He was so distracted by trying to work out what was really going on with Amber that he missed her moving towards him, until she was so close that he could smell that shampoo again. Her lips brushed against his cheek, soft and plump, and he wondered what she would have done if he’d turned his head slightly, so that they touched against his own. So that he would have the taste of her on his mouth.
‘I have to go. It was nice to meet you, Mauro.’
Something about the way she said it raised his hackles. Nice to meet him, but she wasn’t planning on seeing him again, he thought. She was going to try and back out of their date. Well, he’d see about that.
AMBER TURNED UP to the airport with a fake smile plastered onto her face, her ears ringing with the warning her boss had just given her: go on this date or lose your job. OK, so it had been more nuanced than that, but that was what it came down to.
Recently, the feedback on her articles had been taking something of a dive. The comments on her online column had started off unpleasant and steadily descended into venomous. She’d stopped reading them, chalking them up to bullies with nothing better to do. But her boss had told her in no uncertain terms that the powers that be at the paper were paying attention.
And maybe they were right; Ever since her heart had been broken, she’d lost her home, and realised that the best advice she could dish out to anyone looking for romance tips was to get out, get your life together on your own, and make yourself happy. The words that had been bandied around in that meeting—cynical, bitter—when had she become that?
But how was she meant to undo the hurt and the anger that had been simmering under her skin? The pain that had become such a part of her that she wasn’t sure if, never mind how, she was meant to shake it off.
This wasn’t just about her feelings. If Maddie was right and her job was at stake...well, there was nothing that she wouldn’t do to save her job. It was all she had. She’d literally lost the roof over her head when her relationship had broken down. Now her rent ate up most of her salary, and her travel card to get in from Zone Three took the rest. Even a month without work would be a disaster. She could not lose this job.
She’d thought she’d be able to beat the check-in queues by doing it online last night, only to be told at bag-drop that she had to go to the desk after all. It was taking an age—an immaculately manicured woman in an airline colours scarf was tapping at a computer and frowning at her passport.
‘I’m sorry for the delay, madam.’ She looked up and Amber forced her mouth back into a smile. There was nowhere she could escape the judgemental gaze of her readers. ‘Some of the information from your passport was missing from the upgrade request, but it’s all sorted now. Here’s your boarding pass, and the executive lounge is just over there. Mr Evans asked me to let you know that he has already checked in.’
Executive lounge? With budget cuts at work, and the unmitigated disaster that was her personal finances, she’d got so used to travelling economy that she’d forgotten that there was any other way.
She determinedly ignored the flutter in the base of her stomach as she walked towards the lounge. There was no way she was going to allow Mauro Evans to have that effect on her. No way she’d be pulled into those sparkling green eyes and be tempted to flirt. The man was incorrigible—a playboy who was with a different woman on the front page of each week’s trashy magazines, and remembering that was her best defence. She was sure that she was going to need one. She’d felt a pull of attraction from the second that she had realised who she was speaking to. A relationship, a fling, a flirtation was the last thing that she wanted, or needed. Especially with someone that the sidebars of shame told her regularly saw, conquered and came all in the space of a weekend. Every weekend.
Ugh, she didn’t even know why she was worrying about this. It wasn’t as if he was going to be interested in her. He had picked her for some perverse reason of his own. He must have wanted to annoy the producers of the show for some reason. Anyway, she had more important things to concentrate on.
She needed an image update. She needed her readers to see something different in her. Something that they could identify with. So far she’d been honest in her columns, brutally honest. But that wasn’t what the readers wanted. She wasn’t what the readers wanted. So while the cameras were rolling, she was going to have to be someone else.
Perhaps Mauro could help her out. No doubt he’d just gone into this whole thing looking for the image boost that came with charity work. She needed to show a softer side. Maybe there was a way they could both get what they wanted.
She didn’t have to do anything. She didn’t even have to promise anything. All she had to do was let the light of Mauro’s brightly shining libido reflect on her for a while. All she had to do was be friendly.
When had that started to be something she needed to work at? Since when had friendly seemed like such an effort?
Her boss was right. Something had to change, and a luxury holiday to a sunny destination—all on someone else’s budget—seemed like as good a place as any to start a little soul-searching.
‘Amber, you found us!’
Mauro greeted her as she stepped through the door to the lounge. He was already sipping from a glass of champagne, with the camera and a microphone pointed at him. The two members of the TV crew swung round at his words, and a camera was thrust in her face. She moulded her features once again into the smile that she’d practised in the mirror, and hoped that it looked more convincing that it felt.
‘Mauro! This was a surprise. An upgrade?’
‘The best way to travel,’ he said with a smile, and the smallest salute from his champagne flute. ‘Don’t worry,’ he added, and Amber guessed that some uncertainty had shown on her face. She’d thought that she’d kept her smile pinned in place, but he had seen through it. ‘I matched the cost of the upgrade with a donation to the charity, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
Maybe she should have been worried about it. This was a PR exercise after all. But that hadn’t been what she was thinking. What she’d been thinking was that his white shirt highlighted the hint of red in his hair and the golden warmth of his skin. That his hair looked as if it had been carefully undone, perhaps by some other woman’s hands as he left her bed that morning. That the smile on his face was warm and open, as genuine as hers was strained.
‘A great surprise, I should have said.’ She forced the words out. ‘Here’s to the start of a great week.’ Ayisha, the TV producer, had passed her a glass and she matched Mauro’s toast with one of her own.
‘To us,’ Mauro said, with a searching look.
‘To us,’ Amber agreed, fixing her smile in place again, trying to hide the effect that Mauro was having on her.
God, he was attractive. Far too attractive for his own good, or for hers. He had been sent to test her. That was the only way she could think of it. One week, trying to show a softer side. Showing that she wasn’t the bitter old hack that the Internet had labelled her. But did the dating gods really have to send this guy to help? Someone who it seemed she was physically programmed to react to. Someone whose eyes seemed to twinkle into the depths of her own, who seemed to sense her discomfort, however hard she tried to hide it.
She sat beside him, and he reached for her hand, pulling her towards him for a friendly kiss on the cheek. A day’s worth of stubble scratched her cheek—he’d lain in bed too long that morning perhaps. Had something more tempting than a close shave kept him there?
Good for him if it had.
Just because she was sworn off romance and men, and sex by default, that didn’t mean everyone had to live her celibate life. If he was getting some, she was pleased for him, really. And not in any way the teeniest, tiniest bit jealous. She settled