Best of Fiona Harper. Fiona Harper

it?’ Right now Nicholas looked the least stuffy and laced-up I’d ever seen him. He nodded towards the clothing rail. ‘You, me, the red dress and a table for two next Saturday?’

      There was an awkward silence, and he must have read the confusion on my face—I’m really going to have to do something about that—because he gave a resigned smile.

      ‘I’m too late, aren’t I?’

      I bit my lip and picked up the next item of clothing, but I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t quite ready to face what I felt for Adam yet, let alone admit it to anyone else. It didn’t matter, however. I think my traitorous face had said it for me. Nicholas cocked his head, the way an old-fashioned gent would have done when he doffed his hat to a lady, and then retraced his steps to the door.

      ‘Ring me if you ever change your mind…’

      I just smiled weakly at him, clutching what I now realised was Adam’s dinner jacket to my chest. He gave me one last smile and closed the door, leaving me marvelling that, despite the horrendous timing, my minx-like attempt at less was the more Nicholas Chatterton-Jones wanted.

      Pity the minx had left the building.

      You know that elephant that everyone always says is standing in the middle of the room? Well, it hitched a ride home with us on Sunday evening. Adam was all calmness and civility on the outside, but his dimples had ironed out and his driving was even more atrocious than usual. I didn’t say anything. Because of the elephant, of course.

      He stopped at Coreen’s Closet and helped me unload everything into the back room, then he drove me to my flat and helped me carry my suitcase up the stairs to my front door.

      As he was leaving he said, ‘I’m going to Malaysia on Thursday, to do the finishing touches on the hotel project.’

      I blinked and smiled. ‘How long will you be away?’

      ‘Two weeks.’

      I nodded. Not because I was agreeing to anything but because I needed to do something. ‘How nice,’ I added, after I’d bobbed my head far too many times to look sane.

      Nellie must have decided to stay in the car, because he gave me a long, searching look and then said, ‘Come with me.’

      ‘What happened to no pressure? To giving me time to think?’ I snapped.

      The sparkle in his eyes was dim now. He looked tired. ‘Maybe some time alone together is just what we both need?’

      It all seemed so reasonable. So reasonable, in fact, that it made my skin itch. I gripped the edge of the door. ‘That’s not quite right, though, is it? You don’t need any more time to figure it out.’

      He was silent for a few seconds, and then he confirmed all my worst fears. ‘I want you in my future, Coreen.’

      A future. Long, endless days stretching into the greyness ahead of us. An infinity in which we would grow old, tire of each other. I didn’t ever want to get tired of Adam, and while we’d been friends I never had.

      I arranged my features into a neutral, serene expression. ‘I’ll always be in your future, Adam. No matter what happens between us.’

      His jaw jutted forward just a millimetre and he licked his lips. I knew he could read the words ‘brush-off’ in my tone and body language. I was counting on it, in fact. I didn’t want to spell it out in words.

      The horrible thing was, I knew he would take it slowly if I asked him to. He would put my wishes—my needs—above his own. Unfortunately, I was scared, and it turned out I just wasn’t that big a person.

      ‘What are you saying?’ he asked slowly. ‘Are you trying to tell me you don’t see anything changing between us?’

      I threw my hands in the air. ‘Yesterday we were just good friends. Now everything’s been turned on its head. I don’t want to be rushed. I have to be free to make my own decisions.’

      ‘What you mean is that you have to be in control.’

      ‘No! That’s not true.’

      ‘Yes, it is.’ He stepped forward into the flat and I spun around and marched into the living room ahead of him. If we were going to have a good old ding-dong we might as well do it in private. My downstairs neighbour thought I was strange enough as it was.

      Adam followed me. ‘Yes, control. That’s why you make all those poor saps who follow you around dance on their hind legs. As long as you’re in control, you’re safe. But love isn’t like that, Coreen. Love means giving a piece of yourself away, trusting someone else with it.’

      I folded my arms across my chest and hugged my elbows. ‘You’re talking about love, but I think you’re forgetting I haven’t worked out how I feel about you yet.’

      ‘Haven’t you?’

      So we were back to this game, were we? We both knew how we felt about each other, and we both knew that we knew… It wasn’t just tiring any more. It was dangerous.

      I had already worked out that Adam wasn’t above playing dirty, and now he blew my carefully constructed denial to smithereens. He was suddenly across the room, his arms around me, his mouth only a whisper away from mine.

      ‘Tell me to stop if you don’t want this,’ he said softly.

      I closed my eyes, trying to think of the words to do just that, but anything as simple as no or stop had exited my vocabulary by the back door, and the only things left were unintelligible sounds and lengthy explanations I sadly didn’t have time for.

      I didn’t do anything as his lips began to move on mine. Okay, well maybe I did something. But how is a girl supposed to stop herself from wrapping her arms around a man when he’s kissing her like that? I’d defy any one of you to do better. I had to kiss him back. To do otherwise would have been rude. Maybe I took it too far by running my tongue along the edge of his lip, but I’ve always had a problem with that.

      The problem with a kiss like that one was that I wasn’t stage-managing it. Usually I set the pace. I controlled how much and how hot. I played the part of vintage minx to the max, in other words. But with Adam I wasn’t playing anything. I didn’t even have my usual costume of red heels and even redder lips. Adam wasn’t kissing the minx; he was kissing me. I felt the shockwaves right down in my soul. They lapped at the shore of my identity, eroding it, rearranging it, as the surf does the pebbles. And I could sense a tidal wave on the horizon—one that would overwhelm and devastate.

      I untangled myself and stumbled back. Adam reached out a hand to steady me, but he didn’t override my decision to stop. Neither of us said anything, but as the seconds dragged on his expression grew both softer and darker. I was transparent again, I could tell.

      ‘You can trust me,’ he said quietly, emphatically.

      Oh, I knew I could trust Adam. Adam was practically manufactured from the stuff. Despite the fact I’d been dazzled by a sexier, more dangerous side to him in the last few days, I knew that if you sliced him open, like sugary seaside rock, he would say ‘loyal and true’ right to the core. It was me I couldn’t trust.

      ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘What you’re afraid of. But love isn’t total surrender. It isn’t one person sacrificing themselves totally for another.’ He glanced at the black-and-white picture of my mum on the mantelpiece. ‘Real love isn’t like that. It’s a two-way street.’

      I looked at the photo of Mum. She’d been about twenty when it had been taken and she looked so jaunty and happy, strolling down the road with her cute little mini-dress and her big sunglasses pushed up on her head. Before she’d met my dad. Before he’d sucked the life out of her. I’d bet she thought love was a safe pastime too.

      When I turned my attention back to Adam I had a shock. He looked so like the boy who’d used to promise me he’d always look out for