‘Us?’ she echoed.
Reaching over, Dan fished for his phone, messed about with it for a bit, then turned the screen round and handed it to her. ‘Have a look at this.’
Taking the phone from him, Zoe began to read, her heart sinking with every word. First there was the news about their engagement, which was melodramatic and sensationalised and about as far from the rather unromantic truth as it was possible to be. Following that was a paragraph about her, which managed to make her sound dry, boring and totally insignificant. And then came reams and reams about Dan, about his advertising brilliance, his eligibility and the women he’d been seen with, of which there were many, all high-profile.
‘I see,’ she said when she’d finished it. ‘No wonder you had to deny it.’
‘I didn’t have a choice.’
She handed the phone back to him. ‘Of course you didn’t. I mean, really? Why would anyone think you were ever engaged to me for real? The gorgeous hotshot Casanova and the dull, plain statistician? Hah. I don’t think so.’
‘What? No. That wasn’t what I meant.’ He looked at her closely and then frowned. ‘But God, they really did a number on you, didn’t they?’ he said softly.
She glanced away. ‘Who did?’
‘The bullies.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You know exactly what I mean.’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe they did.’
‘Just maybe?’ he asked.
‘OK, so I have a couple of self-esteem issues. But it’s nothing I can’t deal with.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do.’
‘What I don’t get, though,’ said Dan, flopping back on the pillows and linking his hands behind his head, ‘is why they targeted you?’
Momentarily distracted by the sight of him lying there, his broad shoulders looking even broader with his arms up like that, his entire chest on display for her, Zoe swallowed hard and dragged her eyes away from his muscles and up to his face, the better to concentrate. ‘Why wouldn’t they?’ she murmured.
‘You don’t seem the type to take it.’
‘You’ve only known me for forty-eight hours. I’ve been around for a whole thirty-two years.’
‘Tell me more.’
Zoe frowned. ‘Why? Isn’t this exactly the sort of personal stuff your three-date rule is designed to avoid?’
‘I’d simply like to be able to put Thursday night into perspective, that’s all.’
Maybe she did owe him that much, she supposed, especially since he’d helped her out so magnificently. ‘OK, well, I guess I never really fitted in.’
‘At school?’
‘Anywhere. Right from when I was little I never got what made people gel.’ She sighed softly. ‘At primary school everyone was always huddled in little groups and I could never work out what they were talking about. There they were playing make believe and all I could think was why? What was the point? So I just stood there hanging around on the sidelines, not joining in, not being invited to birthday parties and not going on play dates.’
‘And it bothered you?’
‘A bit, but mainly because I couldn’t work out what to do about it.’
‘What happened when you got to secondary school?’
She winced. ‘Oh, well, things got a lot worse obviously.’