The stark minimalism of a quintessential bachelor pad was evident, but it was softened.
‘Coffee?’
Rose jumped at his voice where she’d been standing, looking at his DVDs, and took the cup he held out, noticing that he’d taken off his jacket and waistcoat, so now he was just wearing the open-necked white shirt and trousers.
He gestured with his head towards the shelves. ‘Don’t tell anyone about my predilection for vintage Kung-Fu movies, will you?’
Rose forced a smile and tried to ignore the sensation of her heart turning over. ‘I won’t.’
The lights of the vast city around them lit up the huge space and it was impossibly seductive. She moved towards a window, cupping her hands around the mug in a bid to put some space between them.
Drink the coffee and get out—before you get lost again.
She marvelled at the life of privilege Zac enjoyed. Although he didn’t give off the air of complacency and entitlement that she’d experienced from others. People like his parents...his mother. Her insides cramped.
‘So...when you say you’re a maid...?’
Zac’s words scattered her guilt and Rose looked at him. She had to bite back a smile at his curious expression. She said dryly, ‘It means that I’m one of those invisible workers who tidies up your world so that when you turn around nothing is out of place.’
He winced. ‘Ouch.’
Rose shrugged. ‘It’s the way it is.’
‘You don’t sound bitter,’ he observed.
She glanced at him again. She wasn’t bitter at all. It had never bothered her that she came from a solidly working-class background. She’d had the love of two parents and knew that that was the most important thing in the world. Which was why she had to save her father...
Rose quickly averted her gaze from that incisive blue one. She felt sick and guilty again. She couldn’t do this.
She put down her cup on a nearby table and straightened and looked at him, steeling herself. But her words dried in her mouth. Zac was looking at her with such searing explicitness that a shiver of anticipation raced through her.
She instructed herself with silent desperation. Say, Thank you for the coffee, but I really should be going. Because I never would have met you in a million years if it hadn’t been for—
And then Zac said, ‘Why do I think that you’re about to bolt, and that if you do I’ll never see you again?’
ZAC’S WORDS IMPACTED on Rose like a punch in the gut. Because I am, and you won’t. She knew that if she walked out of there right now she wouldn’t see him again, because this had been an exercise in madness.
She’d never in a million years expected to find herself in this situation, and maybe that was why she’d agreed to this extreme plan—because it had never entered her head that it could possibly become a reality.
Yet despite that she was there, and what had sprung to life between them was...unprecedented. It called to all of Rose’s unawakened desires. And she knew that if she wanted—against all the odds—she might quite possibly be able to fulfil the demands of his mother.
But she couldn’t do it.
Not now that she’d met him.
She couldn’t deceive this man and use him in whatever power play was going on with his mother. She had no right. And she should never have been tempted. Jocelyn Lyndon-Holt had appealed to her fear and vulnerability. Her lack of resources. And she’d shamelessly taken advantage of Rose’s father’s ill health to do so.
For a moment Rose had been terrified enough to agree. But now, facing the stark reality of putting the plan into action, she knew she couldn’t live with herself if she did. She would have to find another way to try and save her father. Which was what she would have had to do anyway. If she walked out of here right now they would be no worse off than if she hadn’t done this. She’d do anything but play with someone else’s life.
She reiterated more firmly, ‘I have to go.’
Bright blue eyes bored into hers and a hand closed around her upper arm. ‘Why? Give me one good reason.’
Anger spiked in Rose—anger that she was in this predicament with the one man she couldn’t have.
She pulled her arm free. ‘Because I’m not meant to be here.’
‘Says who?’
Rose glared at Zac and the anger bubbling up inside her was projected easily onto his arrogant tone.
She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Not everyone has to bow down to the mighty Zac Valenti.’
Zac’s cheeks flushed with dull colour. ‘I don’t expect everyone to bow down to me.’
But they always will just because of who you are.
That wasn’t fair. Rose’s anger drained away. He was not the object of her ire. He was the object of something else—something much darker and hotter. And if she didn’t get out now... Panic made her jerky as she looked around for her small clutch bag.
She couldn’t see it, and she stopped and took a breath, looked back at Zac. ‘I’m sorry. But I just...really have to go.’
Something in his expression hardened—again that glimpse of a more intimidating side. Intractability.
‘You’re married? You have a lover?’
Shocked, Rose answered with affront. ‘No! Nothing like that.’
Now he folded his arms across his chest. ‘Then tell me, Rose, why do you have to run?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Because it might be approaching midnight, but I don’t think you’ll turn into a pumpkin when the clock strikes, and you still have both your shoes.’
Something weakened inside Rose—some resistance she was desperately clinging on to. Zac filled her vision, filled every sense with his sheer charisma and masculine allure. And all of it was fixated on her.
She heard herself admitting, ‘I don’t want to leave.’
His stern expression immediately relaxed. He uncrossed his arms and stepped close to her again, cupping her jaw with a hand. ‘Then don’t. Stay, sweet Rose. Stay with me for tonight.’
She looked up into fathoms-deep, clear blue eyes and fell headlong into a dream where she did stay, and spent one beautiful, illicit night with the most exciting man she’d ever met.
A seductive voice whispered over her feverishly hot skin. You can do this if you really want to...take this night and keep it your secret forever.
Just then a shrill sound pierced the thick silence. Rose blinked out of the fantasy being woven in her head and saw Zac’s face tighten with irritation as he plucked a small phone out of his pocket. He looked at the screen and issued a curse.
He glanced at her. ‘I’m sorry, I have to take this for a moment...it’s an important call I’ve been waiting for. But don’t move...’
The phone kept ringing—insistent. Zac was looking at her, commanding her to his will, waiting for her promise that she wouldn’t leave.
Rose finally said, huskily, ‘Okay...’
But as she watched him walk away from her, with that powerful, lithe grace, she knew she’d just uttered a lie. This was her last chance. She had to leave—now.
At least, she told herself as she found her bag and stole out of the apartment, she wouldn’t be adding any further transgressions to her already blackened