it was making her itchy. It was time to break free.
And, thankfully, since Alan had also mentioned that the carnivorous plant display in the Princess of Wales Conservatory was being updated today, she knew just where to find him.
When Chloe entered the Wet Tropics zone of the Princess of Wales Conservatory she almost bumped into a woman in a raincoat standing at the slope that led down to the lily-pad pool.
‘Sorry,’ she said, but the woman didn’t hear her. She was too busy staring at something on the other side of the pond. Chloe followed her gaze and quickly worked out why. Not bothering to wait for a ladder or any other suitable piece of equipment, Daniel had climbed outside the railing of the stepped walkway that led from the pond’s edge over the water to the upper level. His attempts to hook a recently planted basket of trailing pitchers from a chain suspended from the ceiling were drawing quite a crowd.
Chloe folded her arms and enjoyed the view. She knew he relished finding plants in inaccessible places, particularly mountainsides, and he seemed totally at home hanging off the walkway, his feet pressing down onto the edge of the concrete path and the taut muscles of his outstretched left arm gripping onto the railing. His T-shirt stretched tight across his back and when he leaned a little bit further, exposing a band of tanned skin between hem and belt, there was a collective female sigh from the crowd of onlookers.
Chloe almost joined in herself. This was what had attracted her to him in the first place as an impressionable young student. Not just the good looks, but his passion for his area of study, the way he flung himself wholeheartedly into everything.
She frowned. While present-day Daniel obviously still liked a physical challenge, if she compared him to the Daniel she’d crushed over in her student days she realised there were subtle differences too. A decade ago he’d smiled more, laughed more. Present-day Daniel seemed more tense, more self-contained. Less … happy.
The woman next to her made a funny noise. Chloe turned to look at her. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Oh, yes,’ the woman replied emphatically, her eyes still fixed on Daniel. ‘Just getting up my nerve.’
Chloe stared at her for a second and began to walk quickly towards the crowd by the pool. A strange tickling under her skin told her she needed to get to him, and she needed to get to him fast. As she neared the pool he disappointed the sighing onlookers by finishing his task and hopping back over the railing to stand on the walkway. The round of applause he received took him completely by surprise.
She was just trying to fight the tide of the dispersing crowd when the woman she’d bumped into earlier dashed past her and ran up the ramp towards Daniel. He was facing the other direction but he must have heard her approach, because when she was within a few feet of him he turned round.
The woman skidded to a halt, fiddled with the buttons of her raincoat, then ripped the flaps open.
Chloe pushed her way through the onlookers and ran up the ramp behind her. Even from that vantage point she could see there was way too much bare skin under that coat. Daniel just stared at the woman, eyes on stalks. And not in a good way.
Everything stopped. The only thing moving was Chloe and the only noise was the overhead misters, hissing their displeasure. Exactly why she was racing to Daniel’s side she wasn’t sure; she just knew she had to do something.
When she reached the woman, she noted—thank goodness—that it wasn’t as bad as she’d first feared. At least she was wearing a set of sexy black lingerie … and a message, written on what looked like permanent marker on her torso.
I do, Daniel, it read. Do you?
He just stared at the writing, a look of frozen horror on his face.
Chloe stared too, unable to work out just what kind of desperation drove a woman to do something like that, but then her gaze drifted from midriff to face. What she saw there was possibly even more shocking.
Not just desperation but longing.
The same kind of longing she’d seen in the mirror all those years ago when she’d first met Daniel. The agitation she’d felt while she’d been pushing her way through the crowd quickly turned to sympathy.
‘I … I …’ Daniel managed to stutter, and suddenly Chloe knew exactly what she had to do.
She hitched the fallen raincoat from round the woman’s elbows and draped it across her shoulders, then she went to stand beside Daniel. After taking a deep breath, she slid her fingers into his.
He did a good job of hiding his flinch of surprise, and a second later his larger, stronger hand closed firmly around hers.
The woman’s slightly glazed expression melted into one of horror. ‘You’re … you’re the girl in the picture,’ she said, her voice high and wavering, ‘on that website …’
Chloe nodded and moved close to Daniel, pressing herself into his side. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’
The woman nodded and clutched the coat around herself. ‘Oh, God,’ she muttered. ‘I feel so stupid.’
Chloe stepped forward, but it seemed Daniel was reluctant to let go of her hand. He still hadn’t moved and his jaw was set in a hard line. She shot him a work with me look and he unclenched his hand enough to let her wiggle her fingers free.
She put her arm around the woman and led her further along the walkway, high above the Wet Tropics zone and through a glass door into another section, away from the staring crowd.
‘I’m so sorry,’ the woman said. ‘I saw that picture of you two online, but there’d never been anything more. I didn’t realise you two … I thought he was available.’
‘It’s okay,’ Chloe said softly. ‘I understand. He … he has this weird effect on people. On women.’
He certainly had a weird effect on Chloe.
Tears slid from between the woman’s lashes. She nodded and looked at the floor. ‘He just looked like … seemed to be … I don’t know … the kind of man who’d really know how to look after a woman.’ Her head jerked up. ‘Is he?’ she asked, slightly desperately, her fierce gaze demanding Chloe made eye contact.
Chloe didn’t know what to say to that. She hardly knew Daniel, not really. And the truth was she’d been on the receiving end of one of the most humiliating and mortifying moments of her life at his hand. She certainly hadn’t felt very special or looked after at that moment.
But this woman didn’t need to hear that, and there was something in the tone of her question that begged for something positive to cling to from this whole sorry experience.
Chloe spotted a couple of the Kew constabulary slowly making their way towards them. She didn’t know what experiences this woman had had with the opposite sex to get herself in this state, but they couldn’t have been good ones. Maybe she just needed to know that all men weren’t rats, that there were some good ones out there.
She thought about the way Daniel tended his plants, how gentle and patient he could be. Now, if he could bring some of that into his personal life, he really would be a catch. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to give the right answer. She met the woman’s gaze.
‘Yes, he is,’
