up. ‘This is a new Samsung Galaxy! I didn’t throw it.’
‘Does that mean an old Samsung Galaxy would have been fair game?’
‘I don’t know. Yes. Maybe. No!’
‘I see, multiple choice. So … what? Am I supposed to pick one?’
Another tiny choke. ‘If you must know—’
‘Yes, I do believe I must.’
‘—I was trying to sneak out without you knowing I was in here. Throwing a phone across a concrete floor kind of defeats that purpose.’
‘But if it were an old phone and I wasn’t here, you might have thrown it?’ he mused. ‘Interesting.’
‘Not interesting. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid! And I didn’t throw it, because I just don’t care enough to do that. I don’t care, I don’t—’
Another choke, but different this time. Not laughter. Tears. Sudden, gleaming tears. Well, tears didn’t scare him and wouldn’t deter him. He calmly slid a hand into the inside pocket of his jacket, extracted his handkerchief and held it out with exemplary sangfroid.
‘Why are you even carrying a handkerchief?’ she asked, blinking ferociously as she took it. ‘I mean, a real one—not one of those pretty pocket squares.’ She nodded at the red and grey scrap of silk peeking out of his left breast pocket.
‘I always carry a real handkerchief because you never know when you’re going to need a good cry,’ David said, straight-faced. ‘A pocket square is the equivalent of a new Samsung Galaxy in such situations. No snot allowed.’
And there was the choked-off laugh again, the tears gone like magic. ‘From the look of you, I’d say you haven’t got snot on anything since you popped out of the womb.’
‘Well, not often,’ he conceded, and watched her as she took a deep breath, resetting her equilibrium, and—damn!—looking towards the exit again before he could manoeuvre himself back into blocking position. ‘Are you going to tell me what happened, Sarah?’
‘Why do you want to know?’ she countered.
‘It’s what my ex-wife calls my White Knight Syndrome.’
‘That’s not a real condition!’
‘Sure it is. My ex-wife is a psychologist—she knows these things.’
‘What is it exactly?’
‘An inability to see a damsel in distress without wanting to throw her across the saddle of my trusty steed and gallop her out of trouble. Metaphorically speaking, since I don’t have a steed currently at my disposal.’ He gave her a small smile—enough for the dimples to twitch, because time was a-marching and he figured he’d better intensify his assault. ‘What can I say? I’m a nice guy.’
‘What’s that old adage about nice guys finishing last?’
‘Oh we do, we do,’ David agreed fervently.
She slanted a narrow-eyed look at him. ‘You see, I have a feeling you don’t finish last. Ever. I’d go so far as to say you finish first. Always. And people who finish first all the time are generally not very nice. They’re generally cold, ruthless, uncompromising—’
‘Argh, not the thesaurus!’ he interrupted, throwing up surrender hands. ‘Stop, stop, I beg you!’
And yes! There it was. He’d made her laugh without choking it off. And the relaxed sparkle of it confirmed that laughter was indeed her default setting. It was strangely appealing.
‘I can see you’re going to need a character reference,’ he said with an exaggerated sigh. ‘Let me get Margaret on the phone.’
‘Margaret?’
‘My ex-wife.’ He reached into his pants pocket. ‘Do you want to call her or shall I?’
‘Hey, no!’ Sarah cried, and then she sucked in a breath that was half-outrage, half-laugh. ‘Oh, you … you villain! I believed you!’
‘Smarty-pants. Villain. What next, thesaurus girl? Meanie-beanie?’
‘How about knave?’
‘Not bad.’
‘Dastard.’
‘Better.’
‘Rapscallion.’
‘Now you’re talking.’
‘You weren’t really going to call her.’
‘No, but I promise Margaret really does think I’m nice. So come on, cheer me up: take advantage of me.’
She blinked at him. ‘Take what?’
‘Take advantage of me. Of my niceness. Indulge my White Knight Syndrome.’ He gave her his most innocent look. ‘Why, what did you think I meant? Do you want to take advantage of me in some other way?’ He flexed his dimple-power again. ‘I’m game if you have designs on my virtue.’
‘You’re being deliberately disingenuous.’
‘Disingenuous!’ he said admiringly. ‘Can you give me a really hard word, and use it in a sentence? Like, really, really hard?’
Another of those chokes, but she straightened her shoulders and picked up the gauntlet. ‘“Absquatulate”. Sarah Quinn had been trying to “absquatulate” from the storage room for quite some time!’
‘I’m such a sucker for a girl with words. Sorry, but you can consider your fate sealed. You’re not absquatulating from the storage room, Sarah Quinn—not without giving me my White Knight fix. I’m saving you whether you want me to or not.’
‘You’ve ably discharged your White Knight duty by offering me your handkerchief.’ She smiled, proffering his handkerchief on one upturned palm. ‘Which I hereby return to thee with gratitude, Sir David, unused and snot-free.’
Damn! He was losing her. ‘Yeah, you might want to use it before you face the crowd,’ he said, thinking fast.
She started to wave that suggestion away—but he twisted his face into a theatrical wince, and that stopped her.
‘Oh, how could I forget?’ She dropped the phone into her open evening bag and pulled out a compact. ‘It’s why I was trying to sneak out in the first place. Instead, here I am, standing around, talking to you. All I can say is thank God you’re not him.’
‘Er … not who?’
‘Him. The man of my dr— Oh, never mind!’ She started to open the compact. ‘It’s bad enough that even you should see me looking like— Oh. My. God!’ She stared in horror into the little round mirror for one frozen moment. And then she started manically dabbing at her
