*****

Chapter 1

I glanced at my watch. Eight thirty-six. Thirty-six long minutes past the hour. And I’d arrived early of course. Just in case. So all in all, I’d been sitting on the steps of the Buttercross for a bottom-numbing forty-nine minutes. It was time to face facts.

I’d been stood up.

Blowing out a sigh, I got to my feet and brushed down my dress. Maybe he’d turned up, taken one look at me and bolted. Or maybe he’d just forgotten.

Yeah, right. I snorted at my own naivety, startling the pigeon that had landed by my foot. Who’d forget they’d been set up on a blind date? I certainly couldn’t have forgotten. Bloody Lisa and her great ideas.

“I’m going to set you up with my boss,” she’d said last Saturday night when I’d been bemoaning my lack of love life. “I think you two would get on really well.”

“Your boss?” I’d stared at her in disbelief. “You mean Mike?” She couldn’t mean Mike, I’d thought, panicking. Yes, I knew he was single but he had to be at least twenty years older than me, had a beer belly and a white beard. Father Christmas material. I knew beggars couldn’t be choosers, but still…

“No!” She laughed merrily. “Not Mike. Griff.”

“Griff?” I frowned, trying to remember if she’d mentioned him before.

“He’s been supervising a project in Aberdeen for the last year. He’s been away since before I started working at ASG. Seems like a nice bloke though I don’t know that much about him.”

“Then how do you know he hasn’t got a wife and two kids?”