He shifted his weight and shoved his hands in his pockets. He might’ve covered up, but Bella could recall with irritating clarity the definition of his pecs and abs, and how firm and warm his skin had felt against her cheek.
‘What’ll happen if it doesn’t get its DVD?’
She shook herself and hauled her gaze back to the cat. ‘She’ll destroy the apartment, that’s what.’
‘Why’d you agree to look after the damn thing?’
Even twisted up like that his lips looked intriguing and full of promise. ‘Because Melanie is my friend and nobody else would do it.’
‘I don’t like the sound of that.’
‘Minky’s cantankerous.’
His lip curled. ‘Minky?’
‘Don’t even go there. Not my cat. I didn’t name her.’
His lips twitched. ‘What would you call her?’
‘Medusa,’ she growled. ‘Because I’m petrified every single time she looks at me.’
He laughed then and all his beguiling goldenness and warmth seemed to reach out and brush against her. Her heart surged against her ribcage. Her lungs contracted.
‘If you give me your car keys I’ll go get your bags.’
Without a word, she fished her keys out of her pocket and handed them over. She wasn’t sure she was capable of speech.
When he left, she had to draw in several gulps of air before she could force her mind to work again. Bedroom. That’s right, check out the bedroom.
A short hallway led to two bedrooms directly opposite each other with the bathroom at the end. She peered in at the door on her right, and her jaw dropped. The rest of the apartment maintained a loose French Regency theme but this … This was just plain tacky.
She hated hot pink.
She checked out the bathroom. ‘Pah!’ She walked back to stare at the bedroom. Her worst nightmare, that was what this was. This bedroom, this apartment and the man she had to share it with.
‘Oh, hell, Bella. How many bags did you bring?’ Dominic struggled back into the apartment and dropped her bags to the living-room floor.
‘We’re in Newcastle for two months, remember?’ She gestured to her bedroom. ‘This is … It’s … I …’ She couldn’t find words.
‘Yeah, I know. And I’m not swapping.’
‘Is that supposed to be a bed?’ She motioned to the round concoction smack-bang in the middle of the room, heaped with hot-pink cushions and surrounded by pastel-pink mosquito netting.
‘I guess.’
She swung to his room. Its blankness shocked her: stark walls. Stark furnishings. She glanced back at her room, then his. It didn’t make sense. Overdone, overblown and tacky to cold, clinical and utilitarian? Not that Dominic had added any personal touches either. Her eyes narrowed. The room didn’t even hint at the personality of the man who inhabited it.
Not that she really knew much about his personality, she had to admit, only what the gossips had told her. But she knew enough to know he was a sensualist, like her. They chose to express it in different ways, that was all. He through sex; she through food. Together they could …
Don’t go there! Dominic conquered women the way the Roman Empire had conquered new territory—with a brash ruthlessness and half an eye on new horizons. Bella didn’t want to be conquered. She sure as hell didn’t want to be left for a new horizon.
‘Bella?’
She shook herself and gestured to his bedroom. ‘I don’t like that any better.’
‘You don’t?’
‘It’s awful.’
He pointed to her room. ‘Worse than that?’
‘Just as bad. Why don’t you put some things around?’
‘Like?’
‘I don’t know. Like a colourful quilt or something. Some photos … Anything.’
‘We’re only here for two months.’
Only two months? It stretched out like an eternity for her.
‘I like things neat.’
‘That’s not neat,’ she blurted out. ‘It’s blank!’
She tried to read the expression in his eyes. He couldn’t seriously like that room, could he? She understood his masculine pride baulking at the hot pink, but …
She glanced back at his room. He didn’t live like that normally, did he? At that thought something shifted inside her, but she couldn’t name what it was.
Only, she recognised that blankness. She and her father had felt that blank after her mother had died.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘OKAY, time to discuss house rules.’
Bella pushed away from Dominic’s intriguing proximity. He’d moved in beside her to shake his head once again at the hideousness of her bedroom, his arm almost touching hers. It made her jumpy.
She didn’t want jumpy. She didn’t want the blood stampeding through her veins as his cinnamon scent infiltrated her senses either. She wanted—needed—her mind honed and zeroed in on her goal.
A man who thought marriage a dirty word was not going to distract her from that.
‘House rules?’
Bella had almost reached the end of the hallway. She turned to find that Dominic hadn’t moved. He raised an eyebrow. She swallowed. She had to find a way to live and work with this man. The sooner she did that, the sooner she could focus on the important things, like putting her plans for her father’s dream restaurant into action and making him proud of her. Making amends. ‘House rules,’ she repeated in as firm a tone as she could muster.
Which was pretty firm. She was kind of proud of it. She’d bet Dominic was used to women rushing to fulfil his every whim. Not her, though. No way. That would not be the way to earn his respect. It certainly wouldn’t be a way to keep things on a business footing either.
‘You may well be the boss when we’re at work, Dominic, but here—’ she slapped a wall ‘—we’re equals. But coffee first, I think, yes?’
She headed for the living room. ‘And then I best let Minky out of her cage.’ She was hoping that, given more time, the cat would settle down and mellow out. She came to a halt and glanced around. Where on earth was the kitchen?
As if he could read her mind, Dominic came up behind her and pointed to a door discreetly set into the wall near the dining nook. She had to look twice before she could make it out.
Right. She set off for it.
The kitchen wasn’t large, but it was well-appointed. A gleaming new red-and-chrome coffee machine sat on the bench in front of her. She stroked it with one finger and then reached up and pulled a packet of coffee beans from a cupboard above her head.
Dominic blinked. ‘How’d you know that was there?’
‘My father organised this apartment, right? Or at least, his secretary’s secretary did. But he’d have given instructions.’ Though Papa’s lip would curl as much as hers and Dominic’s if he ever saw the place. Still, she had no intention of ringing to complain. Low maintenance, that was what she had to be. Low maintenance, adult and businesslike. She should write that down and repeat it three times every day.
Besides, if this wasn’t somebody’s idea of a joke or a payback, then …
Katie, her father’s