Page 23 of Fundamentals in Flirting

“I thought it was a ridiculous term?”

“It is.”

“Why?”

“Well, it sounds as though you’re an eighty-year-old grandmother from the Victorian era and?—”

“No, Teddy, I mean why would you even want to woo me?” I cut him off with a shake of my head, exasperated and slightly alarmed at where this conversation might go.

“Because you’re clearly resistant to my obvious charms and I would like to rectify that,” he said casually, amusement dancing across his features.

“Why?” I felt like a three-year-old who’d just discovered this word.

“Don’t you think we should try to get along better?” His expression was mischievous, reeling me in. Hook, line and sinker. Once again.

“Why?” Again.

Teddy shrugged. “It’s the neighbourly thing to do.”

“Is it?” I was breathless, confused, but somehow eager that he should go on.

“It is. And maybe I can even help you to loosen up a bit. Have some fun.”

“Fun?”

My voice was now barely a whisper. It was croaky and didn’t really sound like me at all.

“Yep.” He swallowed slowly, his Adam’s apple bobbing. His tone had changed and he was staring intently at my mouth. “Oh, I know lots of ways we could have some fun.”

With fascination I watched his face crease into a smile, so seductive and enticing, that a faint tingle of anticipation lit up my insides. It was a buzzy, shimmering feeling, a thrilling hum of expectation, like that wonderous, frightening sensation of looking down over a precipice to a yawning abyss below. In my brain a warning alarm was sounding, but it seemed very far away, drowned out by the heady cry of excitement that was, in that moment, all-encompassing.

Opposite me, Teddy’s pure magnetism was drawing me to him like a moth to a flame. And it was as though time stood still, electricity arcing between us. I began to lean in, an unspoken intention in the air. A repeat performance of our one and only kiss surely imminent. I licked my lips and his pupils enlarged to impossibly dark pools in response, his body shifting over the gear stick towards me. Repositioning myself in the seat, ready for action, I turned and my arm brushed the steering wheel, catching the volume control for the radio and sending it into sonic boom mode. The car’s speakers rattled and filled the car with the sonorous notes of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”. And thankfully the very wise words of Taylor Swift gave my good sense a proper kicking at the very last minute.

I switched off the radio and sat back in my seat, putting as much distance as possible between us again. What had I been thinking? Well, it was pretty clear that I’d been led astray by my sex-starved hypothalamus and reproductive system, rather than listening to the logical musings of my frontal lobe.

Let’s not make that mistake again, Hannah, ok?

Teddy remained in place, frozen, silent. A muscle ticked in his jaw, his hand on the handbrake lever, white-knuckled as he clenched his fist around it. He stared at me until I looked away first, fixing my gaze on the setting sun on the horizon.

“What doeswooingentail exactly anyway?” I asked eventually, suspiciously, not really sure I wanted to know. But also, desperately wanting to know. Because in the last couple of minutes, I’d apparently developed an embarrassing crush on Teddy Fraser, and was acting like a needy teenager despite being in my mid-thirties, even though it was dangerous and ridiculous, and likely to be an emotional car crash. Because he surely did not have any feelings for me, not beyond some weird, misplaced lustiness that had clouded his judgement a moment ago.

I should stop this. I should move away, and put some distance between us to save my sanity. But I didn’t seem able to.

“Ah, you’ll have to wait and see,” Teddy whispered after a beat, before leaning right over the gear stick and adding seductively in my ear, “But I think we’re both going to enjoy it immensely.”

Using his thumb and index finger under my chin, he turned my head to look at him and gently closed my gaping mouth so that I no longer resembled a gawking codfish.

ChapterEight

It was late when I woke up the next day, being gently battered around the head with Lady Fraser’s plastic cone of shame. The cat was sitting on my stomach, purring and kneading sharp claws into my chest. Groggily I pushed her off and swung my legs out of bed.

In a horrible case of coincidence and bastard karma, I had been called out at 2am by a real-life farmer called Angus MacDonald, and had spent most of the night up to my armpits in a cow, trying to deliver a stuck calf.

And now I was bloody knackered, ached like I’d done ten rounds with Mike Tyson, and had a Saturday morning clinic in twenty minutes.

After feeding Lady Fraser and taking a record-breaking super-quick shower, I bounded downstairs, pulled a white coat on over my clothes and hurtled headlong into Giles in the dispensary.

“Morning, Hannah. Are you ok?”

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