His Darling Valentine. Carole Mortimer

them in all—Tazzy had counted them as she’d put them in the vases!—must have cost someone a small fortune, especially today of all days, but, as she couldn’t even take a wild guess at who might have sent them, the gesture was totally wasted on her!

      She shook her head. ‘Couldn’t you just take my word for it that they don’t? It would save you having to go to the expense of taking me out to lunch.’

      ‘No, I said I was taking you out, and that’s what I’m going to do,’ Ross insisted. ‘So we had better leave here—’ He broke off as the second knock of the morning sounded on Tazzy’s office door, a rather bemused Mrs Brown once again the perpetrator, another man trailing in her wake.

      Tazzy had tensed the moment the knock had sounded on the door, and as she saw the enormous box of chocolates the man carried in his hands—a red heart-shaped box of chocolates, tied up with a red ribbon—she knew she was right to feel that way!

      She closed her eyes, hoping—and praying!—that the chocolates hadn’t come from her mystery admirer too, that they weren’t even for her. Although perhaps, in the circumstances, that would be hoping for too much!

      Mrs Brown looked even more bemused than she had earlier. ‘This gentleman has instructions to deliver the chocolates personally, too,’ she told them.

      ‘Miss Darling?’ The man looked at Tazzy enquiringly.

      ‘Yes,’ she confirmed abruptly, unable to even look at Ross this time as the delivery man crossed the room to place the box of chocolates into her hands—goodness knew what Ross was making of all this! ‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly.

      The man grinned. ‘Eleven o’clock the man said, and eleven o’clock it is,’ he said with satisfaction.