Misbehaving Under the Mistletoe (Mills & Boon M&B): On the First Night of Christmas... / Secrets of the Rich & Famous / Truth-Or-Date.com (Mb)

by Heidi Rice

  And it was only when she got inside the stall and had locked the door firmly behind her that her brain caught up with her hormones.

  Miles had just called her Andy. And now he knew her real name!

  She sat down, fully clothed, her elbows resting on her knees, chewing at her raggedy small fingernail, trying to come up with a cunning plan as to how to:

  #Thank Miles for his understanding about Elise and pray that he had enough cash for the bill. Then thank him for the nice kiss. No—make that a very nice kiss.

  #Sneak out of the coffee shop alone past the two gossips. Or maybe she should stride past with her head high? Nigel the suit was nothing compared to the gorgeousness of the man she had just left at the table.

  #Come clean to Saffie. It had to be done. Elise’s online coffee date had kissed her within an hour of walking through the door. Which either made her extremely lucky or a total strumpet. And she did not do strumpet. Never had. Not even when she was at school. The boys from their rival high school did not call her frosty knickers without good reason.

  #Try and ignore the fact that Miles was the most attractive man that she had met in a very long time and that she would be reliving every moment of the last hour for a long time to come.

  She keyed in the list on her organiser, looked at it, then shut the gizmo down and stuffed it into her bag, ripped off a long strip of toilet tissue and blew her nose loudly.

  One thing was for sure. She was not going to get anything done sitting here feeling sorry for herself. Time to get going.

  Andy pushed herself to her wobbly legs, turned the door handle and hobbled over to the washbasins in her high-heeled boots to try and repair the damage before facing Miles again.

  She took one look at the medium-height, medium-pretty woman with the medium-brown scraggy hair in the mirror and winced.

  Why had she stayed long enough to let Miles kiss her?

  Miles was a flirt. A professional, Greek-god-handsome, used-to-women-falling-at-his-feet flirt. He had higher qualifications in manly allure and an honorary degree from the university of flirting and female dazzling.

  And she was not in a place where she could handle that. Any of it.

  He was everything she’d thought he might be from his emails. And more.

  She simply wasn’t up to flirting with a man like Miles and the truth was … she didn’t know whether she ever would be. Time to go home.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MILES watched Andy stroll away from him to the other side of the room.

  So what if he was a leg man?

  Those cute little ankle boots showed off her shapely legs to perfection, and not even that shapeless grey business suit could hide the fact that Andy had a body that would look amazing in a swimsuit.

  What was the Andy short for? Andrea? Maybe he would have a chance to find out.

  If she let him.

  Miles chortled to himself as he finished his coffee. It wasn’t often that the old Gibson charm let him down, and he had a sneaking suspicion that there might be a back door to this coffee shop and Andy had made a run for it.

  And he could hardly blame her. He had felt like doing exactly the same thing after the little announcement she had made earlier.

  The whole idea that he had been set up was the one thing guaranteed to flick his switches. When she told him that she was a replacement for her boss, his first reaction was to walk out and not look back.

  Which was only natural after what happened with Lori.

  But that was before he realised that Andy was the girl who had written the emails that had made all of those trips to the physio almost tolerable over the past week.

  Well. Jason had warned him that this #citygirl might not be the date he was expecting—and he had got that right.

  She was a whole lot more.

  It took guts to come here and apologise in person. Guts and a heart that did not want him to sit here on his own waiting for his date to show up. Maybe that was what he had seen in those emails? That Andy cared about people. People other than herself.

  One thing was sure.

  He had trusted his gut reaction every day of his sporting life, and right now it was telling him that Andy was telling him the truth. This was no trick—she had not even bothered to look the same as the girl whose blurry photo was attached to the online dating profile.

  Of course he could be wrong. Lori had proved that. But there was even more to this girl Andy than he had expected. She was curious about him—and he was just as curious about her. Why on earth did she agree to write emails for her boss? This girl had a story to tell and he wouldn’t mind hearing it.

  At the very least she could provide the kind of distraction he would need to get through the sports event a week on Saturday.

  He peered around in the direction of the ladies’ room. She had taken off pretty quickly after he had kissed her. Maybe that had been a mistake? She hadn’t stopped him but unless he had read the signals wrong she hadn’t been expecting it, either.

  Maybe she was hiding and afraid to come out in case he was actually a sex fiend who lured nice girls into coffee shops. Then kissed them in front of their least favourite workmates.

  Jason was going to be furious.

  Miles scanned his emails and opened the latest from Jason with a link to an article from a London magazine giving a list of the Brainiest Millionaire Bachelors in London.

  And there he was—Jason Gibson of Cory Sports.

  His identical twin brother.

  The photographer must have come to their London office because Jason was in full city-boy mode. He was wearing his trademark long-sleeved black shirt with the diamond cufflinks in the shape of a surfboard and black formal trousers. Something must have amused Jason because he had broken into a half-smile as he looked into the camera.

  Miles shook his head. Even though they were so totally different in so many ways, there was no denying the fact that there had been a time when their own parents could not tell them apart.

  Of course that had been before he filled out and Jason stayed boy slender.

  When he thought about all of the times they had swopped places and fooled people over the years. Playing tricks on teachers and girls was their favourite—Jason was naturally more academic and a whizz at exams. He could never understand why Miles only wanted to learn about the things that interested him—like sports science and geology and the weather.

  Then there had been that one time when Miles had taken the boat out to show off to some girl and it had run out of diesel in the middle of nowhere. And Jason had taken the initiative to sit the exam in his place, and not one of their tutors realised. What made it especially annoying was that Miles had been given top marks, and Jason had only studied climatology for a few months before dropping it for computer science.

  But somehow it had worked. Jason was the brains of the family and Miles was the professional sportsman who was on the way to being world champion.

  And that was okay. Hell—it was better than okay. The Gibson twins were the stars of the surfing world and Cory Sports went global.

  Miles inhaled slowly and rolled his shoulders back as that cold icy feeling of dread welled up from the pit of his stomach.

  Correction. That had been okay. Until the accident.

  Now he was back in London to pretend to the sporting world that it was business as usual for Cory Sports.

  If only that were true.

  Oh—he knew what the sports journalists were asking. Jason was at the helm and still one of the brainiest bachelors in London. But what about his brother? What was Miles doing in the business apart from learning to walk again? What future did he have when he stopped being the sporting hero? Good question. Pity that he did not have a smart answer for them. Not yet. But he would. He had to.

  Sitting up taller, Miles decided to focus on something he could control and snorted in derision at the fawning press article before sending a suitable reply about how Jason’s smart-boy haircut was bound to wow
the ladies—if, big if, he ever found the time to meet any.

  Jason was brilliant and had taken Cory Sports to places neither of them had ever expected.

  But when it came to girls? Hopeless. No. Make that worse than hopeless.

  His brother seemed to attract girls who either saw him as someone who they could get free sportswear from, or as a geek who they could persuade to run the IT in their companies in his spare time, then dumped him when they found out that he did not have any spare time.

  Or then there were the worst kind. The professional gold-diggers who were happy to pursue any man who could even vaguely be described as a millionaire. Or, in their case, multimillionaire, although Jason would be the last person to brag about the money.

  And Miles knew all about gold diggers.

  Lori had been in his life for three years and not once did it cross his mind that she was using him and his status to get where she wanted to be. He was actually deluded enough to believe that she wanted to be with the real Miles Gibson, when in fact, she had a lot more interest in how he could further her career.

  But when he had the accident? Well. He had stopped being useful to her any more and she had moved on to the next world-class sportsman who could give her the A-list profile she wanted. Having her own TV show was just part of the perks of that celebrity world.

  And so was being invited to the Sports Personality Award show next week.

  Which made it even more important that he walk into that sports event, on his own two feet, with a new woman on his arm and a twinkle in his eye.

  The twinkle he could manage on his own.

  But the woman? He wanted the right woman. Not another lingerie model like Lori.

  No—he needed a stand-in date for one night—and just one night—who could hold her own.

  A date with spark and energy and her own life and independence who could guard his back when he showed the world that Miles Gibson was not going to let a car accident stop him doing what he wanted.

  Moaning to Jason that he did not want to go solo to the sports personality event had been a mistake. The last thing he had expected Jason to do was set him up on an Internet dating site. And he hated it when Jason got it so right. Andy was interesting. Funny. Oblivious to the fact that her real personality was there in every line of the emails that she had sent.

  She had been worth coming out on a wet November evening.

  All he had to do was turn on the charm and talk her into coming with him to the event. Done deal.

  Suddenly there was a bustle of activity and Andy breezed past him, picked up her coat from the back of her chair, slipped it on without saying a word, and slung her bag over one shoulder.

  He was just about to say something when she turned towards him, and the words stuck in his throat. Her skin was as white as paper, and from the quivering mouth it was obvious that she was upset about something.

  Over him? Damn. Those girls must have got to her. Kissing her just to make an impression had been a big mistake, even if it had been the highlight of his day.

  ‘It was very nice to have met you, but I need to head back. Urgent business. Thank you very much for the dinner and best of luck with the dating scene.’ Then she gave a quick nod and turned away from him towards the door.

  ‘Hey. Wait a moment,’ he said, not wanting to draw attention to her, but if she heard him she pretended not to, and in one smooth motion flicked her collar up, flung open the door and strode away into the rain as fast as her legs could carry her. And was gone.

  Miles stood up and tried to move after her, but he had been sitting in the one place too long again. His leg instantly cramped up and the pain in his knee switched from being just tolerable to pass-the-painkillers so quickly that he had to sit back down and massage the injured muscle back into life.

  Well, this day got better and better.

  He had just driven away the only online date he had agreed to meet.

  And then he spotted something purple and umbrella shaped propped up next to her chair.

  Saffie’s house was in complete darkness when Andy walked up the path and turned the key in the front door. The rain had turned into a driving sleet and as the warm air hit her face and ears she could feel her cheeks tingle from the icy blast.

  She had already been halfway down the street before she realised that she had left her purple umbrella back in the coffee shop—probably hidden below Miles’s jacket. So she had waited for the bus that never came. So then she had gritted her teeth and walked for twenty minutes in her smart boots rather than just stand there and wait.

  Waiting was for losers. Miles would never have waited—and neither would she.

  Because standing on her own at that freezing bus stop with the rain running down her neck and inside her boots Andromeda Elizabeth Davies had come to a major conclusion. After twenty-eight years on this planet she had done enough waiting for other people in life.

  She had waited for her parents to stop working just long enough to pay her some attention.

  She had waited for someone to explain why they had to move out of her home and her own room with her own things into the hastily rearranged study of her grandparents’ apartment, which she would be sharing with a lifetime of hoarded unwanted clutter.

  She had waited for her parents to stop telling her how lucky she was to go to the private boarding school that was soaking up the trust fund her parents had started when they were rich and had money to throw away.

  And then she had waited for her school friends to realise that she was just the same girl, only without any money. Saffie and her close pals had been brilliant but the others like Elise had dropped her in a week.

  She had been prepared to wait for Nigel to make the first move and start dating her properly. Too busy with the project work, he had said. The presentation to the board for the new promotional plans for the coming year had to be perfect—but then they could relax and spend a weekend away together and tell the other people in the office that they were a couple. Surely she could wait a few more weeks?

  She was his guilty little secret.

  Sordid. Dirty. Expendable—and something he would simply throw away when he had used her enough. So he could get back to the girl he was living with.

  Well, that was then and this was now. And she had waited long enough.

  Meeting with #sportybloke Miles that evening had shown her just what she had been missing in her life—and it hurt that she did not feel able to open her heart to relax and enjoy his company as though it were a real date.

  Because it had never been a real date, and she had to remember that. No matter how lovely his smile, his touch and the feeling of his lips on hers.

  Slipping off her wet coat, she strolled slowly up the staircase, her feet dragging and her wet boots feeling like lead weights on her feet. Each tread of the old wooden staircase creaked as she put her weight on the boards and echoed around the tall empty hallway, but she had become used to each familiar sound in this comfortable family-sized home. Her faithful friends were the chiming of the grandfather clock in the hall and the faint clanking from the central heating as it tried to bring some warmth to so many unoccupied rooms.

  When Saffie had asked her if she wanted to come and keep her company, Andy had jumped at the chance to share a house with a girl she was proud to call her friend.

  But that was two years ago, when Saffie was working in London and she could jump on a bus and be at the restaurant in twenty minutes. Now she was in Paris and not even a fast train link could make the distance any smaller.

  Andy looked up at the stained-glass window at the top of the stairs. In summer the house was filled with coloured light and seemed a magical place, bright and positive and bursting with life.

  But at that moment, it was dark, wet and windy and the rain lashed against the stained-glass and the only light was from the street light outside streaming in from the glass panel over the front door.

  And as she stood there on the staircase, halfway
to the landing, a huge weight suddenly seemed to press down on her shoulders.

  Andy slid sideways onto the stair with her back against the wall as though the events of the day were too heavy to carry any longer.

  She let her head drop back and just sat there, listening to the sound of her breathing and gentle sobs in the darkness.

  It wasn’t the dark, or the silence.

  No, it was the crushing feeling of loneliness that drove her to feel sorry for herself. She had never got used to being so lonely. There was no one she could talk to about her life and her problems. Nobody understood her or was truly interested in her life.

  Saffie was the nearest thing she had to a family. It would be the middle of the dinner service in Paris around now, so she couldn’t talk to her best pal until the morning—and Saffie worked so hard, driven by her passion for food to be the best she could be, and Andy admired her for that.

  Goodness knew, Saffie could have trained as a lawyer as her parents wanted her to, but that wasn’t what she wanted and she had started at the bottom washing dishes and ended up with a first-class degree in catering and a chance to show what she could do in a serious restaurant in Paris.

  And nobody was prouder than Andy.

  Saffie had been her best friend at boarding school when her parents were working silly hours in the city and sending the chauffeur to pick her up on a Friday afternoon. But what made her truly special was that Saffie had stuck by her even when the stock market exploded and her father’s bank went under. Helping her friend out while finding somewhere else to live had seemed a brilliant solution to two problems. Win, win, as Nigel would have said.

  Nigel.

  Andy pressed her hand to her mouth, and then wiped away the tears from her cheeks.

  Oh, what a fool she had been.

  It had been the right decision to resign from her nice clean office job once she understood that he already had a girlfriend. No. Make that a rich girlfriend. The boss’s daughter. There was no going back from that. Even if it had meant leaving a full-time job to work part-time for Elise to pay her bills.

  It was just—sometimes she felt that she could touch the silence in this house which was more than her home—it was where she had her studio.