Loe raamatut: «The Dating Game»

For Jarrod – my nephew

Heroes don’t come any more gorgeous

CHAPTER ONE

… but not six days! Six miserly, measly, paltry, pitiful—

Uh-oh. Fist against mouth. Hold … hold … hooold … aaand … whew! Under control. She was not going to give in to those hideous sobs again, even if she had to stuff her fist down her throat to throttle them.

Not that it mattered if she bawled herself into a snot-laden seizure, since there was nobody here to witness it. Well, nobody except the bespectacled bronze head on the shelf to her right, and ‘Clarence Donleavy’—his name, according to the plaque affixed to his wooden base—wasn’t going to be tattling.

In fact, Clarence was regarding her with unwavering apathy, which Sarah decided was the perfect look to carry her out of the storeroom and back to civilization. She swivelled the wheeled footstool she was perched on so she could face him, contorted her face into what she hoped was a matching expression, realized a more scientific approach would be to actually look at herself while she did it, and reached into the evening bag on her lap for her compact.

But it was her phone that her fingers closed around and lifted out.

Perhaps she should check the message. To see if she’d misinterpreted. Because she might have, mightn’t she?

She brought up the text, read the words …

And her breath eased out like a slowly deflating balloon. Nope. No misinterpretation possible.

Liam had dumped her. At the six-day mark—a new low, even by her plummeting standards.

‘It’s a curse, you know,’ she explained to Clarence. ‘I can’t get Lane and Erica to believe me, but I’m definitely afflicted by some sort of anti-love hex. And it’s so unfair, when I try. So. Hard!’ She stamped her foot for emphasis, which proved a little too violent an action for the footstool, which would have shot out backwards from under her if she hadn’t caught it with a lightning-fast shoe-plant.

And wouldn’t that ice tonight’s cake, to tumble onto the unforgiving concrete floor and knock herself out? Who knew how long it would take for someone to come looking for her?

Someone.

Anyone.

Or maybe, the way her life was going, no one.

‘Not my big, bold brother Adam, that’s for sure,’ she told Clarence, with a snort of disgust. ‘He’s too busy whipping himself into a jealous rage over Lane flirting with the hot banker guy with dimples. And certainly not Lane, who I’m starting to think is too obtuse to notice anything. I’m telling you, Clarence, never set your friend up with your brother for any reason whatsoever, not even to save them from their own insanity, unless you enjoy watching train wrecks.’

She was in the mood for another foot stamp, but decided not to tempt fate with the surprisingly agile footstool. The thought of gasping her last breath, unconscious among a collection of mounted body parts while everyone else in the building was hobnobbing with flesh and blood humans, was too depressing. Instead, she was going to find a bathroom, fix the sodden mess that was her face, and return to the party in the art gallery.

Where, for all she knew, the man of her dreams might be waiting for a newly single Sarah Quinn to find him. And even if the man of her dreams wasn’t out there waiting for her, at least she’d be on hand to stage an intervention should Adam decide to attack the hot banker guy with dimples in a Gladiator meets Walking Dead frenzy.

But first, she’d send a masterfully crafted text to Liam and close that demoralizing chapter of the book of her life.

Depositing her evening bag on the floor beside her, she ran feather-light fingertips over her phone keypad, ruminating over word arrangements. She wanted to sound philosophical, but not stoic. She wanted to express wistfulness but not dejection. She wanted to insinuate that although dumping a girl by text was lily-livered, she was nevertheless relieved. That she agreed it was time for the two of them to call it quits; that she’d been on the verge of severing their connection herself; that he’d beaten her to it by mere seconds.

‘Clearly what I need most is italics,’ she said, and laughed as she caught Clarence’s eye. He seemed to be telling her to stop boring him and get on with it.

‘Okay, okay!’ she said, and bent her head over her phone to start tapping.

Thank you so much for your thoughtful mess—

‘Well, blow me!’

—age.

Sarah’s fingers stilled. Had Clarence offered up that ‘Well, blow me’ in a hallucinatory moment?

Nope, one glance confirmed he was supremely uninterested in being blown by her or anyone else.

Which had to mean the ‘Well, blow me’ had come from a human. A male human she’d been too preoccupied to hear entering her sanctuary. A male human who was now taking an audible breath in, then out.

‘This is more like it,’ the male human said softly, presumably to the room at large, since he could have no way of knowing he wasn’t alone.

Sarah considered doing the sensible thing and walking out of her hiding place with a cheery ‘Hello there’ until she remembered the tear-stained state of her face. Nobody—as in nobody, let alone a guy who, for all she knew, may turn out to be single and ready for a relationship—would be seeing her until she’d visited the bathroom.

Mystery Man, meanwhile, was on the move, his shoes making a tapping noise on the concrete, which meant they had those steel toe tips on the soles that Sarah equated with quality footwear.

Tap, tap, tap. Coming closer.

Sarah’s heart leapt into her throat. She tried to swallow it back down, but it stayed wedged there like a football with a pulse. She waited, listening for where he was heading, hoping he didn’t have a sculpture fetish that would bring him her way, wondering if she could manage to soundlessly extract her compact from her evening bag and check exactly how bad the face situation was …

Stop.

He’d reached the row next to her. The one with the paintings. Tap, tap, tap, as he entered it.

Reprieve!

Sarah’s heart slowly returned to its usual position as a solution to her problem presented itself: wait him out. No guy was going to stay in a storeroom looking at paintings when he could be drinking champagne at a party. She’d give him five minutes, max, to come to his senses.

Sarah heard him slide a painting out. There was a pause. Then the painting was slid back in. It happened again. Again. And it kept happening. Painting out, pause, in, as the little clicks of his toe taps on the floor marked his progress up the row. Five minutes passed. Ten. Occasionally, the pause was punctuated by a low murmur. ‘Brilliant.’ ‘Those colours!’ ‘Is that … yes, it’s gouache, but it looks so …’ ‘How did he do …?’ ‘Ah, it’s been smeared off.’

Fifteen minutes!

Okay, the guy appeared to be as much of an art tragic as Adam, which meant—face it, Sarah—he wasn’t going to leave until he’d checked out every swirl of paint in the place. After which he’d probably wander her way in search of other treasures.

The plan to wait him out, therefore, had to be abandoned, leaving only one option: sneak out while he’s too engrossed to notice.

Sarah looked down at her smack-you-in-the-head chartreuse cocktail frock with its generous scatter of spangles. Then up at the glaring overhead fluorescent bulbs—not what you’d call mood lighting. She doubted she’d make it past the end of the aisle he was in without sending a shaft of searing luminosity to at least a corner of one of his eyeballs, no matter how stealthily she moved or how distracted he was.

On the other hand, so what if he caught a glimpse of a chartreuse spangle? She wasn’t doing anything wrong! No more wrong than what he was doing himself, sneaking into a space signposted Staff Only. She didn’t have to explain herself. She could sail out the door, face strategically averted, giving him the metaphorical finger if he dared to try and stop her.

Still, it would be preferable if she were not caught; how embarrassing, after she’d let so much time elapse! It wasn’t like she could pretend she hadn’t heard him, or she’d been taking a quick nap, or she’d only just that second been beamed down from an alien spacecraft.

Step one, therefore, bearing in mind how the intruder’s steel toe tips clacked on the floor, was to remove her similarly audible ice-pick heels. She slipped her feet, one at a time, out of her gold stilettos, then paused to listen. All she could hear was the whisper of canvases being shifted, interspersed with those murmurs of appreciation.

So far, so good.

She bent down for her shoes and felt her dress pull threateningly across her hips. Don’t tear, please don’t … ah, good! She straightened, shoes in one hand, phone in the other, and paused again. The oohing and cooing in the next row continued. Excellent. She took three silent steps, only to remember—duh!—her evening bag. She looked back, saw it where she’d placed it, on the floor beside the footstool.

Keeping her eyes trained on the end of the row, she edged backwards and adjusted her stance as she considered how best to get her bag while having both hands occupied. Care-ful-ly. She braced her phone hand on the footstool, only to feel another dangerous pull across her hips. This was not going to work. She moved fractionally and the footstool castors gave a little squeak. Uh-oh. Footstool moving. Footstool rolling. Footstooooool—

‘Oof.’ The sound huffed out of her as she landed facedown on the floor. And then she just lay there. One hand still clutched her shoes. The other was stretched out as if reaching for her phone, which had clattered along the floor and slid to a stop at around the halfway mark.

For one long moment, nothing happened.

Had the guy, by some miracle, been too engrossed to hear anything? Cautiously, Sarah pushed up onto her knees … and that’s when she heard those blasted steel toe tips.

So he’d not only heard her, he was on his way to find her, too. Not hurrying, just heading slowly down his aisle, turning at the end, coming towards hers. Stopping.

And there they were. His shoes. Black leather. Perfectly laced, perfectly polished. Nonchalantly classy. Could a pair of shoes look at ease? Because his did. Just hanging out at the end of the aisle asking ‘What’s up?’ in their silent, shoe-like way.

Her eyes moved up, over dark charcoal pants, immaculately fitted suit jacket, tie in red and purple. Red and purple, red and pur-oh.

She’d seen that tie. She knew that tie. Her eyes kept moving along their upward trajectory anyway, because they couldn’t seem to stop. Chiselled, clean-shaven jaw. Slightly hollowed cheeks with the—gulp—dimples.

Hot banker guy.

The man Lane said was so legendary a bed partner, women were lining up for a taste of any body part he cared to offer for their delectation. The man Lane intended to seduce. The man who was, therefore, Adam’s enemy—and by extension, Sarah’s enemy.

‘It’s Sarah, right? Sarah Quinn?’ he asked, and smiled his I’m-so-charming dimpled smile. ‘Lane’s friend? I’m David Bennett. From the bank. Lane’s colleague. We met out in the gallery.’

As though David Bennett didn’t know that every woman at the party knew exactly who he was! The moment Sarah had been introduced to him, his classical good looks, elegantly lean frame, perfect hair and those dimples had walloped her over the head and she’d despaired. How was Adam supposed to compete with a guy who not only looked like that, but was also intelligent, debonair, charismatic, and had the impudence to be friendly, as well, despite Adam glowering at him like the Prince of Darkness?

‘Yes, I remember you,’ Sarah said, and tried her best to inject some hostility into it for her brother’s sake.

But her attempt must have been unconvincing, because David Bennett dared to smoulder as he started towards her, scooping up her phone without breaking stride. ‘And here you are on your knees, waiting for me. Nice.’

CHAPTER TWO

David was laughing as he homed in on his quarry—but only on the inside. He didn’t want to make her any grumpier with him than she already was by laughing out loud, but God, how he wished he could. After all his artistic babbling since he’d entered the storeroom, aimed at encouraging her to give up, step out and show herself, in the end she’d done it via a face-plant without any help from him.

Ah well, the result would be the same. She just didn’t know it yet.

It had been intensely frustrating knowing he needed Sarah Quinn in the first instant of meeting her out in the gallery, and in the next instant knowing just as surely she wasn’t going to play ball. Just one conscious look from her was enough to tell David she knew he’d been angling to get her friend Lane into bed. Not that every girl would view him as off limits in such circumstances, but coupled with the tempestuous dynamic between Lane and the brother, Adam, David didn’t like his odds.

He’d wondered whether some concentrated flirting would get Sarah onside, but hadn’t had the chance to find out; she’d hauled Lane away posthaste as though he’d give them both a disease if they stayed in his orbit, had remained frustratingly out of reach for the next twenty minutes, and then pulled a Cinderella and disappeared.

As much as you could ‘disappear’, wearing a dress that stuck out like a bolt of bright lightning in a sea of drab.

But David had seen where she was heading and kept his eyes surreptitiously on the path she’d taken as he’d beguiled the bank’s VIP clients for the next half-hour, waiting for her to reappear.

She hadn’t reappeared, however, so when Anthea from the bank’s investor relations department had made her third beeline for him with seduction in her eyes, he’d finally run out of patience and headed in search of his quarry.

And here she was. Small but perfectly formed Sarah Quinn. Like a present, gift-wrapped and delivered on her knees—a position he’d happily take himself if it would get him what he wanted faster.

Not that Sarah was staying on her knees. She was scrambling up—not an easy feat in that dress. And she was looking at him like he was the enemy. He was going to have to change that. Charm, flirtation, seduction. Humour, intellect, intensity. He had no idea what approach was most likely to work, but he was ready to try them individually and severally until he found the right lure.

‘Yes, I recall what you said about getting blown when you came in,’ she said coolly, and her right eyebrow quirked up in that way that had already intrigued him. Like a sideways question mark, complete with a tiny black beauty spot forming a decisive full stop at the end. ‘But there must have been a lot of women out there proposing service on their knees if you can’t distinguish between the ones who were offering and the ones who weren’t.’

‘I’d say a few rather than a lot,’ he said, all self-effacement as he battled a smile he knew she wouldn’t appreciate when she was trying so hard to sound disdainful.

He heard Sarah give a tiny choke, as though a laugh had taken her by surprise.

Good start.

He fixed a hopeful look on his face. ‘But are you quite, quite sure you weren’t among the ones offering?’

‘Quite, quite sure,’ she said, and rolled her bright blue eyes in a way he guessed she thought was condescending—but somehow was not.

‘Then my hopes are dashed,’ he said dramatically. ‘At least tell me who my rival is.’

‘Your …? Huh?’

‘The man you’re waiting for.’ He watched her closely, saw a tiny start. ‘Ah, you’re not waiting for someone, you’re hiding from someone.’

Sarah shifted from one foot to the other, like she was preparing to take off. Oh, no! That was not happening. ‘I’m not hiding,’ she said, and David was intrigued to see a blush work its way across her cheekbones.

David hooded his eyes and held his tongue. It was a tactic he’d found useful in getting people to talk—the stare and wait. And he was going to get her to talk to him if it killed him. He could talk a woman into anything if he set his mind to it. Out of anything, too.

Sure enough, within thirty seconds, she made an indistinct grumbling noise of surrender. ‘All right, yes, I was hiding. But now my cover’s blown, I guess I’ll … you know …’ Another shift from foot to foot as she looked past him towards the exit.

Nope. Not happening. ‘If you tell me who you’re hiding from, I’ll check if the coast is clear before you go back out there.’

‘It’s not a “who”, it’s an “it”,’ she said. ‘I was hiding in a generic sense. From the whole …’ waving the phone towards the door ‘… thing.’

‘You don’t like parties?’ he asked.

Up went the eyebrow. ‘Who doesn’t like parties?’

Again, he wanted to smile; again, he battled it back. The dimples had to be kept up his sleeve. So to speak. Emergency reserves. ‘So it’s this particular party that’s the problem?’

‘No. That is— I mean— It’s not about the party—at least not per se. It’s …’ She leaned in, as though she was about to get confidential and David waited hopefully … but suddenly she seemed to catch herself, and leaned out.

David took the lean-out to mean he was still the enemy. But he knew he had to be making headway if she could lean towards him in the first place without realizing she was doing it. ‘It’s …?’ he prompted.

‘It’s … a situation. I needed a bit of time alone to sort it out in my head.’

‘And have you sorted it out?’

Silence.

Which he took to mean ‘no’.

Sarah looked to the exit again, and then glanced behind her. His eyes followed hers, landing on the glittery little evening bag near the footstool. She tottered over to it on her insanely high heels and started to bend to pick it up—as awkwardly as she’d got to her feet minutes ago. She put out a hand towards the footstool, for support he guessed, but then pulled it back, with an ‘Oops.’

David moved lightning-fast to retrieve the bag in one low, easy swoop and held it out to her. ‘So your situation isn’t sorted.’

‘Yes and no,’ she admitted, taking the bag and slipping its chain strap over her shoulder.

‘Then I’ll help you sort it.’

She snorted. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Try me.’

Another glance at the exit had David shifting so his body blocked both her line of sight and the path to the door. She’d have to do a full-body-brush past him to get out. She wouldn’t want to do that—but he kind of hoped she’d try it.

‘Come on, Sarah, tell me why you’re crying.’

The look of startled dismay on her face was priceless. ‘I’m not,’ she said, and the blush rushed across her cheekbones again as her fingers went to the clasp of her bag.

‘Telling me, or crying?’

Fumbling with the clasp. ‘Either or, smarty-pants.’

‘Smarty-pants?’ He slapped a hand over his heart. ‘Ouch, that hurts.’

And there was the little choke in her throat as she caught another unexpected laugh. It reminded him of how much she’d been laughing out in the gallery as she crisscrossed the room like a hyperactive Miss Congeniality—right up until the moment Lane had introduced them, which was when things had gone south. But still, he’d bet she spent more time laughing than not, which meant it was time to switch tactics. Seduction was off the table; he’d try laughing her into accepting him.

‘But that’s not the best you can do, is it?’ he teased. ‘Smarty-pants?’

‘As a matter of fact, I can do a lot better than “smarty-pants”.’ She was leaning in again, the gaping bag seemingly forgotten. ‘I happen to have a thesaurus for a brain.’

‘So come on, I’m game. Lay some words on me,’ he invited. ‘I can take it.’

Her mouth started to open. He waited, intrigued …

But nope. She leaned back out and gave her head a firm shake. ‘The crying thing. I really don’t cry. Generally, I mean. But in this instance, there are extenuating circumstances.’

‘Which are?’

‘Not interesting.’

‘But they must be interesting if you don’t generally cry and yet you were crying.’ He looked at the phone in her hand. ‘Even more interesting is why you threw the phone.’

Eyebrow up. ‘This is a new Samsung Galaxy! I didn’t throw it.’

‘Does that mean an old Samsung Galaxy would have been fair game?’

‘I don’t know. Yes. Maybe. No!’

‘I see, multiple choice. So … what? Am I supposed to pick one?’

Another tiny choke. ‘If you must know—’

‘Yes, I do believe I must.’

‘—I was trying to sneak out without you knowing I was in here. Throwing a phone across a concrete floor kind of defeats that purpose.’

‘But if it were an old phone and I wasn’t here, you might have thrown it?’ he mused. ‘Interesting.’

‘Not interesting. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid! And I didn’t throw it, because I just don’t care enough to do that. I don’t care, I don’t—’

Another choke, but different this time. Not laughter. Tears. Sudden, gleaming tears. Well, tears didn’t scare him and wouldn’t deter him. He calmly slid a hand into the inside pocket of his jacket, extracted his handkerchief and held it out with exemplary sangfroid.

‘Why are you even carrying a handkerchief?’ she asked, blinking ferociously as she took it. ‘I mean, a real one—not one of those pretty pocket squares.’ She nodded at the red and grey scrap of silk peeking out of his left breast pocket.

‘I always carry a real handkerchief because you never know when you’re going to need a good cry,’ David said, straight-faced. ‘A pocket square is the equivalent of a new Samsung Galaxy in such situations. No snot allowed.’

And there was the choked-off laugh again, the tears gone like magic. ‘From the look of you, I’d say you haven’t got snot on anything since you popped out of the womb.’

‘Well, not often,’ he conceded, and watched her as she took a deep breath, resetting her equilibrium, and—damn!—looking towards the exit again before he could manoeuvre himself back into blocking position. ‘Are you going to tell me what happened, Sarah?’

‘Why do you want to know?’ she countered.

‘It’s what my ex-wife calls my White Knight Syndrome.’

‘That’s not a real condition!’

‘Sure it is. My ex-wife is a psychologist—she knows these things.’

‘What is it exactly?’

‘An inability to see a damsel in distress without wanting to throw her across the saddle of my trusty steed and gallop her out of trouble. Metaphorically speaking, since I don’t have a steed currently at my disposal.’ He gave her a small smile—enough for the dimples to twitch, because time was a-marching and he figured he’d better intensify his assault. ‘What can I say? I’m a nice guy.’

‘What’s that old adage about nice guys finishing last?’

‘Oh we do, we do,’ David agreed fervently.

She slanted a narrow-eyed look at him. ‘You see, I have a feeling you don’t finish last. Ever. I’d go so far as to say you finish first. Always. And people who finish first all the time are generally not very nice. They’re generally cold, ruthless, uncompromising—’

‘Argh, not the thesaurus!’ he interrupted, throwing up surrender hands. ‘Stop, stop, I beg you!’

And yes! There it was. He’d made her laugh without choking it off. And the relaxed sparkle of it confirmed that laughter was indeed her default setting. It was strangely appealing.

‘I can see you’re going to need a character reference,’ he said with an exaggerated sigh. ‘Let me get Margaret on the phone.’

‘Margaret?’

‘My ex-wife.’ He reached into his pants pocket. ‘Do you want to call her or shall I?’

‘Hey, no!’ Sarah cried, and then she sucked in a breath that was half-outrage, half-laugh. ‘Oh, you … you villain! I believed you!’

‘Smarty-pants. Villain. What next, thesaurus girl? Meanie-beanie?’

‘How about knave?’

‘Not bad.’

‘Dastard.’

‘Better.’

‘Rapscallion.’

‘Now you’re talking.’

‘You weren’t really going to call her.’

‘No, but I promise Margaret really does think I’m nice. So come on, cheer me up: take advantage of me.’

She blinked at him. ‘Take what?’

‘Take advantage of me. Of my niceness. Indulge my White Knight Syndrome.’ He gave her his most innocent look. ‘Why, what did you think I meant? Do you want to take advantage of me in some other way?’ He flexed his dimple-power again. ‘I’m game if you have designs on my virtue.’

‘You’re being deliberately disingenuous.’

‘Disingenuous!’ he said admiringly. ‘Can you give me a really hard word, and use it in a sentence? Like, really, really hard?’

Another of those chokes, but she straightened her shoulders and picked up the gauntlet. ‘“Absquatulate”. Sarah Quinn had been trying to “absquatulate” from the storage room for quite some time!’

‘I’m such a sucker for a girl with words. Sorry, but you can consider your fate sealed. You’re not absquatulating from the storage room, Sarah Quinn—not without giving me my White Knight fix. I’m saving you whether you want me to or not.’

‘You’ve ably discharged your White Knight duty by offering me your handkerchief.’ She smiled, proffering his handkerchief on one upturned palm. ‘Which I hereby return to thee with gratitude, Sir David, unused and snot-free.’

Damn! He was losing her. ‘Yeah, you might want to use it before you face the crowd,’ he said, thinking fast.

She started to wave that suggestion away—but he twisted his face into a theatrical wince, and that stopped her.

‘Oh, how could I forget?’ She dropped the phone into her open evening bag and pulled out a compact. ‘It’s why I was trying to sneak out in the first place. Instead, here I am, standing around, talking to you. All I can say is thank God you’re not him.’

‘Er … not who?’

‘Him. The man of my dr— Oh, never mind!’ She started to open the compact. ‘It’s bad enough that even you should see me looking like— Oh. My. God!’ She stared in horror into the little round mirror for one frozen moment. And then she started manically dabbing at her cheeks with his handkerchief. ‘I need to invest in some waterproof mascara.’