She bent down, picked up her discarded clothes and threw them in the wardrobe. A pair of hot-pink heels winked at her from inside and she quickly reached for them and slid them on her feet. Then, without looking back, she strutted down the corridor back to the living room, reminding herself to breathe.
Since Daniel had picked up a framed photo of her on holiday last year, she took the opportunity of reaching for the dimmer switch and taking the lighting down to a more intimate level as she entered the room.
The change in brightness made him look up and round to where she was standing.
He dropped the frame.
It bounced on the floor but didn’t break.
The look on his face right then was all Chloe needed to wipe all those years of insecurity away. Never had she felt so feminine, so beautiful...so wanted.
She could pull this off, she really could. New Chloe had been a project that had worked from the outside in, but she had the feeling that after tonight that version of herself would no longer be a work in progress. One night with Daniel Bradford would banish the Mouse for ever and cement New Chloe into place. The transformation would be complete.
Since Daniel didn’t seem capable of movement at the moment, let alone speech, she walked slowly towards him, crouched to pick up the picture—aware that the angle of her knees and the high heels were doing amazing things for her legs—and handed it back to him and nodded towards the bookcase. He replaced it without taking his eyes off her.
And then, taking advantage of his paralysed state, which only gave her some kind of weird exultant power, she gave him a gentle shove and he sat down suddenly on the sofa. She had one knee on the sofa beside his leg, preparing to slide onto his lap, when he shifted slightly and reached beneath him. He pulled out the book—his book—that she’d thrown there earlier. Knowing they were definitely not going to be doing any reading in the next few hours, Chloe took it from his fingers and tossed it onto the adjacent sofa cushion.
As she did so a slip of coloured paper dislodged itself from the pages and fluttered to land on Daniel’s lap. He picked it up and stared at it. Chloe took the opportunity to place her other knee on the sofa and sank down until soft, rounded bottom met hard thighs. She attempted to pluck the paper from his hands, but he wouldn’t let go.
‘What’s this?’ he asked, obviously having recovered the use of his tongue. Chloe wasn’t very happy about that. For the money she’d paid for this bra and the way it made her boobs look he should have been drooling, his tongue thick in his mouth, for at least another half-hour.
He frowned. ‘Who...? Why have you got this?’
It was then she realised it was a photograph.
‘That’s me,’ he said, sounding slightly dazed, ‘in the middle.’
Chloe’s stomach rocketed down so hard she reckoned it had gone through the hull of her houseboat and was now wedged in the mud at the bottom of the river.
She’d forgotten all about that photo, tucked lovingly in the back of her favourite book, the one she’d never, ever lent to anyone else. A snap someone had taken on the last day of Daniel’s tropical plants course of a bunch of students and their much-admired lecturer.
‘Oh, that,’ she said blithely, trying once again to dislodge it from his fingers without seeming as if she was desperate. ‘That’s from my college days.’
‘You attended my course?’ he asked, still looking at the photo and not the pink lingerie. That was starting to annoy Chloe.
She let out a huff of air. ‘I told you I was a student at Kew,’ she said.
Finally, he made eye contact. He still wasn’t letting go of the photo, though. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
Chloe swallowed. What was she going to tell him? That she was the girl who’d humiliated herself in front of him? No way. ‘When we first met it was obvious you didn’t remember me—why would you?—so I decided not to bring it up. I didn’t want to make you feel awkward.’
Hah! Biggest fib ever. It had been nothing to do with not wanting Daniel to feel awkward.
He frowned and looked back at the photograph. ‘I do remember a few of these people,’ he said slowly, his eyes flitting between one face and the next.
Chloe decided drastic measures were needed. In a few seconds he’d realise she was in that photo. And while he hadn’t put two and two together yet, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t if he stared at it long enough.
She peeled his fingers from the photograph, let it flutter to the floor and placed his hands high on her waist, just on her lower ribs, and then she leaned forward and delivered the kiss of her life.
Thankfully, after a few seconds, she felt him relax, felt his jaw soften as he kissed her back. She let him set the pace, take control, knowing that was what he needed at that moment to keep his mind occupied. Within sixty seconds she wasn’t thinking about anything but his lips and the lazy circles his thumbs were making on her torso, travelling slowly upward. If he didn’t get to that pink silk soon she was going to explode.
Just as he’d pulled her closer, as his thumb had grazed the underside of her breast and Chloe had let out a low moan, his hands slowed down. And then they stopped. She tried to keep on kissing him but eventually his lips stopped too. He pulled away.
Chloe’s heart raced, and not from the recent thumb activity. This time her pulse was struggling to push frozen blood through her veins.
He leaned past her to reach for the photograph at his feet, and Chloe slowly climbed off his lap. He picked it up and looked first at the photo and back at her, then he studied the photo again.
When he spoke his words were measured and cool. ‘Where are you in this photograph?’
Chloe shook her head, lips moving, not able to produce any sound.
Daniel’s brows lowered. ‘Don’t lie to me,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me you’re not in here.’
A tiny noise escaped her mouth. The kind of weak croak any self-respecting frog would be ashamed of.
The urge to curl up and hide was irresistible. She knelt on the other side of the sofa and buried her face in her hands, hiding her exposed flesh as much as possible.
Daniel leapt to his feet. ‘All the time it was you and you never told me! What is this? Some kind of sick joke? You’re...you’re just like the rest of them...just another obsessive woman.’
The tears began to stream down Chloe’s face. She wiped the first wave away and looked at him, still trying to curl into the sofa and disappear. ‘That’s not true! I made it quite clear from the beginning I didn’t want to get involved, but you just kept wearing me down...’
He let out a harsh, dry laugh. The look on his face was pure revulsion. ‘That was all part of the plan, wasn’t it? And I fell for it—hook, line and sinker. That idea to “help” me out with those fake dates...’ He shook his head, as if he was hardly able to believe the thoughts running through his head. ‘God, I was suckered right in, wasn’t I?’
Anger was taking over now, and Chloe let it. It was a much better sensation than cold humiliation. She stood up and folded her arms tightly across her chest. ‘There was no plan! You’re being paranoid.’ She walked right up to him. He backed away.
That hurt.
‘Admit it!’ she yelled. ‘You did all the chasing. You wouldn’t leave me alone. That wasn’t a trick. You wanted me!’
His expression set like stone. ‘I wanted her,’ he said softly, almost too reasonably. ‘The woman I thought you were. Not—’ he gestured towards the photo still in his right hand ‘—this.’
Chloe’s