get the opportunity to peel off her gown and unleash the real woman beneath.
But the evening did work, and well. The drinks and canapés, the dinner, the coffee and dessert—the hotel catering would get a bonus. It was all faultless. Culshaw was beaming, his wife was glowing and the Alvarezes made such entertaining dinner companions, reeling out one amusing anecdote after another, that half the time everyone was laughing too much to eat.
And Evelyn—the delectable Evelyn—played her part to perfection. Though he frowned as he caught her glancing at her watch again. Perfect, apart from that annoying habit she had of checking the time every ten minutes. Why? It wasn’t like she was going anywhere. Certainly not before they’d had a chance to catch up on old times.
Finally coffee and liqueurs had been served and the staff quietly vanished back into the kitchen. Culshaw stifled a yawn, apologising and blaming his habit of going for a long early walk every morning for not letting him stay up late. ‘But I thank you all for coming. Richard and Leo, maybe we can get those contract terms nutted out tomorrow—what do you think?’
The men drew aside to agree on a time to meet while the women chatted, gathering up purses and wraps. They were nice people, Eve thought, wishing she could have met them in different circumstances, and not while living this lie. She knew she’d never meet them again, and maybe in the bigger scheme of things it made no difference to anything, as they would all go their separate ways in a day or so, but that thought was no compensation for knowing she’d spent the evening pretending to be someone and something she was not.
‘Shall we go?’ Leo said, breaking into her thoughts as he wrapped his big hand around hers and lifted it to his mouth, and Eve could see how pleased he was with himself and with the way things had gone.
The final act, she thought as his lips brushed her hand and his eyes simmered with barely contained desire. A look filled with heated promise, of a coming night filled with tangled limbs in tangled sheets. The look a man should give his fiancée before they retired to their room for the night. The final pretence.
No pretence necessary when her body responded like a woman’s should respond to her lover’s unspoken invitation, ripening and readying until she could feel the pulse of her blood beating out her need in that secret place between her thighs, achingly insistent, turning her thoughts to sex. No wonder everyone believed them to be lovers. He acted the part so very well. He made it so easy. He made her body want to believe it.
A shame, she thought as they said their final goodbyes and left the suite. Such a shame it was all for nothing. Such a waste of emotional energy and sizzling intensity. Already she could feel her body winding down, the sense of anticlimax rolling in. The sudden silence somehow magnified it, the hushed passage devoid of other guests, as empty as their pretend relationship.
‘Will the car be waiting for me downstairs?’ she asked, glancing at her phone as they waited in the lift lobby. No messages, she noticed with relief, dropping it back into her purse. Which meant Mrs Willis had had no problems with Sam.
‘So anxious to get away?’ the man at her side said. ‘Do you have somewhere you’re desperate to get to?’
‘Not really. Just looking forward to getting home.’ And she wasn’t desperate. There no point rushing now, Eve knew. She’d been watching the time and chances were Mrs Willis was well and truly tucked up in bed by now, which meant no picking up Sam before morning. But equally there was nothing for her here. She’d done her job. It was time to drop the make-believe and go home to her real life.
‘No? Only you kept checking your watch every five minutes through dinner and you just now checked your phone. I get the impression I’m keeping you from something—or someone.’
‘No,’ she insisted, cursing herself for being so obvious. She’d gone to the powder room to check her messages during the evening, not wanting to be rude or raise questions. She hadn’t thought anyone would notice a quick glance at her watch. ‘Look, it’s nothing. But we’ve finished here, haven’t we?’
‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’
‘What?’ He took her hand and lifted it, the sapphire flashing on her finger. ‘Oh, of course. I almost forgot.’ She tried to slip her hand from his so she could take it off, but he stilled her.
‘Not here. Wait till we get to the suite.’ And she would have argued that it wasn’t necessary, that she could give it to him in the lift for that matter, only she heard voices behind them and the sound of the Alvarezes approaching and knew she had no choice, not when their suites were on the same floor and it would look bizarre if she didn’t accompany Leo.
‘Ah, we meet again,’ Richard said, coming around the corner with Felicity on his arm as the lift doors whooshed open softly behind them. ‘Great night, Leo, well done. Culshaw seems much more comfortable to do business now. He agreed to call to arrange things after his walk in the morning.’
Leo smiled and nodded. ‘Excellent,’ he said, pressing the button for the next floor as they made small talk about the dinner, within seconds the two couples bidding each other goodnight again and heading for their respective suites.
And, really, it wasn’t a problem for Eve. Leo had told her his rule about not mixing business with pleasure. So she knew she had nothing to fear. She’d give him back the ring, make sure the coast was clear, and be gone. She’d be in and out in two minutes, tops.
He swiped a card through the reader, holding the door open so she could precede him into the room. She ignored the flush of sensation as she brushed past him, tried not to think about how good he smelt or analyse the individual ingredients that made up his signature scent, and had the ring off her finger and back in its tiny box before the door had closed behind her. ‘Well, that’s that, then,’ she said brightly, snapping the box shut and setting it back on the coffee table. ‘I think that concludes our business tonight. Maybe you could summon up that car for me and I’ll get going.’
‘You said you didn’t have to rush off,’ he said, busy extracting a cork from what looked suspiciously like a bottle of French champagne he’d just pulled from an ice bucket she was sure hadn’t seen before, and felt her first shiver of apprehension.
‘I don’t remember that being there when we left.’
‘I asked the wait staff to organise it,’ he explained. ‘I thought a celebration was in order.’
Another tremor. Another tiny inkling of…what? ‘A celebration?’
‘For pulling off tonight. For having everyone believe we were a couple. You had both Eric and Maureen, not to mention Richard and Felicity, eating out of your hand.’
‘It was a nice evening,’ she said warily, accepting a flute of the pale gold liquid, wishing he’d make a move to sit down, wishing he was anywhere in the suite but standing right there between her and the door. Knowing she could move away but that would only take her deeper into his suite. Knowing that was the last place she wanted to be. ‘They’re nice people.’
‘It was a perfect evening. In fact, you make the perfect virtual fiancée, Evelyn Carmichael. Perhaps you should even put that on your CV.’ He touched his glass to hers and raised it. ‘Here’s to you, my virtual PA, my virtual fiancée. Here’s to…us.’
She could barely breathe, barely think. There was no us. But he had that look again, the look he’d had before they’d left the presidential suite that had her pulse quickening and beating in dark, secret places. And suddenly
