Thank God they hadn’t actually kissed.
Or done anything else.
Pursing her lips, Allegra studied her drawing. It looked like Max, but the mouth wasn’t quite right... She made a slight adjustment to his upper lip and his face sprang to life so abruptly that her heart jumped a little: steady eyes, stubborn jaw, a quiet, cool mouth. She hadn’t realised how well she had memorised the angles of his cheek, the way his hair grew. She had made him look...quite attractive.
Her mouth dried and all at once she was remembering how she had hugged him in her excitement the night before. She hadn’t thought about it. He was Max, and he’d just agreed to take part in something Allegra knew he was going to hate. Hugging him was the obvious thing to do.
But when her arms were around his neck and her lips pressed to his cheek, she had suddenly become aware of how solid he was, how male. How familiar and yet how abruptly strange. The prickle of stubble on his jaw had pressed into her cheek and she’d breathed in the clean masculine smell of him and something had twisted hard and hot in her belly.
Something that had felt alarmingly like lust. Which of course it couldn’t have been because, hey, this was Max.
Beside her, Georgie, one of the few journalists who was as junior as Allegra, leant over and raised her eyebrows appreciatively. ‘Your guy?’ she mouthed.
Allegra shook her head, unaccountably flustered. ‘Just a friend.’
‘Right.’ Georgie’s smile was eloquent with disbelief.
Quickly Allegra sketched in Max’s shirt, including every stripe, and the collar that was buttoned too high, and Georgie’s smile faded.
‘Oh.’
Quite, thought Allegra. She should do less thinking about Max’s mouth and more remembering his absolutely appalling taste in shirts.
‘Allegra!’
The deputy editor’s voice made Allegra jerk her eyes to the front, where Stella was looking sphinx-like and Marisa, her deputy, harried. ‘Could we have a moment of your attention?’
Allegra fought the impulse to say, Yes, miss. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘Making Mr Perfect...did you get anywhere with that?’
Clearly expecting the answer to be no, their eyes were already moving down the list, on to the next idea. This was her moment.
‘Actually, yes, I did,’ Allegra said and a ripple of surprise ran round the room.
‘You found someone to take part?’ Stella’s expression was as inscrutable as ever but Allegra told herself that the very slight life of her editor’s immaculate brows was a good sign.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Who is he?’ That was Marisa.
‘The brother of a friend of mine. Max.’ Why did just saying his name suddenly make her feel warm?
‘What does he look like?’ asked Marisa practically. ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that he’s a hunk?’
Allegra glanced down at her sketch of Max on the sofa: solid, steady-eyed. Ordinary. Nothing special. Her eyes rested on his mouth for a moment and there it came again without warning, a quick, disturbing spike of her pulse. She looked away.
‘I wouldn’t say that he was a hunk, exactly,’ she said cautiously, ‘but I think he’ll brush up well.’
‘Sounds promising. What’s he like?’
‘He’s a civil engineer,’ said Allegra, as if that explained everything. ‘He’s pretty conventional, plays rugby and doesn’t have a clue about style.’ She lifted her shoulders, wondering how else to describe him. ‘He’s just a bloke, really.’
‘No girlfriend in the wings? We don’t want anyone making a fuss about him spending time with Darcy.’
Allegra shook her head. ‘He’s just been dumped by his fiancée and he’s going to work abroad soon so he’s not interested in meeting anyone else at the moment. He’s perfect,’ she said.
‘And he knows exactly what’s involved?’ Marisa insisted. ‘He’s happy to go ahead?’
Happy might be stretching it, thought Allegra, remembering uneasily how she had had to blackmail Max, but this was no time for quibbling. Her big chance was this close, and she was ready to seize it.
‘Absolutely,’ she said.
Marisa glanced at Stella, who nodded. ‘In that case, you’d better get on to Darcy King and set up the first date straight away.’
‘So this is where you work.’ Max looked around him uneasily. The office was aflutter with gorgeous glossy women, all eyeing him as if they had never seen a man in a suit before and weren’t sure whether to laugh or pity him.
It ought to have been gratifying to be the focus of so much undivided female attention, but Max was unnerved. He felt like a warthog who had blundered into a glasshouse full of butterflies.
Why the hell had he agreed to this stupid idea? He’d been lying there minding his own business and then Allegra had slid onto the sofa next to him and before he knew what was happening he’d been tangled up in her idea and lost in those mossy eyes and suddenly all he cared about was making her happy.
He’d even suggested his own blackmail. He must have been mad.
But the smile on Allegra’s face had lit up the room and left him scrabbling for breath, and when she’d thrown herself into his arms the feel of her had left Max oddly light-headed. Her hair had trailed silkily over his face as she threw her arms round him and pressed her lips to his cheek, and the smell of her perfume had sent his mind spinning.
To Max’s horror, his body had taken on a mind of its own. Without him even being aware of what he was doing, his arms had clamped round her and for a moment he had held her against him and fought the crazy urge to slide his hands under that skimpy top and roll her beneath him.
Which would have been a very, very, very bad idea.
The next instant Allegra had pulled back, babbling excitedly about the assignment. As far as she was concerned, it had just been a sisterly hug.
That was all it had been, Max reminded himself sternly.
And now it seemed he was committed to the charade. ‘The first thing is to smarten you up.’ Allegra had gone all bossy and produced a clipboard and a list. ‘Can you take an afternoon off? You’re going to need a complete makeover.’
Max didn’t like the sound of that. He didn’t like the sound of any of it, come to that, but he’d given his word.
‘I could take some flex leave,’ he said grudgingly. He didn’t want anyone at work to get wind of what was happening. That morning he’d told them that he was going to the dentist and, looking around Glitz’s glossy offices, he couldn’t help thinking that root canal surgery might be preferable to what lay ahead.
He was going to be styled by the great Dickie himself. Allegra had impressed on Max what an honour this was. ‘If he’s bored or irritated, Dickie’s likely to storm off, so please just be nice!’ she said again as she led him between glass-walled offices and down to a studio, her sky-high heels clicking on the polished floor that she had told him was known as the runway. Apparently this was because everybody could see and comment on the outfits passing, something Max would rather not have known. He could feel all the eyes assessing his hair, his suit, his tie, his figure as he followed Allegra.
She