Getting Over Mr. Right by Chrissie Manby Read Free Book Online Page B

in hers? What if he just wanted me to prove my love in public? He’d broken up with me in a public forum, after all. What if I just had to declare my love for him in a public forum, too? What if it was that simple?
    I Googled the phrase “grand gesture” and found a dozen similar stories.
    “She said she never wanted to see me again, but I turned up at her office with some flowers and a ring and now we’re having our second child.”
    “We were on the point of divorcing but my brave step pulled us back. He said what he wanted all along was real proof of my love.”
    If proof was what Michael wanted, then proof was what I would give him.

Waking up the following morning, having managed just a couple of hours’ sleep, I suppose I wasn’t exactly thinking like a genius. I had that final scene from
An Officer and a Gentleman
running through my head. The one where Richard Gere goes into his lover’s workplace and sweeps her off her feet. I was going to do something like that for Michael.
    I took a taxi to the building where he worked, stopping en route to pick up three dozen red roses from a stand on the street. I got past the security guards at Michael’s company with ease. I persuaded them against calling him up to announce my arrival by telling them that I was on my way to deliver a singing telegram for Michael’s birthday and that to call him first would spoil the surprise.
    One of the guards looked lasciviously down the front of my shirt. “Like a stripping policewoman?” he asked.
    “I just sing,” I told him sharply.
    So, I got to the floor where Michael had his office, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to get past Tina, his assistant. Unless she was on a cigarette break. I prayed she would be on a cigarette break. She wasn’t on a cigarette break.
    “W-what?” she stuttered when she saw me. “Ashleigh. You’re … er … you’re in the office. And you … you’ve brought flowers. Nobody called to say you were coming up.”
    “I know,” I said breezily. “I told them not to. I wanted it to be a surprise.”
    “It’s certainly that,” said Tina. “But, anyway, Michael is in a meeting …”
    “I know you’re lying,” I said. “I know he’s told you not to let me anywhere near him.”
    “That’s not true,” Tina swore. “He really is in a meeting. But I promise I’ll tell him you dropped by.”
    Well, if he had been in a meeting, he was out of it now. My attention was attracted by movement at the end of the corridor and I turned to see the man himself, coming out of the staff kitchen with a steaming mug in his hand. Tea. Milk. One sugar. I knew the way he liked it so well. He was dipping a biscuit as he walked. He looked as though he didn’t have a care in the world. He certainly didn’t look as though he had just broken up with the love of his life.
    “Michael,” I called out to him. “I have to speak to you.”
    Michael froze with the chocolate HobNob halfway between the mug and his mouth. In the time it took him to register who had called his name from behind all those flowers, half the biscuit had dropped back into the tea with a plop. Michael swore as the tea splashed on his tie.
    “Ashleigh, what are you doing here?” he hissed. He remained at the other end of the corridor. He would not walk toward me, and Tina had come out from behind her desk and was preventing me from heading toward him like a goal defense marking goal attack on the netball court.
    “You won’t return my calls,” I shouted to him. “You won’t answer my emails or texts. What am I supposed to do?”
    “Get the message?” said the bright spark who had the desk opposite Tina. I gave her the benefit of a glare.
    “You should go,” said Michael. “And take those flowers with you. This is not the right time for this.”
    “But when will there be a right time?” I implored him. “When will you listen to what I have to say?”
    “There really isn’t anything left to say, is