‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...’
‘I know. I know you didn’t mean anything by it. But, yeah, we would have to keep it up until he dies. Which, apparently, won’t be all that long. Don’t worry—I don’t expect you to actually say I do.’
She sat and thought on it for a moment. Remembered the look on Edward’s face when Joss had told his lie. She couldn’t deny that he’d looked happy. As happy as she’d seen him for a long time.
She loved Edward. He had been the one constant in her life for so long now, and she wasn’t sure how she was going to manage without him. A sob threatened, and her hand lifted slowly to her throat as she forced it down. She slumped into the back of the chair, suddenly deflated. Surely if it made Edward happy she could do this. She should do this.
‘I need some time to think about it,’ she said eventually, not wanting Joss to know the direction her thoughts had been heading.
Goodness knew she’d been trying to keep the details of her mind secret from him for long enough. If they were to go through with this completely ridiculous idea, how was she meant to keep that up? To hide the fact that her mouth wanted to part every time she saw him? That she had to stop her tongue moistening her lips and her body swaying towards him?
‘Take some time, then. No work’s going to get done this afternoon anyway, by the looks of it.’
Eva shook her head. ‘Your father will need me.’
‘I’m going to my father’s office now, and we’re going to have a long talk. I’ll make sure there’s not a problem. If you want, I can say you went home with a headache.’
‘While he’s still at work with a terminal illness? Thanks but no thanks. Lock yourself in with your father if you want, but I’ll be at my desk if either of you need me.’
Joss leaned back in his chair, raising his hands to admit defeat. ‘We need to talk, though. And we can’t do that in the office. Dinner tonight?’
Dinner tonight.
How many times had she imagined Joss issuing an invitation like that? Though she’d always known that she wouldn’t accept. It wasn’t even the time that he spent travelling around the country that made her think he was a million miles from boyfriend material. No, it was the fact that even when he was here he wasn’t quite...here. There was an isolation about him. A distance. Even when he was close enough to touch.
She’d done long-distance before, with people in her life that she’d loved, and she’d hated every second of it. The last thing she needed was a man—a fiancé—who was distant even when he was in the room.
But she couldn’t ignore him while he was going around telling people that they had got engaged. She had to convince him to tell his father the truth. And then figure out how they were meant to work together.
‘Yes,’ she agreed eventually. ‘I guess we do need to talk about this. My place? I don’t feel like going out after news like this. I don’t suppose you do either.’
‘No. That sounds good. Eight?’
She nodded, and scribbled down her address.
Walking back to her desk, she grabbed the coffee-stained dress and put it in the garment bag that she’d flung over her chair as she’d raced for the boardroom.
The blinds in Edward’s office were drawn—a sure sign that he didn’t want to be disturbed—so she sat at her computer, knowing that her work—the one constant she had in her life—was going to change irrevocably, and there was nothing she could do about it.
EVA CHECKED ON the food and resisted glancing at her reflection in the window. She didn’t want Joss to think that she’d made an effort, so she’d not touched her hair or her make-up since she’d got home, and had just thrown on jeans and a comfy jumper. She always wore her skinnies and a cashmere sweater for a Friday night in—that was perfectly plausible.
She didn’t even want to think about how the conversation over dinner was going to go, but she had to. Had to be prepared—set out in her own mind, at least, what was and wasn’t going to be on the cards.
Joss was crazy, thinking that they could get away with a fake engagement. They’d be under scrutiny every minute they were together at the office. She knew how little fuel the gossip furnace needed to keep it alight. But every time she convinced herself of how terrible an idea it was, she remembered the happiness on Edward’s face and the eagerness to please his father on Joss’s.
She had to admit to being intrigued.
Joss was a powerful man. A director—now the MD—of a vast luxury group of department stores, with a presence on every continent, property in every major European shopping capital. He was notorious for the coldness of his personal life—the wife and the marriage that he’d neglected, and the transactional nature of the dates he took to industry functions. The women he dated were always clients and colleagues, there to further a business deal or a conversation, and they always went home alone.
She’d always seen something else in him. Something more. Something in the way that he joked with his father in a way he didn’t with anyone else. Being so close to Edward, she’d seen their father-son relationship up close. Seen that Joss might not be the cold-hearted divorcee that everyone had him pegged as.
And now he’d invented an engagement just to please his dying father, and her curiosity was piqued again.
The two men didn’t have much time left together—and they both seemed happier with this alternative reality than with real life. Who was she to judge? Who was she to tell them they were wrong? If she hadn’t been personally involved she’d be telling them to do whatever they had to do in order to enjoy the time they had left together. But to say that she was ‘involved’ was putting things mildly—and this was way personal. She’d be as responsible as Joss if the truth came out and Edward’s heart was broken in his last few weeks or months.
And maybe all of this was academic. Because it assumed that they stood a chance of getting away with this charade. Making everyone believe that they were in love. Well, it wouldn’t be too hard to convince on her side, she supposed, given the attraction that she’d been hiding for years.
Through the break-up of his marriage—that time of dark black circles under his eyes and an almost permanent blank expression on his face—she was the only one who had seen him lean back against his father’s office door after he’d left a meeting, composing his features and erasing all emotion before he went and faced the rest of the office. And in the time since, he’d been working non-stop—not competing with his colleagues but seemingly competing with himself.
It was hard to pinpoint when she had realised she had a heck of a crush growing. Perhaps after the dip in her stomach when she’d won a hard-earned smile, or when they’d argued in the boardroom and he’d held up his hands in concession to her point, never mind that he was a director and she an assistant.
Or when he’d walked in on her today, half-dressed in his father’s office, and her whole skin had hummed in awareness of him. She’d had to hide the blush that had crept over her cheeks when his fingertips had clasped the zip and
