shook her head. For her own benefit maybe, but it made her feel better. ‘It won’t work. It can’t. This is artifice and it will come unstuck and in grand style.’
‘Evelyn,’ he said measuredly, ‘it can work and it will. If you let it.’
‘Mr Zamos—’
‘One evening, Evelyn. Just one dinner.’
‘But it’s not honest. We’d both be lying.’
‘I prefer to think of it as offering reassurance where reassurance is needed. And if Culshaw needs reassurance before finalising this deal, who am I to deny him that?’
But making out we’re engaged? ‘I don’t know.’
‘Look, I haven’t got time for this now. Let’s cut to the chase. I said I was willing to pay someone above the odds and that goes for you too. This dinner is important to me, Evelyn, I don’t have to tell you how much. What do you think it’s worth for a few hours’ work?’
‘It’s not about the money!’
‘In my experience, it’s always about the money. Shall we say ten thousand of your Australian dollars?’
Eve gasped, thinking of new clothesdryers and new hot water services and the cost of plumbers and the possibility of not dipping into her savings and still having change left over. And last but by no means least, whether Mrs Willis next door might be able to babysit tonight…
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Let’s make it twenty. Would that be enough?’
Eve’s stomach roiled, even as she felt her eyes widening in response to the temptation. ‘Twenty thousand dollars,’ she repeated mechanically, ‘For one evening.’
‘I told you it was important to me. Is it enough, do you think, to entice you to have dinner with me?’
Twenty thousand dollars enough? It didn’t matter that his tone told her he was laughing at her. But for someone who had been willing to spend the night with him for nothing, the concept that he would pay so much blew her away. Did tonight really mean so much to him? Was there really that much at stake?
Really, the idea was so bizarre and ridiculous and impossible that it just might work. And, honestly, what were the chances he would recognise her? It had been almost three years ago and in a different city, and beyond heated looks they’d barely communicated that day and she doubted he even remembered her name, let alone what she looked like. And since then he’d met a thousand women in a thousand different cities, all of them beautiful, plenty of whom he’d no doubt slept with.
And since then she’d let her coloured hair settle back closer to its natural mousy colour and her body had changed with her pregnancy. Now she had curves that hadn’t been there before and maybe wouldn’t be there if she’d returned to work in that highly groomed, highly competitive office environment. One of the perils of working from home, she mused, was not having to keep up appearances.
Which also meant she had one hell of an afternoon in front of her if she was to be ready before seven. A glance at the wall clock told her she had less than eight hours to find a salon to squeeze into on the busiest day of the week, and find an outfit somewhere. Still assuming her neighbour could babysit tonight.
A thud came from the nursery, followed by a squeal and gurgles of pleasure, and she swung her head around. Sam was awake and busy liberating his soft toys from the confines of the cot. That meant she had about thirty seconds before he was the last man left standing and demanding to be released from jail the way he knew best. The loud way.
‘There’s a couple of things I have to square away,’ she said, anxious to get off the phone before Sam decided to howl the place down. ‘Can I call you back in a few minutes to confirm?’
‘Of course,’ he said, in that velvet-rich voice that felt like it was stroking her. ‘Call me. So long as it’s a yes.’
Leo slipped his phone into his pocket as the car came to a smooth halt outside his hotel. A doorman touched his gloved fingers to his hat as he pulled open the door, bowing his welcome. ‘We’ve been expecting you, Mr Zamos.’ He handed him a slim pink envelope that bore his name and a room number on the front. ‘Your suite is ready if you’d like to go straight up.’
‘Excellent,’ he said, nodding his thanks as he strode into the hotel entry and headed for the lifts, feeling more and more confident by the minute. He’d known Evelyn would soon have that little problem sorted, although maybe he hadn’t exactly anticipated her sorting it so quickly and efficiently.
What was she like? he wondered as the lift whisked him soundlessly skywards. Was he wrong not to insist on a photo of her to be safe? Originally he’d had looks on his list of requirements, on the basis that if he had to act as someone’s fiancé, he’d expected it would be one hell of a lot easier to be act the part if he didn’t have to force himself to smile whenever he looked at her or slipped his arm around her shoulders. But maybe someone more ordinary would be more convincing. Culshaw didn’t strike him as the sort of man who went for looks over substance and, given his circumstances, he’d be looking for a love match in the people he did business with. In which case, some nice plain girl might just fit the bill.
It was only for one night, after all.
The lift doors whooshed open on the twenty-fourth floor onto a window with a view over the outer city that stretched to the sea and air faintly scented with ginger flower.
Other than to get his bearings, he paid scant attention to the view. It was success Leo Zamos could smell first and foremost, success that set his blood to fizzing as he headed for his suite.
God, but he loved it when a plan came together!
EVE had some idea of how Cinderella must have felt on her way to the ball. Half an hour ago she’d left her old world behind, all tumbling-down house and broken-down appliances and baby rusks, and was now being whisked off in a silken gown to a world she had only ever dreamt of.
Had Cinderella been similarly terrified on her way to the ball? Had she felt this tangle of nerves writhing in her stomach as she’d neared the palace on that fairytale night? Had she felt this cold, hard fear that things would come terribly, terribly unstuck before the night was over? If so, she could well empathise.
Not that her story was any kind of fairy-tale. There’d been no fairy godmother who could transform her into some kind of princess in an instant with a touch of her magic wand for a start. Instead, Eve had spent the afternoon in a blur of preparations, almost spinning from salon to boutiques to appliance stores, in between packing up tiny pots of yoghurt and Sam’s favourite pasta so Mrs Willis wouldn’t have to worry about finding him something to eat. There had been no time for reflection, no time to sit down and really think about what she was doing or why she was even doing it.
But here, sitting alone against the buttery-soft upholstery of an entire limousine, she had no distractions, no escape from asking herself the questions that demanded to be answered. Why was she doing this? Why had she agreed to be Leo’s pretend fiancée, when all her instincts told her it was wrong? Why hadn’t she insisted on saying no?
Sure,
