The Costarella Conquest. Emma Darcy

and she looked at him in puzzlement. ‘Why to your dismay?’

      The riveting brown eyes bored into hers with heart-stopping intensity. ‘Because I don’t want to want you, Laura. Any more than you want to want me. And with that said, why don’t we both take time to think about it?’

      He rose from the garden bench, apparently preparing to leave her. Laura was so startled by the action, she simply stared up at him.

      ‘Do you have a mobile phone?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Give me your number. I’ll call you at the end of the week if I’m still thinking of you and you can then say yes or no.’

      It was so abrupt, hard, cut and dried, and the turbulent feelings it set off inside her made it difficult to think. Time … yes … time to decide if she couldn’t bear not to know more of him … or time to have his impact recede to something less significant.

      He took a slim mobile phone out of his shirt pocket and she rattled out her number for him to enter it in his private file.

      ‘Thank you,’ he said, pocketing the phone again and flashing an ironic smile at her. ‘I’ve seen enough of the garden. You might like to join Eddie and your mother playing Scrabble. I’ll say goodbye to them and then to your father on my way out.’

      Relief poured through her. No more stress today. Decision-making could wait. She returned his smile as she rose from the bench. ‘I didn’t have you pegged as a garden man.’

      ‘I shall take up smelling roses.’