Because there was no point, no point at all, in having dinner with this man.
But it would be worth it if only for the memory.
She took a breath—and made her decision. Looking straight at him.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Il me fait un grand plaisir de vous accepter, m’sieu,’ she enunciated carefully. Then she looked at him uncertainly. ‘Was that correct?’ she asked.
His mouth quirked. Tension seemed to have gone out of his face.
‘It will do perfectly,’ he said.
He relaxed back into his seat, his shoulders easing.
‘Where did you learn French?’
‘At school,’ she volunteered. She, too, sat back into the contours of the seat. ‘Same as everyone else, really. I can just about get my way around France, but that’s all. I can’t really have a proper conversation, or read novels or watch TV or anything demanding. It always seems a bit bad, really, that the British—and the Americans, too, I suppose—can get away without knowing another language fluently. English is de rigueur, presumably, in business circles outside France?’
She was babbling, she knew, but it seemed important to her somehow to have an innocuous conversation—one that had nothing to do with where she worked, or what she’d thought he’d hired her for. A conversation she could have had with anyone.
‘English now is very much the lingua franca, it’s true, but I also speak Italian, Spanish, and some German, as well.’
Her reply was another burble.
‘Well, I can say café con leche, por favor in Spanish, and dov’e il cattedrale in Italian, and I think that’s about it. As for German, it’s just Bitte and Danke. Oh, and I can say epharisto in Greek. But that’s really my lot.’ She gave a self-deprecating smile.
The long eyelashes swept down over his dark eyes. There were no more raindrops on them, but his hair was still clearly wet. So was hers. She could feel water trickling down her back. Another thought struck her. She could hardly dine in a hotel restaurant looking like a drowned rat. But maybe there would be powerful hand dryers in the Ladies, and she could at least get her hair dry. She could try and style it a bit, too, though it was probably best left in a tight pleat. But she could put a bit of makeup on, though—she had enough in her handbag after all. It was the clothes that were the main problem, however. She was just wearing jeans and a jumper—would that really do? Well, it would have to. Anyway, her thoughts raced on, it obviously didn’t bother him, or he wouldn’t have asked her out in the way he had.
Why had he?
The question stung through her thoughts, scattering them instantly. Then into her head his words sounded. Don’t you ever look in the mirror?
A quiver went through her. Was she really the kind of woman a man like him was interested in? She knew she could look good—knew she had been blessed with a face and figure that many women would envy her for. But a man like Xavier Lauran, rich, sophisticated and French, would move in circles where every woman was beautiful and chic, groomed from top to toe in exquisite designer clothes.
Doubt trickled through her. Then she put it aside. A man like Xavier Lauran would know his own mind. If he thought her beautiful enough to interest him, then that was that. He had, after all, no other reason to spend his time with her.
A warm glow began to spread through her. It might only be dinner, but in the evening ahead she would enjoy all she could of it.
She gave a silent mental shrug. Even if she had to do it in jeans and a jumper.
Fifteen minutes later, she realised she’d got that bit as wrong as everything else about the evening. She was being ushered across the huge, marble-floored lobby of a West End hotel, and guided distinctly towards the left-hand side.
‘The hotel boutique is still open—I am sure they will have something suitable for you there.’
Lissa stopped dead, and looked round at Xavier Lauren.
‘I beg your pardon?’
He glanced down at her. ‘I don’t wish to be critical, but you’re soaking wet—as am I. And there is, I believe, a dress code at the restaurant here that precludes jeans. So it would be a good idea to avail yourself of the resources of the hotel boutique.’
Lissa swallowed. ‘I’m afraid I can’t afford to buy anything there.’
‘But I can—’
She shook her head. A quick, decisive action. ‘Monsieur Lauran, I don’t let men buy me clothes.’
He went on looking at her a moment.
‘Consider it merely a loan. You can change back into your jeans at the end of the evening.’
‘We could always eat somewhere where there’s no dress code,’ she ventured. ‘There are loads of restaurants around here.’
‘But I have made a reservation at this one. The chef is very good here. He is a Frenchman, you see. I make it a rule in London only to eat where the chef is French. That way I can protect my digestive system.’
There was deliberate humour in Xavier Lauran’s voice.
‘I can think of a number of British celebrity chefs who’d chop you up with meat cleavers for that comment,’ Lissa was driven to retaliate. But the exchange had lightened the moment.
‘Then you can see exactly why I prefer to dine in safety. Now, will you really not agree to my suggestion about the use of the hotel boutique?’
Lissa threw up her hands. ‘OK—but I’m really not comfortable with it, you know.’
Something flickered at the back of his eyes. She couldn’t tell what it was. But then she was more focussed on wondering, for the thousandth time, just how incredible it was just to look at him.
‘Bon,’ he said decisively. ‘Alors—’ He continued to guide her into the boutique. ‘Why don’t you choose something and meet me in, say …’ he shot back his cuff to glance at the thin gold watch around his lean wrist ‘.twenty minutes in the cocktail lounge.’ He cast her a wry look. ‘I myself have to dry out, as well.’ He glanced at the shop assistant hovering not just attentively but positively eagerly, Lissa noticed, but she could hardly blame the woman for her reaction. ‘I am sure it will prove possible to provide suitable facilities for changing?’
‘Certainly, sir,’ said the other woman, and cast him a warm smile. ‘If madam would like to see our collection?’ Her eyes flickered down to Lissa’s booted feet. ‘And perhaps our footwear, too?’
‘Whatever is necessary. Charge it all to my room.’ He gave the number. Then he glanced back at Lissa. ‘A bientôt,’ he said, and left her to it.
He strode off across the foyer towards the bank of lifts and headed up to his suite. He needed to shed his still-damp clothes, then shower and change. He also needed time.
Time to think straight. Think straight about Lissa Stephens—because Lissa Stephens was rearranging everything inside his head yet again, and he needed to make sense of it. Had to. Urgently. As he stood under the stinging needles of hot water, splintering on his back with the full punishing force of the hotel’s water pressure, he knew that yet again Lissa Stephens had behaved against expectations. It had been shock enough to his system to discover, last night, that out of make-up and hostess costume she looked nothing like the money-grabbing tramp he had initially taken her to be. But now he had something else to make sense of.
Lissa Stephens had thought he’d booked her like a call girl—and she had gone ballistic. Why? Was it because she was too clever to be that unsubtle? Or was it because she had genuine objections to that kind of assumption? And she’d also objected to his assumption that he would provide her