‘Quentin helped me pick it out.’
Traitor, he thought. Quentin was supposed to be his friend. ‘You look good.’ No harm in telling the truth—though he put both hands firmly on the wheel. ‘Have to say, I pity those sales assistants.’
‘Quentin was very polite—and he knows all the best shops,’ Bronte protested.
And she’s loyal to a fault, he thought. ‘I bet he does,’ he murmured.
‘Quentin was only trying to help, so don’t go after him,’ Bronte begged him.
‘Am I such a monster?’ He glanced her way. ‘I’m just saying dungarees would have been a better choice for where I’m taking you.’
‘I can hardly wait,’ she said dryly.
Dipping his head, he scanned the traffic for the quickest way through, making Bronte exclaim a second time when he dropped a gear to overtake some slow-moving vehicles. ‘I didn’t mean to shake you up.’
‘But you have,’ she said, giving him the quake with fear routine. ‘You’re such a scary baddie in your powerful machine, and I’m such a little country innocent all alone in the big city.’
He couldn’t have put it better himself. ‘So, where are you taking me, Heath?’ she probed.
‘Like I told you, somewhere fun—somewhere they won’t hear you scream when I really give you something to be scared about.’
‘Sounds … interesting,’ she said, pulling an uncertain face.
‘It will be,’ he promised.
She shrieked his eardrums out on the big dipper, buried her face in his jacket and clung to him with claws of iron on the Plunge of Doom. She couldn’t have done that with anyone else, she assured him, after she’d made him queue for the ride a second time.
‘I can’t believe you don’t know any other adrenalin junkies,’ he said, wrapping her in his jacket when she shivered from a combination of freezing wind and her unbounded lust to ride the big wheel.
‘I don’t know anyone else who would brave my screams a second time,’ she said, jumping up and down to keep warm.
The friction at such close range was … interesting. ‘I don’t mind you screaming, just so long as you don’t do it in my ear. The big wheel?’
‘Try and keep me off it.
‘This was an inspired choice, Heath,’ Bronte told him as she marched along, head down against the wind, ‘if not exactly what I was expecting as part of my job interview.’
‘Performance under stress? Surely, that’s a normal part of any interview process?’
‘Working for you, I’d say it’s an essential part.’
‘I aim to please.’
‘So screaming might get me brownie points?’
‘Screaming will get you all sorts of places, Bronte.’ He had the satisfaction of seeing her cheeks glow red.
He gave her his jacket on the big wheel, wondering why he hadn’t noticed before how slight she was and how quickly she took cold.
‘Are you enjoying it?’ she said as the wheel started turning.
‘It’s a little slow for me,’ he admitted, ‘though the view is good.’ London was unfolding in front of them like one of his fantasy panoramas; a magic carpet in colours of umber and ash, bustling with moving lights beneath a rapidly darkening indigo sky.
‘Can you see St Paul’s from here?’ she said, craning her neck to look round as their seat reached the highest point.
‘I don’t know.’ He was staring at Bronte when she asked the question.
‘Yes,’ she cried excitedly. ‘Look, Heath—over there.’
Shimmering with light and unwritten stories, the sight of the city would have lifted anyone’s mood and Bronte’s excitement was infectious. ‘I see it.’ He sounded as excited as she was.
‘This is such an amazing view, isn’t it?’
‘It’s not bad,’ he admitted wryly. Bronte’s lips were red, her face was flushed and the tip of her pixie nose had turned crimson with cold.
‘It’s fun, Heath—admit it,’ she threatened, doing what he called her bite smile—the big, touching one where the pearly teeth bit down on the full swell of her bottom lip. And this was certainly something. Fun in his world was exploring new markets for his games—checking balance sheets, checking the bank—but Bronte had jolted him out of that perfectly designed world into a realm full of crazy adventure and emotional overspill.
‘So you see, you can spare the time,’ she told him triumphantly, sitting back against the padded vinyl seat.
‘Barely,’ he murmured as the wheel began its painfully slow descent.
Bronte’s eyes were half shut against the wind, and her face was all screwed up against the biting cold, but even so she was beautiful … and vulnerable, and deserving of someone who would cherish her and focus his whole attention on her—someone who would give Bronte more than he ever could. She shivered again and this time he resisted the temptation to pull her close. Once had been an impulse, twice would make it usual between them, as if they were boyfriend and girlfriend, which they were not.
‘What shall we do now?’ she said as the wheel stopped to let them get off.
He helped her out. ‘What would you like to do?’
‘I’ll leave that to you—within reason,’ she added quickly, shooting him a warning glance. ‘And we haven’t eaten yet,’ she reminded him.
None of this had been planned. It had started out as one thing and ended up as something quite different—the need to talk, the need to get to know each other in the present and find out how they’d changed. The need to do something other than have sex and stalk round each other like two suspicious combatants in the ring. He didn’t want to talk about Hebers Ghyll, or business, or Bronte’s job. He wanted to do all the things they had never done together, things he’d dreamed about doing with Bronte all those years back—on the rare occasion when he had managed to lift his thoughts above his belt. This was a second chance—a voyage of discovery to find out whether his fantasies had legs.
Guys had fantasies?
Even tough guys like him had fantasies. You want to make something of it? he challenged his inner voice.
‘Brrh, it’s cold,’ Bronte said, shrinking deeper into his giant-sized jacket.
‘How about somewhere warm now?’ he suggested.
‘You read my mind.’ She laughed up at him. ‘Are you going to tell me where, or are you going to keep me hanging?’
‘I’m going to take you to see a small corner of my world.’
‘Will I need lifts in my shoes?’
He glanced down at her flats and laughed. ‘I’ll make sure no one treads on you.’
Bronte laughed. And now they were both laughing. And before he knew what he was doing he’d dragged her close.
She hugged him hard. They broke away as if they both knew it was wrong, and could only lead them down the same blind alley. There was a certain amount of awkwardness between them until he said, ‘Can you dance?’
Her face lit up. ‘What do you think, rubber legs? But I thought we were going somewhere to eat first.’
‘We are. Come on,’ he said, urging her towards the car.
‘You’re not taking me somewhere stuffy like that last place, are you?’ she said, looking up at him.
He