‘My mother is a firm believer in true love and happy-ever-after endings,’ Lucas intoned with a corrosive cynicism he made no attempt to disguise. ‘She married the man she fell in love with as a teenager and they stayed married and in love until the day he died. She has high hopes that I might continue the tradition and she doesn’t see it happening in the arms of any of the supermodels I’ve ever dated.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with true love and happy-ever-after endings. You might have had one bad experience, but you can’t knock the real thing because of that.’
‘I’m surprised to hear you say that after what you’ve been through.’ But he wasn’t. She struck him as just the sort of hopeless romantic who nurtured secret dreams of the walk down the aisle in a big wedding dress, with a sprawling line of best-friend bridesmaids in her wake. The sort of girl who eagerly looked forward to testing her culinary skills in her very own kitchen while lots of little Millies pitter-pattered at her feet. Just the sort of girl his mother imagined for him and precisely the sort of girl he would run a mile from, because he’d had his learning curve when it came to all that nonsense about love.
‘Just because I was let down—’
‘Dumped by a guy who absconded with your best friend.’
Milly flushed hotly. ‘There’s no need to ram that down my throat.’
‘A little reality goes a long way, Milly.’
‘If by that you mean that it goes a long way to turning me into someone who doesn’t believe in love and marriage, then I’d rather not face it.’
‘Well, considering I have no time for any of that, it should be a cinch demonstrating to my mother just how incompatible we are.’
‘If we’re that incompatible, then I’m wondering how we ever got involved with one another in the first place,’ Milly said tartly. ‘I’m broken-hearted and vulnerable after a broken engagement, and you swoop into my life and decide that I’m the one for you even though I’m the last person on the planet you would get involved with? How does that make sense, Lucas?’
‘Like I said, my mother is a devotee of fairy stories like that.’
‘Then she doesn’t know you at all, does she?’
‘Do you ever accept anything without questioning it out of existence?’ He shook his head and sighed with a mixture of resignation and exasperation. ‘People believe what they want to believe even if evidence to the contrary is staring them in the face. My mother believes in true love without any encouragement from me, I assure you. So she won’t find it odd at all that you’ve swept me off my feet.’
Milly blushed and looked away. ‘Does she know about your experience with that girl when you were still a kid? An excusable mistake when you were too young to know better.’
‘Is that your way of introducing your analysis of the experience?’ He shot her a glance of brooding impatience, which she returned with unblinking disingenuousness. ‘Which I’m seriously regretting telling you abou. To answer your question, no, she doesn’t.’ His gaze became thoughtful. ‘Which brings me to one or two ground rules that should be put in place.’
‘Yes?’ What would it take to sweep a man like Lucas off his feet? she wondered. Someone amazing. And that person existed, even if he didn’t think so. His parents had been happily married, as had hers. Her grandmother had told her numerous tales of how much in love her parents had been. Inseparable, she had said. Growing up, Milly had never tired of looking at snapshots of them together; had never tired of hearing all the small details of the childhood sweethearts who had grown up together and had never wavered in their love for one another. Maybe those tales had formed the person she was now: idealistic and eternally hopeful that she would one day find the right guy for her.
If it was inconceivable that someone like Lucas, jaded and cynical, could ever be attracted to someone like her, then it was equally inconceivable that someone like her, optimistic and romantic, could ever be attracted to someone like him.
‘Ground rules...’ he repeated gently, snapping her out of her reverie.
‘Oh, yes, you were about to tell me.’
‘Ground rule number one,’ he said, frowning, because never had he ever had to work so hard at getting a woman’s attention, ‘is the importance of remembering that this is just a temporary charade.’
Milly looked at him, eyes wide with puzzlement. ‘I know that.’
‘By which,’ Lucas continued, taking advantage of her full, concentrated attention before she could drift off into one of those doubtless cotton-candy fantasies of hers, ‘I mean that you don’t get ideas.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Enlightenment dawned as he stared at her with unflinching intent. ‘Oh, I get it,’ she said slowly, as colour crept into her face and her heart picked up angry speed. ‘You don’t want me to start thinking that the game is for real. You really are the limit! Do you honestly imagine for a second that I would be stupid enough to fall for a guy like you? Especially after everything you’ve told me?’
‘Come again?’
‘You think that because you happen to be okay looking, because you happen to have a lot of money, somehow you’re an irresistible catch! And you may just be for all those supermodel women who like being draped over your arm, getting their pictures taken whenever they’re with you, but I meant it when I told you that I can’t think of anything worse! Least of all with a guy who’s said that he sees marriage as a business transaction!’
‘Sure about that?’ Lucas’s mouth thinned, a reaction to the unfamiliar sound of criticism.
‘Quite sure,’ Milly informed him scathingly. ‘I could never be interested in a man like you. I’m sure you have wonderful qualities...’ She paused for a heartbeat while she tried to imagine what those wonderful qualities might be. Certainly sensitivity and thoughtfulness didn’t feature too high.
Although, a little voice pointed out, isn’t his attitude towards his mother an indication of just those qualities, lurking there somewhere underneath the cool, hard, jaded exterior?
‘But,’ she continued hurriedly, ‘I go for caring, sharing fun guys.’
‘Caring? Sharing? Fun? This may come as a shock, but when it comes to fun I can’t think of a single woman who’s ever complained.’
‘I’m not talking about sex,’ Milly said derisively, scarlet-faced, because really what on earth did she know about sex? Her life had not exactly been littered with panting suitors desperate to strip her naked and climb into bed with her. Sure, there had been interest. She had even gone out with a couple of them. But none of those brief relationships had ever stayed the course. Either she was too fussy or she just wasn’t clever enough to play the games that most women knew how to play, the games that trapped men. Not that she had ever had any inclination to trap any of the guys she had dated briefly.
She went a shade pinker as she wondered how Lucas would react if he knew that she was a virgin. The virgin and the rake, poles apart, the most unlikely pretend couple in the world!
‘I’m talking about the sort of caring, giving man who shares the same belief system as I do; the sort of man who wants the same things that I want—love, friendship, a soulmate for life...’
‘Sounds thrilling,’ Lucas said drily. ‘You’re omitting passion. Or is that sidelined by the friendship, soulmate angle?’ He shot her a wolfish grin that made her skin prickle, made it difficult to keep her eyes focused on his lean, dark face. ‘Never mind, I get the picture, and I’m glad that we’re singing from the same song sheet. That being the case, you will have no need to pretend.