‘We could start your cooking lesson tonight. Something
informal.’
‘I live miles from here.’
He smiled. ‘I don’t.’
And just like that—
bam!
—she was
sober. Zander Rush was taking her back to his place. To feed her. To teach her
to make food. Something about that seemed so...intimate.
‘You know what?’ she lied. ‘I have some things to do tonight
before work tomorrow. I think maybe I should just head home.’
‘What about food?’
If she was clear-headed enough to lie she was clear-headed
enough to catch the tube. ‘We’re one block from the station.’
His smile grew indulgent. ‘I know. You drove us here.’
‘It’s on the same line as Kew Gardens. I used to catch it home
all the time.’ So she knew it well.
‘At least let me walk you to the station, then.’
She shot to her feet. ‘That would be lovely, thank you.’
He shook his head. ‘Still so courteous.’
She shrugged. ‘Old-school upbringing.’
‘Traditional parents?’
Her laugh was more of a bark. ‘Definitely not. My gran raised
me mostly. To give me some stability. My mother really wasn’t...well
adapted...to parenting.’
He threw her a sideways look. ‘I’m the youngest of six to older
parents so maybe we were raised by a similar generation?’
It took just a few minutes to walk down to the station and
something in her speech or her steady forward movement or her riveting, non-stop
chatter about her childhood must have convinced him she was fine to be left
alone because he didn’t try and stop her again.
He paused by the white entry gate. ‘Well...’
‘You’ll be in touch?’
‘Casey will. My assistant.’
Of course. He had minions.
‘She’ll pull together a schedule for the next few months, to
get us started.’
‘So...I guess I’ll see you at the first one, then.’
‘Remember, we’ll be strangers as far as anyone else is
concerned. I’m just your shadow. I won’t even acknowledge you when I
arrive.’
Weird. But better. If they were doing these things together
she’d just get too comfortable. And that wasn’t a good idea, judging by how
comfortable she’d been for the past few hours. ‘I’ll remember. See you
then.’
She stepped towards the ticket gate, then turned back and
smiled. ‘Thanks for letting me drive the Jag.’
‘Any time.’
Georgia waved again and then disappeared into the station.
Zander turned and jogged across the pedestrian crossing, then ducked down the
commercial lane that led to the back of the garden of his nearby house where
they’d parked the Jag. Except she thought they just got lucky with a street park
convenient to his favourite bar, not parking in front of his house.
He was really out of practice. Who took a woman to a bar, then
drank so that he couldn’t drive her home? Who let a woman ride the tube alone at
night?
A man who was trying really hard not to feel as if he was on a
date, that was who.
He’d first caught himself back at his office when she’d thrust
her hand out so professionally and he’d felt a stab of disappointment. What did
he expect, a kiss on each cheek? Of course she was all business. This
was...business.
And this was just an after-hours work meeting. He’d almost
sabotaged himself by inviting her back to his house to eat, but it had just
tumbled from his lips. The old Zander never would have let so many hours pass
without taking care to make sure they’d both eaten. It had been a long time
since the new Zander came along. This Zander had perfectly defined business
muscle but it had come at the expense of social niceties.
Any muscle would atrophy without use.
And then the coup de grâce.
Any
time
. He could have said ‘you’re welcome’ or ‘think nothing of it’
but he went with ‘any time’. As though there’d be a repeat performance.
He pushed through the gate to his property and started down the
long, winding path between the extensive gardens to the conservatory.
Clearly something of the old him still existed. Something that
responded to Georgia’s easy company and complete failure to engage with him the
way others did. She just didn’t care who he was or that he was the only thing
standing between her and a lawsuit. Or maybe she just didn’t recognise it.
She stared up at him with those big brown eyes and treated him
exactly like everyone else.
No one did that any more. Even Casey—the closest thing he had
to a friend at work—was always super careful never to cross a line, to always
stop just short of the point where familiarity became contempt. Even she was
sensitive to how much of her future rested in his hands.
Because he was so thorough in reminding them all.
Regularly.
His minions.
He smiled. The irony was he didn’t think that way at all. Not
deep down. He believed in the power of teams and much preferred collaborative
working groups to the way he did things now. They’d served him well back in the
day when every programme he’d produced had been the product of a handful of
hard-working people. But there was no getting around the fact that EROS really
did run better with a clear, controlled gulf between himself and the people who
worked for him. And he didn’t mind the gulf; it meant no complications between
friendships and workplace relationships.
And driving Georgia home would have been a complication.
Having her here, in his house, would have been a
complication.
He had a signed contract; the time for courting The Valentine’s
Girl, professionally, was over. He should have just given her a list of
activities that the station was prepared to send her to and been done with it.
Instead of being a sap. Instead of reacting to an event fifteen years old and
letting it colour his better judgement.
Instead of empathising.
Just because he’d been exactly where Georgia was; on the
arse-end of a declined proposal. Only in his case, he got all the way down the
aisle before realising his fiancée wasn’t coming down behind him because she was
on her way to Heathrow with her supportive bridesmaids. What followed was a
horrible half-hour of shouting and recriminations before the priest managed to
clear the church. Lara’s family and friends all went wildly on the defensive—as
you would if it was someone
you
loved that had done
something so shocking. His side of the church rallied around him so stoically,
which only inflamed Lara’s family more because they knew—
knew
—that there were a hundred better ways to not proceed with a
marriage than just not turning up. Less destructive ways. But she’d gone with
the one that would cause her the least pain.
And, chump that he was, he actually preferred that. He wasn’t
in the business of wishing pain on people he loved back then.
The heartbreak was bad enough, slumped in the front row of the
rioting church, but he’d had to endure the public humiliation in front of
everyone he cared about. Their whispers. Their pity. Their side-taking. Worse,
their determined, well-meant support. Every bit as excruciating and public as
Georgia’s turn-down live on air. Just more contained.
Like atomic fusion.
But the after-effects rippled out for a decade and a half.
He jogged up the stairs and headed straight for his study. The
most important room in his house. The work he got done there was the difference
between just-hanging-on in the network and excelling. No one excelled on forty
hours a week. He was putting in eighty, easy.
It was the one thing he could thank Lara for.
Setting him up for the kind of success that gave him a
luxurious study in a big house in Hampstead Heath and had him rubbing shoulders
with some of the most powerful people in the country.
And just like that he was thinking of Georgia again. Her crack
about big houses and unworn clothes and crowded garages. There was a reason he
parked the Jag on the street. Because both the cars in his garage were worth
more. He liked his life. Excessive though it might be at times. He barely drove
the Lotus or the Phantom but he could if he wanted to. And he could look at them
whenever he wanted. But they represented something to him. As did the suits and
the house and the title on his business card.
They represented the fact that no one would ever pity him
again.
And, God help him, no one would ever come to his emotional aid
as they’d had to in that church. Not family. Not friends. He would never allow
himself to be in that kind of vulnerable position twice.
Money made sure of that.
Success made sure of that.
The corporate world might be a brutal mistress but it was
constant. And if you were going to get screwed you’d always see it coming.
He’d never be hijacked again.
* * *
How
pathetic that she needed a good excuse
to go to Kew and
accidentally
see Dan. If she’d
found the courage to face the truth about her reasons for proposing, could she
really not face Dan himself? The man who’d been such an important and steady
part of her life for the past year. Even longer if you counted their friendship
before that.
She did need to speak to him face to face. Six weeks was long
enough to take the sting out of everything for both of them.
And she had seeds to deliver to his colleagues for
identification.
She dropped them to the propagation department and then hit the
pathways across Kew to the behind-the-scenes greenhouses. That was where Dan
spent most of his time—cultivating the carnivores, he called it—as popular with
him as they were with the public.
She knew these paths like the freckles on her body. Long before
she knew Dan.
Huh. Look at that. Life before Dan.
She’d almost forgotten what that felt like.
Determined not to cut corners—even turf deserved not to be
trampled—she followed the path the long way around to the plain glasshouse where
Dan primarily worked. Her pulse began to thump.
As she approached it the doors opened and a woman emerged.
‘Oh, excuse me!’ Georgia exclaimed, her hand to her chest. She
had crazy blonde curls, and the serviceable work-coats that everyone wore here.
But she had a tight pink dress beneath it, bright, manicured nails, three inch
heels and flawless make-up.
Not
like everyone else here.
‘Nearly got you.’ The woman smiled, stepping back to hold the
door.
That was perfect, too. Her eyes dropped briefly to the woman’s
ID tag and, just like that, all Georgia’s carefully constructed excuses about
why she didn’t have better clothes and better hair vanished in a puff of
perfume. This woman was an orchid specialist—she worked with dirt all day. Yet
she could do that and still look like this.
What excuse did she herself have?
‘Can I help you?’ the woman said.
‘I’m looking for Daniel Bradford.’
‘He’s out in the display house tending to a struggling
Nepenthes tentaculata
. Can I give him a message?’ The
slightest hint of curiosity filled her eyes.
It was pure luck that she hadn’t run into someone she knew,
someone much more familiar with the past relationship between she and Daniel.
She wasn’t going to blow the opportunity for anonymity.
‘No, I know the way. I’ll chase him down there. Thank you.’
Georgia stepped back from the entrance.
The woman stepped away from the doors, smiling, and they swung
shut behind her. ‘You’re welcome.’
She turned left, Georgia turned right. But she watched the
woman walk away from her. Heels. They did something very special to a walk, even
on gravel and grass. Pity she didn’t have a single pair above a serviceable
inch.
Maybe that was something she could put on her Year of Georgia
list.
Learn to walk in heels
.
And not because men liked them—though the distracted glances of
two groundsmen passing the woman confirmed that they did—but because heels were
a side of herself that she just never indulged.
Heels and pole dancing. They could go on the side-list she was
quietly developing.
Though both could easily break her neck.
It took nearly ten minutes to cross out into the public area
and work her way around to the carnivorous-plants exhibit. The doors were
perpetually closed to keep the ambient temperature inside right but, unlike the
clunky ones behind the scenes, these opened and closed whisper quiet.
She took a breath. ‘Dan?’
The silence stayed silent, but somehow it changed. Grew loaded.
And Georgia knew she’d been heard.
‘I know you’re here, Dan.’
‘Hey.’ He stepped out from behind a large sign. Confused. Wary.
‘I didn’t know you were coming.’
‘I was dropping down some stock for identification. Thought I’d
come and say hi.’
Oh, so horribly bright and false.
He nodded. ‘Hi.’
Silence. Maybe six weeks weren’t enough. ‘How are you doing?’
she risked.
‘OK. Managing.’
The intense scrutiny. Right. ‘It’s not getting better?’
His lips thinned. ‘Not really.’
She nodded. More silence. ‘So...I’ve come to say I’m sorry.
Again.’
‘Your emails and messages not enough?’
‘I didn’t want... Not without at least seeing you.’ God. How
could it be this hard breaking up with someone when you were already broken
up?
He shrugged. ‘Fodder for the paparazzi.’
She spun around, expecting to see flashes of cameras behind
her. ‘Oh, God, I didn’t even think of that...’
‘That’s starting to sound familiar.’
The unkind words cut but she knew they were more than deserved.
And short of ratting out Kelly to her brother, she couldn’t enlighten him
otherwise. She sighed. ‘Look, Dan, if I could undo it I would. I know you didn’t
ask for any of this.’
‘Done is done.’