Peony Place. Jules Wake

me and this random stranger. I felt the flush heating my cheeks which made the cocky git smile, his wide mouth curving up to reveal a flash of white teeth. Nice mouth.

       Oh yes, go the whole hog Claire. Imagine what it would be like to kiss him because that’s really going to help.

       Yes, very nice mouth. His lower lip is full, sort of biteable…

      Seriously. I’d really said that in my head. I was really thinking that. I sank my teeth into my own lips, imaging it a little too vividly.

      From the sudden flicker of his eyes, I must have given myself away. He was a hunter. The sort that thrived on the chase. My heart fluttered, an honest-to-God flutter, and almost as if he sensed it, his eyes narrowed.

       Oh heck, what is he thinking now? Does he know?

       Does he know that I’m imagining bad things, inappropriate things? Wholly-inappropriate-on-a-packed-train things. Like taking that white shirt off.

      I sat up smartly. This was not train behaviour. It wasn’t normal behaviour. Certainly not my normal. Despite all this weird stuff going on in my brain, I held his gaze.

      It hadn’t been too difficult at all at the beginning to see exactly what he was thinking.

       I’m going to win. I’m going to beat you. I’m going to grind you to dust under my superior staring skills.

      Now he was warier and – I was pleased to see – a little bit impressed.

       Yeah, sunshine. Not so arrogant now, are you?

       He does have lovely eyes though…

      The train pulled in to the next station and new people crowded into the carriage. One man was even grabbed and held back by a passenger to prevent him standing in front of us. Everyone was watching us, craning their necks to keep us in their eyeline. Oh God, we were the star attraction on board. There was no way either of us could give way now.

      And the cockiness was back – he’d also realised that we were the centre of attention. I was conscious of the bated breaths around us against the backdrop of the noisy rattle of the train.

       God, he’s sure of himself.

      His eyes bored into mine and there it was again, the tiny trip in my pulse. This was quite sexy. A power of wills. I parted my lips and just touched my upper lip with the tip of my tongue. I saw the answering glimmer in his eyes, a fractional movement of his muscles. He’d noticed all right. I shot him a sultry smile which did more harm than good because his eyes widened ever so slightly, and if I hadn’t been staring so intently at him I wouldn’t have seen it.

       Bad move.

      This man was not backing down from a challenge and now I’d ramped it up. No, he wasn’t going to give way, not now I’d added sex into the mix. His brows rose again and he gave me a mocking smile, with enough kilowatts of sexiness to knock me back into my seat.

       Whoops, big mistake. Huge.

      But a thrill of adrenaline burst through me; I felt edgy and alive. Aware of my body. Aware of the sexual buzz that thrummed through my veins.

      With a sudden jolt, the train came to an abrupt halt, sending the people hanging onto the rails pitching forward. A woman in a lightweight pale blue mac lost her handhold and tumbled forward, almost landing in his lap. Instinctively he glanced her way, his hands moving to steady her.

      Ha! He’d lost. He looked away first. When he turned back to me, I gave him a small grin of triumph and with a lift of my brows, shuffled my papers and made much of going back to my presentation as if he was no longer worthy of my time. I was dying to sneak a peek at him but the challenge had been won. There wasn’t going to be a rematch. I ignored the voice in my head, all for being fair and honest, arguing the case that my victory was by default.

      A few minutes later, after the train lurched forward again, it slowed into Leeds City station. Standing up, startled a little by a burst of regret, I waited until he raised his head and met my eyes.

      ‘Good luck with your meeting,’ I said with a victor’s smile and sauntered off the train.

      I’d never noticed him before on my morning commute in the last six months of walking across the park to the station. Churchstone was a relatively small place, with a population I was sure I’d read somewhere of only thirteen thousand people – a hell of a lot smaller than I was used to, given the nearly half a million that lived in Leeds, where I’d spent the previous six years.

      Part of me wanted to turn back and see where he was but I resisted. Would I ever bump into him again? Although, I could do without the ‘bump’ part. I glanced down at my coffee-stained chest and groaned inwardly.

      Halfway down the platform, I felt a prickling down my back and a second later he pulled level. My heart leaped at the sight of his dark, handsome face.

      ‘I’d have won if it hadn’t been for the interruption,’ he said.

      ‘Ha, you’d like to think so.’ I felt a burst of pleasure. ‘Only losers look for excuses.’

      ‘Excuses?’ he all but spluttered. ‘She fell into my lap.’

      I shrugged, biting back a grin, as if to say, not my problem.

      ‘Are you always this contrary?’ he asked as we mounted the stairs.

      ‘I’m not contrary,’ I said indignantly. ‘Most people think I’m lovely.’

      Surprising me, his mouth curved into a sudden grin which did the whole clichéd transform-his-face thing, but it really did. Those eyes really were something and he had the most perfect teeth, except the bottom ones crossed each other very slightly.

      ‘Okay, prove it.’

      ‘How am I supposed to do that?’ I asked.

      Like a magician with a quick sleight of hand, he produced a business card between his fingers and pushed it into the top pocket of my suit with an arrogant grin, that did something to my insides. Either there were fledgling butterflies in there or I’d got a bad case of indigestion.

      ‘Come out for a drink with me. A week on Friday. Here’s my card. Text me.’

      Chapter Two

       Ashwin Laghari,

       Financial Director

      When I got to the office I’d flipped the card backwards and forwards over my hand. It had been ages since I’d had so much as a sniff of a date. All work and no play made Claire very dull. And I didn’t want to be dull. He’d sparked something that had lit a little glow of excitement in what was otherwise a fairly barren landscape. While sitting at my desk, something had made me send a distinctly out-of-character, playful text to Ashwin Laghari, of the sexy long legs and unusual, piercing eyes. He wasn’t having things all his own way and besides, on Friday nights I tended to stay late in the office and get as much done as I could before heading home. My reply had been:

       Dinner, a week on Saturday. 8pm. The Beech House. Coffee Girl. x

      I swallowed as a twinge of nerves flashed in the pit of my stomach. Ashwin Laghari. After a whole day of radio silence, he’d finally responded to my text.

       You strike a hard bargain. Saturday it is. See you there.

      Despite its brevity, I must have read it dozens of times over the last ten days and now here I was on Saturday afternoon, less than three hours to lift off. I’d kept my eyes peeled for him on my daily walk across the park to the train station but hadn’t seen him once. Maybe he didn’t live around here. What if he’d been on his way to work after a one-night stand? What if he was a complete womaniser?

      And what