His Darling Valentine

‘I will.’ He nodded, his expression becoming mocking at her obvious surprise. ‘Tazzy, believe it or not, before the advent of your undoubtedly efficient self into my life, I was quite capable of telephoning a restaurant myself and booking my own table!’

She knew that he still did that if he was taking a woman out to dinner. Something, in view of her own feelings towards him, she had always been grateful for.

But that wasn’t the point she had been about to make; it was the fact that this didn’t sound like a business lunch to her, and the two of them having lunch together under any other circumstances was not a good idea …

‘I’m sure you were,’ she soothed. ‘It’s just that—’

‘I said leave it to me, Tazzy,’ Ross insisted, moving towards the connecting door.

‘Use the intercom the next time you need something,’ Tazzy was stung into advising him sharply as he was closing the door, inwardly wondering when the strangeness of today was going to end!

The door opened again, Ross grimacing across at her. ‘I loathe that damned intercom,’ he muttered. ‘I rue the day I ever let you persuade me into having it installed.’

She was well aware of Ross’s feelings concerning the intercom system between their two offices. But, for her part, it was yet another move to keep their relationship on a businesslike footing; before the intercom had been installed Ross had been altogether too fond of just wandering into her office whenever he felt like it, sitting on the side of her desk to discuss whatever problem was bothering him at the time. And in the process usually managing to upset Tazzy’s equilibrium for at least half an hour after he had left—by which time he had usually wandered back in again! The intercom system had stopped all of that. At least … until today, it had …

‘Nevertheless, it’s there to be used,’ she insisted primly.

‘So was the guillotine!’ Ross pointed out. ‘And we all know what use that was put to! Not all machines are progress, you know, Tazzy.’

This sounded more than slightly ridiculous coming from a man who specialized in clearing any glitch or bug that might attack a computer or its software!

He had also called her by her first name yet again! It was way past time this familiarity was put to an end!

‘I’m afraid I really can’t have lunch with you today,’ she told him determinedly. ‘I have to go and check on the kitten,’ she explained as he gave her a frowning look.

His brow cleared. ‘We’ll both go,’ he offered. ‘We can go on to the restaurant from there.’

Tazzy stared at him. Never once during the eighteen months she’d worked for him had there been a need for him to go to her home. ‘I don’t think—’

‘Oh, come on, Tazzy,’ he encouraged. ‘After all, I might end up taking the kitten off your hands.’

‘I told you, I haven’t decided yet whether or not I’m going to keep it myself!’ she came back defensively.

‘Going to wait and see who gave him to you first, is that it?’ Ross teased, brown eyes definitely laughing at her.

‘Certainly not,’ she denied crossly. ‘Oh, very well, you can come with me at lunch-time,’ she capitulated. ‘You’ll just have to excuse the mess,’ she added ungraciously, knowing there was no mess, that she kept her home as tidy as she kept her office.

But the thought of Ross in her home, the one place she never had to remember him having been, was not a pleasant one. Her little terraced house was her sanctuary. A sanctuary that was about to be invaded!

‘I’ll do that.’ Ross grinned knowingly. ‘While we’re there, you could also change into something a little less … businesslike,’ he added before continuing on his way to his own office.

Tazzy glared at the now closed door between the two rooms. She had no intention of changing into something less businesslike! Businesslike was how she liked to be whenever she was around Ross, and she had no intention of ever changing that.

Whoever the practical joker was who had sent her first the kitten, and then these roses, had a lot to answer for. Because she had no doubts that it was the anonymous gifts she had received today that had prompted Ross into inviting her out to lunch, if only to try and find out from Tazzy exactly how serious the relationship was.

When there was no relationship!

CHAPTER THREE

‘PIERRE will be more than pleased to see us both at about one-thirty,’ Ross told Tazzy with satisfaction as he strolled back into her office a couple of hours later.

Pierre Gaston owned one of the most select restaurants in London, with extortionate prices to go along with that prestige; no doubt he would be pleased to see another two customers in his restaurant at lunch-time!

But, Tazzy noted with a certain inner smugness, it had taken Ross almost two hours to come up with a restaurant that had availability.

Although the fact that it was Pierre’s meant she might just have to rethink her decision not to change out of the grey suit and white blouse she had worn for work today. The women that frequented such a restaurant had a totally different idea of ‘power dressing’ from the one she had: designer suits and diamonds, probably!

‘You were right about everywhere being full,’ Ross admitted with a grimace as he came over to sit on the side of her desk. ‘I tried Pierre’s as a last resort.’

That was one of the endearing qualities about Ross that so made her love him; he hadn’t needed to admit to her that he had found difficulty, after all, but he had done so anyway.

‘Not that you aren’t worth it,’ he hastened to add with a boyish smile. ‘I just had somewhere a little more—well, less formal, let’s say—in mind.’

‘There really is no need to take me out at all,’ she assured him, calmer now than she had been a couple of hours ago. Everything was back under control, even the red roses were out of the way on top of a filing cabinet in a couple of vases she had borrowed from Mrs Brown; she simply hadn’t the heart to throw such beautiful flowers in the bin—whoever they might have come from! ‘I can promise you, I’m not involved in a relationship, and have no intention of letting anyone “steal me away” from your employment,’ she added impatiently.

He shrugged. ‘The roses say differently.’

Admittedly, the roses, five dozen of them in all—Tazzy had counted them as she’d put them in the vases!—must have cost someone a small fortune, especially today of all days, but, as she couldn’t even take a wild guess at who might have sent them, the gesture was totally wasted on her!

She shook her head. ‘Couldn’t you just take my word for it that they don’t? It would save you having to go to the expense of taking me out to lunch.’

‘No, I said I was taking you out, and that’s what I’m going to do,’ Ross insisted. ‘So we had better leave here—’ He broke off as the second knock of the morning sounded on Tazzy’s office door, a rather bemused Mrs Brown once again the perpetrator, another man trailing in her wake.

Tazzy had tensed the moment the knock had sounded on the door, and as she saw the enormous box of chocolates the man carried in his hands—a red heart-shaped box of chocolates, tied up with a red ribbon—she knew she was right to feel that way!

She closed her eyes, hoping—and praying!—that the chocolates hadn’t come from her mystery admirer too, that they weren’t even for her. Although perhaps, in the circumstances, that would be hoping for too much!

Mrs Brown looked even more bemused than she had earlier. ‘This gentleman has instructions to deliver the chocolates personally, too,’ she told them.

‘Miss Darling?’ The man looked at Tazzy enquiringly.

‘Yes,’ she confirmed abruptly, unable to even look at Ross this time as the delivery man crossed the room to place the box of chocolates into her hands—goodness knew what Ross was making of all this! ‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly.

The man grinned. ‘Eleven o’clock the man said, and eleven o’clock it is,’ he said with satisfaction.