘new and improved’ Chloe staring up at Daniel all wide-eyed and breathy; it had been the Mouse.

CHAPTER FOUR (#u33619845-840c-5dda-a8b5-4a5c124c81ad)

DANIEL CAUGHT A flash of colour out of the corner of his eye as he flicked a paintbrush full of pollen over a plant he was trying to propagate. Instinctively, he swung round to find it again.

Just a brightly coloured plastic bag one of the staff had walked past the door of his nursery with. Not a pink shoe, or an emerald blouse or even a pair of smiling ruby lips.

He stood up and scrubbed a hand over his face.

He was losing it, wasn’t he?

Just a hint of colour, which he now seemed to associate with Chloe, because everyone else here wore variations of brown and green and navy blue, or a scent like her perfume—an easy mistake to make in a greenhouse full of flowers—and he’d react. He’d seek first and think later, making him just like the insects who were lured by the smell and hue of the plant he was tending. They couldn’t help it.

He couldn’t help it.

Another dash of soft pink at the edge of his peripheral vision. He turned immediately, then swore.

This time it was Chloe, popping her head in the door of one of the other rooms and asking one of the horticultural students something. She was wearing a top that clung in all the right places. She smiled at the two young men, was charming and poised. Just as she was with him. No difference.

No difference at all.

It was driving him mad.

He’d tried everything, every trick up his sleeve—every look, every line—and she was still completely unaffected.

He bowed his head and turned his attention back to the bulbous Nepenthes hamata he was working on. Most people thought of plants as pretty things, but this specimen was dark and fierce-looking. He thought it was beautiful, but with vicious-looking black teeth round the opening of the pitcher it resembled something out of a science-fiction movie more than a bloom fit for a bridal bouquet.

He was trying to cross it with another species that was a deep purply-black. If he succeeded, he’d have a plant that would give even Sigourney Weaver nightmares.

He glanced up again, but realised he was subconsciously searching for soft pink, and made himself focus on the plant instead.

Not her. This plant wouldn’t scare her. In fact, nothing seemed to rattle her, and he both admired and resented that ability. Chloe Michaels was like her own unique subspecies of womankind. Bred to resist him.

And, with all the lurid rumours flying round about them, her apathy just rubbed salt into the wound. Maybe it was just stubbornness on his part, an unwillingness to admit defeat?

A fly buzzed round the Nepenthes, alighting on the slippery edge of the plant’s mouth and climbing inside. Daniel knew that was the last he’d see of it. The waxy interior would prevent any escape.

He studied the plant once again. So beautiful, but so deadly, luring most unwitting insects in with the promise of sweetness but the reality of slow drowning and digestion.

He heard heels on the concrete floor, sensed a patch of pink walk past his nursery door, but, despite the urge to turn, he kept his eyes trained on the shiny black teeth at the gaping mouth of the pitcher.

Maybe he would do well to learn a lesson from that fly.

Emma slid into the empty chair next to Chloe in the Orangery restaurant. It was a bright May afternoon, temperatures approaching those of high summer.

‘So …’ Emma said, leaning in close and lowering her voice. ‘How are things going between you and the gorgeous Daniel?’

Chloe stopped chewing. If she had to say the equivalent of no comment just one more time she thought she’d scream. Even if it had been her clever idea.

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ she said, after swallowing her mouthful.

Emma just grinned at her. When the rumours about her and Daniel had first surfaced Emma had given her a wide berth, but now she’d decided to buddy up with Chloe and live vicariously through her colleague’s fictitious love life.

‘I know that’s the official line,’ Emma said, her eyes gleaming over the top of her soup bowl, ‘but everybody knows there’s more to it than that. Come on … just one juicy detail … please?’

Chloe’s eyebrows raised. ‘Everybody? Still?’

‘Pretty much,’ Emma said as she slurped butternut squash soup off her spoon.

Chloe stared at her sandwich in dismay. She’d hardly seen Daniel in the last few weeks, let alone spoken to him. This ‘deny everything’ tactic had given her the perfect excuse to keep her distance.

‘I don’t know how you’re managing to be so discreet,’ Emma added between mouthfuls, so enthusiastic she dribbled a big glob of orange soup down her front. ‘If I owned a man like that, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off him—at home or at work.’

Chloe closed her eyes. It didn’t matter what they did, did it? They were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. Keeping their distance, only nodding at each other in hallways when they passed, was just as much a confirmation of a steamy relationship as if they’d stripped naked and done it in the middle of the Palm House.

But it had worked. Media attention on Daniel and his ex had lulled. Thanks to that blog article, Daniel wasn’t The One Who Got Away any more; he was The One Who’d Been Snared. Nowhere near as appealing. The women of London were moving on to pastures new.

‘How’s the pole dancing going?’ she asked Emma, and thankfully her friend took the bait.

‘The course finished and I’ve switched to belly dancing. You should try it!’

And as Emma gushed on about her new hobby an idea solidified in Chloe’s head.

She would go and talk to Daniel, suggest they end this no comment nonsense. She felt as if invisible ropes, projected by other people’s minds, were tying the pair of them together, each day becoming tighter and tighter, and it was making her itchy. It was time to break free.

And, thankfully, since Alan had also mentioned that the carnivorous plant display in the Princess of Wales Conservatory was being updated today, she knew just where to find him.

When Chloe entered the Wet Tropics zone of the Princess of Wales Conservatory she almost bumped into a woman in a raincoat standing at the slope that led down to the lily-pad pool.

‘Sorry,’ she said, but the woman didn’t hear her. She was too busy staring at something on the other side of the pond. Chloe followed her gaze and quickly worked out why. Not bothering to wait for a ladder or any other suitable piece of equipment, Daniel had climbed outside the railing of the stepped walkway that led from the pond’s edge over the water to the upper level. His attempts to hook a recently planted basket of trailing pitchers from a chain suspended from the ceiling were drawing quite a crowd.