Valentine's Day. Nicola Marsh

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      * * *

      How pathetic that she needed a good excuse to go to Kew and accidentally see Dan. If she’d found the courage to face the truth about her reasons for proposing, could she really not face Dan himself? The man who’d been such an important and steady part of her life for the past year. Even longer if you counted their friendship before that.

      She did need to speak to him face to face. Six weeks was long enough to take the sting out of everything for both of them.

      And she had seeds to deliver to his colleagues for identification.

      She dropped them to the propagation department and then hit the pathways across Kew to the behind-the-scenes greenhouses. That was where Dan spent most of his time—cultivating the carnivores, he called it—as popular with him as they were with the public.

      She knew these paths like the freckles on her body. Long before she knew Dan.

      Huh. Look at that. Life before Dan. She’d almost forgotten what that felt like.

      Determined not to cut corners—even turf deserved not to be trampled—she followed the path the long way around to the plain glasshouse where Dan primarily worked. Her pulse began to thump.

      As she approached it the doors opened and a woman emerged.

      ‘Oh, excuse me!’ Georgia exclaimed, her hand to her chest. She had crazy blonde curls, and the serviceable work-coats that everyone wore here. But she had a tight pink dress beneath it, bright, manicured nails, three inch heels and flawless make-up.

      Not like everyone else here.

      ‘Nearly got you.’ The woman smiled, stepping back to hold the door.

      That was perfect, too. Her eyes dropped briefly to the woman’s ID tag and, just like that, all Georgia’s carefully constructed excuses about why she didn’t have better clothes and better hair vanished in a puff of perfume. This woman was an orchid specialist—she worked with dirt all day. Yet she could do that and still look like this.

      What excuse did she herself have?

      ‘Can I help you?’ the woman said.

      ‘I’m looking for Daniel Bradford.’

      ‘He’s out in the display house tending to a struggling Nepenthes tentaculata. Can I give him a message?’ The slightest hint of curiosity filled her eyes.

      It was pure luck that she hadn’t run into someone she knew, someone much more familiar with the past relationship between she and Daniel. She wasn’t going to blow the opportunity for anonymity.

      ‘No, I know the way. I’ll chase him down there. Thank you.’ Georgia stepped back from the entrance.

      The woman stepped away from the doors, smiling, and they swung shut behind her. ‘You’re welcome.’

      She turned left, Georgia turned right. But she watched the woman walk away from her. Heels. They did something very special to a walk, even on gravel and grass. Pity she didn’t have a single pair above a serviceable inch.

      Maybe that was something she could put on her Year of Georgia list.

      Learn to walk in heels.

      And not because men liked them—though the distracted glances of two groundsmen passing the woman confirmed that they did—but because heels were a side of herself that she just never indulged.

      Heels and pole dancing. They could go on the side-list she was quietly developing.

      Though both could easily break her neck.

      It took nearly ten minutes to cross out into the public area and work her way around to the carnivorous-plants exhibit. The doors were perpetually closed to keep the ambient temperature inside right but, unlike the clunky ones behind the scenes, these opened and closed whisper quiet.

      She took a breath. ‘Dan?’

      The silence stayed silent, but somehow it changed. Grew loaded. And Georgia knew she’d been heard.

      ‘I know you’re here, Dan.’

      ‘Hey.’ He stepped out from behind a large sign. Confused. Wary. ‘I didn’t know you were coming.’

      ‘I was dropping down some stock for identification. Thought I’d come and say hi.’

      Oh, so horribly bright and false.

      He nodded. ‘Hi.’

      Silence. Maybe six weeks weren’t enough. ‘How are you doing?’ she risked.

      ‘OK. Managing.’

      The intense scrutiny. Right. ‘It’s not getting better?’

      His lips thinned. ‘Not really.’

      She nodded. More silence. ‘So...I’ve come to say I’m sorry. Again.’

      ‘Your emails and messages not enough?’

      ‘I didn’t want... Not without at least seeing you.’ God. How could it be this hard breaking up with someone when you were already broken up?

      He shrugged. ‘Fodder for the paparazzi.’

      She spun around, expecting to see flashes of cameras behind her. ‘Oh, God, I didn’t even think of that...’

      ‘That’s starting to sound familiar.’

      The unkind words cut but she knew they were more than deserved. And short of ratting out Kelly to her brother, she couldn’t enlighten him otherwise. She sighed. ‘Look, Dan, if I could undo it I would. I know you didn’t ask for any of this.’

      ‘Done is done.’

      Well... ‘Not quite, actually.’

      His shaggy head tipped. But his hazel eyes darkened with warning. ‘Georgia...’

      ‘I’m... I signed a contract with the radio station, for the whole...’ She couldn’t even use the word proposal. ‘I have to see it through.’

      ‘I hope you mean “I” and not “we”.’

      ‘Not we. I made it a condition that you weren’t involved at all.’ Something she should have thought about originally, perhaps. ‘It’s not about us, it’s about me. Me getting myself all fixed up.’

      God love him, he frowned. ‘You weren’t broken, George. It was just a really stupid thing to have done.’

      ‘I know. But for me that’s symptomatic of being broken. I don’t do stupid things. I’m supposed to be rock-solid and reliable and never-changing like you.’ It was why she’d allowed herself to think they might make a life together at all.

      His scowl deepened.

      Say what you have to say and get out. ‘So I really just wanted СКАЧАТЬ