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The stations had always seemed so close to one another, but by the time the next was called, an eternity had passed.

“The next station is Baker Street.”

“Mind the gap between the train and the platform.”

If only Claire could mind the gap and get off this freaking train.

She closed her eyes. Okay, she was being dumb. Yes, she was insanely attracted to Liam—his silent confidence and caring behavior. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t stand next to him without losing her cool, right?

But as the train stopped again and more people filtered on, Claire was shuffled even closer to him, a mere’s spaghetti’s width between their sides.

Ooh spaghetti. That sounded good. But no, they were having fish and chips for dinner. Which sounded just fine. Like the buns she’d eaten for lunch. Not the Branston pickle. Not the rye bread.

Of course, at the moment, she didn’t really care about what she’d eaten for lunch. All she was really doing was trying to distract herself from Liam’s powerful stance right beside her.

She shifted her footing as the doors beeped closed, and a sudden pressure in her upper calf drew her attention to where the zipper of her boot pressed into her skin.

Finally, something else to focus on. She raised her foot a fraction to reach down and readjust the zipper, but when the train whooshed forward, she lost her balance and fell directly toward Liam.

She yelped, landing against his solid chest as his free arm instantly wrapped around her back to steady her. Her head spun from his touch, warmth pulsing from her heart to spread throughout her limbs.

Without hesitation, she scrambled from his grasp, clasping onto the rod with both hands and shifting her hair back with a flick of her head.

“You alright?” Liam asked in a tone as smooth as honey glazed ham.

With an averted gaze and burning cheeks, she ran her tongue over her teeth. “Yep. Just needed to embarrass myself here, too, you know. Gotta hit all the spots in London apparently.”

The grin she was rewarded with would have made all the embarrassment in the world worth it, had her legs not weakened at the sight.

FIFTEEN

After what seemed an eternity, Claire and Liam finally reached Aldgate Station. Claire was the first to put some distance between them, hopping from the train onto the platform with so much swiftness, she nearly toppled into the people in front of her.

She couldn’t help it. She was too attracted to Liam—like, unhealthily attracted to him. How else could she explain knowing him for only three days and having such strong reactions to being merely near to him? Falling into his perfectly solid, perfectly lovely, perfectly manly chest had been a wakeup call.

Thank goodness it was only physical attraction. If she liked him any more than as a friend, she’d be in for a world of hurt when she left England, and that was something she didn’t want for herself. She already missed too many people from her life as it was.

What she really needed to do to keep herself safe was to remember all of the things she didn’t like about the guy. That would be easy enough—she’d just think about how rude he’d been to her at the airport and how often he’d made fun of her since.

And yet, as the evening progressed, she found it more and more difficult to remember those brief moments, as Liam Everhart seemed to be on a mission to prove he was an anomaly among the men in her life, past and present.

First, as they’d strolled down the long, cement platform between the two train tracks, a musician’s jazzy rendition of Jingle Bells had echoed down the station, so Liam had tossed a few spare pound coins into the man’s saxophone case as they walked by.

It wasn’t that big of a deal, really. He’d be selfish if he hadn’t dispensed a few coins. But then, as they sat down for dinner at Honeysett’s Fish and Chips, he took to asking her question after question about Peonies & Burlap, about what her typical day of work looked like, and about how she found herself falling in love with flowers in the first place.

“It’s kinda morbid,” she’d said, but he’d urged her on anyway. “I was at my great-aunt’s funeral when I was just a little girl, and I was more interested in the floral displays than I was the actual service.”

Liam had chuckled, then he’d spent the next half hour asking her how she was making her dream come true of owning her own shop one day.

If Claire didn’t know any better, she’d have thought he was trying to impress her, what with all of his perfect conversational skills, but she knew he didn’t like her in that way. He’d seemed hardly ruffled by her falling into him on the train, or when their knees bumped into each other beneath the table as they ate. More importantly, how could he be attracted to her, an apparently accident-prone American who he’d been forced to hang out with all day long?

It was more likely that his mom had coerced him into speaking about Claire’s life, just like she’d coerced him into spending the day with her. There was no other reason for him to appear so interested in her.

Especially when the saucy waitress who’d been eying Liam up all night returned to their table to deliver their separate checks, which Claire had insisted on to avoid the appearance of her being a freeloader.

“I’ll be right back for these, then,” the waitress said with another smile in Liam’s direction.

Liam smiled in return, and Claire averted her gaze once again. Richard had always flirted with the waitresses when they went out. Not that Liam was flirting, per say. But there was no way he wasn’t flattered by the brunette-and-red-lipped-beauty’s attention.