With This Fling...

Decisive woman. And yes, it suited him just fine. She gave him her address. They arranged a collection time.

And when he got off the phone, the memory of her voice stayed with him and refused to go away.

‘Keep it simple,’ Charlotte said to herself for the umpteenth time that morning. Sunday morning, to be exact. Sunday morning at Aurora’s, no less, for that was the pickup address she’d given Grey Tyler.

Dr Greyson Tyler was a water weed control specialist. She’d discerned this from the research papers he’d authored and co-authored. Lots of them, and he didn’t bother submitting to the smaller journals either. Quality work, all the way.

Maybe she’d read one of his papers years ago and filed his name and that larger than life persona of his somewhere in the dim recesses of her mind. Maybe that was why, when she’d needed an absent fictional fiancé, she’d picked the name Tyler, only she’d used Gil for a first name instead of Greyson. Greyson being far too formidable a name for any fiancé, fictional or otherwise.

Not that it mattered, for within an hour his box would be gone and so would he, and after that there would be no more fictional fiancés ever and certainly no doing away with them. ‘This I pledge,’ she said fervently.

By the time the doorbell finally rang, a good two hours later than expected, Aurora’s house was spotless and Charlotte had taken to fretting that Dr Greyson Tyler wouldn’t come for his box at all today but would turn up at her workplace tomorrow, thus exposing the entire fictional fiancé debacle to all and sundry, thus sealing her reputation as a complete and utter nutter, and ruining her professional reputation along with it.

She opened the door hastily and found herself staring straight at a broad and muscled chest. She dragged her gaze upwards and finally came to his face. A tough, weathered face, not young and not yet old. Strong black brows framed eyes the colour of bitter coffee, easy on the milk. His hair colour hovered somewhere between that of eyebrows and eyes. He had excellent facial bone structure and an exceptionally fine mouth. A mouth well worth staring at. She had a feeling she’d stared at it before, but where?

Eventually the edge of it tilted up a little and she remembered her manners and stepped back politely and fixed a smile to her own face.

‘I’m looking for Professor Greenstone,’ he said, his voice a perfect match for the rest of him. Rough around the edges but with a fine baritone centre. Gil had also been in possession of such a voice. A voice to make a woman swoon.

‘That would be me,’ she said. ‘Dr Tyler, I presume?’

‘Yes.’ His eyes had narrowed. His mouth twisted wryly. ‘You’re young for an associate professor.’

‘My parents were archaeologists,’ she said. ‘I was raised by my godmother, who was also an archaeologist. I grew up chasing lost cities and ate breakfast, lunch and dinner at tables covered in maps. I was working dig sites by the time I turned six. I had a head start.’

‘Sounds like quite a childhood.’

‘Worked for me,’ she murmured, although it hadn’t exactly provided her with an altogether firm grip on reality. Not when there were so many ancient and different realities to choose from. Where had she seen his face before? A glossy magazine ad for something sumptuously male and decadently expensive? A magazine article? ‘World’s Sexiest Scientists’, perhaps? Oh, hell. New Scientist.

Charlotte sped back in time to a hospital waiting room, and an old waiting room copy of New Scientist magazine with an article on water weeds in it. There’d been a picture of the weeds. A picture of this man. She’d skimmed the article while waiting for the specialist to finish with Aurora.

Gil Tyler—fictional fiancé extraordinaire—hadn’t been a figment of her imagination at all.

The parts of Gil that hadn’t been based on movie superheroes and a long dead father had been based on this man.

‘Your box is here in the hall,’ she said, stepping back and opening wide the huge slab of petrified oak that doubled as a door. ‘I taped it back up for your convenience but you’re welcome to go through it while you’re here if you want to. It’s all there.’

The good doctor stepped into the hall and eyed the box balefully.

‘Okay, let me rephrase,’ she murmured. ‘Everything they sent me is in that box, and I’m really sorry if it’s not all there.’ Charlotte’s dismay hit a new low at the thought of Greyson Tyler losing important possessions on her account. ‘Extremely sorry.’

Greyson Tyler studied her intently. Finally he put his hand to the back pocket of his trousers, stretching fabric tight across places no well-brought-up woman should be looking. Charlotte averted her gaze and watched the unfolding of the paper instead. He held it out to her. ‘I understand you have a fiancé working in PNG and that he and I share a surname.’

Charlotte took the paper from those long strong fingers and reluctantly scanned the email printed on it. The request was a simple one for a photo of the late TJ (Gil) Tyler, botanist, if there was one about. Just as Millie had explained it to her.

‘Thing is, PNG is a small place,’ he continued conversationally. ‘Especially for scientists. I know my colleagues. Your fiancé wasn’t one of them. I checked the records. No sign of him there either.’

‘It’s complicated,’ she said, queen of the understatement. ‘This email, for instance. Unfortunately, one of my work colleagues sent it on my behalf, without my knowledge, but with the very best intentions.’ Charlotte felt herself shrinking beneath that penetrating dark gaze. ‘To be fair, the information I gave her about my fiancé wasn’t quite correct.’

‘Exactly how wrong was it?’ he asked silkily.

‘You mean on a scale of one to ten with one being almost correct and ten being a whopping great lie with a momentum all its own?’

‘If you like.’ He could be droll, this man, when he wasn’t so busy being stern.

‘Ten.’

‘And the lie?’

Charlotte shoved her hands in her pockets and moved past him, back through the door so she could stand on the top step of the portico and look out over Aurora’s immaculately kept grounds. ‘My godmother was dying,’ she said, her voice surprisingly even. ‘She was the closest thing to family I’d ever had and she was worried about leaving me alone in the world. I invented a fiancé. A botanist, working in PNG. His name was Thaddeus Jeremiah Gilbert Tyler.’

‘You named your fiancé Thaddeus?’

‘It was 3 a.m. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight. Yes, I named him Thaddeus.’

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘Aurora lasted another month. Gil became a regular topic of conversation.’

‘Gil?’ he queried.

‘Thaddeus.’ Charlotte closed her eyes, shook her head. Felt her lips curve in memory of some of those late night conversations with Aurora. ‘You were right about the name. No one called him Thaddeus except his mother when she was annoyed with him. I called him Gil.’

‘Go on.’

‘There’s not much more to tell,’ she murmured, coming back to the present with a start and shooting Greyson an apologetic sideways glance. ‘Aurora died. Two days later I did away with Gil, only by that time someone had told my work colleagues about him so the lie continued to grow. Everyone now thinks I’m mourning both Aurora and a fiancé. My colleague Millie went in search of a photo of Gil that I could put up somewhere. To help me grieve, or maybe to help me rejoice in the time I’d spent with him. Something like that.’

‘And then?’

‘Someone in PNG sent me an office.’ Charlotte risked another glance in his direction. Greyson Tyler was staring back at her as if reluctantly, unaccountably fascinated. ‘And here you are. I’m not usually this …’ She stopped, lost for words.

‘Batty?’ he said. ‘Irresponsible?’

‘Like I said, your belongings are in the box in the hallway,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll reimburse you for the cost of your airfare and your time. I’ll make a considerable donation to your research fund. There won’t be any more confusion. I’ll be telling my boss and my colleagues the truth of the matter tomorrow. Your PNG colleagues too, if that’s what it takes. And then there’ll be no more lies.’ No more good reputation or friends either, but the devil would have his due and Charlotte only had herself to blame. ‘You’re not married, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Excellent,’ she said faintly.

He’d heard madder explanations. Not often, but it could be done. Grey vacillated between wanting to comfort the apologetic Charlotte and wanting to strangle her.

‘Excuse me for a moment,’ he muttered, and headed back inside towards the box. The tape gave way easily beneath his hands. Probably his temper showing. Clothes came first and he tossed them aside as befitting their importance. Hard copies of various research papers came next—it looked as if they were all there. He pulled out his laptop and his back-up drives. Reference books, all of them. It was all there.

‘What’s missing?’ Associate Professor Charlotte had joined him, she of the velvet voice and excessive imagination. The horror of losing work was something she appeared to understand.

‘Nothing,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve decided not to strangle you.’

‘You’re a rare and generous man,’ she said.