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Andy’s gaze slid over to his long, muscular, tanned arms and she inhaled slowly.
Men like Miles stood at the helm of sailing ships and jumped off mountain peaks with only a pair of skis strapped to their legs. They did not do executive buffet lunches with mini canapés and fizzy pink water, which Elise specialised in.
It was time to call a halt to this embarrassing charade and make a quick getaway.
Stealing a secret smile, Andy was just about to make her excuses and leave when her view was blocked by the long cream designer raincoat of the most notorious gossip in Nigel’s office, who was standing right in front of her.
Leering.
Andy reared back in horror, a fixed smile cemented onto her face. She had walked out of Nigel’s office in tears six weeks ago and this was the first time that she had met any of the people she used to work with.
Worse. There were two of them. The second most feared, time-wasting gossip in the whole office building was glaring at Miles, her mouth hanging open in shock and lust.
‘Hello, Andy,’ the gossip whined, her eyes flicking from Andy to Miles and then back to Andy again. ‘Fancy seeing you here. I heard that you were working nights somewhere.’
‘Oh. Just taking an evening off,’ Andy replied, in a casual voice, refusing to get involved in any kind of conversation with these two. ‘You?’
‘Thought we would catch a movie,’ came the casual reply. Then her lips twisted into a knowing smirk. ‘Amazing who you meet on the way.’
‘Isn’t it? Have a good time at the movie. See you around,’ Andy replied with a quick wave of her hand, then her fingers clamped around her coffee beaker instead of the girl’s neck.
Sniffing at being so obviously dismissed without being introduced to Andy’s mysterious date, the two shuffled over to the only spare table, which thankfully meant that they were facing away from Andy, but from the sly sniggering glances they were giving her it was obvious that their lives were now complete.
Who needed a movie when they had just found out that Andy Davies was out with a hunky bloke in a coffee shop? Just think! Who would have thought she had the nerve, after Nigel had made such a fool of her?
It would be around the office in five minutes. In fact, they were probably texting all of their pals and her colleagues on their mobile phones at that very minute.
‘Friends of yours?’ a male voice asked from across the table.
She opened her eyes and blinked. Not only was Miles still there, but he was smiling at her and had started work picking out the whole hazelnuts from his cookie. She had been so absorbed in her own dilemma that she had forgotten about him.
‘Girls I used to work with in my last job. And no, they certainly are not my friends. Far from it. I despise them.’
Now why had she said that? It wasn’t their fault that she had fallen for all of the lies Nigel had told her so that she would work on his business proposals for nothing, night after night, while all the time he was living with the boss’s daughter and taking the credit for her work. And she was the only one who was not in on the joke. The rest of the office had been laughing behind her back for weeks. Just waiting for Nigel to dump her the second he got his promotion. And he had. Oh, yes. And in public. And in style.
That familiar cold dark blanket of humiliation and bitter disappointment wrapped itself around Andy’s shoulders, and she shivered inside her thin suit jacket.
‘I see. They tell me that girls can be hard to work with. I’m sorry if my being here is going to cause you a problem back in the office.’
‘Problem?’ She whimpered and slumped down. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’ Then she caught his change in breathing, and saw a flash of concern in his eyes. Tossing her head, she ran her fingers through her hair and smiled. ‘Sorry. It’s fine. Let’s try and ignore them. They have nothing to do with my life now.’
He rested both elbows on the table and leaned forwards until his fingers were almost touching hers, and nobody else could hear what he was saying, his back to the room. ‘None of my business but in my mind there are two ways to deal with office gossips. You say so what, and shrug it off. Or …’ He picked up Andy’s hand and started playing with it.
‘What are you doing?’ Andy snapped, trying to pull her hand away, but he was holding it in a vicelike grip. ‘They’re looking this way and taking photos on their cell phones,’ she groaned in a strangled voice, as if things could get any worse.
‘Excellent,’ he replied, in a low calm voice. ‘So let’s try the other option, and give them something to really talk about.’
There was something in his voice that should have warned her that actually things were going to suddenly get a lot worse, but her gaze was locked on his mouth as he licked his lower lip with the tip of his tongue.
Then without warning his entire body moved in one single continuous motion, so that as he lifted slightly from his chair his right hand reached back and cradled the base of her head.
And then he kissed her.
Not just a peck on the cheek. Oh, no. His warm, full, moist lips moved gently across hers in a kiss so tender and so loving that her eyes instantly filled with tears and she had to blink them away as she closed her eyes and tilted her head so that he could kiss her again.
Only this time it was deeper and she felt just the slightest tingle of his tongue, chocolate and coffee on hers before he slid his mouth away, leaving her staggered, wobbly and unable to speak and attempting to breathe again.
Wow.
Andy opened her eyes and he was breathing as hard as she was. She could not resist staring at his full mouth, which was still wet from her kiss, and in another place and another universe she would have liked to know what it would feel like to lift that shirt over his head and find out what kind of man was able to kiss a perfect stranger like that.
She wasn’t sure if she was meant to push him away and hit him for taking advantage, or pull him closer, and jump into his lap.
He did it for her. ‘Andy?’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you think that is enough to keep the gossips happy?’ he asked in a hoarse, breathless whisper.
‘Oh, yes. That would do it,’ Andy answered, and looked over to the girls who seemed to be huddled together over their phones. ‘That will definitely do it.’
She pulled back, scraping her chair along the floor, grabbed her bag and stood up. ‘Back in a moment. Too much caffeine,’ she lied and almost ran to the ladies’ room.
‘I’ll be right here,’ he murmured behind her back. She turned back to look at him, as his fingers started flicking across the screen of his smart phone. The way his fingertips pressed the keys told her a lot more about his finesse and gentle touch than any online profile could.
Miles would be amazing in bed. She sighed as she turned away.
And it was only when she got inside the stall and had locked the door firmly behind her that her brain caught up with her hormones.
Miles had just called her Andy. And now he knew her real name!
She sat down, fully clothed, her elbows resting on her knees, chewing at her raggedy small fingernail, trying to come up with a cunning plan as to how to:
#Thank Miles for his understanding about Elise and pray that he had enough cash for the bill. Then thank him for the nice kiss. No—make that a very nice kiss.
#Sneak out of the coffee shop alone past the two gossips. Or maybe she should stride past with her head high? Nigel the suit was nothing compared to the gorgeousness of the man she had just left at the table.
#Come clean to Saffie. It had to be done. Elise’s online coffee date had kissed her within an hour of walking through the door. Which either made her extremely lucky or a total strumpet. And she did not do strumpet. Never had. Not even when she was at school. The boys from their rival high school did not call her frosty knickers without good reason.
#Try and ignore the fact that Miles was the most attractive man that she had met in a very long time and that she would be reliving every moment of the last hour for a long time to come.
She keyed in the list on her organiser, looked at it, then shut the gizmo down and stuffed it into her bag, ripped off a long strip of toilet tissue and blew her nose loudly.
One thing was for sure. She was not going to get anything done sitting here feeling sorry for herself. Time to get going.
Andy pushed herself to her wobbly legs, turned the door handle and hobbled over to the washbasins in her high-heeled boots to try and repair the damage before facing Miles again.
She took one look at the medium-height, medium-pretty woman with the medium-brown scraggy hair in the mirror and winced.
Why had she stayed long enough to let Miles kiss her?
Miles was a flirt. A professional, Greek-god-handsome, used-to-women-falling-at-his-feet flirt. He had higher qualifications in manly allure and an honorary degree from the university of flirting and female dazzling.
And she was not in a place where she could handle that. Any of it.
He was everything she’d thought he might be from his emails. And more.
She simply wasn’t up to flirting with a man like Miles and the truth was … she didn’t know whether she ever would be. Time to go home.
CHAPTER THREE
MILES watched Andy stroll away from him to the other side of the room.
So what if he was a leg man?
Those cute little ankle boots showed off her shapely legs to perfection, and not even that shapeless grey business suit could hide the fact that Andy had a body that would look amazing in a swimsuit.
What was the Andy short for? Andrea? Maybe he would have a chance to find out.
If she let him.
Miles chortled to himself as he finished his coffee. It wasn’t often that the old Gibson charm let him down, and he had a sneaking suspicion that there might be a back door to this coffee shop and Andy had made a run for it.
And he could hardly blame her. He had felt like doing exactly the same thing after the little announcement she had made earlier.
The whole idea that he had been set up was the one thing guaranteed to flick his switches. When she told him that she was a replacement for her boss, his first reaction was to walk out and not look back.
Which was only natural after what happened with Lori.
But that was before he realised that Andy was the girl who had written the emails that had made all of those trips to the physio almost tolerable over the past week.
Well. Jason had warned him that this #citygirl might not be the date he was expecting—and he had got that right.
She was a whole lot more.
It took guts to come here and apologise in person. Guts and a heart that did not want him to sit here on his own waiting for his date to show up. Maybe that was what he had seen in those emails? That Andy cared about people. People other than herself.
One thing was sure.
He had trusted his gut reaction every day of his sporting life, and right now it was telling him that Andy was telling him the truth. This was no trick—she had not even bothered to look the same as the girl whose blurry photo was attached to the online dating profile.
Of course he could be wrong. Lori had proved that. But there was even more to this girl Andy than he had expected. She was curious about him—and he was just as curious about her. Why on earth did she agree to write emails for her boss? This girl had a story to tell and he wouldn’t mind hearing it.
At the very least she could provide the kind of distraction he would need to get through the sports event a week on Saturday.
He peered around in the direction of the ladies’ room. She had taken off pretty quickly after he had kissed her. Maybe that had been a mistake? She hadn’t stopped him but unless he had read the signals wrong she hadn’t been expecting it, either.
Maybe she was hiding and afraid to come out in case he was actually a sex fiend who lured nice girls into coffee shops. Then kissed them in front of their least favourite workmates.
Jason was going to be furious.
Miles scanned his emails and opened the latest from Jason with a link to an article from a London magazine giving a list of the Brainiest Millionaire Bachelors in London.
And there he was—Jason Gibson of Cory Sports.
His identical twin brother.
The photographer must have come to their London office because Jason was in full city-boy mode. He was wearing his trademark long-sleeved black shirt with the diamond cufflinks in the shape of a surfboard and black formal trousers. Something must have amused Jason because he had broken into a half-smile as he looked into the camera.
Miles shook his head. Even though they were so totally different in so many ways, there was no denying the fact that there had been a time when their own parents could not tell them apart.
Of course that had been before he filled out and Jason stayed boy slender.
When he thought about all of the times they had swopped places and fooled people over the years. Playing tricks on teachers and girls was their favourite—Jason was naturally more academic and a whizz at exams. He could never understand why Miles only wanted to learn about the things that interested him—like sports science and geology and the weather.
Then there had been that one time when Miles had taken the boat out to show off to some girl and it had run out of diesel in the middle of nowhere. And Jason had taken the initiative to sit the exam in his place, and not one of their tutors realised. What made it especially annoying was that Miles had been given top marks, and Jason had only studied climatology for a few months before dropping it for computer science.
But somehow it had worked. Jason was the brains of the family and Miles was the professional sportsman who was on the way to being world champion.
And that was okay. Hell—it was better than okay. The Gibson twins were the stars of the surfing world and Cory Sports went global.
Miles inhaled slowly and rolled his shoulders back as that cold icy feeling of dread welled up from the pit of his stomach.
Correction. That had been okay. Until the accident.
Now he was back in London to pretend to the sporting world that it was business as usual for Cory Sports.
If only that were true.
Oh—he knew what the sports journalists were asking. Jason was at the helm and still one of the brainiest bachelors in London. But what about his brother? What was Miles doing in the business apart from learning to walk again? What future did he have when he stopped being the sporting hero? Good question. Pity that he did not have a smart answer for them. Not yet. But he would. He had to.
Sitting up taller, Miles decided to focus on something he could control and snorted in derision at the fawning press article before sending a suitable reply about how Jason’s smart-boy haircut was bound to wow the ladies—if, big if, he ever found the time to meet any.
Jason was brilliant and had taken Cory Sports to places neither of them had ever expected.
But when it came to girls? Hopeless. No. Make that worse than hopeless.
His brother seemed to attract girls who either saw him as someone who they could get free sportswear from, or as a geek who they could persuade to run the IT in their companies in his spare time, then dumped him when they found out that he did not have any spare time.
Or then there were the worst kind. The professional gold-diggers who were happy to pursue any man who could even vaguely be described as a millionaire. Or, in their case, multimillionaire, although Jason would be the last person to brag about the money.
And Miles knew all about gold diggers.
Lori had been in his life for three years and not once did it cross his mind that she was using him and his status to get where she wanted to be. He was actually deluded enough to believe that she wanted to be with the real Miles Gibson, when in fact, she had a lot more interest in how he could further her career.
But when he had the accident? Well. He had stopped being useful to her any more and she had moved on to the next world-class sportsman who could give her the A-list profile she wanted. Having her own TV show was just part of the perks of that celebrity world.
And so was being invited to the Sports Personality Award show next week.
Which made it even more important that he walk into that sports event, on his own two feet, with a new woman on his arm and a twinkle in his eye.
The twinkle he could manage on his own.
But the woman? He wanted the right woman. Not another lingerie model like Lori.
No—he needed a stand-in date for one night—and just one night—who could hold her own.
A date with spark and energy and her own life and independence who could guard his back when he showed the world that Miles Gibson was not going to let a car accident stop him doing what he wanted.
Moaning to Jason that he did not want to go solo to the sports personality event had been a mistake. The last thing he had expected Jason to do was set him up on an Internet dating site. And he hated it when Jason got it so right. Andy was interesting. Funny. Oblivious to the fact that her real personality was there in every line of the emails that she had sent.
She had been worth coming out on a wet November evening.
All he had to do was turn on the charm and talk her into coming with him to the event. Done deal.
Suddenly there was a bustle of activity and Andy breezed past him, picked up her coat from the back of her chair, slipped it on without saying a word, and slung her bag over one shoulder.
He was just about to say something when she turned towards him, and the words stuck in his throat. Her skin was as white as paper, and from the quivering mouth it was obvious that she was upset about something.
Over him? Damn. Those girls must have got to her. Kissing her just to make an impression had been a big mistake, even if it had been the highlight of his day.
‘It was very nice to have met you, but I need to head back. Urgent business. Thank you very much for the dinner and best of luck with the dating scene.’ Then she gave a quick nod and turned away from him towards the door.
‘Hey. Wait a moment,’ he said, not wanting to draw attention to her, but if she heard him she pretended not to, and in one smooth motion flicked her collar up, flung open the door and strode away into the rain as fast as her legs could carry her. And was gone.
Miles stood up and tried to move after her, but he had been sitting in the one place too long again. His leg instantly cramped up and the pain in his knee switched from being just tolerable to pass-the-painkillers so quickly that he had to sit back down and massage the injured muscle back into life.
Well, this day got better and better.
He had just driven away the only online date he had agreed to meet.
And then he spotted something purple and umbrella shaped propped up next to her chair.
Saffie’s house was in complete darkness when Andy walked up the path and turned the key in the front door. The rain had turned into a driving sleet and as the warm air hit her face and ears she could feel her cheeks tingle from the icy blast.
She had already been halfway down the street before she realised that she had left her purple umbrella back in the coffee shop—probably hidden below Miles’s jacket. So she had waited for the bus that never came. So then she had gritted her teeth and walked for twenty minutes in her smart boots rather than just stand there and wait.
Waiting was for losers. Miles would never have waited—and neither would she.
Because standing on her own at that freezing bus stop with the rain running down her neck and inside her boots Andromeda Elizabeth Davies had come to a major conclusion. After twenty-eight years on this planet she had done enough waiting for other people in life.
She had waited for her parents to stop working just long enough to pay her some attention.
She had waited for someone to explain why they had to move out of her home and her own room with her own things into the hastily rearranged study of her grandparents’ apartment, which she would be sharing with a lifetime of hoarded unwanted clutter.
She had waited for her parents to stop telling her how lucky she was to go to the private boarding school that was soaking up the trust fund her parents had started when they were rich and had money to throw away.
And then she had waited for her school friends to realise that she was just the same girl, only without any money. Saffie and her close pals had been brilliant but the others like Elise had dropped her in a week.
She had been prepared to wait for Nigel to make the first move and start dating her properly. Too busy with the project work, he had said. The presentation to the board for the new promotional plans for the coming year had to be perfect—but then they could relax and spend a weekend away together and tell the other people in the office that they were a couple. Surely she could wait a few more weeks?
She was his guilty little secret.
Sordid. Dirty. Expendable—and something he would simply throw away when he had used her enough. So he could get back to the girl he was living with.
Well, that was then and this was now. And she had waited long enough.
Meeting with #sportybloke Miles that evening had shown her just what she had been missing in her life—and it hurt that she did not feel able to open her heart to relax and enjoy his company as though it were a real date.
Because it had never been a real date, and she had to remember that. No matter how lovely his smile, his touch and the feeling of his lips on hers.
Slipping off her wet coat, she strolled slowly up the staircase, her feet dragging and her wet boots feeling like lead weights on her feet. Each tread of the old wooden staircase creaked as she put her weight on the boards and echoed around the tall empty hallway, but she had become used to each familiar sound in this comfortable family-sized home. Her faithful friends were the chiming of the grandfather clock in the hall and the faint clanking from the central heating as it tried to bring some warmth to so many unoccupied rooms.
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