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

And for Andy, my own Indiana Jones

with secateurs. x

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

DANIEL ALWAYS GRUMBLED that his mobile phone rang at the most inconvenient of moments, and it didn’t disappoint him now. Just as he was lifting a delicate Venus flytrap out of its pot, his hands full of roots and compost, his trouser pocket buzzed. Since he refused to assign fancy ring-tones to everyone in his contact list the double ring of an old-fashioned phone told him precisely nothing about the caller’s identity.

Once upon a time, he’d have ignored it—his hands being full of an uprooted Dionaea muscipula and all—but these days he could never quite push the thought from his mind that it might be his younger sister, telling him she was ill again. Or worse, a stranger telling him she’d collapsed and was in Accident and Emergency, and casually requesting he pick her kids up from pre-school.

Reluctantly, he shook the earth off his right hand, cupped the clump of roots and foliage in his left and fumbled in the thigh pocket of his cargo trousers for his phone. He balanced the handset on his shoulder and squeezed his cheek onto it to keep it in place as he attempted to brush more of the compost that caked his fingers off on the back of his trousers.

‘Yup.’

The phone started to slide and he quickly grabbed for it with his still-dirty hand.

‘Daniel Bradford?’ a deep yet annoyingly upbeat male voice asked.

‘Yup,’ he repeated, more focused on trying to replace the prize specimen in its pot with the use of only one hand. It wasn’t going well. He wasn’t planning on dividing this one for propagation yet but it was threatening to do just that.

‘Well, Daniel, this is Doug Harley and you’re live on Radio EROS, London’s most romantic radio station!’

Daniel stood up straight, then twisted round, scanning the tropical nursery at London’s famous Kew Gardens, expecting to see a group of snickering underlings hiding behind a palm in an adjacent room of the sprawling greenhouse. This had to be a prank, right? And, if there was one advantage of working in a place where ninety per cent of the buildings were made of glass, it was that there was nowhere to hide. He’d find them and make their lives hell for this.

But all he could see was a lone horticultural student, wheeling a trolley of seedlings past the door, plugged into his music and oblivious to the world. The rest of the multi-roomed greenhouse was unusually quiet.

‘Daniel?’ the silky smooth voice crooned in his ear.

He pulled the phone away from his head and stared at the display, seriously considering just hanging up. He didn’t have time for this.

‘What do you want?’ he barked at the man as he put the phone back up to his ear. ‘I’m busy.’

There was an equally smooth—and equally irritating—chuckle on the other end of the line. ‘Not too busy for this, Daniel. I promise you.’

He clenched his jaw. The over-familiar manner in which the DJ kept inserting his name into every sentence was getting on his nerves.

‘Convince me,’ he said.

The chuckle again. As if the man was the insider to some joke that Daniel didn’t know about. His eyes narrowed.

‘I’m sure you know what day it is today, Daniel?’

Confusion wrinkled his brow further. It was Tuesday. So what?

Oh.

He swore inside his head, remembering the collection of red and pink envelopes that had been sitting on his desk when he’d arrived for work this morning. He’d shaken his head, pushed them to one side unopened and had done his best to forget about them. Not just any Tuesday, but one slap-bang in the middle of February.

‘Or what year it is …’ the voice added.

Daniel let out a huff. He’d been right all along. A half-baked radio contest run by some sappy station he’d never heard of. He was pretty sure he didn’t want whatever prize this idiot was offering. Seriously, couldn’t they come up with a better question than what year it was? Even his four-year-old nephew could answer that one. He was just about to tell Mr Silky Smooth that when he was interrupted.

‘Of course, leap years have their perks,’ the man said, and a rumble of perfectly pitched deep laughter followed. ‘We know it’s a couple of weeks until the twenty-ninth, but we’ve got a Valentine’s surprise for you, Daniel. There’s a young lady who’d like to ask you something.’

Daniel looked down at the plant in his hand. Even in its current uprooted state, a fly was attracted to the sweet nectar oozing from the glands in its trap. It darted around, weaving in and out of the leaves, looking for somewhere to land.

‘Dan?’ This voice was soft and feminine. One he recognised instantly.

He froze. His brain told him what was coming, but he refused to believe it.

‘Georgia?’

That hadn’t come out right. He’d sounded grumpy and defensive, not pleasantly surprised, at hearing his girlfriend’s voice. He tried again. ‘What are you doing?’

Nope. That hadn’t been any better.

He heard her swallow in a great gulp of air. ‘Daniel … I know you’ve had a tough time recently, and I’ve been happy to be there for you … but things are looking up now and I really believe we could be good together.’

Daniel’s mouth moved but no words—not even any sounds—came out.

He wanted to close his eyes, as if doing so could block out the sound of her voice, but he was transfixed by the sight of the fly settling on the fleshy pad of one of the plant’s open traps. He shook his head, warning the insect off.

Fly away. Escape while you still can.

‘So, what I’m doing, Daniel …’ She paused, gave a little nervous laugh. ‘What I’m saying is … is that I’d like you to marry me.’

In one swift, smooth motion the flytrap closed over the fly. Not so much a snapping as an elegant but relentless squeezing. Daniel could hear the creature’s frantic buzzing, see it struggling in the trap as the teeth-like cilia closed tighter and tighter over its head.

Don’t. Struggling only makes it worse.

A terrible silence settled around him. All sound disappeared. Even the visitors to the botanical gardens, who could often still be heard from the private nurseries, had hushed. It seemed the whole of London was holding its breath, waiting for his answer.

‘Is this a joke, George?’ he croaked, a horrible pleading tone in his voice.

This wasn’t the Georgia he knew. The nice, uncomplicated, undemanding woman he’d been seeing for almost a year. His Georgia knew he didn’t have the emotional space for a proper relationship right now, let alone a marriage. His Georgia understood that and accepted that. So who was this, borrowing her voice and asking him out-of-the-blue questions—on the radio, for heaven’s sake? Not even person to person, face to face.

Who proposed in public, anyway? It should be done privately and quietly. Preferably to someone other than him.

He squeezed his teeth together to stop himself from demanding an explanation, right here, right now. He was suddenly furious with her for springing this on him, for changing the rules and moving the goalposts of their relationship while he hadn’t been looking. This wasn’t what they were about and she knew that.

At least, he’d thought she’d known that.

Silky Smooth chuckled again. ‘Well, Georgia, you seem to have rendered the poor man speechless! What do you say, Daniel? Are you going to put this gorgeous girl out of her misery or what?’

That doused his billowing temper quick smart.

What was he going to say?

He could imagine Georgia sitting there at the radio station, a fixed smile on her face and fear in her eyes, bravely trying to pretend it was all right, when really her heart was pounding and her eyes filling.