Saying Yes to the Millionaire. Fiona Harper
She loved the wide stone paths and solid walls, the outrageously ornate Victorian lampposts set at regular intervals. Bulbous-headed black fish gazed at her from the base of the lamps and wound their tails up the posts.
After walking for a few minutes in silence, they naturally gravitated to a quiet stretch of wall and stopped to lean on the smooth granite, their cups of coffee balanced in front of them. Josh nodded towards the crane poking above the skyline.
‘That was quite a rush, wasn’t it?’
Rush? Never had she felt such pure terror as when she’d been hurtling towards the ground, sure the bungee cord would snap or that her ankles would slide loose.
‘Yes,’ she mumbled, glad she had a good excuse to lie. Josh would never understand.
‘I thought for a moment, when I heard you say no, that you were going to chicken out.’
Fern stopped watching the light play on the water as it lapped against the wall below her. ‘I said no?’
Josh nodded. ‘I think so.’
Fern bit her lip. Darn, darn, darn. All that for nothing! She’d shot herself in the foot before she’d even jumped. She felt like giving herself a hefty slap on the forehead, but that would have required an explanation she wasn’t ready to give. Instead she turned round and leaned her bottom against the cool stone and stared at the traffic racing along Victoria Embankment.
‘Come on, Fern. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Everyone is a little nervous on their first jump. It’s only natural.’
She twisted just her head to look at him. ‘Were you?’
He half-coughed, half-laughed. ‘Well, no…but that doesn’t matter, does it?’
Fern could feel the coffee churning inside her and looked down at her stomach. Yesterday, she’d been so sure this challenge of Lisette’s was going to be a piece of cake and now she’d blown it. Stupid, stupid girl! All she’d had to do was say ‘yes’. Such a tiny word. Not that difficult. Lisette was right; she was far too used to saying the opposite and a moment of subconscious muttering had cost the Leukaemia Research Trust nine hundred pounds.
‘What you said up there doesn’t matter,’ he continued. ‘It’s cancelled out by the fact that…Hey, look at me…’
She looked sideways at him, her head still bowed forward. He raised his eyebrows, waiting. There was no point resisting Josh when he got all determined like this. She turned to face him and looked straight into his melting brown eyes.
‘It’s cancelled out by the fact that you did it anyway. You turned the no into a yes by your actions. And actions are what count.’
She blinked. That sounded a bit like wiggling out on a technicality. Could she just gloss over it? Tell Lisette she hadn’t said no all week?
The smallest of smiles started on her lips, barely a curve. Focusing on the small print, Lisette hadn’t exactly said she couldn’t say the word no, had she? She just wasn’t allowed to use it as an answer to a direct question. And she hadn’t been asked a question on top of the crane. She’d been talking to herself.
It truly didn’t count. A sigh of relief escaped her lips and she rested her elbows on the parapet once more. Josh’s left forearm was only six inches away from her right one. Not close enough to suggest the intimacy of a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, but close enough for her to feel the heat of him.
Josh moved the arm closest to her and gave her a gentle prod in the ribs with his elbow. ‘What are you smiling to yourself about?’
‘I really did it, didn’t I?’
He grinned back at her. ‘Yes, you really did. You were really brave.’
The smile waned and the crease reappeared between her brows. ‘Don’t be silly! I’m not brave, not like you. You must have done hundreds of those jumps.’
He sidled up closer so their arms were touching. The breath caught in her throat.
‘You’ve got it the wrong way round. I’m not brave when I do a bungee jump. It doesn’t take anything for me to do it. I love it. But you…’
The way he was looking at her, full of warmth and admiration, made her mouth dry.
‘…I know you’re not mad keen on heights. For you, it was brave.’ One corner of Josh’s mouth lifted in a smile. ‘And that’s why I have a proposition for you.’
CHAPTER THREE
FERN’S eyes widened. Was this it? The moment she had dreamed about as a teenager, lying face up on her bed, listening to power ballads and staring at the posters on the wall? Was this the moment when the scales would fall from Josh’s eyes and he would finally see what had been under his nose all along? He was at least a decade behind schedule.
Her silly heart fluttered against her ribcage like a trapped bird. ‘What…what kind of proposition?’
Josh leaned towards her, a glint in his eye, as if he were making her part of some thrilling conspiracy. He was close enough for her to see the olive-green flecks in his irises and catch a waft of his aftershave.
‘I think we should spend a lot of time together over the next few days.’
‘You do?’ Her voice squeaked the same way it had every time she’d had to talk to him when she’d been a teenager. How embarrassing. All she’d been capable of doing back then was watching his lips move, hoping against hope that he’d stop mid-sentence, lean forward and…
As if he could read her mind, he came closer, near enough for the words he whispered to tickle her hair. ‘How does five grand sound to you?’
Five thousand pounds? He was offering her money to go on a date with him? Didn’t he know she’d do it for free? Heck, there’d been a time when she’d have given the contents of her savings account for such a privilege.
She shook her head. The lack of oxygen in all those high altitude places he’d trekked in must have interfered with his brain.
He suddenly stepped away and jumped up to sit on the edge of the wall overlooking the river. ‘Don’t say no before you’ve heard me out.’
A little laugh tickled at the back of her throat. God bless Lisette and her stupid bet!
‘Come up here.’ He held out one hand and patted the space on the wall beside him with the other. Now, climbing on walls was not something she normally did. They were usually there for a reason. In this case, a twenty foot drop with smelly river water at the bottom. But the look in his eyes told her it was easy—no big deal—and she placed her hand in his and wedged her trainer on the lip at the bottom of the wall. He tugged and for a moment she was airborne and then, somehow, she was sitting on the wall next to him, her feet dangling above the paving stones.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a ragged scrap of newspaper. She squinted in the bright sunshine as he began to unfold it.
‘You and me together for four days in London…’ he muttered as he concentrated on flattening the paper out against his thighs.
Four days? This moment had definitely been worth the wait. Her chest seemed to expand, fill with sunshine.
Encouraged by her smile, Josh slapped the scrap of paper with the flat of his hand. ‘I knew you were the right person to ask, the moment I saw you jump off that crane!’
Fern blinked. This conversation was not going anything like it had all those years ago in her daydreams. She’d always imagined that the realisation that she was The One For Him would hit him like a bolt from the blue, rendering him unable to anything but sweep her into his arms and declare his eternal love for her. In reality, it was an awful lot more confusing.
She turned to look at him, leaning forward and resting her weight on her hands as they gripped the edge of the wall. ‘What exactly did you know when you