any other guy. And now he had to go and pretend to be in love with her. And the only result of calling him on it would be to hurt the man she’d come to care for almost as a parent. She couldn’t do it to him. She’d have to talk to Joss in private. He could break it to his father gently.
Funny how being angry with him made him that little bit less fanciable—she’d been looking for something to knock the shine off him for years.
It wasn’t as if she wanted to be attracted to him—she told herself that often enough. She couldn’t think of anyone less suitable for falling in love with than the son of her boss, who spent half his time on the road visiting the UK stores, and the other half in his office, buried in spreadsheets and dodging calls from disappointed would-be dates.
Secretaries talked—hardly breaking news.
As soon as she’d recognised where her feelings were going—the irritating pitter-patter of her heart, the annoying dampness of her palms, not to mention the completely inappropriate but delicious dreams that had her waking flushed and impressed by the breadth of her own imagination—she’d acted.
She’d put space between them at the office, avoided him in the break room and at the pub. She’d thrown herself into dating in a way that was the opposite of Joss’s clinical style: enthusiastically, prolifically, discriminately. She’d found handsome, eligible bachelors who weren’t intimidated by her salary or her seven fluent languages—or the handful of conversational ones. She’d dated in Russian, Greek and German, and once—haltingly, but memorably—in Mandarin. She’d gone dancing, cocktail-making, picnicking. Tried blue blood and blue collar.
And not a single one of the men she’d kissed so demurely on the cheek at the end of the night had helped her even start forgetting about Joss. He was beginning to appear annoyingly unforgettable, and now he was pulling her into a deceit that she knew, unhesitatingly, was a BAD IDEA. All caps.
‘Well, like I said, I can’t say that I’m surprised. I’ve suspected for a while that you two have a soft spot for each other,’ Edward said at last, still smiling.
Eva groaned inwardly. Oh, no, how much of her stupid crush had he seen? How much was he going to figure out? How much was Joss going to figure out for himself?
‘And it makes me a very happy man to see you settled and in love before I go.’
The three of them sank into silence as the meaning of his words hit home and the reality of his illness intruded once again on the completely insane situation Joss had just created.
‘But now I’ve got work to do—so get out of here, the pair of you.’
Eva kissed Edward on the cheek and mumbled something indiscernible, then let Joss follow her from the room, past the open-plan desks and into Joss’s office.
‘What the hell was that?’ she demanded as soon as they were alone, staring at Joss as he sank into his chair and rested his face in his hands.
‘Not now, Eva.’
‘Not now? You just told your father we’re engaged—I think I’m entitled to an explanation.’
‘He’s just told me he’s dying. I can’t talk about this now.’
She dropped into a chair opposite him, feeling sick to her stomach. Joss was right—he’d just had terrible news. Much as she had every right to give him hell, perhaps now wasn’t the time.
‘You didn’t know anything about it?’ she asked gently.
‘He didn’t say anything. Just that he needed to speak to me before the meeting. But I was tied up on a call and I... I missed the meeting. He wanted to tell me.’
‘You couldn’t have known he was going to tell you that.’ She crossed to stand beside him and rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘It wouldn’t have changed anything. The news would have been the same.’
‘It would have felt different if he’d been able to talk to me before having to tell everyone else.’
‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’
He leaned his head against her arm and she let her hand brush against his hair.
‘And I’m sorry for what I told him about us.’
Eva moved her hand away, aware of a sudden change of the chemistry in the room. She hitched herself onto the corner of the desk, letting her stilettoed feet dangle.
‘What was that about? The truth would have been a much simpler explanation. It’s going to be a hundred times harder to explain things now. Engaged or not, who knows what he thinks we were up to in his office?’
‘I was thinking on my feet. I didn’t want him to think that you were involved in something sordid, and my brain went to “engaged” rather than “wardrobe malfunction”. You saw his face when I told him that we were getting married. I knew that it would make him happy.’
‘Marrying me?’
‘Being happy...settled. It’s all he wants for me. And since my divorce... You don’t want to hear all that. Just trust me on this one. I know my father. I knew it would make him happy.’
‘So what’s it going to do to him when you tell him there’s no engagement?’
And suddenly, from the defiant clench of his jaw and the killer look in his eyes, Eva knew that he wasn’t planning on telling his father the truth at all.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said, keeping her voice low and commanding. ‘We have to tell him the truth. I’ll tell him about the coffee and the dress. I’ll sort this out.’
Joss shrugged, never breaking eye contact, never backing down from the challenge she’d made so clear in her voice.
‘We’ll explain about the dress. But I see no reason to drop the pretence of our engagement.’
She stood slowly from the desk and took a step towards him, letting him know that she found neither his position in the company nor the six inches in height he had over her intimidating in the slightest. Least of all when he was seated and she could tower over him.
‘No reason, Joss? You just panicked and told a bare-faced lie that has implications for us both. I have no intention of lying to your father, so unless you want him to hear from me that you just fabricated a fiancée, I think you would do better to just tell him now.’
‘Or we could make him believe that it’s true.’
She took half a step back to stare at Joss. ‘Have you completely lost your mind? Why would we want to do that?’
‘Maybe I have lost my mind. It wouldn’t be the first time. I don’t know... What I do know is that my father has just told me that he’s dying, and I—we—can do something to make him happy in the time he has left.’
‘By lying to him? Do you think he’d really want that?’
‘You saw his face. You tell me if you think the lie hurt him.’
She shrugged, unable to contradict him. ‘I know he seemed happy, Joss. But it can’t be right.
