with this man on a daily basis, have his hand brush hers, feel his breath on her neck as he bent over her desk to read a report as Steven had done many times …? Rose shuddered. The horrifying imaginary scenario made her want to crawl out of her skin.
‘Don’t be embarrassed. The extra padding has gone to all the right places.’
Padding! Rose gritted her teeth. She was comfortable with her weight. She knew she was never going to be a size eight, basically because she would never starve herself and become a gym junkie like Rebecca to achieve it, but there was a line. And he had just crossed it.
She embraced the anger, gritting her teeth, and gave him a steady look. ‘You’re too kind.’
‘No, I’m not. I’m not kind at all.’
Looking into his spooky pale eyes, Rose believed him. She shivered and lowered her gaze.
CHAPTER FOUR
IGNORING him as best she could, Rose pulled the heavy dry sweater over her head. It reached her knees and acted as a screen as, still shaking feverishly, she peeled away her jeans.
Before she had managed to wriggle them down to her ankles he had opened the door and returned to the front seat without a word. He started the engine with a curt instruction for her to belt up.
Belt up … he probably, she decided, meant it in both senses of the word, which was no problem for her. The last thing she felt like was making conversation. They’d been driving for a couple of minutes before she realised he couldn’t know where she lived.
‘I’m staying at Dornie House, that’s the last turning after—’
His impatient voice cut across her. ‘I’m not taking you there.’ His eyes met hers in the rear-view mirror. ‘You need to get checked over; there’s a cottage hospital in Muir.’
‘I don’t need to see a doctor.’
‘Need or not, you’re going to,’ came the autocratic retort.
Short of jumping out a moving vehicle, she didn’t have much choice but to go along with his plan. The man was obviously a total control freak.
‘There’s a blanket on the back seat if you don’t mind a few dog hairs. It should only take five minutes or so.’
She lasted three. She was wasting her breath, she knew that, but how could she let him go away thinking that she was someone she wasn’t? She really wanted to hear him admit he was wrong.
‘I’ve never slept with you, you know.’ Or anyone else, though Rebecca’s theory on this sad state of affairs was wrong—it wasn’t because she was a hopeless romantic who couldn’t deal with real emotions. That was the problem. She wanted emotions; she didn’t want soulless sex.
It was just her luck that the one man she had met whom she could imagine sex not being a cold, mechanical exercise with had already been taken. Her brow wrinkled as she recalled Rebecca’s suggestion that it wasn’t accidental she had fallen in love with someone who was inaccessible. Then she found herself recalling that one time when Steven had kissed her.it hadn’t been what she had expected. She hadn’t been carried away by passion; in fact, she had felt oddly removed from the event.
‘Only because I threw you out.’
His scornful observation cut like a blade through Rose’s rambling reflections.
‘Why? What was wrong with me?’ Rose closed her eyes and bit her lip. Could I have sounded more like a rejected lover if I tried?
‘I do not sleep with drunk groupies,’ he announced with disdainful hauteur.
The blood that had returned to her tingling extremities now rushed to her head. ‘Now hang on, I know you probably saved my life, but—’
He cut across her with a sardonic, ‘Probably?’
‘All right, then,’ she conceded crossly. ‘You saved my life, but that doesn’t give you the right to invent stories and virtually call me a tramp.’
‘It was not a term I used, but what would you call a woman who targets famous men with the purpose of adding another scalp to her belt? An icon of modern female empowerment?’
‘Famous?’ she echoed, getting seriously angry. ‘Am I supposed to know who you are?’
Dark brows elevated to an incredulous angle, he shot her a look of sardonic amusement in the rear-view mirror. ‘You are trying to tell me you don’t?’
‘I have never laid eyes on you before today,’ she snapped angrily.
‘Fine.’ He sighed, sounding like someone who was bored but prepared to go through the motions for a quiet life. ‘I am Mathieu Gauthier …’
Of course she knew the name even though she didn’t follow formula one. Well, it explained the arrogance—the adulation those drivers got was ludicrous. He had probably started believing his press releases.
‘Is that meant to mean something?’
It was obvious from the brief look he slung her over his shoulder that he didn’t swallow her pretended ignorance for a second, but to her relief he didn’t challenge her lie, but sounded lazily amused as he said, ‘If you are a fan of formula one it might.’
‘I thought you were Greek. Gauthier doesn’t sound very Greek to me.’
The lazy smile faded from his face. ‘Half Greek. I used my mother’s name professionally.’
‘So you are actually …?’
‘Mathieu Demetrios. Look, you don’t need to do this. I’m not going to tell anyone if that’s what is worrying you. Maybe your life has moved on and you’re ashamed of your past … though in my opinion you’d do better to come clean with whoever is in your life now.’ He didn’t doubt for a moment there would be somebody; for women who looked as she did there was always somebody.
‘Thank you for the advice,’ she gritted, thinking it was so not asked for. ‘But I’m not ashamed. I have nothing in my past to be ashamed of.’ Which makes me one of the most sad twenty-six-year-olds on the planet. ‘I don’t even know where or when I’m supposed to have tried to … to … seduce you.’
‘Monaco.’
‘Well, I’ve never been to Mon—’ She stopped. She hadn’t, but Rebecca had. She had the postcard to prove it.
Rose closed her eyes, a silent sigh leaving her lips. The woman he was talking about, sneering at, the woman who had tried to seduce him, was none other than her twin.
Rebecca who had been dumped literally at the altar and gone a little crazy. It all fitted, the timing, everything. They were talking about Rebecca’s ‘summer to forget’ when she had by her own admission done a lot of things she would like to forget. It looked as if jumping into the bed of a formula-one champion driver had been one of them.
It was like seeing the last piece of a jigsaw slot horribly into place—she had always hated jigsaws.
Oh,
