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admitted, aware of how close he was to me. “Jo does it as part of her Edinburgh stand-up act, with different words—she calls it ‘Single Laddies.’ I can do it too.” I demonstrated one quick hand move and smacked a nearby Simon Cowell in the face by mistake. “Oh, my God, sorry, sorry. …”
    Gorgeous Blond Man grinned and made a space for me to get through to the window. As I opened it, I groaned aloud: the heavy window box of geraniums was still there, but the plants I’d wedged behind it had been shoved through the railings and off the balcony. Grace’s precious pots and my precious seedlings would be toast—as would her dreams, and our plans for the rental property contract.
    Not that I believed all that hippie mumbo jumbo.
    Still, I sobered up instantly in the chilly night air. I didn’t normally get so sentimental about plants—some sprouted, some failed, Nature was mean like that—but for some reason this felt symbolic.
    “What?” The man leaned to see what I was looking at.
    “There were seven pots of seedlings and some herbs,” I said. “I don’t even want to
think
about what they hit on the way down.”
    “Really? Oh no.” His own expression turned serious when he saw my face. “Were they expensive plants? Or valuable pots? Can we replace them?”
    “No. They’re …”
    He looked at me as if he really wanted to know, and the words tumbled out of my mouth before I had time to think about what I was saying.
    “They’re seeds I was growing for a client—hers haven’t sprouted, so I was growing these as backup. I was going to swap these with the ones she’s managed to wipe out before she gets back this week. I’m a gardener,” I added, in case he thought I did this sort of thing for fun. “And they’re not dodgy.”
    “Can’t you just swap them for some different seedlings?”
    I shook my head, already wondering what I could tell Grace. “She got them while she was on some retreat in Thailand. There are photos of the flowers in her meditation pack—she’d know if they suddenly came up as tomatoes.”
    He frowned, then his face cleared into a smile. “Oh, I know the course you mean. Were they Dream Seeds? Lots of nude yoga and talking about your soul’s greenhouse? Each seed represents a wish, et cetera, et cetera?”
    “You know them?” I squinted at him. He didn’t look the sort to go on Grace’s courses. I mean, he looked wealthy, but nowhere near flaky enough. (Also, nude yoga?)
    “Let’s say I know
of
them,” he replied. “And I know how important the seeds are to the fruitloops who … Oh, God, sorry, the, um …” His eyes were doing the frantic darting thing mine did when I was trying and failing to find the tactful word.
    “You had me at fruitloops,” I said. “In the nicest possible way.”
    We shared a quick, apologetic smile of conspiracy.
    He touched my arm. “In that case, let’s go down and see if they’ve survived the fall. I can’t have someone’s karmic journey on Rolf’s conscience as well as him ruining your party.”
    “Does it look ruined?” I asked. The Beyoncé dancing was reaching a new level of ferocity, and if Mrs. Mainwaring hadn’t been doing some kind of mashed-potato move in the middle of the floor, she’d have been banging on the ceiling with her broom. That didn’t mean her cat was inside. If anything had happened to Elvis, I wanted to find out before she did.
    He glanced over and when he turned back a white-hot shiver rippled through me.
    “No,” he said, keeping his eyes on mine. “Quite the opposite, I’d say.”
    “Okay,” I said, before I said anything more stupid. “Let’s go and have a look for these plants.”
    *
    I t was much quieter in the hall, and I suddenly felt conscious of not actually having introduced myself. The fact that he seemed so relaxed with me only made me worry that we
had
been introduced and I’d forgotten. That had happened before now. Although it wasn’t my fault so many of Jo’s