That had been part of the reason why she’d put down the ‘no sex’ rule when she’d agreed to his outrageous proposition.
If he thought that he could come to her for a favour, tell her that she was the only one who fitted the bill because she was credibly average enough to convince his mother that he was serious about her, and then expect sex as some kind of bonus just because they’d been there before, then he was in for a shock!
But then, beneath that very sensible way of thinking was something she hardly dared admit even to herself. That thing she had felt for him and still felt for him after he’d disappeared back down to London frightened her. The power of his attraction had been so overwhelming that it had blitzed all her dearly held principles. In the face of it, she had had no choice but to throw herself into bed with him.
She was terrified that if she allowed herself to be weak, if she allowed herself to be overwhelmed by him again, then she would end up hurt and broken. She wasn’t sure how she knew that but she just did.
So the last thing she should be doing right now was straying from the ‘business arrangement’ agenda and letting herself get side-tracked by personal asides.
‘I mean...’ he leaned towards her, his voice low ‘...my driver has never looked twice at any of the models who have stalked into this car over the years but he couldn’t take his eyes off you.’
Becky went bright red. She wanted to put her hands to her cheeks to cool them. She glanced towards his driver, but the partition between the seats had been closed. Even so...
‘If you think the stuff I bought is inappropriate, then I can easily, er, replace them...’
‘Depends.’
‘On what?’
‘What else is in those suitcases of yours? Maybe I should have had a look before we left,’ he continued in a low, thoughtful voice. ‘Made sure you hadn’t bought anything that would make my mother’s hair curl...’
‘You’re being ridiculous,’ Becky told him briskly. ‘I doubt I’ve bought anything that any girl of my age wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing, and your mother certainly wouldn’t blink an eye at this outfit or any of the others if she’s met any of your past girlfriends. I know, if they were all models, then what I’m wearing now would have been their idea of over-dressing.’ Her skin was tingling all over and, although she wasn’t looking at him, she was very much aware of his eyes on her, lazy and speculative.
Gazing at her pointedly averted profile, Theo had never felt such a surge of rampant desire. If this was what unfinished business felt like, then he wondered how he was going to cope for the next fortnight when he would be condemned to look without touching.
‘At any rate, you’ve bought what you’ve bought,’ Theo said roughly, dragging his mind off the prospect of trying to entice her into bed, because that would be a show of weakness he would never allow.
With the conversation abruptly closed down, Becky lapsed into nervous silence, while next to her Theo worked on his phone. When she glanced across, she could see him sending emails and scrolling through what appeared to be a mammoth report. He was completely oblivious to her. One minute it had felt so weird, so intimate...the next, she could have been invisible.
When she thought about the next fortnight, her stomach twisted into anxious knots, so instead she projected beyond that to where her life would be after they returned from Italy. He had told her that he would set her up in business, she only had to pick the spot, and she busied herself thinking about a possible location.
She wondered when the cottage would be sold. Her parents were unaware of the state of gradual disrepair into which it had fallen and that was something she had decided she would keep to herself. When it eventually sold—and there was no guarantee that would be soon, because the property market was hardly booming at the moment—it would get a far bigger price now that work was being done to fix the broken-down bits and she was pleased that her parents would reap the rewards from that. They had let her stay there for practically nothing.
Looking back at it, Becky could scarcely remember why she had felt so driven to run away when her sister and Freddy had tied the knot. She could scarcely remember what it had felt like to have a crush on Freddy or when, exactly, he had turned into just a pleasant guy who was perfect for her sister. She couldn’t believe that some silly infatuation gone wrong had dictated her behaviour for years. If she hadn’t allowed herself to lazily take the route of least resistance, she would not be here now, because she wouldn’t have been at the cottage, pottering through life doing something she loved but without the necessary interaction with guys her own age.
She would never have met Theo. He had blasted into her life and galvanised her into really looking at the direction she had been taking. It just went to show how a series of coincidences could result in major life changes.
‘Penny for them.’
Becky blinked and focused on him. He was leaning back against the door, his big body relaxed, legs spread slightly apart. Even like this, in repose, relaxed, he was the very image of the powerful alpha male and her heart gave a treacherous little leap.
‘I was thinking about coincidences,’ she said truthfully and Theo inclined his head.
‘Explain.’
Becky hesitated. She knew that she needed to go on the defensive. She also knew that, if they were supposed to be an item, then for the duration of a fortnight she would have to stop treating him like the enemy.
He wasn’t the enemy, she thought. Although he was...dangerous. Horribly, wonderfully, thrillingly, excitingly dangerous. And that was something she would never let on, because if there was one guy on the planet who would be tickled pink at being considered dangerous it was Theo Rushing. The more she agonised over the impact he still had on her, the more power she gave him over her state of mind.
He’d made those lazy little remarks to her about the way she looked and she’d practically gone into meltdown.
Well, it was going to be a nightmare if she went into a meltdown every time he turned his attention to her, especially considering they would have to pretend to be in love in front of his mother.
‘I was thinking,’ she ploughed on, determined to level the playing field between them so that she could be as cool as he was, ‘that if you hadn’t shown up out of the blue at the cottage, if it hadn’t been snowing and you hadn’t have ended up being stuck with me...’
‘“Stuck” takes all the fun out of the memory.’ Keen grey eyes noted the delicate colour that stained her cheeks and the way her eyelids fluttered as she breathed in sharply. Little giveaway signals that her ‘no sex’ rule had more holes in it than she probably would want to admit.
She’d made a big deal about how unsuited they were to one another and she was right. He could no more fall for someone as intensely romantic as she was than he could have climbed a mountain on roller skates. And, yet, the physical attraction was so strong that you could almost reach out and touch the electric charge between them.
She’d slept with him because she hadn’t been able to fight that physical attraction. He hadn’t been able to fight it either and he itched to touch her again.
Even though he knew that it probably wasn’t a very good idea. He certainly wouldn’t dream of going down the road of actively chasing her when a rebuff was waiting directly round the corner but...
He looked at her, eyes brooding and hooded.
There was no law against flirting, or pushing the barrier she had hastily erected, just to check and see how flimsy it was...was there...? Some might maintain that that would be a perfectly understandable response given that he was a red-blooded male with a more than healthy libido that just so happened to be fully operational when it came to her.
It would be a delicate compromise between maintaining his pride, holding on to his self-control and tipping his hat at common sense whilst testing the waters...and then playing a ‘wait and see’ game.
It would certainly enliven the next two weeks.
‘I was driftin
g.’ She ignored his little jibe. ‘And you were a wake-up call.’
‘Am I supposed to see a compliment in that?’ he drawled. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been described as any woman’s wake-up call.’
‘When this is over and done with, I feel that life can really start again for me.’
‘I suggest we just get through the next couple of weeks before you start planning the rest of your life.’
‘What if your mother doesn’t like me?’ Becky suddenly asked. ‘I mean, you’ve taken it for granted that, because she hasn’t approved of the women you’ve dated in the past, somehow she’ll approve of me because I’m different from them—but she may not like me and, if she doesn’t, then this whole charade will be a waste of time.’
Businesslike though this arrangement was, Theo was still irked to think that uppermost in her mind were worries about the financial side of things. ‘Are you afraid,’ he enquired coolly, ‘That you might not get your money if things don’t go according to plan?’
That had not occurred to Becky but she didn’t refute it. She was going to be as cool about this as he was. She wasn’t going to get bogged down in her own emotional issues. This was an exchange of favours and, the more she recognised that important aspect of their so-called relationship, the happier and more relaxed she would be. Their eyes met and she kept her stare as steady and as level as his.
‘Well, nothing’s been signed,’ she pointed out with what she thought was an admirable amount of reasonable calm.
Theo gritted his teeth. One thing his mother was guaranteed to like about her was her honesty, he thought grimly. Marita Rushing had complained often and loudly that the bimbos she had met would have done whatever he asked because of his money.
‘It must get boring for you,’ she had declared a couple of years previously, after she had met one of the last of his leggy blondes before he had decided that introductions, always at his mother’s insistence, were no longer a very good idea, however much she insisted.
His mother had never bought into the argument that having a woman do whatever he wanted was just what the doctor ordered for someone who had far too much stress on the work front to tolerate it on the home front. What he saw as soothing, she saw as unchallenging.
Becky took challenging to another level. If she didn’t like anything else about his brand-new love interest, then that was something she would love. She would have first-hand insight into how frustrating the honest and challenging woman was capable of being.
By the end of the fortnight, he surmised that there was a good chance that his mother would be only too keen to concur when he’d say that there was a lot to be said for the eager-to-please lingerie model.
Instead of the woman who hadn’t shied away from telling him that he wasn’t her type, who had been frank about using him to please her, to teach her about making love, presumably so that she could implement the lessons learnt with a man more suitable... A woman who had agreed to help him out because of what she could get out of it in return and who, now, was worried that she might not reach the promised land if things did not go according to plan with his mother.
His lips thinned. ‘Are you implying that I’m not a man of my word? That because I didn’t get a lawyer to draw up an agreement for both parties to sign, that I would renege on what I promised to deliver?’
Becky sighed and lay back, eyes half-closed. ‘You’re the one who raised the subject.’
‘Whatever the outcome of the next two weeks, you will get exactly what I have promised. In fact, name the place and I will get my people to start checking out suitable sites for a practice. Presumably you would want to go in with someone?’
She angled her head so that she was looking at him, and as always she had to fight not to respond outwardly to his masculine beauty.
‘Maybe I’ll go to France,’ she thought aloud. ‘Join the family. I’m going to be an aunt in a few months’ time.’ And she wouldn’t have a problem with Freddy. She could now, for the first time, fully admit what she had suspected for years. That, whilst she had been upset when he had chosen Alice over her, she hadn’t been devastated. Whilst she had told herself that she needed to return to the family home, to be surrounded by what was familiar so that she could put heartbreak behind her, she had just given in to the indulgence of licking her wounds and then had stayed put because it had been easy. In truth, on the occasions when she had seen Freddy, she had secretly found him a little bland and boring—although to have admitted that, even to herself, would have opened up a Pandora’s box of questions about the sort of man she was looking for.
She had always assumed that her soul mate would come in a package very much like Freddy’s.
But Freddy was dull and so, she thought slowly, would be all those thoughtful, caring types she had held up as the perfect match for her.
She had allowed herself to assume, from a young age, that because Alice was the beautiful one in the family she would automatically be suited to guys as beautiful as she was. And for her, Becky, would come the steadier, more grounded, less beautiful types. But life had proved her very wrong, for her sister had fallen madly in love with the ordinary guy while she...
Her heart began to race. She felt nauseous, and suddenly she just couldn’t look at the man next to her, even though she knew that she would still be able to see him with her eyes shut because he was so vividly remembered in her head. Like a diligent, top-of-the class student, the sort of student she had always been, she had filed away every single thing about him into her memory banks and all that information would now stay there a lifetime. She knew every small detail of his face, from the tiny lines that formed at the corners of his eyes when he smiled, to the slight dimple on just one side of his cheek when he laughed...from the way those silver-grey eyes could darken when he was roused, to the feel of his muscular shoulders under her fingertips.
She’d thought she was immune to him touching her heart because he hadn’t ticked the right ‘suitable for relationship’ boxes in her head. She’d assumed that she hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind after he had left for London because he had shaken her out of her comfort zone, so it was only natural that he had left behind a certain ache. What she hadn’t done was ask herself the more fundamental question: why had she allowed him to break into her comfort zone in the first place?
Physical attraction was one thing but, of course, there had been much more to what she had felt for him, even after a day, two days...three days...
He had touched something deep inside her, stirred something into life. Why had no one warned her that love at first sight actually existed? Rather, why on earth hadn’t she learnt from Alice and Freddy, both of whom had fallen head over heels in love from the very second their eyes had met?
And now here she was.
Panic and confusion tore through her. She felt she might faint. He was saying something about France, in that lazy, sexy voice of his but she barely heard him over the thundering of her heart. She wasn’t aware of the car moving or didn’t even know whether they were close to where his private jet would be waiting for them.
After a while, she heard herself responding to whatever he was saying. For the life of her, she had no idea what.
The only thing running through her head was the next two weeks and how she would survive them.
She could never let him suspect how she felt. She had her pride. If she had to live with memories, then she didn’t want to add to the tally of difficult ones—the memory of him laughing incredulously at her or, maybe worse, backing away as if she were carrying a deadly infection.
The next two weeks weren’t going to be a business arrangement to be endured as best as possible.
The next two weeks were going to be an assault course.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BECKY HAD GRUDGINGLY accepted Theo’s advice that she change her wardrobe or risk not being a credible girlfriend. He was rich and he was accustomed to dating women for whom shopping for clothes was a career
choice. Even if he liked women who didn’t care, his definition of ‘not caring’ would be designer jeans and designer silk blouses and designer high heels, accompanied by lots of gold and diamond jewellery. Dressing down in a no-expense-spared kind of way.
There was no way cheap, durable, all-weather clothing would have passed muster.
One glance at his fabulous apartment had told her that. Her old, tired suitcases had stuck out in the midst of all the luxurious splendour of his penthouse apartment like an elephant in a china shop.
But his private jet—which, he explained with an indifferent wave of his hand, was useful to his CEOs for whom time was usually a great deal of money—was a sharp reminder not only why he had pushed her to buy a new wardrobe but of the huge chasm between them.
Even in her fancy, expensive clothes, she was horribly conscious of not quite fitting in. She knew that she was gaping. Gaping at the pale, soft, butter-cream leather seats and the gleaming chestnut interior. It was a small plane, fast and light, and capable of seating only a dozen people, but it was truly exquisite inside, with a long sideboard, on which was a basket heaped with fresh fruit, and a marble bathroom that included a shower and thick, fluffy towels.
Looking at her, Theo knew that he should have been put off by her obvious open-mouthed awe. She didn’t pretend to be blasé about flying in a private jet. She was impressed and it was written all over her face. There was no need for her to say wow for him to notice that.
He wasn’t put off. He was as pleased as the cat that had just got the cream. He dumped all intentions of working on the short flight and instead gave her an amused, verbal, in-depth description of the plane, what it was capable of doing and where he’d flown on business.
‘You must have really felt as though you were slumming it when you got stuck in my cottage,’ Becky said ruefully and Theo looked away.
The thought of admitting at this late stage that he had hardly found himself stuck in her cottage by pure chance was unthinkable. It hardly made a difference, because what did it matter whether she eventually found out or not that he had appeared there by design? But something inside him twisted, an uneasy tug on his conscience, which was usually unassailable.
Snowbound With His Innocent Temptation Page 10
