slid her phone out of her pocket, intending to text Ellie and ask her to bring her call forward. But then a girl emerged from the crush at the bar and kissed the man on the cheek.
Feeling impossibly relieved, Stella put the phone back in her pocket.
All that worry and anxiety and it wasn’t even him. But now she had a new worry.
What if he didn’t turn up?
The door opened again and she glanced up expectantly.
Daniel stood in the doorway, flakes of snow clinging to his dark hair and broad shoulders, a dangerous look in his eyes.
‘Dan.’ The barman called out a greeting and Stella frowned slightly because she hadn’t realised that he frequented this pub.
He said something that she didn’t catch and glanced around the noisy pub.
Stella slid down in her seat and tried to be inconspicuous, but she knew it was hopeless. There was no way he could fail to spot her. He was going to want to know what she was doing here and she was going to have to confess that she was meeting a stranger. How sad was that? Not only had she had to resort to the internet to meet a man, but he hadn’t turned up. Her confidence in herself suddenly evaporated.
She was unattractive and she was never going to meet anyone.
‘Stella?’
Accepting the inevitable, she looked up at him.
Flakes of snow clung to his sleek dark hair and his jaw was dark with stubble. With the bulk of his shoulders and those long, strong legs, he looked strong, tough and imposing. A man who was afraid of nothing.
Nothing except commitment, Stella reminded herself wearily, producing what she hoped was a decent imitation of a smile. ‘Hi, Daniel. This is a surprise. I thought you had a date with your lawyer at eight. You’re going to be late. Will she sue you?’
He didn’t laugh. In fact, he seemed a long way from laughing. ‘What are you doing here on your own?’ His ice-blue eyes glittered in the firelight and he pulled out a chair and sat down, nodding his thanks as the landlord discreetly placed a drink in front of him.
Stella fiddled with her scarf. ‘They give you free drinks here?’
‘His daughter fell in a climbing accident last summer. Nasty head injury. Tricky evacuation.’
‘And you rescued her?’
‘I was part of the team.’
Despite his concise, factual answer, Stella knew instinctively that he would have been the one to rescue the girl and manage the head injury. ‘Have you had many callouts lately?’
‘I don’t want to talk about the mountain rescue team.’ Daniel’s eyes were fixed on her face. ‘Tell me why you’re here.’
That was the other thing about Daniel. He came straight to the point.
‘I—I fancied a drink.’
‘On your own?’
‘No, not on my own. I was supposed to be meeting someone but he’s been …’ She licked her lips. ‘He’s been delayed.’
‘Who are you supposed to be meeting? Your new boyfriend?’
Something in his tone made her look at him closely and she saw the tightness of his mouth and the deadly gleam of his eyes under the veil of thick, dark lashes. ‘Why does it matter to you?’
‘Because I don’t think you should meet strange men in pubs.’ His tone abrupt and gritty, Daniel lifted his drink and Stella sensed that he knew.
He knew she was seeing someone she’d met on the internet.
Stella wondered why that felt so humiliating. ‘Who told you?’
‘That doesn’t matter.’ He put his drink down on the table with a thump. ‘What matters is that you’ve arranged to meet a guy you don’t know. Have you no sense of self-preservation?’
Startled by the anger in his voice, Stella looked at him. ‘I’m in a crowded pub,’ she said reasonably. ‘What’s going to happen?’
‘He’ll invite you back to his place and—’ Daniel broke off, his eyes on her neckline.
‘What?’
‘You’re wearing your red dress.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ Exasperated and self-conscious, Stella reached for her coat and pulled it on. ‘I like this red dress. And I’m on a date. Go away and leave me alone, Daniel.’ She’d hoped that the feelings she’d had for him had died, but she was fast discovering that life wasn’t as simple as that.
‘It isn’t the right dress to wear with someone you’ve never met.’
‘I wanted to look nice!’
‘You’re asking for trouble.’
‘Well, it’s hard to get into trouble with someone who hasn’t even turned up.’ Smarting with humiliation and anger, Stella picked up her bag and stood up. ‘Thanks for the feedback, Dan.’ Furiously angry with him, and with herself for caring what he thought, Stella walked quickly out of the pub.
The cold punched her in the face and she told herself that it was the weather that was making her eyes water as she picked her way across the icy car park towards her car. The temperature had dropped and a bitter wind breathed freezing air over her as she snuggled deeper inside her coat. Her windscreen was opaque with ice and she pulled a scraper out of her bag and attacked the ice, her fingers numb with cold as it showered over her hands. Scraping methodically, she wondered whether every Christmas was destined to be a romantic disaster for her.
Last Christmas she’d been working and the nearest she’d got to romance had been when a ninety-year-old patient had assured her that if he’d been six decades younger he would have married her. The Christmas before that—well, she wasn’t even going to think about that one but this one didn’t promise to be too much better.
The way the festive season was unfolding it looked as though she was going to need to stock up on comfort food.
As she pulled her car keys from her pocket and turned to unlock the car, her feet slid from under her and she would have fallen if strong hands hadn’t caught her.
‘Careful. It’s icy.’ Daniel’s rough, masculine voice was next to her ear and she wrenched herself away from him.
‘Let me go, Dan.’ Terrified that she wasn’t going to be able to hold it together, Stella shrugged him off with as much dignity as she could and opened her car door. ‘I wish I could say it was nice bumping into you, but it wasn’t.’
With a rough curse he turned her to face him, his hard, powerful body pressing her back against the cold metal of the car. ‘Why are you meeting men on the internet?’
‘Because I don’t meet any decent ones in real life!’ Her eyes clashed with his
