by Lucy King
‘A pleasant one though,’ she said, burying the lie in politeness and thinking that actually ‘pleasant’ was way too bland a word to associate with Will. In any context.
‘Then why don’t we join you?’ he said with a smile so cool it was sub-zero.
What? Bella’s eyebrows shot up and her stomach jumped. Oh, no. No no no no no. Grabbing back some sort of control, she flashed both Will and his date an overly bright smile. ‘Oh. Well, that would be delightful, of course, but I’m sure—’ She glanced at the redhead.
‘Rosie,’ she supplied huskily.
‘Rosie would rather you had your own table,’ she said.
‘Rosie doesn’t mind,’ said Will abruptly.
Rosie looked as if she minded quite a bit, but she got over it remarkably quickly and smiled graciously. ‘That sounds lovely,’ she said, presumably so confident that she’d have Will all to herself later that she could afford to be generous, Bella thought tartly.
‘Fine by me,’ said Sam, getting to his feet and summoning a waiter before Bella could shoot him a pleading look.
And then introductions were being made and a couple of waiters were hurrying over to whip off tablecloths and rearrange cutlery and crockery, and Bella felt any kind of control she might have had over events slip through her fingers like sand through an hourglass.
How was she going to get through this evening now? Enjoy supper, Sam had said. Ha. There was absolutely no chance of that. With Will in this weirdly prickly mood, and Bella feeling more than a little on edge herself, it was going to be agony.
But what could she do, apart from drum up some of that coolness and aloofness she’d hauled into action the first time she’d met Will, and count the minutes until the bill arrived?
That was it, she decided, clutching onto that idea for dear life. That was what she’d do. She’d be polite and charming, chatty when the conversation called for it, and above all she would not think about how the last time she’d seen Will he’d been beneath her, trapped between her thighs, clamping her against him and pounding into her.
Because he clearly wasn’t, she thought darkly as he smiled down at something Rosie said with far more warmth than he’d so far offered her this evening.
That Will had moved on far more effectively and efficiently than she had rankled. Big time. Training her gaze on what the waiters were doing and keeping it off the couple the other side of the action, Bella made a snap decision.
Was she really going to primly sit there with Sam equally primly at her side while Will and Rosie flirted and no doubt played footsie all evening?
Was she hell.
Polite and charming be damned. If she was going to have to suffer the agonies of the next couple of hours at least she could do it on something approaching an equal basis.
‘Sam?’ she muttered.
‘Yes?’ He glanced round and bent his head towards her.
‘Would you mind doing me a favour?’
If Sam touched Bella once more, thought Will grimly, he’d leap across the table, haul him up by the lapels of his very expensive-looking jacket, drag him outside and set about wiping the smile from his face. Permanently.
Ever since they’d all sat down Sam had barely been able to keep his hands off her. He’d pulled a chair out for her and planted a lingering kiss on her cheek. He’d handed her a menu, and then leaned forwards, his head touching hers as he completely needlessly pointed out the various dishes. When he’d murmured something into Bella’s ear, making her laugh softly, it had taken every ounce of Will’s self-control not to yank them apart and snap at them to stop acting like besotted teenagers.
‘Well, isn’t this a coincidence?’ he said, fixing a smile to his face and looking at no one in particular.
Bella arched an eyebrow. ‘Is it?’ she said.
‘What else would it be?’
‘I read about this place in a magazine,’ said Rosie. ‘I’ve been dying to try it out.’
‘So have I,’ Bella muttered, sounding as if she deeply regretted it.
‘And how many strings did you have to pull to get a table tonight?’ said Sam, shooting Will an irritatingly conspiratorial grin.
‘A few,’ he said.
‘Me too. But I thought, what the hell, whatever my Bella wants.’
His Bella? Bella winced a little, as well she might, and Will ground his teeth. How long had this been going on?
‘So how have you been?’ he said coolly, looking across the table at her.
‘Absolutely marvellous,’ she said, meeting his gaze equally steadily.
She looked it, he thought, running his gaze over her deliberately slowly. She looked glowing. Her hair was loose and tumbling round her shoulders and her eyes were sparkling. She was wearing a white shirt, undone just enough to provide a hint of cleavage, and caramel-coloured suede trousers that sat low on her hips and called out to be stroked.
Will curled his fingers into fists to stop them from reaching out beneath the tablecloth and doing exactly that. ‘I’m so glad,’ he said smoothly, thinking he was anything but.
‘You?’
‘Couldn’t be better.’
‘How nice.’ She gave him a tight little smile, lifted her glass to her mouth and took a sip of champagne.
‘So how do you know each other?’ said Rosie, plucking a breadstick from the glass standing in the centre of the table and snapping it.
Bella jumped and spluttered and coughed, and Will felt a burst of satisfaction surge through him. She was rattled. Good. And then hot on the heels of the satisfaction came relief. Thank God he wasn’t the only one to be suffering from this. For a moment there her cool detachment had been highly unnerving. But then he remembered that she’d hidden her response to him behind icy aloofness once before, and relaxed a little.
‘Bella did some work for me,’ he said, toying with the stem of his own glass and watching as her eyes dipped to his fingers and darkened.
And then she’d done him.
At the thump of desire that struck him in the gut and then ricocheted around inside him Will’s fingers tightened around the stem of the glass and he swiftly removed them to break the far less fragile bread roll sitting on his side plate.
‘That’s right,’ she said calmly, although his senses, hyperalert where she seemed to be concerned, picked up on the fact that her breathing had quickened slightly and a faint flush was creeping into her face.
‘She’s very talented,’ said Sam, throwing an admiring smile in Bella’s direction that Will wanted to knock off his face.
‘She certainly is,’ Will murmured.
‘What do you do?’ asked Rosie.
Bella blinked, then smiled. ‘I’m a jeweller.’
‘Is the necklace you’re wearing one of your designs? It’s very beautiful.’
Will’s gaze dipped to the amber pendant that nestled in Bella’s cleavage and his mouth went dry.
Bella opened her mouth to answer and then Sam, damn him, was leaning forwards and smiling into her eyes and saying, ‘I gave it to her, didn’t I, darling?’
Darling? Will went so rigid he nearly shattered.
‘Oh—er—yes,’ said Bella, smiling right back and batting her eyelids up at him. ‘Sam’s so thoughtful like that.’
Will forced his jaw to relax and wished he were unscrupulous enough to use Rosie to wind Bella up as much as she was unknowingly winding him up. ‘I’m sure he is.’
‘I’d love something like that,’ said Rosie, her voice dreamy but her eyes shooting Will a pointed look that he chose to ignore, as he always did in the face of such not-very-subtly-dropped hints.
Instead he muttered something non-committal and watched through narrowed eyes as Sam stretched his arm along the back of Bella’s chair and began massaging her shoulder.
‘And what about you, Rosie?’ said Sam.
‘I’m a professor of astrophysics at Imperial College.’
Bella’s jaw nearly hit the floor and Will felt another stab of satisfactio
n.
‘Wow,’ she muttered. ‘That sounds fascinating.’
Rosie shrugged and smiled modestly. ‘I enjoy it. I specialise in stellar dynamics and galaxy formation. It’s kind of fun.’
‘And Will’s a duke,’ said Bella, turning to Sam.
Sam’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Really?’
She nodded. ‘He has houses all over the country but chooses to live in the Cayman Islands. He dives.’
Curiosity spiked through him. ‘You seem to know a lot about me.’ Had she checked him out?
‘I do.’
So what else did she know? And did any of it have anything to do with why she’d cancelled their date?
‘Then you’ll know I’m not only a duke,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘What else do you do?’ asked Sam.
‘I trade.’
‘So do I,’ Sam said, eventually sliding his hand from Bella’s shoulder to butter his roll. ‘Who for?’
‘Myself.’ And because he realised he really had to relax before his blood pressure shot through the roof, Will made himself dredge some sort of small talk and said, ‘How about you?’
‘Parker, Collins and Black.’
Will gave a brief nod of recognition. ‘Good company.’
‘Why the Cayman Islands?’ asked Bella.
Because of the tax benefits? Because of the diving? Because he could leave his house unlocked without worrying about anyone breaking in? Or all of the above?
Hmm. Will might have decided to make a bit more of an effort in the way of conversation but no way was he going into all that. ‘I like the heat,’ he said eventually, staring straight at Bella and watching the flush in her cheeks deepen. ‘Don’t you?’
Something flickered in the depths of her eyes and she swallowed. And then she pulled her shoulders back, sat up a little straighter and flashed him a bright smile. ‘Not a bit of it,’ she said lightly. ‘I hate the heat.’
‘Really?’ He lifted his eyebrows and shot her a smouldering smile. ‘I’d have thought you’d have loved it.’
Her eyes widened. ‘I can’t imagine where you’d get that idea.’
‘You seem that kind of woman.’
For a moment, everything else ceased to exist. For a moment it was just the two of them, enveloped in a bubble of heat and electricity and vibrating tension. Will arched an eyebrow. Curved his lips into the barest hint of a smile all the time wondering who exactly she was trying to convince.
Bella caught her lip with her teeth, then blinked and looked away. ‘Well, I assure you, I’m not.’
The urge to push it, to carry on needling her until she was forced to acknowledge the chemistry between them was so strong, so insistent that it brought him slamming back to his senses. Hauling himself under control, Will shrugged and frowned and made himself back off. ‘My mistake.’
‘The Arctic’s my kind of thing,’ she said firmly. ‘The colder the better.’
‘I agree,’ said Sam, ‘which is why I’m taking her skiing in a few weeks. The Alps, I was thinking. Log fires and whisky macs. Sheepskin rugs and Bella.’ He smiled. ‘What more could a man want?’
Will’s jaw almost snapped. Skiing? Log fires and whisky macs? Sheepskin rugs? What the hell was going on? ‘What indeed?’ he muttered.
‘Personally I vastly prefer the heat,’ said Rosie, fluttering her eyelashes at Will. ‘I’d love to visit the Cayman Islands,’ she added wistfully, and planted a hand on his thigh.
He tensed, was about to remove it when he saw Bella’s gaze drop to it and a tiny frown pucker her forehead. Ha, he thought, and decided to leave it there.
‘Perhaps Will will take you,’ said Bella, lifting her eyes to his.
Not a chance. ‘Perhaps,’ he murmured and wondered if he might have accidentally stepped into some sort of parallel universe.
‘Have you known each other long?’ asked Rosie.
‘A couple of weeks,’ said Sam with a shrug. ‘Not long, I know, but it’s been pretty intense, hasn’t it, honey?’
At first the implication of Sam’s words didn’t register. Bella’s knee had bumped against his and a jolt of electricity was shooting straight to his groin, making his body tighten with need and his pulse race.
And then the words filtered through the hazy fog in his head and Will felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. Desire vanished. Heat turned to ice.
Two weeks? His gut churned and a strange kind of numbness began to seep through him. Two weeks?
So she had lied.
For a few long moments a taut kind of silence descended over the table. Will stared at her, watching her expression fill with distress and her eyes cloud, and steeled himself against the unwelcome effect he suspected her reaction could have on him if he let it.
Of course she was distressed, he thought grimly. She’d been caught out.
And then, with a demonstration of self-control he might have admired had he not been so furious, Bella pulled her shoulders back, smoothly rose to her feet and cast them all a cool smile.
‘Please do excuse me,’ she said, and ran for the bathroom.
CHAPTER EIGHT
OH GOD, oh God, oh God.
Bella rested her burning forehead against the mirror but it did nothing to cool the heat and the turmoil churning through her body.
Gripping the edge of the vanity unit to stop herself from shaking quite so uncontrollably, she drew back and stared at her reflection. Her face was as white as the napkin she’d just thrown down, and her eyes looked huge and troubled.
Not that that was any surprise. Tonight was turning out to be the most horrendous night she’d ever had. The whole evening was hurtling out of control and she had no idea how to stop it.
And it was all entirely her own fault.
How could she have thought that asking Sam to pretend to be mad about her, to hang onto her every word and appear to be unable to keep his hands off her was a good idea? Since when had she played that kind of game? Shame battered its way into the tangle of emotions racing around inside her, and Bella stifled a groan.
Had she completely lost the plot?
It had seemed like such an excellent plan at the time, when she’d been so wrong-footed and ill at ease, but with hindsight it was childish and knee-jerkingly stupid.
Releasing her death grip on the edge of the sink, Bella locked her knees and dug around in her handbag for her lip gloss.
Why, oh, why couldn’t Sam have told her she was out of her tiny little mind and refused point-blank, instead of glancing over at Will and Rosie, grinning and saying sure, why not?
And why had he had to embrace the role with quite such enthusiasm?
Every time he’d touched her, or even smiled at her, she’d sensed Will’s tension level rocket, and had to bite back the urge to snap at Sam to cut it out.
But then Will had started talking about heat and things, and her tension level had shot up and she’d found herself wanting to encourage Sam.
Rosie with her possessive hand planting hadn’t helped. Bella had seen the none-too-subtle movement—and Will’s lack of reaction—and it had nearly crucified her. She would have to be a professor of bloody astrophysics, wouldn’t she? Bella thought glumly, applying a layer of gloss to her lips. Why couldn’t she have been a vacuous model or something? Why did she have to have legs up to her armpits, a killer figure, a mane of shiny red hair and brains?
God, it wasn’t fair.
And actually neither was she, she acknowledged, her hand stilling as she paused and frowned at her reflection. It wasn’t really Rosie’s fault there was all this tension crashing around, and nor was it Sam’s. In fact if it hadn’t been for those two, conversation, at least of the verbal kind, would have been pretty thin on the ground.
Besides, she didn’t believe in the fairness—or lack of—of life. She believed you were in charge of your own destiny and made your own choices. So her current predicament was entirely of her making.
However, being aware of tha
t didn’t make it any less awful, did it? she thought as the scene she’d fled flew into her mind and sent a fresh wave of nausea rolling around her stomach. When Sam had blithely announced that they’d been seeing each other for two weeks she’d seen Will blanch and had known what he’d have thought. And then his eyes had drilled into hers, demanding an explanation, and, what with the heat and the desire and the confusion churning around inside her, she hadn’t been able to stand it any longer.
So here she was. Hiding in the loos and wishing she could stay here for ever because she had the terrifying feeling that sooner or later all this pressure was bound to explode, and she wasn’t sure she was prepared to face the consequences.
But what choice did she have?
The bathroom window was far too small to escape through and she really couldn’t stay in here for ever. Her only option was to go out and face the music that she’d composed.
Taking a deep breath, Bella dropped her lip gloss back in her bag and ran her wrists under the tap. Then she pulled her shoulders back and practised a smile until it looked as natural as it ever was going to look, pinched her cheeks and shook her hair back.
There, she told herself. That would have to do. Her insides might be a mess, but at least she looked calm and in control.
All she had to do now was go out, plead a headache and ask Sam to find her a taxi, because she didn’t think she could keep up the pretence any longer. The idea of having to continue with the charade and suffering more of Will’s glares and Rosie’s sultry smiles made her smile wobble a little, and her head started pounding so fiercely that she realised she wouldn’t even have to fake the pain.
Briefly closing her eyes and massaging her temples, Bella straightened her spine, lifted her chin and opened the door.
To find Will leaning against the wall opposite, his hands in his pockets, his eyes dark and impenetrable and his expression grim.
Bella froze, her hand tightening on the door handle and her heart banging against her ribs. ‘Will,’ she said, as coolly as she could manage.
‘Bella.’
