The Runaway Princess, Page 7

  “Badger!” I yelled. “Knock it off!”

  “Hey! Enough of that!” the man said, much more mildly than Badger deserved—I was already saying a lot worse, in my head—and I recognized the voice at once.

  A searing blush started around my forehead and spread rapidly across my whole body.

  It wasn’t Kit Pike. It was Leo.

  As he emerged from the steps, he looked a bit different in a work suit than in the jeans and shirt I’d seen him in on Saturday night, but everything else was very much the same. The teddy-bear blond hair, the shy smile, the arresting blue eyes.

  Actually, he looked better in a suit. He looked like a suit model, but capable of doing whatever job he needed to wear the suit for.

  Predictably, my brain went into standby mode, just when I needed it.

  “He won’t bite,” I babbled, “he’s just very barky and—Badger! Stop it! He has a thing about deliverymen—I think one must have kicked him when he was at my gran’s—not that I’m saying you look like a deliveryman, obviously, or that you kicked him—Badger!”

  I finally stamped on Badger’s lead just as he launched forward again, but not before Leo stumbled back to avoid him, and fell into the railings running alongside.

  He spun, then sat down with a thump on the stone front steps, and I grabbed the growling Badger and scooped him under my arm. I wished there were some kind of rewind button I could press to do this the way I’d been imagining it in my head for the past four days. Most of those scenarios had ended with Leo laughing at my ready wit, then taking me out for dinner. None of them had involved this much apologizing before we’d even begun.

  “I’m really sorry. Are you okay? He didn’t rip anything, did he?” I went to help him up, then thought better of it, in case Badger went for his tie. It looked like a really expensive tie; I had an awful mental image of Badger swinging from it by his teeth. “This is Badger. My dog. He’s a bit protective of me and Jo. Thinks he’s the man of the house!”

  “Well, I guess he’s cuter than a burglar alarm.” Leo nodded at him warily, and got up, brushing dust from his trousers. “Unless you’re a burglar. Does he do that to everyone?”

  “Just, er, deliverymen.” I shook my head, and put Badger down, clamping him between my feet for safety. “And men with hats. And men who look like the dodgy handyman who lived next door to Gran. That’s why he wasn’t invited to the party—he operates a really strict door policy.”

  “You mean, he wouldn’t have let Rolf in?”

  “Not if he was wearing a hat, or carrying a parcel, no.” I grinned nervously. “Santa gets a hard time of it. That’s why he uses the chimney.”

  Badger was sniffing the air between him and Leo, and I could feel his wiry body trembling through my jeans; but then Leo made some kind of clicking noise and, to my astonishment, Badger sat down and looked balefully up at him through his sparse white lashes.

  “Wow,” I said, amazed. “How did you do that?”

  Leo raised an eyebrow. “Deliveryman trade secret.”

  I took a deep breath and noticed, out of the corner of my brain, that the air was tangy with the scent of next door’s winter honeysuckle, which bloomed early every year. I could smell spring in the air, even though it was still winter. Being near Leo seemed to heighten all my senses, as if every tiny detail was sharp around him.

  “You’re very honored,” I blurted out. “It took ages for Badger to get on with Ted. I had to make him carry frankfurters all the time—he was like the Pied Piper of Fulham, what with the dogs following us around. But without the jazzy tights, obviously.”

  Leo bent down to pet Badger’s ears, and glanced up, apparently not put off by my nervous waffling. “Ted’s the tall guy who stopped Rolf from falling off the balcony? Very strong? Bit cross?”

  “That’s Ted, yes.”

  “Does Rolf owe him some plants too? Or a rare tree or something?”

  “No.” I kept a watchful eye on Badger, but he was upside down now, offering Leo his muddy tummy to tickle. The tart. “Ted’s agricultural interest is strictly nine-to-five. He really only got into it so he could do some covert metal-detecting. He’s convinced that there’s a Roman hoard out there with his name on it.”

  “And has he found much?” Leo got up, and Badger sniffed his trousers, which I was relieved to see weren’t shredded.

  “Three bags of assorted coins and more clay pipes than a civil war reenactment,” I said. “But he lives in hope. At least we haven’t found any dead bodies. And it leaves me free to get on with the actual gardening side of things. I do the planning. And the planting. And the design.”

  Now that we were actually looking at each other and talking, I felt the same strange mixture of nerves and relaxation I’d felt on Saturday night. I was panicking about what to say, but somehow it was coming out all right—and more than that, Leo seemed interested.

  “Did you leave these?” I gestured toward the pots.

  “Yup. Five pots of Dream Seeds, to replace those lost in action.” Leo grinned, giving his professional City appearance an unexpectedly boyish twist. “I don’t know if they’re at the exact same stage as the ones you had on your balcony, but I don’t think your client’s going to know the difference, is she?”

  I blinked in amazement. “But where did you find them? I’ve been on the Internet all week trying to track some down! I can’t even find out what they’re called. They’re so secretive about where the course is and how much it costs—all I could dig up was that it’s one of those ones celebs go on when they don’t actually want to be photographed.”

  “It’s on a private island. And it costs a fortune. Between you and me, my contact’s been on it so often she’s virtually got a whole hedge of these things,” said Leo, dropping his voice conspiratorially.

  “She must have a lot of dreams come true.”

  He looked wry. “Funnily enough, no. Which is odd, given that she’s already got pretty much everything most women would wish for. I sometimes think she goes on it to get ideas for things to wish for.”

  I nodded. I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I liked the confiding way he said it. I wondered, awkwardly, if the “contact” was his girlfriend. Oh … nuts.

  He was staring at me with a smile flickering on his lips, as if I’d done something amazing—even though he was the one who’d just magicked these plants out of nowhere. I felt my face tingle.

  “I don’t know how to thank you enough,” I babbled. “Did she mind giving them up? I mean, how did you get them? Did you pop round to hers and say you needed some dreams coming true, so could you take some cuttings?” I widened my eyes. “Does she think you’re having some kind of midlife crisis now?”

  Leo had a nice, relaxed sort of laugh. “There were a few phone calls back and forth. I think it would have been easier to fly there myself and get them—I mean, these guys more or less got their own seat in business. The pots aren’t quite the same, but I guess you could say you replanted them as a Christmas present?”

  “Oh, no, they’re nearly ident—” I stopped, and stared. He flew them in? He was so normal to talk to that I’d forgotten that Leo was the sort of guy who hung out with princes like Rolf. Rolf had probably flown those girls in on Saturday. On a private jet. Or something.

  “Anyway,” he went on, leaning against the railing, “I was hoping you’d be here—I wanted to talk to you about something else, and I wasn’t sure how to get hold of you.”

  My heart bumped in my chest. “Oh?”

  “I’ve got this garden. It’s a bit of a project, and I’ve been told to get some professional advice on it.” His blue eyes crinkled. “And as you’re the only gardener I’ve met recently, I wondered if you had time to advise me. I can’t guarantee there’s much worth metal-detecting, but there’s quite a bit of planting.”

  My heart stopped bumping so hard. A garden. Of course.

  Well, maybe that one plant he’d saved had been mine. I had wished for a new client. Maybe wishing for Pal
ace View had been overambitious.

  “Of course I’ve got time, I’m always on the lookout for new clients. I mean, new challenges.” I fished my phone out of my pocket, and hoped I hadn’t made it sound as though all Ted and I did was play amateur archaeology. “When’s a good time for you? Morning, afternoon?”

  I paused. Leo’s suit was quite a traditional one, with none of the flashy details some of Jo’s friends adopted, so he probably worked in the City, without time to take off for garden consultations. This had to be his lunch break. How long had he been here? “Or is evening better?” I added, in case he thought I was staring.

  Did that sound like I was fishing for a date?

  My mind gave up and went blank.

  “Evenings are better. Let me look at my diary and get back to you,” said Leo. “I’ve got quite a complicated couple of weeks coming up, and I’d hate to arrange something and then have to cancel. I just wanted to check that you had time to see me.”

  “There are easier ways of getting hold of a gardener than hanging outside her house with plants.” I couldn’t help feeling a little flat that it was my green fingers he wanted, not … any other bit of me. I tried to cover it with a jokey tone. “You could have asked Rolf for our landline. He must have it—he’s been calling Jo enough.”

  An expression I couldn’t quite identify flashed across Leo’s face and then vanished almost at once. If I hadn’t been staring at him like a love-struck teenager, I’d have missed it.

  “Has he? I haven’t seen him since the weekend, to be honest. And I didn’t want to ask him for your number because …” His mouth twisted up. “Well, you’ve met Rolf.”

  I started to agree, then realized I didn’t know exactly what he meant by that. What? He was embarrassed to be seen calling me?

  Leo saw my confusion and hastily added, “I mean, I … I didn’t phrase that well. Sorry. I meant, I don’t do everything with Rolf. I like to keep some areas of my life straightforward.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, only partially mollified.

  “So?” Leo’s thumb was poised over his phone, and I rattled off my work mobile number, and e-mail, and then our home landline too.

  “You could let Rolf know that Jo’s not listening to the messages, by the way,” I said while he was saving them. “The first two were okay, but they got a bit … stalky after that? Maybe a nice bunch of flowers would be a better gesture.”

  “Good suggestion. I’ll let him know,” said Leo, then checked his watch and grimaced. “I wish we could have that chat about the garden now over lunch, but I’ve really got to dash. I’m supposed to be in a meeting in Canary Wharf in ten minutes.”

  “That’s okay, I’m supposed to be in a garden in Buckingham Palace Road in fifteen.”

  “Buckingham Palace Road?” He looked impressed. “You win. Are you fitting corgi doors?”

  “Oh, it’s just weeding,” I said automatically, then remembered I should have told him I was doing something more upmarket, as befitting his garden plans. Doh.

  “Anyway,” I hastened on, “I should be thanking you. I can’t believe you went to so much trouble with these plants. My client’s back on Friday—she’ll be nearly as thrilled as I am to see those.”

  “My pleasure.” A warm smile spread across Leo’s handsome face, and I could only just make myself keep meeting his gaze. “I’ll be in touch. About the garden.”

  There was a second’s awkwardness—should I offer my hand to shake?—and then he leaned forward and kissed my cheek. A tingle spread through me, under my thermals, across my skin, and then Leo bent down, ruffled Badger’s ears, and, with a backward wave, dashed to catch a passing black cab.

  I put the pots carefully to one side on the step, where they wouldn’t be kicked over, then hurried to the front door, where I fumbled with my keys because my hands were shaking so much. I knew I was smiling like a madwoman from the ache in my cheeks, but I froze when I saw my reflection in the big mirror over the hall post table.

  My hair was somehow greasy and flyaway, my face was flushed, and my clothes—oh, God, my clothes looked in a worse state than Badger did, and he’d been rolling in everything the park had to offer.

  I stared at myself. Why hadn’t Leo said anything? How polite was he that he hadn’t mentioned the fact that I looked like I’d been sleeping rough in someone’s shed for three weeks? My glowy mood shriveled with embarrassment, and then my phone buzzed.

  Just checking I’ve got your number right, and to give you mine. Great to see you just now—glad we’re forgiven! Look forward to talking soon re the garden. L

  My heart raced. He must have texted from the taxi—he hadn’t even waited the two days Jo said most London men waited before they got in touch, just to mess with your head.

  But then, Leo was completely unlike any man I’d met in London before. He was very posh, but he was easy to talk to. He wore a suit, but he didn’t mind scaling scuzzy fire escapes for broken plants. He was gorgeous, but—actually, there was no but there. He was just gorgeous.

  The only trouble was, he was best friends with the one man my best friend absolutely, definitely didn’t want to talk about.

  I looked at my smeary face in the hall mirror and decided that from now on, I might start wearing a bit more makeup for work, just in case.

  Six

  Leo must have spoken to Rolf about the phone calls, because they stopped that night.

  The presents, on the other hand, started the next day.

  “You have to admit, Rolf’s persistent,” I said, looking at the enormous box on the kitchen table, spilling pink and black tissue and ribbons over the jaunty plastic tablecloth.

  It was a very big box for what was inside. The silky underwear we’d eventually unearthed from the multiple layers of tissue would have fitted into a medium-size Jiffy bag and still left room for a gift card and a pair of tights.

  “Persistent, yes,” said Jo, picking up the fragment of lingerie with a finger. “In the sense that the common cold is quite persistent. And I don’t count this as an apology. I’m not sure if it’s actually making things worse.”

  “Is this really a pair of knickers?” I asked, curious. “Technically speaking?”

  Rolf’s apology undies were a world away from my own Marks & Spencer reliables. They were more elastic than material, and I wasn’t even sure how you’d put them on, since it was all holes.

  The box of knickers had arrived after Jo had left for work that morning, and then sometime in the afternoon, Mrs. Mainwaring had taken delivery of a Jo Malone scented candle the size of a bucket, with a solid silver lid. While we were having supper, Dickon had knocked on the door to pass on one of those ludicrous sledge-size padded boxes of Swiss chocolates that I thought only existed in Doris Day films, delivered by courier. All with cards that Jo wouldn’t even let me see “for the sake of your innocence.”

  She made a snorting noise, balled up the thong, and squashed the ribbons and tissue paper back over the lot. “The fact that Rolf thinks I’d be won over by this sort of lingerie tells you everything about both him and the sorts of girls he normally goes for. I am not a girl who can be impressed with stripper thongs. Even if they did cost a couple of hundred quid.”

  “A couple of—?” My mouth dropped open. “Are they made from gold thread or something?”

  “And the rest,” said Jo. “Anyway, Rolf’s got to learn to take no for an answer. I’m not interested in a man who talks about himself in the third person. Why would I change my mind just because he thinks he can guess my bra size?”

  “Did he?”

  Jo looked momentarily discombobulated. “Yes. And I don’t know how, because he never got as far as … Anyway, no! No, no, no! It’s extremely bad behavior and only makes me more determined to ignore him.”

  “He must really like you, though, to go to all that bother,” I said, thinking of the thoughtful way Leo had not only found the plants but delivered them himself. They were now installed on Grace’s balcony, where I’
d spent several happy hours simultaneously tidying up and rehearsing the conversation I’d have with Leo when he called to talk about his garden. Which he hadn’t. Yet.

  “Amy!” Jo’s eyebrows vanished into her fringe with disbelief. “Men like Rolf have La Perla on speed dial. It’s not that impressive. And he doesn’t really like me either—he just can’t stand the thought of being turned down. He’s not used to it. It took me nearly a month to end it with him in the first place. I kept telling him we had nothing in common, and he kept saying, ‘Oh, tiger, you’re playing hard to get! Grrr!’ and sending me enormous teddy bears with diamond earrings on.”

  I boggled my eyes. “Your problem with that being?”

  “The problem being that I didn’t want them.” Her ferocious expression softened. “Princes, even very low-level ones, don’t understand normal women. They don’t understand that you can’t buy your way into someone’s heart. That’s why we should leave them to date loopy supermodels with entitlement complexes and other princesses who are just as mad as they are.”

  I said nothing. The most I usually had to worry about with the men Jo tried to set me up with was, were they going to make me pay for supper, and could I ever fancy a man who called it “sups” in the first place?

  Jo’s face suddenly brightened. “Ooh! I meant to say, I saw my friend Poppy outside Callie Hamilton’s. She’s having a party at the Chelsea Arts Club this Saturday—she’s put us both on the guest list.” She nudged me. “Come on, I’ll lend you my red dress.”

  I liked the Chelsea Arts Club. It had one of those unexpected city gardens that felt like stepping off the street into Narnia, all quiet corners and tea lights and undergrowth that rustled with artists. But what if Leo called, and asked me to come over on his day off?

  He isn’t going to ask you to check out his garden in the dark, I reminded myself.

  Jo was peering at me. “What’s up? Are you worried we’ll run into Dickon? Not all painters demand that you strip, you know. Poppy usually asks her sitters to put more clothes on. Dog costumes, usually.”