‘So you take somebody else with you.’ There was a marked lack of understanding in the cool grey eyes. ‘A girlfriend,’ she elaborated. ‘Show Katrina you’re all over somebody else! There’s no surer way for someone to get the message that you aren’t interested!’
‘But I’m not in love with anybody else.’
Megan sighed. Men could be so infuriatingly dense at times—even ones as startlingly bright as Dan McKnight! ‘You don’t have to be. You just have to pretend to be. Just find someone who’s willing to go along with it.’
Dan screwed his face up. ‘Like who, for example?’
‘Well, I don’t know! There must be hundreds of women who would be delighted to slip into the role of being Dan McKnight’s partner for the weekend!’
‘Yes. With most of them looking to make the post permanent. I can’t take the risk,’ he said grimly.
His arrogance almost took her breath away. ‘I’m sure there must be a woman somewhere who could manage to resist your charm for forty-eight hours, Dan!’
He acknowledged her sarcasm with a slight quirk of his lips, and then his grey eyes began to gleam with the first inkling of a plan. Someone outside his circle. Someone who would be willing to play along with it for a couple of days and then forget it. Someone who didn’t tempt him. Someone who…
‘How about you?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Me?’ Megan stared at him. ‘Why me?’
He considered this. There was no point in beating about the bush. ‘Well, the main reason is because you don’t find me in any way attractive.’ His eyes bored into her. ‘Do you, Megan?’
Megan stared back at him. She knew that nine women out of ten would have fancied him. Maybe if she hadn’t worked for him she might have felt differently. As it was, she found it easier to imagine being kissed by a block of concrete than by Dan McKnight. She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t.’
Dan smiled. ‘Thank you for not bothering to spare my feelings,’ he murmured. ‘And, fortunately, the feeling is entirely mutual. You’re probably the last woman in the world I would choose to have a relationship with.’
Megan glared. Surely there were nicer ways he could have put it? ‘Thanks very much!’
He flicked her a look from between the dark curtain of his lashes. ‘So. Are you busy this weekend?’
Megan hesitated. There was a sort of unspoken rule that if you were a single woman and a man asked if you were busy you always said that, yes, you were. Very. From this, they would come to the conclusion that you had a wonderful, exciting life of your own and you weren’t just sitting around waiting for Mr Wonderful to come galloping into it on his white charger.
But Megan had always had a problem with telling lies. Even if they were only tiny ones.
‘Er, no. I’m not. I’m free, actually.’
‘So would you do it, Megan?’
‘Pretend to be your love-struck girlfriend, you mean?’
‘That’s right.’
Megan looked at him. At the cool grey eyes and the thick, dark hair. At the body which was surprisingly lean and muscular for a man who didn’t have a job which was fundamentally physical. ‘No,’ she said flatly.
Dan’s eyes widened. He wasn’t the kind of man who often had to ask a woman for a favour—those were usually offered freely enough. Neither was he used to being turned down quite so firmly or so emphatically as Megan Phillips had just done, and he suddenly found the novelty of being refused almost stimulating.
And certainly surprising.
‘Why not?’ he asked.
‘Because I’m your assistant—I can’t go along pretending to be your lover.’
‘I wasn’t actually expecting you to consummate our fictitious relationship.’ He bit back a smile. ‘That would be taking method acting a little too far!’
If Megan hadn’t grown up on a farm and been so matter-of-fact about the act of procreation, then she might well have been embarrassed by a remark she suspected had been made with just that aim in mind. As it was, she was able to return his mocking stare with an unruffled look of her own. ‘I hardly know anything about you.’
‘You seem to have extracted a lot more information than most people,’ he told her truthfully.
‘Not enough if we’re supposed to be in love.’
‘Ask me anything you want,’ he coaxed softly.
‘What would I have to do?’
‘Very little. Eat a few meals with me. Maybe play a little tennis. Laugh at my jokes. Withstand the third degree from my mother. Gaze adoringly into my eyes—’
‘I don’t know about the gazing adoringly into your eyes bit,’ she told him honestly. ‘I’m not that good an actress!’
He pursed his lips together, like someone who’d been amused by an unexpected source of entertainment. ‘Well, if the pleasure of my company doesn’t tempt you enough, here’s an added inducement.’ He paused for effect before saying softly, ‘What if I told you that a very famous actor was also going to be there this weekend?’
Slightly relieved that he hadn’t done anything so vulgar as offer her money, Megan willed herself not to look too interested. He probably meant somebody who’d been in a series of coffee advertisements. ‘Oh? And who’s that?’
Dan enjoyed the moment. ‘Jake Haddon.’
Megan’s face froze in disbelieving surprise. It was a full ten seconds before she could speak. ‘The Jake Haddon?’
‘Is there more than one?’
Megan swallowed, more confused than excited. Because not only had Jake Haddon just starred in the year’s biggest-grossing film—but the upper-class Englishman with a fine line in irony had been voted the sexiest star of the decade!
‘Jake Haddon,’ she questioned slowly, speaking each word with extreme care, just in case she had misheard him, ‘is actually going to be at your mother’s house?’
‘That’s right.’
Megan frowned. In her world, famous actors didn’t just happen to stay with your parents. ‘Is he a friend of yours?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘Yes, he is.’ He saw the disbelieving look in her eyes and felt obliged to elaborate. ‘He grew up locally. We went to the same village school for a while, before he moved away. But we always kept in touch.’
What sort of world did he inhabit, she wondered, if he was mixing with people of that calibre and had never let on about it? Why, if Jake Haddon were her friend, she’d have his posters plastered all over the office walls!
As Dan spoke, he watched the excitement working Megan’s face—an excitement she was unsuccessfully trying to suppress. And he wondered why he should feel an odd twinge of disappointment that she should be so transparent.
Had he imagined that she would differ from other women, by not being attracted to a man because of who he was, rather than what he was? When would he ever learn? His mouth turned down at the corners. ‘So. Changed your mind about coming?’
Megan knew that she shouldn’t be swayed by a famous name. And instinctively—for whatever reason—she suspected that part of Dan wanted her to say no.
Say no? She would have to be locked up first! She very nearly leapt up and down with excitement. Just wait until she told