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.
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