he’d made that rule, but he’d made it knowing he might be tempted from time to time and he’d made it for good reason. But at least he knew he wouldn’t have to spend the night forcing himself to smile at a woman he wasn’t interested in. He found it easy to smile at her now, as she returned from the powder room, coyly avoiding his eyes. She was uncannily, serendipitously perfect, from the top of her honey-caramel hair to the tips of the lacquered toenails peeping out of her shoes. And he had to smile. To think he’d imagined her middle-aged and taking nanna naps! How wrong could a man be? He would have no trouble at all feigning interest in this woman, no trouble at all.
He rose, heading her off before she could sit down, her eyes widening as he approached and blocked off the route to her armchair so she was forced to stop, even in heels forced to tilt her head up to look at him. Even now her colour was unnaturally high, her bright eyes alert as if she was poised on the brink of escape.
There was no chance of escape.
Oh no. His clever, classy little virtual PA wasn’t going anywhere yet. Not before he’d convinced Culshaw that he had nothing to fear from dealing with him, and that he was a rock-solid family man. Which meant he just had to convince Evelyn that she had nothing to fear from him.
‘Are we late?’ she asked, sounding breathless and edgy. ‘Is it time to go?’
He could be annoyed at her clear display of nerves. He should be if her nervousness put his plans at risk. But somehow the entire package was so enticing. He liked it that he so obviously affected her. And so what that she wasn’t plain? She wasn’t exactly classically pretty either—her green eyes were perhaps too wide, her nose too narrow, but they were balanced by a wide mouth that lent itself to both the artist’s paintbrush and to thoughts of long afternoons of lazy sex.
Not necessarily in that order.
For just one moment he thought he’d noted those precise details in a face before, but the snatch of memory was fleeting, if in fact it was memory at all, and flittered away before he could pin it down to a place or time. No matter. Nothing mattered right now but that she was there and that he had a good feeling about tonight. His lips curved into a smile. A very good feeling.
‘Not yet. Dinner is set for eight in the presidential suite.’
She glanced at the sparkly evening watch on her wrist and then over her shoulder, edging ever so slightly towards the door, and as much as he found her agitation gratifying, he knew he had to sort this out. ‘Maybe I should check with the staff that everything’s good with the dinner,’ she suggested. ‘Just remind them that it’s for a party of six now…’
He shook his head benevolently, imagining this was how gamekeepers felt when they soothed nervous animals. ‘Evelyn, it’s all under control. Besides, there’s something more important you should be doing right now.’ He touched the pad of his middle finger, just one finger, to her shoulder and she jumped and shrank back.
‘And what might that be?’ she asked, breathless and trembling and trying to mask it by feigning interest in the closest photographic print on the wall. A picture of the riverbank, he noticed with a glance, of trees and park benches and some old man sitting in the middle of the bench, gazing out at the river. That wouldn’t hold her attention for long. Not when he did this…
‘You’re perfect,’ he said, lifting his hand to a stray tendril of hair that had come loose and feeling her shudder as his fingertips caressed her neck. ‘I couldn’t have asked for a better pretend fiancée.’
Her eyelids fluttered as he swore she swayed into his touch until she seemed to snap herself awake and shift the other way. ‘I sense a “but” coming.’
‘No buts,’ he said, pretending to focus on the print on the wall before them. ‘We just have to get our stories straight, in case someone asks us how we met. I was thinking it would make sense to keep things as close to the truth as possible. That you were working as my PA and one thing led to another.’
‘I guess.’
‘And we’ve been together now, what, two years? Except we don’t see each other that often as I’m always on the move and you live in Australia.’
‘That makes sense.’
‘That makes perfect sense. And explains why we want to wait before making that final commitment.’
‘Marriage.’ She nodded. ‘We’re taking our time.’
‘Exactly,’ he said, slipping a tentative arm around her shoulders, feeling her shudder at the contact. ‘We want to be absolutely sure, which is hard when we only get to see each other a few snatched times a year.’
‘Okay. I’ve got that.’
‘Excellent.’ He turned towards her. Put a finger under her chin and lifted it so that she had no choice but to look into his eyes. ‘But there’s one thing you don’t get.’
‘I knew there was a but coming,’ she said, and he would have laughed, but she was so nervous, so on edge, and he didn’t want to spook her. Not when she was so important to him tonight.
‘This one’s simple,’ he said. ‘All you have to do is relax with me.’
‘I’m perfectly relaxed,’ she said stiffly, sounding more like a prim librarian than any kind of lover.
‘Are you, when my slightest touch…’ he ran a fingertip down her arm and she shivered and shied away ‘…clearly makes you uncomfortable.’
‘It’s a dinner,’ she said, defensively. ‘Why should you need to touch me?’
‘Because any red-blooded man, especially one intending to marry you and who doesn’t get the chance to see you that often, would want to touch you every possible moment of every day.’
‘Oh.’
‘Oh, indeed. You see my problem.’
‘So what do you suggest?’
Her eyes were wide and luminous and up close he could see they were neither simply green nor blue but all the myriad colours of the sea mixed together, the vibrant green where the shallow water kissed the sand, the sapphire blue of the deep water, and everything in between. And even though she was supposed to be off limits, he found himself wondering what they’d look like when she came.
‘I find practice usually makes perfect.’
She swallowed, and he followed the movement down her slender throat. ‘You want to practise touching me?’
Fascinated, his thumb found the place where the movement had disappeared, his fingers tracing her collarbone and feeling her trembling response, before sliding around her neck, drawing her closer as his eyes settled on her too-wide lips, deciding they weren’t too wide at all, but as close to perfect as they could get.
‘And I want you to practise not jumping every time I do.’
‘I…I’ll try,’ she said, a mist rolling in over her eyes, and he doubted she even realised she was already swaying into his touch.
He smiled as he tilted her chin with his other hand, his thumb stroking along the line of her jaw. ‘You see, it’s not that hard.’
She
