He paused, arched an eyebrow at her and grinned. ‘Are you asking me out on a date?’
Despite all her earlier self-assurances, at the hint of amusement in his voice her confidence in his answer and herself suddenly faltered, and Zoe felt her cheeks redden with enough warmth to heat the whole of London. ‘I guess I am.’
‘But we’re engaged. Don’t you think it’s a bit late for that?’
‘Would you mind just answering the question?’ Preferably before she expired of either anticipation or overheating.
‘Well, I’d love to—’ he began before coming to an abrupt stop mid-sentence, frowning and shifting his gaze to a spot behind her and in that second smashing to smithereens all her stupid fragile hopes of normality, all her pathetically deluded ideas of romance and all her faith in statistics and probability as he did so. ‘But—’
‘Forget it,’ she muttered before he could get in with the brush-off she’d naively never expected but with hindsight really should have done.
‘No,’ he said, snapping his attention back to her and whipping out a hand that she just about managed to dodge.
‘I should get going.’
‘Wait.’
‘Dan! At last!’
At the sound of the voice behind her she stopped trying to avoid the efforts Dan was making to get her to stand still and spun round to see a tall broad man striding along the pavement towards them.
And then as a dozen different realisations cascaded into her brain the mortification that was already swilling around inside her surged up to fill every cell of her body and if she’d thought the warmth in her cheeks could have heated London before, now it could have kept the entire country nice and toasty throughout the winter.
Oh God, how could she have got it so badly wrong? Of course Dan wouldn’t be wanting to have a drink with her. Of course he’d been in that pub to meet someone. Other people—especially people like him—had friends, didn’t they? They had plans. And ones that didn’t involve conjuring up fictitious boyfriends and concocting ludicrous relationships.
And wasn’t he someone in the public eye? Someone very possibly famous, who had dozens of smokescreens slash girlfriends? What had she been thinking? Why on earth would a man with his charisma, his confidence and his looks want to go on a date with a basket case like her in any case? God, she was an idiot.
And how on earth could she have been so foolish as to have forgotten that none of those lovely affectionate kisses and squeezes in the pub had been real? That they’d all been for the benefit of their audience and all indirectly at her behest?
Why, oh why, had she ever opened that bloody email in the first place? Why hadn’t she just left it in the trash? Why had she had to try and prove something?
More pressingly, why couldn’t the ground open beneath her feet and provide her with a great big Zoe-shaped hole she could conveniently disappear into?
‘Sorry, sorry,’ said the newcomer, sounding faintly out of breath as he shook Dan’s hand and clapped him in a matey way on the back while Zoe wondered whether either of them would notice if she fell to the pavement and started head-butting it in an attempt to knock some sense back into her brain. ‘My tube broke down and we sat in a bloody tunnel for hours. I reckoned I’d probably missed you. Good to see you’re still here.’ He turned to Zoe, eyeing her up and down, and a slow smile began to spread across his face. ‘Who’s this?’
‘Pete Baker, Zoe Montgomery,’ said Dan, still frowning as he waved a hand between the two of them.
‘Who’s just leaving,’ she said, now wanting nothing more than to turn and run and carry her and her humiliation as far away as possible.
‘Really?’ said the man called Pete. ‘Won’t you stay and join us for a drink?’
And prolong the suffering? God, no. ‘Thanks, but I really must be off. Work to do... You know...’ She turned to Dan and grabbed his hand. ‘Thanks again for everything,’ she said, giving it a vigorous shake before letting it go. ‘Enjoy the rest of your evening.’
And with that she flashed them both what she could only imagine was a truly manic smile, spun on her heel and practically ran for the station.
FIVE
Dan was sitting at his kitchen table with his third espresso of the exceptionally early morning, frustrating himself hugely by staring blankly at the report he’d requested into the pros and cons of acquiring an agency that had recently come up for sale in the States, when his phone rang.
‘So what’s this I hear about my big brother finally biting the bullet and getting engaged?’
At his sister’s conversational opener Dan jerked and nearly choked on his coffee. Other people might have started with a hello, how are you before launching into an interrogation, but not Celia. There was no beating about the bush for her. No second of her busy life wasted. And absolutely no mistaking a spade for anything other than a spade.
‘What?’ he said hoarsely, clearing his throat as he set his cup down and then thumping his chest.
‘En-gaged,’ his sister said again, only this time drawing out each syllable as if he was a little on the slow side. Which he was, hence the rocket-fuel-strength coffee. ‘Last night. You...A girl...A pub, of all places, and a proposal...Does that ring any bells or has too much celebratory champagne annihilated your memory?’
Ring any bells? God. Dan planted his elbows on his desk and rubbed his eyes with the hand that wasn’t clamping the phone to his ear because an entire churchful of the bloody things had been clanging in his head all sodding morning and he was getting thoroughly sick of it.