Her journey back to London was surprisingly swift, but then it was the rush hour and most of the traffic was flowing in the opposite direction.
Within an hour of leaving Dominic, Romy was back in her Kensington mews house, kicking off her shoes with a sigh of relief, glad that she now had the luxury of living on her own since her friend Stephanie had fallen in love and moved in with her boyfriend.
She grabbed a cola from the refrigerator, threw herself down on the large, squashy sofa in the sitting room and sipped thirstily from the can, trying to work out whether or not the meeting with Dominic had done her good.
She had gone over and over her reasons for going there until she was blue in the face.
She had told Dominic that her reasons for accepting the job were curiosity and the desire to get him out of her system, but had that been entirely true? Had her pride perhaps been hoping to demonstrate that she was no longer Little Miss Vulnerable, who allowed herself to be seduced by strangers in broken-down lifts?
She had gone there determined to show him how much she had changed, and in that she had almost succeeded.
Almost
But what about the woman who had allowed Dominic to kiss her today, and who had failed so spectacularly in her efforts to resist him? Was she really any different from the eager nineteen-year-old he had first encountered all those years ago?
The telephone rang and she snatched it up on the first ring. It was Stephanie, her ex-flatmate.
‘Expecting someone, Romy?’ She giggled mischievously. ‘Surely not DDD?’
‘DDD?’ asked Romy, confused.
‘Dear Dominic Dashwood, of course,’ teased Stephanie.
‘Dastardly Dominic Dashwood, more like.’ Romy scowled.
‘How about Devastating Dominic Dashwood?’ laughed Stephanie. ‘Good grief—I could go on playing this game all evening.’
‘Not with me, you couldn’t,’ said Romy darkly. ‘I would have died of boredom long before then.’
‘Ooh! Fighting words! Do I take it that your meeting with the man achieved its objective of flushing him out of your system?’
‘You make him sound like some sort of toxin,’ complained Romy.
‘Now she’s defending him!’ declared Stephanie.
‘No, I’m not!’
‘So you told him what to do with his house party, right?’
‘That would have been highly unprofessional—considering he made the booking months ago,’ said Romy frostily. ‘I do have my reputation to think of, you know!’
‘Did he kiss you?’
‘None of your business!’
‘So he did!’ squeaked Stephanie delightedly. ‘Well, thank heavens for that! I couldn’t bear to think of you saving yourself for him since Mark died, if the man didn’t even do the decent thing and pounce!’
‘I have not been saving myself for anyone!’ said Romy indignantly.
‘Sure,’ said Stephanie, unconvinced. ‘You just get a kick out of turning down every dishy man who asks you out—’
‘Steph!’ said Romy warningly. ‘That’s enough!’
‘Oh, all right!’ sighed Stephanie. ‘Fancy going out for a drink later to fill me in on all the gory details? How he looked? What he said—?’
‘No, I don’t!’ said Romy immediately. ‘I’ve got some stupid tennis party to sort out for tomorrow. I need to write out all the place-names in my best italic writing tonight.’
‘Is that the tennis party in Yorkshire?’
‘It is,’ sighed Romy, thinking of the long drive ahead.
‘With a certain young, handsome and extremely eligible earl attending?’
‘The very same.’ Why was it, Romy wondered fleetingly, that you never fell for the kind of men you knew you really should fall for?
Stephanie clearly felt irritated by Romy’s looking such a gift-horse in the mouth, too. ‘Well, there’s no need to sound as though the three-minute warning has just gone off! This is an earl we’re talking about here, Romy! He’s bloody gorgeous and he fancies you like mad! Couldn’t you even show one teensy-weensy bit of interest?’
That was just the trouble; she couldn’t. And it drove her mad. She didn’t want to be fascinated by silver eyes and a dark, obdurate face. ‘No,’ she said gloomily. ‘Not even a teensy bit.’
But then she thought of the forthcoming house party, and saturation therapy and spiders, and the brain which God had given her and which she intended to start using instead of relying so heavily on hormonal influence—which had her simpering helplessly in Dominic’s arms!
And Dominic was basically a brute, she told herself firmly. An egotistical, single-minded brute who just happened to be over-endowed with sex appeal.
By the end of the house party, with uninterrupted exposure to his arrogance and his faults for a whole weekend, she should be sick to death of the sight of him...
By the time Tuesday came around, Romy was exhausted.
She had spent a professionally successful weekend which the over-eager attentions of the love-struck earl had only slightly dented. He had just been unable to accept that Romy wasn’t interested in him, and that his thousands of acres and family crest did not make the slightest impression on her!
She rang Dominic at his offices, and it took so long for a series of frosty secretaries to connect her that she was in a filthy temper by the time a deep, laconic voice finally said into the receiver, ‘Hello, Romy.’
Thank goodness they weren’t talking on phones with video screens, thought Romy, her cheeks going pink. Because then he would have been able to witness the depressing little spectacle of her nipples stinging with some horrifying Pavlovian response to the way he said her name.
‘I can’t believe I’m through to the Great Man at last!’ she said sarcastically.
‘Had problems, did you?’
‘I should say!’ answered Romy crossly. ‘I had to speak to at least three snotty secretaries who obviously do a bit of moonlighting for the Spanish Inquisition!’
‘Which is why,’ he explained patiently, as though Romy had an IQ in single figures, ‘I offered to ring you—’
‘Can you still meet me tonight?’ Romy interrupted crisply, thinking it would go down well if she sounded both bored and busy.
‘Where?’
Romy blinked. ‘Wh-where?’
‘Well, you did say that you’d book.’
‘Oh, yes. I have. Of course I have!’
A pause. ‘Then where?’
Romy didn’t stop to think. ‘The Olive Branch,’ she said wildly.
Another pause. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure!’ she lied outrageously. ‘Is this the way you usually respond when someone manages to get you a table in London’s best restaurant?’
‘I shall look forward to it immensely,’ came the dry rejoinder. ‘What time have you booked the table for?’
The stupidity of what she had done was only just beginning to register and Romy had to think rapidly. Getting a table at The Olive Branch was going to be like procuring a diamond the size of the Koh-i-noor. And the only way she had of increasing her odds was to suggest