“Hmm?”
“The deal. You’re getting a girlfriend…” She paused when the guy actually winced at the word.
“What do you want, Saskia?” he asked, charm forming between the words like mercury.
“I want what I wanted from the beginning. To get the low-down on online dating.” But if she could save time, money, by having a guinea pig do it for her…
“Here’s the low down,” said Nate. “It’s as much of a crap shoot as closing your eyes and picking someone out of the phone book. I should know. You’re my seventh.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You’ve asked six other women to pretend to date you?”
His mouth kicked into a smile while his eyes came over all dark and intense, lit with that flicker of heat. “I’ve been on six dates,” he corrected. “I asked only you.”
“Oh.” Well, that was kind of nice. “But I still need first-hand experience for my study—”
He shook his head, his eyes not leaving her. “No dating between now and then. I won’t either. Goes without saying.”
“Good to know. But I was actually going to suggest that maybe you could be the subject of my piece.”
A muscle flickered in his cheek and she wondered how long it would be before he was rubbing at that temple of his again. “Saskia, I’m not talking to you about my dating habits. My private life is just that. Private.”
He looked as if he meant it. But Saskia had always found that men liked talking about themselves. So she wasn’t really worried on that score. She’d find a way to get to the heart of the man—especially if she had a few weeks to do it. At the thought of a few weeks in the company of this man the curls of sensation were back in her belly.
“So when’s our next date?” she asked.
A frown creased his brow. “The wedding.”
“But what if someone asks how we met? If they ask you about my home, my family, my friends, my work? What’s an infographic?”
“I’m sorry—a what?”
“An infographic. It’s what I am working on for the dating site.”
He looked pained.
“It’s a diagram that shows information—stats, links, comparisons—in a bright, attractive, easy-to-digest contained image. We need a little background to do this properly, Nate. I can put it together, if you’d like. Research is my thing.”
A list of dry questions, she thought, warming to the idea, with some curve balls thrown in. Classic stat-collection technique. He could tell her a lot that way without even meaning to.
“Or how long will it take for your family to think you’ve just made me up?” When his cheek twitched again she knew she had him. “We’ll need to set up a couple of meetings between now and then. Casual get-togethers. Coffee, perhaps. We both like coffee. The Art Gallery has an Impressionists exhibition. Or we could go ice-skating. I don’t mind.”
Keeping him thinking about places he clearly did not want to go with her gave her the chance for the other half of her brain to create the research project in earnest. Questions piled up inside her head with such speed it made her breathless.
And as she was getting excited by the research, the layers upon layers of information this man could provide for her love formula, she remembered the pile of red envelopes wavering on her desk.
Her excitement deflated like a pricked balloon. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Why not?”
The why was like a pain in her belly—one that was lessening by the day, but would remain till the day the last red envelope landed in her mailbox. “Time, I guess. More than anything.”
“An hour together here and there should suffice,” he said.
“Well, now, that’s about the most romantic thing a nearly pretend boyfriend has ever said to me.”
His mouth did the surprise smile thing—the one that gave a hint of straight white teeth and lit his intense eyes with genuine laughter. “What’s the problem? I’m a problem-solver. It’s what I do. Money, time, space, audience, you need it I provide it.”
“You’d be cutting into my worktime. I need to work.”
“Why?”
He was so sincere, so keen, she made a quick decision to tell him the truth. Part of it anyway. Not bend the truth, just not tell all.
“I have…debts.” Yet her chin lifted as she said it.
His long, slow breath in made her stomach hurt. Then, with a nod, he said, “I’ll take care of them.”
She shot out a laugh so loud the table shook. “Just like that? A blank cheque?” When he didn’t laugh back she realised. “You’re serious?”
“Deadly.”
“But I haven’t even said what I owe!”
He gave a slight lift of the shoulder, as if she could name her price. “Consider this negotiation, Miss Bloom.”
Miss Bloom now, was it?
“You have a debt. I have the means to wipe it from existence. I have need of a date to my friends’ wedding, and you seem amenable to the terms and conditions that come with being said date.”
“You pay off my debt—I pretend to be devoted to you?”
He eased into a smile this time, slow and sensual. A frizzle of energy lit her belly and she felt a sudden need to swallow.
“Seems more than fair,” said Nate.
“Seems like a version of the oldest profession,” she muttered.
Clearly not softly enough. “I’m not asking you to sleep with me, Saskia,” he said.
“Stop,” she said, her cheeks feeling like little spots of heat. “Now you’re just gushing.”
His laughter was soft, a low chuckle. And then he leant back in his chair, watched and waited.
A pretend boyfriend. A date to a wedding. No more red envelopes. No more reminders of Stu or his letter. The time and the means to get back to renovating the first place she’d ever rightfully called home.
“For the sake of argument,” she said, “would you change your mind if I told you this is what it would take?”
She threw out the hefty figure that covered Stu’s debt only, which she knew to the nearest cent, and he didn’t even blanch. Maybe if he’d flickered an eyelid, lost a little colour in that healthy face, or if his long fingers had gripped a napkin in despair that would have been the end of it. But for his complete lack of reaction she might as well have been asking for a tenner for the cab home.
And from one heartbeat to the next she considered his offer.
Seven months she’d been living under the weight of it. Seven long months of driving a banged-up car, of trawling online sales to replace every piece of electrical equipment she needed to make a living. Of taking menacing late-night phone calls from debt collectors, legal threats, her mortgage squeezing tighter and tighter. Of being romantically stagnate…None of the debt was her fault, but she was too bone-deep humiliated to do anything but absorb it.
Nate watched, bluer than blue eyes taking in her every breath. The guy was smart, gorgeous, clearly better than welloff. He wasn’t going into this thing desperate or despairing. He was doing a deal with all the cool of a business decision. Why couldn’t she do the same?
“Do we have ourselves a deal?”
“I