Truth-Or-Date.com

‘It was very nice to have met you, but I need to head back. Urgent business. Thank you very much for the dinner and best of luck with the dating scene.’ Then she gave a quick nod and turned away from him towards the door.

‘Hey. Wait a moment,’ he said, not wanting to draw attention to her, but if she heard him she pretended not to, and in one smooth motion flicked her collar up, flung open the door and strode away into the rain as fast as her legs could carry her. And was gone.

Miles stood up and tried to move after her, but he had been sitting in the one place too long again. His leg instantly cramped up and the pain in his knee switched from being just tolerable to pass-the-painkillers so quickly that he had to sit back down and massage the injured muscle back into life.

Well, this day got better and better.

He had just driven away the only online date he had agreed to meet.

And then he spotted something purple and umbrella shaped propped up next to her chair.

Saffie’s house was in complete darkness when Andy walked up the path and turned the key in the front door. The rain had turned into a driving sleet and as the warm air hit her face and ears she could feel her cheeks tingle from the icy blast.

She had already been halfway down the street before she realised that she had left her purple umbrella back in the coffee shop—probably hidden below Miles’s jacket. So she had waited for the bus that never came. So then she had gritted her teeth and walked for twenty minutes in her smart boots rather than just stand there and wait.

Waiting was for losers. Miles would never have waited—and neither would she.

Because standing on her own at that freezing bus stop with the rain running down her neck and inside her boots Andromeda Elizabeth Davies had come to a major conclusion. After twenty-eight years on this planet she had done enough waiting for other people in life.

She had waited for her parents to stop working just long enough to pay her some attention.

She had waited for someone to explain why they had to move out of her home and her own room with her own things into the hastily rearranged study of her grandparents’ apartment, which she would be sharing with a lifetime of hoarded unwanted clutter.

She had waited for her parents to stop telling her how lucky she was to go to the private boarding school that was soaking up the trust fund her parents had started when they were rich and had money to throw away.

And then she had waited for her school friends to realise that she was just the same girl, only without any money. Saffie and her close pals had been brilliant but the others like Elise had dropped her in a week.

She had been prepared to wait for Nigel to make the first move and start dating her properly. Too busy with the project work, he had said. The presentation to the board for the new promotional plans for the coming year had to be perfect—but then they could relax and spend a weekend away together and tell the other people in the office that they were a couple. Surely she could wait a few more weeks?

She was his guilty little secret.

Sordid. Dirty. Expendable—and something he would simply throw away when he had used her enough. So he could get back to the girl he was living with.

Well, that was then and this was now. And she had waited long enough.

Meeting with #sportybloke Miles that evening had shown her just what she had been missing in her life—and it hurt that she did not feel able to open her heart to relax and enjoy his company as though it were a real date.

Because it had never been a real date, and she had to remember that. No matter how lovely his smile, his touch and the feeling of his lips on hers.

Slipping off her wet coat, she strolled slowly up the staircase, her feet dragging and her wet boots feeling like lead weights on her feet. Each tread of the old wooden staircase creaked as she put her weight on the boards and echoed around the tall empty hallway, but she had become used to each familiar sound in this comfortable family-sized home. Her faithful friends were the chiming of the grandfather clock in the hall and the faint clanking from the central heating as it tried to bring some warmth to so many unoccupied rooms.