Valentine's Day. Nicola Marsh

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      His eyes burned into hers. Deciding. He slid his recorder up onto the table. ‘OK. Tell me more.’

      She did. For the next hour and a half. All about Göreme, where she wanted to stay, all about Cappadocia’s extraordinary ancient lunar-scapes and traditional villages and the amazing peoples that had lived there for forty centuries. All about how it had wheedled its way under her skin all those years ago.

      ‘And you can stay in these underground buildings?’

      ‘They carve them out of the side of enormous rock faces. And they’ve been modernised. Electricity, water. They even have Wi-Fi. So you won’t be slumming it.’

      He’d been smiling for the last five or six minutes straight, though she knew she wasn’t saying anything funny. His eyes practically glittered looking at her.

      ‘What?’

      ‘You just...’ He struggled for the right words. And he turned the recorder off. ‘You love life, don’t you?’

      Generally, she just endured life. But maybe that was because she’d been missing the best of it. ‘I love the possibilities. I love that you’ve given me this opportunity and I’m going to do something I’ve always wanted to. I couldn’t do this without you.’

      ‘Without the station,’ he clarified.

      Right. Just in case she was thinking he was doing this for her. ‘Without help.’

      ‘You might have got there by yourself. Eventually.’

      ‘Maybe not. I was this close—’ she pinched her fingers ‘—to consigning myself to the role of wife and mother. That would have meant a lot less flexibility and freedom for a really long time.’

      He shrugged. ‘A different kind of adventure, perhaps?’

      His words sank in. If marriage was an adventure, then shouldn’t you enter into it with someone that you’d want to be adventurous with? Discover new worlds with? Fly across a lunar landscape with. Her breath tightened up. She said the first thing that came into her head in order to stop anything more inappropriate appearing there.

      ‘Is that what you think marriage is? An adventure?’

      ‘I used to.’ He pressed his lips together the moment those few tiny words voiced.

      The unexpected glimpse into his past was tantalising. She wanted more immediately. ‘Is that why you created the Valentine’s promo?’ she fished. ‘To celebrate marriage?’

      His answer was fifty-per-cent snort. ‘Definitely not. I created the promo to cash in on the leap year commercialisation. Nothing more.’

      Well, that was depressingly cynical. ‘You don’t think matrimony is worth celebrating?’

      ‘On the whole I think marriage is highly overrated.’

      She stared at him. ‘I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. Otherwise you’d have been snapped up ages ago.’

      One expressive eyebrow lifted. ‘You don’t think I’d have done the snapping?’

      ‘You strike me as a man who gets what he wants. If you wanted a wife in that big lonely house of yours there’d be one there now.’

      He drained the last of his second coffee. ‘You have a very high opinion of my desirability. Not everyone would agree with you.’

      His staff perhaps? ‘Maybe you work too hard keeping people at a distance...’

      ‘You’re here.’ He tossed it out like a challenge. ‘I can’t seem to shake you at all.’

      His light words filleted her neatly along her ribs. Although, she could see he wasn’t saying them to be cruel. In fact, if anything, he looked more engaged and more intent than ever. And positively mystified.

      ‘I’m particularly uncaring about societal niceties,’ she murmured. ‘I’m sure there’s been a hundred not-so-subtle hints I should have been taking.’

      If she weren’t so busy looking for hints that he might be more interested than he was letting on. Maybe than he even knew, himself. But for every sultry look, for every gentle touch, for every unexpected waterside kiss there was a frown, pressed lips, words like professional and aberration. And ill-equipped.

      They kind of cancelled each other out.

      ‘Besides,’ she braved on, ‘I’m not your target market.’

      His eyes narrowed. ‘Really? Who is?’

      She looked around. A lone woman sat reading a thick book in the far corner. Her perfectly manicured nails were the exact same shade as her shoes. ‘Her. Maybe...’ She looked around for someone else. ‘Maybe her?’

      Two glamour queens in one coffee shop. Convenient.

      Zander looked around far more subtly than she had. ‘They’re both very attractive.’

      Of course that would be the first thing he noticed.

      ‘And stylish,’ he went on.

      ‘And well educated.’ She nodded to the woman with the thick hardback. ‘She’s reading Ayn Rand.’

      ‘And that’s who you think my target market is? Stylish intellectuals?’

      ‘I can see either one of them in your house very easily.’ Much as it galled her to admit it.

      His grey eyes pierced her. ‘Can you see them sitting on the side of a weather-beaten old track for an hour making conversation with the locals while waiting to hand me an energy drink?’

      She just stared. Because, no, she couldn’t.

      ‘So maybe my target market isn’t as clear-cut as you think?’ His chin rested on his steepled fingers and he lifted it enough to tilt his head.

      Maybe not.

      ‘It’s a moot point, anyway,’ she breezed. ‘If you’re not actually in the market.’

      He started to answer that but then changed his mind. His mouth gently closed again without making a sound.

      ‘So three weeks before the underground cities?’ he hedged, after a moment.

      ‘And two dance classes before then.’

      ‘What about my garden?’

      She studied him. This man was more baffling than any of the complex scientific mysteries she’d studied at university. His garden had sat there, untouched, for years. Now suddenly he wanted it to progress immediately? ‘What about it?’

      ‘Don’t you want to see how it’s progressing?’

      Did she want to see what some other lucky sod got to create with? ‘When it’s done.’

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