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her nerves from the way she held her bag on her lap, fiddled with its strap and looked straight ahead. He needed to get her to relax. Be as amenable and easy as possible until he could work out what made her tick.
    She was just another woman, after all. How hard could it be?
    ‘Where are we going, then?’ she asked as he worked his way into central London. ‘Some bar, I suppose, or restaurant.’ He saw a flash of anxiety in the tense set of her jaw and knew he’d made the right decision by dismissing the cutting-edge trendy brasserie in Knightsbridge that had briefly crossed his mind. If anyone ever needed to loosen up a little, it was her.
    ‘You’ll see.’
    * * *
    ‘Regent’s Park?’
    He didn’t miss the hint of cynicism in her voice as he led the way through the Clarence Gate entrance. It was a blue-skied September day and a broad pathway between perfectly manicured green lawns lay ahead of them in the glorious sunshine.
    ‘When you said I needed to get out more, I didn’t realise you meant it so literally,’ Alice said.
    ‘Now don’t start grouching before we’ve even begun.’ He grabbed her hand and tucked it through his arm, letting her step fall into line with his. ‘You’re going to love it. I thought we could go for a walk, maybe get a coffee, relax for a while, get to know each other. Then we can find somewhere for lunch. Where did you think I was taking you? Straight back to my shag-pad?’
    ‘I wouldn’t put anything past you.’ She was glad of the sunshine warming her face, perfect for disguising a blush. ‘I suppose I thought we’d go somewhere in town. A restaurant for lunch maybe. Trendier. Busier. With loads of background noise, music, people.’
    ‘There are lots of places I could take you exactly like that. But I thought you might prefer something a bit more laid-back. Your whole life seems to revolve around work and when you do go out for dinner or drinks it’s probably work-related too. When did you last take a walk in the park?’
    ‘Back when I was living at home.’ Her mind treated her to an unwelcome flash of the graffiti-festooned park near her mother’s house in Dorset.
    ‘You’ve lived in London all this time and you haven’t been to the parks?’
    She shook her head, bristling a little at the implication she was some kind of hermit.
    ‘You don’t seem a park kind of a person either,’ she said defensively. He didn’t.
    ‘Well, that just goes to show how wrong you can be when you judge someone on second-hand information.’
    She managed not to laugh at that. If he thought a curved ball of a daytime date would be enough to cast doubt on his playboy reputation, he was deluded.
    ‘Sometimes a bit of open green space is just the thing. We can talk, get to know each other. Difficult to do that when you have to shout over music or elbow your way through crowds.’
    Get to know each other. Her heart began to step up the beat, causing a rush of exasperation. Why couldn’t she just block out all this physical-reaction claptrap and concentrate on the task at hand? As if she were interviewing a candidate for a job or handling a business meeting maybe.
    She concentrated hard on the surroundings as they carried on strolling. The sun dappled the path through the trees and warmed her back.
    ‘I can’t believe you’ve been single for so long,’ he was saying. ‘You’re smart, you’re gorgeous. Why would someone like you stay out of the field so long? It just doesn’t make sense.’
    Her mind zeroed in. Flattery and compliments were obviously the order of the day on first dates with him, then. She wondered how long that would continue. Second date maybe? Or until he got you into his bed? She intended to abort her experiment way before it reached that point.
    ‘I never really meant for it to be that long,’ she said. ‘I just got wrapped up in my professional life. You make me sound like some kind of an alien because I haven’t done the London sights, but plenty of