‘What is this position?’
‘I need a fiancée.’
In the act of brushing a strand of hair from her cheek, she froze dead. ‘You need a fiancée?’ she repeated flatly. He said it the same way someone else would say they needed more petrol.
‘Before you get excited …’ Too late, she already was if the heaving bosom was any indicator. ‘The position,’ he explained, dragging his reluctant gaze upwards, ‘is purely temporary.’
Rose pointed to her face with a not quite steady hand. ‘What you are seeing is not excitement,’ she told him. ‘This is fear of being in the same room as an insane person.’
The man was quite definitely off his head, but, that being a given, his mental state was apparently more stable than her own. For a split second there she had almost allowed herself to consider his offer. Not in a serious way but thinking about it in any way at all was worrying.
‘If you need a fiancée I suggest you put an ad in the situations vacant column.’
Or announce it on any street corner and you’ll be mobbed, she thought, watching as his lips curved into a smile that was almost as dangerous as the gleam in his incredible metallic eyes. As her eyes lingered on the sensual curve of his lips heat exploded somewhere deep in her belly and radiated outwards and downwards.
Deeply ashamed of the heavy ache low in her pelvis, she struggled to school her features into a bland mask that gave no hint—she hoped—of the physical reaction over which she had no control. The wave of colour that washed over her skin she couldn’t hide; she just hoped he attributed it to anger.
‘Let me explain …’
Rose didn’t want explanations; she wanted the nervous excitement fluttering in her stomach and causing her mouth to grow dry to subside.
Feeling the panic rise, Rose assured herself what was happening was no big deal. It was normal. He was an incredible-looking man. It was just shallow physical attraction, nothing to get worked up about … just biology. Something over which you had no control, like a sneeze.
Think sneeze, Rose.
It wasn’t easy to stand there and think sneeze when you were looking up at someone who was just possibly the most incredible-looking man on the planet.
‘Save your breath,’ she advised tersely. ‘I’m not enjoying the joke.’
‘It isn’t a joke. There is a girl that my father wishes me to marry.’
Rose looked at him in exasperation. He wasn’t even attempting to make this plausible.
‘And you, I suppose, always do what your father wants.’ She rolled her eyes, relieved that she had her hormones back in check. Mathieu being a dutiful obedient son was about as likely as him asking her to marry him for real.
‘Don’t,’ she said, picking up her case, ‘say another word. I’m leaving.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
HAD Mathieu really expected her to say yes to such a crazy idea?
‘My God, I’m not that desperate!’ Rose muttered, slamming the taxi door and in the process trapping the hem of her ankle-length coat in it. ‘Damn,’ she groaned, opening it and rescuing her coat that was now liberally coated with mud along the hem.
After a second definitive slam that made the driver wince, she slumped back in the seat and, eyes closed, exhaled a heavy sigh.
‘The station, please.’
The past half an hour had all been slightly surreal.
She still wasn’t totally sure if he had even been serious. If it had been his idea of a joke. People just didn’t go around asking other people to pretend they were engaged. Though she was learning fast that Mathieu Demetrios was not exactly a man who felt obliged to follow the rules. In fact he seemed most comfortable making them up as he went along.
And he had a way of making the most outrageous suggestion sound almost normal. She sighed and straightened up. Pulling a compact from her bag, she flicked it open.
‘If you’d stayed around a minute longer,’ she told her reflection, ‘you’d have ended up agreeing with him.’ She rolled her eyes and laughed at her joke. Then frowned because her laughter had a slightly hollow ring to it—also the driver was looking worried.
She hadn’t been tempted, not for a second.
Turning her frowning glare on the dour grey stone façade of the house as they drew away, she reached inside her bag for her mobile. The sooner a line was drawn under her Scottish misadventure, the better.
Her twin picked up straight away.
‘Is this a good time?’
‘Rose, of course, I was just thinking about you. How are things in bonny Scotland?’
Rose didn’t waste time wrapping it up. ‘Terrible. I’m coming home. As you and Nick are in New York until March, would it be all right if I stayed at your place for a couple of weeks?’
There was a pause that grew longer.
‘This is where you say I told you so closely followed by I can’t wait to see you.’
‘Of course I can’t wait to see you …’
‘But?’
‘But the thing is, I was going to call you, but Nick said I should leave well enough alone and … the thing is, Rose, Steven’s wife is divorcing him.’
Rose’s eyes opened wide.
She screwed up her face as she made an effort to visualise his face. Should a person have to make an effort to see the face of the person they had decided was the unrequited love of their life?
Even when she had formed a mental image to go with the name his eyes kept switching from blue to silver-grey and another mouth, one that was both sensual and cruel, kept superimposing itself over his.
‘Are you still there, Rose?’
Rose gave her head a little shake and forced a smile even though there was nobody there to see it. ‘Yes … so Steven is getting a divorce?’
Which made him available and ought to make her deliriously happy.
Only she wasn’t, which probably meant that Rebecca had been right all along and whatever she had felt for Steven Latimer hadn’t been love. And had, she realised with dawning shock, was the key word. Whatever it was she had felt for Steven was simply not there.
Which made her shallow and superficial—even worse than that, he was getting divorced because of her and she could barely remember what the poor man looked like.
‘Steven is divorcing his wife?’ This is all my fault.
‘No, Rose, she’s divorcing him.’
The hand with the phone in it fell into her lap as she sighed. ‘Thank God for that.’ Feeling light-headed with relief, she lifted the phone back to her ear.
‘Rose … Rose! Did you hear what I said?’
‘No, sorry, I lost the signal,’ she lied cheerfully.
‘God, does that mean I have to tell you again?’
‘Tell me what again?’ Rose asked, her curiosity roused.
‘Steven’s wife is divorcing him because she found out that he’s been having an affair.’
‘No …no, there was no affair, you were right, I—’
‘Not with you, Rosie. The reptile has been having an affair with the nanny.’
Rose’s jaw dropped. ‘The nanny!’
‘And