hesitation. He smiled, and it looked dangerous and far too seductive.
‘Don’t worry—I won’t ravish you. And you have to eat, don’t you?’
She opened her mouth, and to her utter horror and chagrin her stomach made a sound like water going down a very big, echoing drain. She promptly shut her mouth and blushed.
‘That settles it.’ He took her arm and shepherded her back up the steps and into the main open-air foyer of the hotel.
The feeling of unreality lingered as they were shown to a secluded table in the corner of the magnificent restaurant. There were no walls, only columns, open to the warm air, the hazy blue of the sky and the lapping waters of the lake, intricately carved with complicated mosaics which were echoed in the roof above. It was truly the most breathtaking place Sorcha had ever been in her life.
A waiter materialised and she heard Romain order a bottle of champagne. She stopped him with a brief, light touch on his hand. He looked at her quizzically.
‘I’m sorry but do you mind if we don’t have champagne? It’s just that it gives me a headache…’
She sent a small, hesitant smile to the waiter and then back to Romain, who felt slightly winded.
‘If you don’t mind…what I’d actually really like is a beer.’
He lifted a brow and felt totally nonplussed. It had been pure reflex to order champagne—his first step in any seduction. And she wanted beer? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d even drunk a beer, and yet in that instant it seemed to him to be the most desirable drink in the world.
He nodded to the waiter. ‘Two beers, please.’
Sorcha felt embarrassed as the waiter scurried away. ‘Oh, you don’t have to have one just because of me…That is,’ she qualified, feeling awkward, ‘you don’t exactly look like a beer drinking man.’
He sat back. His face was all lean angles, making him look austere.
‘Tell me, what do I look like?’
Like a man who knows how to make love to a woman…
Sorcha’s insides liquefied, and she couldn’t believe how a bubble of sensuality seemed to have enveloped them.
She had to control herself with effort. ‘You look like a vintage champagne type. Or a thousand-euro-a-bottle of wine type.’
He had actually paid that much and more for wine in the past, and it seemed almost crass now. ‘Forgive me. I should have consulted with you before ordering. Though, after seeing you put away half a glass of champagne in one go in New York, I was under the impression that you liked it.’
Sorcha had the grace to smile. ‘I actually hate the stuff. I wouldn’t have had a glass at all, only for Katie giving me one. Maud likes us to look like we’re having a good time at events like that…drinking champagne promotes the stereotype.’
‘And you weren’t having a good time?’ he asked easily.
The beers arrived. Romain held his bottle up and Sorcha clinked hers to his. Without breaking eye contact, they both took a long swallow.
Romain closed his eyes for a second. ‘I’d forgotten how good it tastes—especially in this climate…’ He opened them again, catching Sorcha looking at him with glittering big blue eyes. His body tightened. ‘Go on, you were going to tell me why you weren’t having a good time…’
She was? She had to be careful. To her consternation, she was finding that he was all too easy to talk to. It would be very easy to let something slip out that she wasn’t ready to talk about.
She shrugged minutely. ‘Well, you saw what it was like. A room full of movers and shakers. We were there primarily as adornments. People look at us and think: Models—ergo stupid. It’s all about seeing and being seen.’
She looked out to the lake. ‘In the early days it was all fabulously exciting to be in the same room as the Mayor of New York, or the biggest, newest film star, but really…your illusions get stripped away pretty quickly. Coming from somewhere like Ireland, I think I have a pretty good inbuilt detector for anyone who isn’t genuine. And about one per cent of that crowd are genuine…’
What she said brought back a niggling sense of déjà vu, but before he could dwell on it, pin it down, the waiter returned and took their order. Romain ordered more beers, and Sorcha was surprised to see they’d already been talking for some time. Her eyes took in his relaxed stance, his T-shirt straining across the muscles of his chest. She remembered seeing him emerge from the sea in Ireland. He smiled and she couldn’t breathe. The brown column of his throat looked all too touchable.
It felt as if a silken cord of intimacy was wrapping itself around Sorcha.
She spoke to fill the silence which seemed far too heavy and potent for her, seizing on the first thing that came into her head.
‘I was here before…’ She answered his questioning look, ‘On a backpacking trip with my friend Katie, when we were twenty-one. We’d been on a shoot in Delhi, and decided to do a little travelling before going home. We stayed at a tiny hostel just across the water there somewhere. We used to sit in our window, drinking beers. We’d dream about being over here, having a sumptuous meal, fine wine…’
She couldn’t stop a sudden giggle from rising, and Romain watched her. She didn’t realise how infectious her grin was. She knew part of it was a slightly hysterical reaction to being here in the first place, sharing such an intimate space with this man. At how fast things were moving, changing…
‘I’m sorry—it’s just that if Katie could see me now, she’d be so horrified…’ The giggle crept higher, and Sorcha bit her lip to stop it erupting. But when she saw a twitch on Romain’s mouth she couldn’t help it spilling out.
‘The fact that I’m here in shorts and a T-shirt, fulfilling our fantasy…and drinking beer…’ A tear escaped from her eye and she had to wipe it away, laughing in earnest now. ‘She’d kill me!’
A grin broke out on Romain’s face, and that sobered her up quicker than anything—the sheer masculine perfection of his features.
Her giggles died away with a little hiccup. ‘Sorry…it’s just if you’d seen the place we were staying…If Katie was here, she’d be dignity personified…not like me, swilling beer and corrupting your fine palate. Maybe you should have brought her,’ she said lightly, too lightly.
Romain shook his head. ‘I’m not interested in her.’
Sorcha’s heart pounded uncomfortably into the silence.
‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘you’re good friends?’
Sorcha nodded emphatically. This was easy. ‘The best. She’s been there for me since—’ She broke off, stopping her runaway mouth, and finished, ‘Since for ever. We’ve known each other since we were ten…and got discovered at the same time by a scout from Dublin when we were fifteen.’
At that moment their food was delivered. With relief at finding his intense focus off her for a moment, Sorcha tucked into the food, suddenly ravenous. They shared starters of traditional samosas and spring rolls wrapped
