Just Say Yes by Phillipa Ashley

are. Your outfit. Did you honestly think I’d be fooled by that getup? You haven’t even made an effort, have you?” She was really warming up now and she had nothing to lose, not even her knickers. Let him plaster her all over his paper if he wanted to. “And by the way,” she said. “Your Cornish accent’s rubbish.”
    “Maybe that’s because I was born in Peckham, but I suppose you’re entitled to your opinion.”
    “No? You don’t say? Gee, I’d never have guessed. Shame your lens is showing.”
    The man glanced down at the camera. “Ah. This. Doing a spot of bird-watching.”
    Lucy snorted. “Can’t you think of anything more original than that?”
    “No, because it’s true.”
    “Yes. Of course it is. I suppose you collect stamps and hang round restored railways noting down engine numbers. I bet you even volunteer at the local youth club.”
    “Well, now you come to mention it…”
    “Somehow, I think not.”
    He pulled his hood off and Lucy did a double take. He didn’t look like any of the photographers or reporters who’d hung about outside her flat. It wasn’t an unpleasant face—in fact, he was startlingly good looking, all razor cheekbones and cool blue eyes. But the Prison Break buzz cut gave him such a hard, uncompromising edge that she felt her bravado rapidly ebbing away. What if he wasn’t a paparazzo? What if he’d escaped from somewhere? Wasn’t there a jail on Exmoor—or was that Dartmoor?
    Tiny beads of rainwater glistened in his thick eyelashes. He attempted a smile which managed to make him seem more threatening than ever. “So, are you going to be sensible and let me in, or are you going to make me stand out here in the rain all day?”
    She curled a lip in what she hoped was defiance. “I think, on balance, I’m going to be stupid and let you get wet.”
    Then she slammed the door on him and locked it.
    ***
     
    After his encounter with the mad girl who’d moved into Creekside Cottage, Josh headed to the club to help Sara out with a novice windsurfing course. Even before he got there to find no one had turned up, he’d known it would be a washout. Only a nutcase, or him, would want to go out on a day like this. Now he and Sara were watching the rain and wind whipping up whitecaps on the estuary and Josh had made the mistake of mentioning what had happened.
    “She did what ?” said Sara.
    “Slammed the door in my face,” said Josh, scrolling through the weather reports on Windguru.com.
    “And this is Fiona?”
    “No, this is the friend.”
    “Doesn’t sound very friendly. What does she look like?”
    “Hell, I don’t know. Average. Tall-ish,” he said, closing the browser on the computer.
    “As tall as me?” she asked.
    He thought for a moment. “A bit taller, I guess.”
    “Slim? Fat?”
    Josh knew he had to close down this discussion quickly. He guessed what Sara was fishing for. She was a hundred percent beach babe, fit and tanned. He’d often told her so, and yet it still didn’t seem to satisfy her. Lately, she’d wanted constant reassurance that she was attractive. She needn’t have worried. From what he’d seen of her, the mad girl was fair-skinned and curvy in a way Sara would have derided.
    “How old is she?”
    “Same as us, I guess. Difficult to tell.”
    Sara nodded. “From London?”
    “I suppose so, she had one of those non-accents.”
    “So average, no accent, medium height, but mad as a hatter.”
    “She had unusual hair,” he said, suddenly recalling the girl’s black hair curling over her shoulders. He had to kill a smile as he remembered her expression: she’d acted as if he was an ax murderer or a Peeping Tom—or maybe the law.
    Sara’s eyes lit up. “How do you mean, ‘unusual’? Spiky? Punk? Goth? Pink?”
    “Dark, I suppose,” said Josh, jumping down from the desk and lacing his arms in front of him in an effort to ease his aching shoulder. Maybe it was a good job the course had been rained off, for the sake of