His eyes held hers for a rather long moment, making Harriet feel decidedly uncomfortable. She hoped her momentary jab of jealousy hadn’t been obvious earlier. If it had, then she might not be lasting long in her job. It was a depressing thought. Her job meant the world to her. It was interesting and challenging and very well paid. Now that she didn’t have Dwayne in her life, she needed her job more than ever.
‘Sorry,’ she said swiftly. ‘I shouldn’t be asking you personal questions like that. It’s none of my business.’
Alex shrugged his powerful shoulders. ‘No sweat. I’m about to ask you a personal question or two.’
‘Oh?’
‘Come now, Harry, you don’t expect me not to be curious over why you broke up with Dwayne. That’s why I brought you down here away from the prying eyes and ears in the office. To worm out all the grisly details. You must know that.’
Harriet sighed. ‘There are no grisly details.’ Just mundane ones.
‘So you didn’t discover he was a secret drunk, or a drug addict?’
‘No!’
‘You didn’t come home and find him in bed with your best friend?’
‘Lord no,’ she said and laughed.
‘Then what on earth did the man do?’
Harriet knew it was going to be difficult to explain without her seeming like some kind of nutcase. But she could see she would have to try. When Alex wanted to know something, he was like a dog with a bone.
‘He just didn’t measure up as husband material.’
‘Ah,’ Alex said, as though understanding perfectly what she was talking about. ‘I rather suspected that his golf playing might have become a problem.’
Harriet just stared at him. ‘I had no problem with Dwayne playing golf,’ she replied, feeling somewhat confused. ‘Though it didn’t go down well when he bought a very expensive set of clubs the same day he suggested I buy my wedding dress on the Internet.’
Alex’s brows lifted. ‘He wanted you to buy a second-hand wedding dress?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted tartly.
‘Ah,’ he said in that knowing way again, Harriet gratified that her boss understood that Dwayne’s penny-pinching suggestion might have been a deal breaker.
‘My father was a mean man with money,’ she found herself elaborating. ‘I vowed when I was just a teenager that I would never marry a scrooge.’
‘I fully agree with you. But didn’t you know Dwayne was tight with money when you first started dating him?’
‘He wasn’t like that then. He used to spend money on me like water. Took me to the best restaurants, the best concerts, the best of everything.’
‘Yes, well, a man like Dwayne would have had to pull out all stops to impress a girl like you. And he succeeded, didn’t he? You fell for him and agreed to marry him. But once he had his ring on your finger, he dropped the ball. Am I right?’
‘Very right,’ Harriet agreed, then frowned. ‘What do you mean by “a girl like me”?’
Alex smiled a crooked smile. ‘It must have been very upsetting to find out that your Prince Charming was nothing but a frog. And a stingy frog at that. What I meant was that you were always a cut above Dwayne, not only in looks but in intelligence and personality. He must have known on first meeting you that he would have to lift his game in every department if he wanted to win the heart of the beautiful Harriet McKenna. But the fool couldn’t keep it up, which is what happens when you play out of your league.’
Harriet flushed wildly at his compliments, not sure whether to believe him or not. Alex could be inclined to flattery on occasions. Not with her, but with clients. Though he had said she looked gorgeous the night they’d all attended that fundraising dinner back in March. She’d been wearing a new red cocktail dress which had looked well on her with her dark hair and eyes.
‘So what was the final straw?’ Alex went on. ‘The wedding dress business? Or something else?’
‘The wedding dress suggestion certainly brought things to a head. But I’d been unhappy for some time. And worried. It was obvious Dwayne wasn’t the man I thought he was. He certainly wasn’t acting like the man I fell in love with. He’d become lazy around the house. And with me.’
‘You mean your sex life had suffered.’
Harriet laughed and blushed slightly. ‘What sex life?’
‘The man was a fool,’ Alex said sharply. ‘What did he honestly expect would happen if he started neglecting you in bed?’
‘I have no idea,’ Harriet said with a sigh, thinking to herself that she couldn’t imagine Alex neglecting any of his girlfriends in bed. That man had testosterone oozing out of every pore of his gorgeous male body. ‘He obviously didn’t expect me to break off our engagement. He couldn’t believe it at first. When I tried to explain the reasons why I’d fallen out of love with him, he went into a rage, accusing me of all sorts of crazy things.’
‘Like what?’
Harriet could see Alex was determined to hear the truth behind the break-up.
‘Like I no longer loved him because I’d fallen in love with you...
‘As if I’d be stupid enough to do something like that,’ she raced on before Alex had a chance to jump to any potentially dangerous conclusions.
THE ARRIVAL OF the brunette with his order of coffee and bagels could not have come at a better time, giving Alex the opportunity to hide his peeved reaction to Harriet’s somewhat scoffing reply to Dwayne’s accusation. A perverse reaction, in a way, considering he didn’t want any woman falling in love with him. But it wasn’t very flattering for Harry to tell him that her falling for him would be stupid!
His throwing the waitress one of his super-charming smiles was more the result of a bruised ego than his desire to capture the girl’s interest. He’d been right when he’d said she wasn’t his type. She’d been way too eager to please. As much as Alex liked to date pretty young things—and the brunette was just that—he preferred independent, spirited girls who didn’t gush or grovel, and who didn’t have a single gold-digging bone in their bodies. Alex had known immediately that the brunette was not of that ilk.
‘Is there anything else you’d like, sir?’ the brunette asked after carefully placing the coffee and bagel on the table, her attention all on him, not having cast a single glance in Harriet’s direction.
‘No, thanks,’ he said and resisted the impulse to give her a tip. Harriet was already looking seriously irritated.
As the waitress departed, Harriet sent him a droll look.
‘Yes, I know,’ he said drily. ‘It does happen to me all the time. But she’s still not my type.’
‘Then perhaps you shouldn’t have flirted with her.’
Alex clenched his teeth hard in his jaw whilst he struggled to control his temper. ‘And perhaps you should tell me why you find me so unlovable,’ he retorted, still smarting over her earlier remark.
She blinked at his sharpness before dropping her eyes, taking a few seconds to pour the sugar into her coffee and looking up at him again. ‘I never said you were unlovable, Alex. I said I would not be stupid enough to fall in love with you. That’s an entirely different concept.’
Alex’s bruised ego was not to be so easily mollified. ‘Would you care to explain that last statement further? Why would it be so stupid