His Mistress, His Terms

by Trish Wylie

  ‘You do know you change when you put on a suit?’

  Her eyes scanned the dark navy of what was no doubt a designer label suit, which, granted, he looked good enough to eat in, but it also gave him an air of ‘all-businesslike’ that she desperately wanted to ruffle. Even if he had softened his appearance some by loosening his tie, undoing the top button of his pale blue shirt and walking by her side with his hands in his pockets.

  The corners of Alex’s mouth quirked, the gold flecks shining bright in the hazel when he looked at her from the corner of his eye. ‘Really.’

  He didn’t make it a question, but then Merrow had noticed how he’d taken to letting her ramble on for a while or get to her point before he either contradicted her or distracted her off the topic. It was a clever ploy. But then Alex Fitzgerald was nobody’s fool. She liked that about him.

  ‘Yup.’ She nudged his upper arm with her shoulder and grinned at him as she bit on the corner of her lip. ‘You go all stuffy, serious Dublin Alex on me.’

  He leaned his head a little to the side so that only she could hear his low-spoken words. ‘Ah-h-h, but then I have you to loosen me up later, don’t I?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her gaze fixed on the curve of his mouth, the mouth that was capable of so much. ‘That you most definitely do.’

  He read the look in her eyes and surprised her by twisting round on his heels to duck down and place a swift kiss on her lips, mumbling the promise of, ‘Later’—before he lifted a hand out of one pocket to haul open the door to the restaurant and set that one large hand on the small of her back to guide her inside. As free as they were with touching each other, at length, in private, public shows of affection weren’t something either of them had done much of.

  Merrow had been quite pleased about that. Or she’d told herself she was. Because this was still an affair, they weren’t ‘dating’ and they most definitely weren’t a ‘couple’; she’d made that clear. And Alex didn’t seem to have a problem with it either, which was great.

  He certainly didn’t have any problem with the ‘affair’ part of an affair. In fact brunch was now officially her favourite time of the day—‘brunch’ being a secret codeword for getting together to ‘mess around,’ that was.

  Of course there was after official working hours too, when they would meet up to eat something at his place and chat about the progress at the Pavenham before messing around some more…

  In fact, this was the first time he’d insisted they eat somewhere with people. Which Merrow told herself wasn’t a date. It was just handy, because the restaurant was halfway between the Pavenham and his place and he’d insisted he was in the mood for Italian.

  See? All fine. Because, really, there was no point in getting their two worlds all tangled up in something that wouldn’t last.

  The restaurant owner greeted Alex by name and immediately guided them past the queue of people waiting for tables. One of the perks of being a Fitzgerald, Merrow supposed. But halfway through the crowded room there was a loud, ‘Oh, my God,’ swiftly followed by a, ‘Merrow! Over here!’

  Her heart sank. Oh, no. Not the gang!

  She glanced briefly at the bemused expression on Alex’s face before she turned round to look at the three familiar faces wearing matching ecstatic grins. And she answered them with a tight lipped, tilted head, wide-eyed glare of recrimination before Alex stepped in beside her, his hand on the small of her back again,

  ‘Hello, ladies.’

  ‘Well, hello!’ Lisa waved a hand from across the table. ‘How nice to see you again.’

  ‘Again?’ Alex quirked his brows in question.

  ‘Oh, you probably don’t remember. We were all at the Oyster Festival with Merrow that night in Galway.’

  Merrow could quite happily have had a hole appear in the floor in front of her. A large one. And she’d have waved bye-bye on her way in.

  ‘What are you guys doing here?’ Normally this kind of a gathering was news she was informed about. If they were all meeting behind her back to discuss how the tag-teaming was going she was going to make them all suffer.

  ‘Gracie won big on a Lotto scratch card at lunch time so we’re all here spending it. You’d know that if you bothered answering your phone. But we just assumed you were busy.’

  Another glare from Merrow earned a tacked on, ‘With the hotel thing and all that.’

  Nice save.

  ‘I take it these are the other three musketeers?’ The sound of Alex’s deep voice close to her left ear dragged her gaze back to his face, where she found a silent amusement sparkling in his eyes.

  She nodded dumbly in response.

  ‘You’re welcome to join us,’ Gracie helpfully piped up. ‘It’s on me. And you can ask us lots of questions about Merrow if you buy the wine.’

  Merrow glared again, her Christmas-card list rapidly shortening. ‘No, thanks, Gracie, we’re just—’

  ‘Lots of questions, you say?’ His hand snaked round from the small of her back to the side of her waist, where he squeezed hard. ‘Well, that seems like too good an opportunity to miss. But dinner’s on me, Gracie, and the wine. You should treat yourself to something with the winnings, shouldn’t she, O’Connell?’

  Like a nice outfit for her coffin, maybe?

  ‘Alex—’

  But Alex had already raised a hand to the restaurant owner and chairs magically appeared as her friends all shuffled round the heavy wooden table to make room.

  It was a nightmare. So much for their two worlds never meeting…

  He made sure she was seated while her three soon-to-be-ex-friends all sighed their approval, and then he removed his jacket, tugging his tie loose and shoving it into an inside pocket before he draped the jacket over his chair and sat down, unbuttoning another button as he smiled his most charming smile at his audience.

  ‘Red or white?’

  ‘So are we talking about what’s wrong or are we pretending nothing’s wrong ’til we get back to my place and I wheedle it out of you another way?’

  Merrow lifted her chin and continued walking. ‘Nothing’s wrong.’

  ‘That’s okay.’ She could hear the amusement in his voice. ‘I’m fine with the wheedling option.’

  ‘There’s nothing to wheedle.’

  ‘Oh, I think there is.’

  ‘Well, you’re wrong.’

  Alex pushed his hands back into his pockets and continued walking beside her while Merrow stared down Grafton Street. There was no point in trying to explain how she felt.

  Because, to be completely truthful, she hadn’t quite sorted through how she felt yet. She just knew she was, well, miffed, quite frankly.

  ‘I didn’t spill any food.’

  She ignored him as he withdrew a hand and began holding fingers up as he counted off what he obviously considered to be plus points.

  ‘I used all the right cutlery.’

  ‘There were only two courses,’ she mumbled back, ‘so it’s not like you had that much cutlery to begin with.’

  ‘Still counts, though.’ He unfurled another finger. ‘I didn’t ask for a quarter of the information they supplied me with. And—’

  He leaned a little closer to add, ‘I even deflected a couple of titbits that sounded like they were going to be really juicy to help you with your embarrassment…’

  He didn’t unfurl another finger for that one, Merrow noted. And, in fairness, another bottle of wine and her friends would have divulged enough information to make her contemplate moving to another country.

  Another finger unfurled. ‘I didn’t push for the reasons why I’m apparently much better than “that Dylan one”—who, incidentally, I’m assuming was the prat that cheated on you.’

  Probably because she’d barely managed to stifle a moan of mortified agony at that point…

  And another finger. ‘Even you have to admit that I was at my most charming. I didn’t even try to feel you up under the table, though the fact you’re wearing trousers instead of one of those s
hort skirts I like so much was a help with that—’

  ‘Yes, but you didn’t have any problem with smiling at me the whole damn time, or brushing my hair back or holding my hand on the table.’ She stopped in the middle of the street and turned to frown up at him. ‘Since when have you been so into PDAs?’

  His other hand appeared out of his pocket as he stopped and turned to face her, both hands twisting in the air to form an invisible shape as his brows lifted in question. ‘Those little hand-held computer things?’

  ‘No.’ She pursed her lips and shook her head in frustration. ‘Public Displays of Affection. Since when do we do that?’

  The hands were tucked in against his broad chest as he folded his arms. ‘There’s a rule about that I didn’t know, is there?’

  ‘Well…’ She frowned at a point at the base of his throat. ‘Yes…there is…’

  ‘Because it breaks the “affair” boundaries, does it?’

  ‘Yes!’ She’d have stamped her foot in frustration if she hadn’t thought it would’ve made her look like a five-year-old.

  Alex unfolded his arms and stepped a step closer, his voice dropping as he lowered his head. ‘You see, I haven’t actually been given a list of those rules. So since you’re so much more au fait with the whole “affair” thing, then maybe you should fill me in. I’ve always been the type of guy to wine and dine or actually date a woman before this…’

  Merrow struggled to find words, which irritated her all the more. How dared he stand there having charmed all her friends to the point of adoration over one meal and then look so gorgeous while pointing out that he was practically God’s gift to womankind—and then claim to be a nice guy too? How was that fair?

  When she didn’t answer as fast as normal, his brows rose again. ‘You have me pegged as some kind of playboy, don’t you? Running about all over the country looking for mistresses?’

  She sucked her cheeks in.

  And Alex smiled his hint of a smile in response. So she frowned and exhaled.

  ‘I hate it when you smile at me like that.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘I do right this minute.’

  He stepped another step closer, tilting his face so close to hers that their foreheads almost touched, his gaze steady and fixed on her eyes. ‘You know what I think, O’Connell?’

  She searched his glowing eyes, heat radiating all over her body from just that look alone while her pulse bounced erratically. She wasn’t actually sure she did want to know what he thought, but she sighed and asked anyway.

  ‘What do you think, Alex?’

  He angled his head to one side, as if he was about to kiss her with one of those incendiary kisses of his, right there, in the middle of a busy Grafton Street, in what would end up as a very public display…

  But instead he kept looking into her eyes as he informed her in a husky whisper, ‘I think you need someone to remind you that not every guy on the planet is as big a loser as your last boyfriend was…’

  Last boyfriend? Meaning he saw himself as her current boyfriend? Hang on a minute—

  But before she could call him on it, he leaned back a little, taking a deep breath as he considered a point about an inch above her head, and then he smiled. A wide smile, a devastatingly sexy smile—a smile that addled her brain and distracted her completely from rational thought. Seriously—one man should not be allowed to be that sexy!

  ‘Meanwhile, having had our first debate in a while, I think we should head back to my place to make up, don’t you?’

  When she opened her mouth to answer, he stepped back, bent over at the waist, and, to the sound of her surprised squeak, tossed her up over his shoulder.

  ‘Alex! Put me down!’

  ‘Nope.’ He hoisted her up a little more as he stood tall, so that her stomach rested on his shoulder, both his arms wrapped around the backs of her knees to hold her in place, and her head dangled upside down facing his back.

  Then he started walking down the street.

  Merrow heard laughter as they passed people. Scowling, she tried to struggle free, kicking out her feet, ‘Put me down!’

  ‘Stop jiggling, woman. You’ll make yourself sick after all that food.’

  It would serve him right if she threw up all over the back of his designer suit! She attempted to look from side to side, the end of her upside-down pony-tail flicking up into her eyes. ‘Alex—’

  ‘Complain all you want, O’Connell.’

  ‘You can’t carry me all the way back to your place—you’ll have a heart attack.’

  ‘I’ll have you know I’m in great physical health, thank you.’ She felt his head nod against her hip. ‘Good evening, nice night, isn’t it?’

  And now he was talking to passers-by about the weather? She really should’ve wanted to kill him. But instead she felt a bubble of half-hysterical laughter building in her chest. It was the most ridiculous situation she’d ever found herself in—and that was saying something!

  The laughter escaped. ‘You are not a nice person!’

  ‘I happen to think I’m adorable.’

  She laughed again. ‘Please put me down, you moron.’

  ‘I’ll put you down on my bed.’

  She moved her head from side to side to see if anyone had heard him, knowing she couldn’t blame the heat rising on her cheeks entirely on all the blood rushing to her head. But they were already turning off the end of Grafton Street and Alex was marching them past Trinity. He really did have abnormal stamina, didn’t he?

  You’d have thought she’d have known that already from all the ‘messing around’ they’d been doing.

  Admitting defeat, she attempted to make herself more comfortable for the journey, propping her elbow on his back so she could rest her chin on her hand. She flicked her pony-tail out of the way and when a passing car beeped its horn, she waved at the driver with her free hand, not bothering to look to see if they waved back.

  ‘Hey, Gabe, how you doing?’ Alex stopped walking and Merrow attempted to see who he was talking to. Whoever it was was obviously someone he knew well, judging by the friendly tone of his voice.

  A similarly deep voice answered with an amused edge, ‘Grand. I’ve just dropped some estimates through your door for the Gallery job.’

  ‘That was quick.’

  ‘I was out that way this afternoon on another job, so I took a look at the place.’ There was a pause. ‘So who’s your friend?’

  Merrow raised her voice. ‘Yes, please feel free to introduce me. Or just pretend I’m not here, whatever suits best. Don’t mind me.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Alex swung round a little. ‘Gabriel Burke, Merrow O’Connell. Merrow is the interior designer for the Pavenham. Gabe is the contractor for the project, and an old friend from way back.’

  ‘You have my sympathy.’ She reached her hand out and had it shaken by what felt like a ridiculously large hand. She even had to crane her head round to a painful angle to look all the way up at him, ‘Wow, you’re tall, aren’t you?’

  ‘Next to this squirt, I am.’ Amazingly blue eyes sparkled at her when he leaned down. ‘He giving you trouble?’

  The six foot one ‘squirt’? She sighed dramatically. ‘You have no idea.’

  ‘You need me to sort him out for you?’

  ‘Would you?’

  Alex hoisted her up again. ‘When you two have finished flirting with each other…’

  Gabe stood tall, his voice laced with a more distinct humour. ‘I have to say I’m impressed, squirt. You couldn’t have carried her like that when we were kids.’

  ‘She’d have been too big when I was a kid.’

  ‘Hey! I’ll have you know I’m the ideal weight for my height. I have a colour chart and everything.’

  There was the sound of joint male laughter and Merrow felt her stomach jiggled as Alex’s shoulders shook. She even giggled herself. There wasn’t much else she could do. But they really had gone past the not-tangling-with-each-other’s-lives thin
g if they’d both met each other’s friends in the space of a couple of hours. Even if Alex had managed his introductions while the right way up!

  Gabe leaned down again. ‘Nice meeting you, Merrow. I have a feeling I’ll be seeing you again.’

  Alex swung her away before she could answer. ‘Probably at the party at the tail end of next month—if we don’t see you at the hotel.’

  ‘Nah, they don’t need me down there. I’ve moved on to the housing development outside town. So I’ll see you both at the party, then.’

  ‘Ash will be back by then. She flies in the day before.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Bye, Merrow.’

  ‘Bye, Gabe.’ She switched elbows and watched him walking down the street as Alex headed for Merrion Square again. ‘Do you both come from the land of giant beautiful people?’

  He smacked her behind lightly and she flinched. ‘What was that for?’

  ‘For checking him out enough to think he was beautiful.’

  She smiled. ‘Is Ash his girlfriend?’

  Another smack. ‘No, she’s my sister.’

  ‘You have a sister?’

  ‘That I do. She’s been away for a while. You’ll meet her at the party.’

  Merrow didn’t remember being invited to a party. ‘What party would that be, then? One of the long list of parties you haven’t bothered telling me about? I might not want to go to a party. I might hate parties.’

  His shoulder shook again. ‘Not according to your friends, you don’t. Though if you could avoid going in fancy dress or dancing on any tables at this one that would be helpful. It’s my parents’ wedding anniversary.’

  What? Oh, no! She wasn’t going to meet his parents!

  ‘Alex, put me down!’

  ‘We already discussed that one.’

  She struggled again, harder this time. ‘I’m not going to any party with you. Especially not one your parents will be at!’

  ‘Breaks another rule, does it?’

  ‘Yes! It does!’

  ‘My father will be fascinated by your plans for the interior—just don’t try selling them to him the same way you did with Mickey D. Who will also be there, by the way. Consider it a work-related party.’