‘That’s because I haven’t,’ Tessa said tartly. ‘I’m about to head to the underground, so have a good Christmas.’
He fell into step with her. ‘Now I’m hurt,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘I thought you cared…’
The mildly flirtatious teasing had been conspicuous by its absence and now it made her already heated skin begin to prickle with all the dangerous awareness she had successfully slapped down over the past few weeks.
‘Well, you were wrong. Why are you following me?’
‘Because I’m trying to persuade you to come and have a drink with me considering you never managed to make it to our little lunchtime party earlier.’
‘I’m sorry. I can’t.’
‘Because you need to get that important stocking filler.’
‘That’s right.’ The underground was now within sight, visible between the hordes of people who were also apparently on the search for last-minute Christmas gifts. The sight of that many people made her feel a little ill but now that she had told him she needed to shop, she had little choice but to honour the white lie, with him walking next to her like an unwanted shadow.
‘In which case, I think I need to get a few things myself. We could go and have that drink afterwards.’
‘No, we cannot!’ Tessa refused vehemently, stopping to glare at him and irritating the flow of people who were forced to break their hurried stride around them.
‘Scared, Tessa?’ he taunted softly. ‘You didn’t manage to make it to the company do a couple of weeks ago either. A sudden cold, if I remember correctly?’
‘I have to go, Curtis.’ She spun around, blinded by rage at what she could only assume was mockery in his voice. Never mind how clever and good looking and incisive and witty he was, she thought furiously, he was still the Man with the Oversized Ego.
She hurtled away from him, struggling against the sea of people, caught up in them as they began to cross the road as one on the go ahead of the little green man from the traffic lights.
Her thoughts were spinning off on a tangent, paying scant attention to the pavement, when her leg buckled under her. The crowd that had virtually carried her along in its surge from one pavement to the middle island had failed to be so accommodating as they’d hurried towards the far pavement.
Tessa gave a groan of pain, tried to maintain an upright position, but, with no one to hold on to, she slid inelegantly onto cold, hard tarmac and, had it not been for a couple of steel arms lifting her out of her embarrassed misery, she was convinced that people would simply have stepped over her in their haste to finish the rest of their Christmas shopping.
The owner of the steel arms spoke in an all-too-familiar voice and Tessa groaned again, this time with heartfelt dismay mixed in with the shooting pain in her ankle.
‘You could have been trampled,’ Curtis said and Tessa opened one eye to look at him. For once, there was no smile on his face as he fought his way across the road, belligerently ordering people to stand aside so that he could get through and cursing under his breath.
He briefly allowed her to stand on one foot for the ten seconds it took him to hail a taxi.
There was no point telling him that she was fine and would be able to make it back to her house without help. She wasn’t fine. Her foot was killing her. She doubted she would have been able to call a taxi for herself, never mind anything else.
Once in the back of the cab, she managed to wriggle herself into a fairly upright and dignified position and turned to him stiffly.
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. How does it feel?’
‘Awful.’ She experimentally tried to move it and winced. It was already beginning to swell and she didn’t protest when he gingerly eased it onto his lap so that he could remove her shoe.
‘We need to get you to a hospital. Get this properly seen to.’
‘No!’
Curtis ignored her, leaning forward to tell the driver to get them to the Kensington and Chelsea Hospital as quickly as he could without killing anyone, then he sat back and reached his hand along her thighs.
‘What are you doing?’ Tessa yelped, trying to tug her leg away from him but greatly hampered by the pain in her foot every time she moved it. ‘Get your hands off me!’
‘Shh!’
‘I will not shut up!’ Her uncooperative leg refused to sprint off his lap.
‘Look,’ he said bluntly, ‘There will be some gravel, probably, embedded in your ankle and knees where you took the brunt of the fall. With your leg swelling up at the rate it is, the gravel is going to become glued to your tights and it’ll be a hell of a job removing them later on. If I could guarantee that we’d be at the hospital quickly, fine, but look at the traffic. It’s Christmas and a half-hour drive could end up taking a lot longer.’