I was wasting my time on men like that. So I sat down and made a checklist of what I wanted in a husband.’
‘A checklist?’ he repeated, looking both surprised and amused.
‘Find it funny if you like. Emily certainly does.’
‘Who’s Emily? Your sister?’
‘No. Emily’s my best friend. She’s an English teacher who flatted with me for a while. It was through her that I met Dwayne.’
‘I did wonder how you two met. Frankly, I never thought you were all that well suited. Still, Dwayne must have met your checklist to begin with.’
Harriet sighed. ‘I thought he did, till he moved in with me and eventually showed his true colours. I now appreciate that it’s impossible to know a man’s true character till you live with him. Dwayne certainly met the first three requirements. When I made up my checklist, I decided that I wouldn’t even go out with a man till he ticked those three boxes. That way I hoped to avoid falling in love with any more Mr Wrongs.’
* * *
Alex’s mind boggled over what those three requirements might be. Harriet was right about his finding the idea of a checklist funny. He did. Though he shouldn’t have. Didn’t he have a checklist of his own when it came to the girls he dated? They had to be in their early twenties, pretty and easy-going. He had a feeling, though, that Harriet’s checklist would be a lot more fascinating. And, yes, very funny indeed.
‘Do tell,’ he said, trying to keep a straight face.
‘Promise me you won’t laugh.’
‘I promise,’ he said, but the corners of his mouth were already twitching.
‘Okay, well, the first requirement is he can’t be too tall or too short. Whilst I find tallness attractive, I’ve found that too-tall men are often arrogant, whilst too-short men can suffer from the “short man” syndrome.’
Alex realised that at six-foot-four he probably came into the ‘too tall’ category.
‘Do you think I’m arrogant?’ he asked.
‘A little. But not in a nasty way.’
‘Thank God for that. And requirement number two is?’
‘He can’t be too handsome or too ugly.’
Well, Dwayne had certainly been on the money there. As for himself... Harriet would probably label him in the ‘too handsome’ category.
‘And number three?’
‘He can’t be too rich or too poor.’
‘Right.’ Well, that certainly ruled him out as a prospective date for Harriet. Not that he would ever ask her out. He’d have to be mad to date Harriet.
But, as he looked into her big brown eyes, Alex was struck by the startling realisation that that was exactly what he wanted to do. Take her out, then take her back to bed.
Bad idea, that, he thought and busied himself stuffing his mouth full of bagel whilst trying to work out where such a potentially self-destructive desire had come from. After all, Harriet didn’t fit his own checklist for dating candidates any better than he fitted hers!
Still, it didn’t take Alex all that long privately to admit that he’d secretly wanted to take Harriet to bed since the day he’d interviewed her ten months ago. The attraction had been there from the moment she’d walked into his office, looking deliciously nervous but beautifully turned out in a sleek black suit which had followed the curves of her very feminine figure. Her dark brown hair had been up in a professional and somewhat prissy style, but her lushly glossed mouth had betrayed her true nature. He’d immediately made the decision not to hire her, despite her excellent résumé—till he found out she was safely engaged, at which point he’d fooled himself into thinking he could ignore his hormones.
And he had, up till now.
They would have remained in control, too, if she hadn’t broken up with Dwayne; if she hadn’t cried and he hadn’t hugged her. That had been the catalyst which had started the chemical reaction which saw him now being tempted to do something seriously stupid.
Thank God it was still just a temptation. He didn’t have to act on it. Didn’t have to suffer the humiliation of Harriet rejecting him, not just because he was her boss, but because he was too tall, too handsome and too rich.
His sudden laughter brought a reproving look into her velvety brown eyes.
‘You promised you wouldn’t laugh,’ she chided him.
‘Sorry. Couldn’t help it.’
‘In that case, I won’t tell you the rest of my checklist. You’d probably crack up entirely.’
‘You could be right, there. So I’ll save up the rest of your checklist till a later date. Now, I think we should finish up here and get back to work.’
HARRIET SIGHED AS she sat back down at her desk and turned on her computer. She hadn’t wanted to go back to work; back to reality. She’d been enjoying having coffee with Alex, despite her many faux pas. She hadn’t really minded his laughing at her checklist, which she now appreciated was rather funny. Whilst it did have some merit, such strategies simply didn’t work out in real life, just like those silly matchmaking forms they made you filled in on online dating sites.
Most women ended up marrying men they met through work, Harriet accepted, thinking of her other married girlfriends. Actually, all her girlfriends were married, a thought which was rather depressing. Harriet was well aware that marriage and motherhood wasn’t the only pathway to happiness and fulfilment in life, but it was her chosen pathway. That and a career. Yes, she wanted to have it all, which was possibly where she was going wrong. Having it all suddenly seemed beyond her grasp. This time next year, she’d be hitting thirty. After thirty, finding a husband became more difficult; all the good ones were already snapped up.
Even ordinary men like Dwayne weren’t exactly thick on the ground. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so quick to dump him. Maybe she should have ignored his failings and accepted him for the imperfect specimen he was...
Harriet was pondering this conundrum when Alex strode out of his office and perched his far too perfect body on the corner of her thankfully large desk.
‘A couple of things I forgot to tell you this morning,’ he said as he hitched his right knee up into a more comfortable position, indicating he was staying put for a while. ‘First, I want you to book me a flight to Milan, arriving on the twenty-ninth of July.’
‘Milan?’ she echoed, forgetting that it wasn’t a PA’s job to question her boss, just to obey.
‘Yes. Milan, Italy. One of my best friends from Oxford is getting married on the thirty-first. I’ve been ordered to be there two days before the actual wedding so that I can be attired suitably for my job as best man. The other best man obviously fears I might show up in jeans and a T-shirt.’
Harriet blinked her astonishment
