Italian Escape with Her Fake Fiancé

by Sophie Pembroke

  ‘Mah!’ Genevieve bleated loudly in his ear and Jay jerked back, out of the range of goat spit, trying not to swear. And failing.

  ‘Genevieve!’ Daisy scolded, but, given how fast she moved away from him, he wondered if he heard a little relief in her voice.

  She’d wanted that kiss as much as he had, he’d seen that in her widened pupils, in the pulse thrumming fast at her throat. But she didn’t want to want it. Why?

  That was what he needed to figure out now.

  Just one more mystery of Daisy Mulligan.

  * * *

  ‘Yes, I know, Genevieve. I’m hiding. You don’t need to give me that look.’

  The goat stared balefully at her regardless, as if she were as disappointed at Daisy’s life choices as her family always had been. As if Genevieve hadn’t actually been the one to bring her to her senses two days ago anyway.

  If it weren’t for the damn goat she’d have kissed Jay Barwell. Again. And then, knowing her, she’d have started getting ideas.

  She couldn’t afford to get ideas about the world’s sexiest man.

  It was one thing when she was fourteen, believing that her eighteen-year-old boyfriend really meant it when he said he only loved her, when actually he had two other girls on the go at the same time. It was one thing taking up with a twenty-something guy when she was sixteen because he had a room over the pub where she could crash for a while, in return for her affection. And it was one thing falling for a musician who claimed to love her—but loved her talent, and the prospect of sharing in her fame, a hell of a lot more.

  People always wanted something in return, that was the rule, and she had to remember it. At least Jay had been upfront about what he wanted—a fake relationship and some songs to boost their flagging tour sales and popularity, plus probably show Milli Masters that he wasn’t still wallowing over her leaving him, even if he was.

  She couldn’t let herself believe, not for a second, that this was about anything else. That it might just be about how badly she’d wanted to kiss him, before Genevieve had intervened.

  So she was avoiding him. Because it was easier than dealing with the butterflies in her stomach—and the other feelings somewhat lower—every time she met his gaze.

  Of course, that made progress on the new songs rather slower. Which she felt bad about; she did. Except...she couldn’t move past those long minutes when they’d played together, when the words that needed to go with the beautiful melody he’d written had just come to her, complete in parts and a work in progress in others. Those minutes when she’d known exactly what the song was about, because she could see it in his gaze.

  It was about wanting. It was about that pull to a person you knew couldn’t be right for you, but that you couldn’t stop wanting all the same. It was about a voice down deep inside saying that this was the one.

  Even when he couldn’t be.

  And she’d known he was thinking the same as her. They were on the same wavelength as surely as they always were onstage, when they sang to each other in front of hundreds or thousands of people.

  Which was why she had to stay away.

  ‘Are you done avoiding me yet?’ Jay’s voice rang out around the outside walls of the cottage, perfectly audible over the hammering on the roof as Matteo and Lorenzo fixed the roof tiles.

  Daisy winced. ‘No, not really.’

  He came into view around the corner of the villa, skirting Genevieve cautiously, and approached Daisy. ‘Tough. I just had a call from Kevin and you’re going to have to start talking to me pretty soon.’

  ‘Why?’ He didn’t ask why she was avoiding him, she realised. Because he already knew. Because he felt the same.

  ‘There’s some awards show in Rome I’d hoped we were skipping, but apparently Kevin wants us there. Together.’

  ‘Damn.’

  He laughed. ‘Is being seen on my arm such a terrible chore?’

  ‘It’s more the “dressing up and wearing heels and make-up” part I wasn’t looking forward to,’ she confessed. ‘Plus you know Kevin will probably have an engagement ring waiting ready for me to wear. He probably measured my finger in my sleep on the tour bus.’

  Jay shuddered. ‘That’s worryingly plausible. Actually, Harry offered to bring my gran’s engagement ring to the awards if you wanted it. Apparently he really did ask Mum for it while he was at home.’

  Daisy recoiled in horror. ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘I think he meant it as a joke.’ But even he didn’t sound entirely sure.

  This was ridiculous. They couldn’t carry on like this. They needed to come to some sort of rebalancing here. One that could let them move past this awkwardness and tension and get back to work. And in her experience, only one thing had worked consistently for ruining potential relationships and encouraging men to move on and ignore her.

  Getting drunk and sleeping with them.

  Jay was an actual rock star. It stood to reason that it would work for him too, right?

  Chewing her lip, she tried to figure out how best to suggest it—and if she even wanted to. She liked Jay. She wasn’t under any illusion that he might be her one and only or anything—they were too different for that, and she didn’t believe in all that ‘soul mates’ stuff anyway. And that was before she got to the part where he was still in love with his all-American, beautiful, successful ex-girlfriend.

  But she didn’t want to trash the friendship they’d built up, either. They still had to work together, once this was over.

  Still, this was the only plan she had—other than hiding out with a goat, which wasn’t actually working that well for her.

  ‘Okay. If we need to go back to civilisation and start faking a relationship again, I think we need to do a couple of things first,’ she said.

  ‘Like talk about how we almost kissed?’ Jay suggested, suddenly closer than she’d thought. Close enough that she could just—

  She stepped back. ‘Talking is overrated,’ she told him, meeting his gaze head-on. ‘We need to go and get drunk.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JAY HAD NO idea exactly what Daisy’s plan was here, but so far he was having fun.

  The last couple of days had been unbearably awkward. Ever since that almost kiss, Daisy had been keeping her distance, refusing to meet his gaze, acting skittish and un-Daisy-like. He didn’t like it. He far preferred her snarky and mocking to this quiet and evasive Daisy.

  Fortunately, with her latest suggestion, she seemed to have got back to her old self again.

  The village at the bottom of the hill was small, but it did at least boast a bar—one which, so far, they’d discovered had plenty of different sorts of alcohol for them to try. It was a little hole-in-the-wall place, with a barely legible wooden sign over the door. Jay wasn’t sure he’d have even noticed it when they walked past, but it seemed Daisy had a nose for places like this.

  ‘It’s the many, many years I spent working in them,’ she’d explained, when he’d questioned it.

  Taking the beer she’d offered him, he’d done some swift mental arithmetic. ‘Years? Did you start bartending in secondary school?’

  Daisy just shrugged. ‘Places like this aren’t so fussy about things like age.’

  He wondered now how old she’d been. Seventeen? Sixteen? She couldn’t be more than twenty-four now, and he knew she’d been playing around pubs and bars for a few years before he met her in Copenhagen, two years ago.

  She’d never talked about her family, he realised. Not once. But now, he wondered where her parents had been when she’d been pulling pints and busking in the streets. Who had looked after her?

  He almost didn’t want to know the answer.

  Now, he leaned across the rustic wood table, beer bottle in his hand, and asked her, ‘Remind me why us getting drunk tonight is going to solve all our problems?’ It hadn’t ma
de much sense when he was sober, but he suspected that a couple of beers in it might start to be understandable.

  ‘We’re too tense around each other.’ Daisy talked with her hands a lot, he realised, watching as she waved her beer bottle around. ‘We need to loosen up.’

  ‘We’re tense because we’re trying not to give in and kiss each other.’ Oops. Apparently the alcohol had loosened his mouth up plenty already.

  Daisy’s eyes widened a fraction, before she spoke. ‘Well, maybe the drinks can help with that too.’

  ‘I don’t think every bottle behind that bar would make me want you less.’ Hell, he just had no filter at all tonight, did he? ‘So you’re going to have to explain to me why I shouldn’t.’

  Her gaze locked on his. ‘What makes you think I’m trying to convince you not to?’

  Raising one eyebrow, she got to her feet—not breaking eye contact—and gave him the sort of smile he’d only dreamed of. The sort that sent fire coursing through his veins.

  Then she turned and stalked to the bar, leaving him watching her hips sway as she procured them more drinks.

  ‘Why am I not surprised that ordering alcohol is one thing you can do in Italian?’ he asked, when she returned with shot glasses for them both.

  She laughed, warm and low. ‘You know me. Always focussing on what’s important.’

  He should change the subject from their previous conversation, he knew that. He should get them back to friendly fake boyfriend and girlfriend, to collaborators and colleagues. Mentor and mentee. But the air between them sizzled with potential, with the sort of tension that could just snap at any moment.

  He might snap if he didn’t do something about it. Either they had to decide to ignore it and hope it went away. Or...

  Well. It was the ‘or’ that had been keeping him awake at night.

  ‘And tonight it was important that you brought me here.’ As she sat, he reached across and took her hand, visibly startling her. ‘Why, Daisy?’

  ‘Because...’ She licked her lower lip again. He wondered if she knew what that did to him, if that was why she did it. Milli would have, he knew. The moment she spotted a weakness in him she homed in on it, exploiting it for all it was worth. But with Daisy...he doubted she even realised she’d done it. ‘We need to get past this...thing between us, right? Ever since we wrote that song together—’

  ‘You mean the day we almost kissed,’ Jay said, for clarity, and enjoyed watching the slightest hint of pink flush Daisy’s cheeks. He’d never imagined that she could blush. He wondered what other parts of her might turn pink with the right attention.

  ‘Yeah.’ Her voice was husky on the word, like when she sang deep and full of meaning, and it hit him places even Milli had never quite reached. God, he needed to keep drinking until he stopped thinking about her this way. She’d made it obvious that whatever the attraction between them she didn’t intend to do anything about it, which meant he needed to move past it, as she’d suggested.

  Except then she said, ‘I think we need to have sex.’

  It took a lot of effort, but Jay just about managed to not drop his drink, swear loudly, or drag her over the table into his arms in the next instant. Just.

  ‘Is that the alcohol talking?’ he asked cautiously. ‘Because honestly? I don’t see how actually getting to see you naked is going to make me want you any less afterwards.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ she said, with a wry smile. ‘Normally I find that most guys lose interest after they’ve got what they want from me.’

  ‘I’m not most guys.’ He hoped that was true. He definitely knew she was wrong about him losing interest.

  She shook her head as if she were shaking away his objections. ‘Look, the point is, we need to be able to work together. And we need to be able to pretend that we’re a couple. We can’t do that if we’re flinching every time we touch.’

  ‘Or hiding from each other.’

  ‘Exactly. So we need to get comfortable with each other again. We didn’t have this problem on the tour, right? Not even after you, well, kissed me onstage that night.’ She rushed the words, as if it would stop him remembering how her lips felt under his. It didn’t. ‘We just moved past it, right? Probably because we were so busy, and there were so many people around, and you were—’

  She broke off, but he knew what she hadn’t said. ‘I was still wallowing after Milli.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Her mouth twisted up into an awkward smile. ‘I mean, at least this is a good distraction from that, right?’

  ‘Definitely.’ He’d barely thought about Milli since he’d arrived in Italy, while she’d consumed his every waking thought when they were on tour. Until he’d kissed Daisy, anyway. She might have thought they’d moved past it, but for Jay it had felt more like trying to ignore all the strange new feelings it had kicked up in him.

  And now, here... It was as if he and Daisy had shifted universes to one where only they existed. Well, them, Genevieve and the builders.

  ‘Plus, people act differently when they’ve slept together. You can see it just by looking at them.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘So your pitch here is that we should sleep together because then I won’t want to do it any more, but Kevin will be happy because more people will believe that we’re a real couple?’ Because that definitely had to be the shots talking, right?

  Daisy leaned forward over the table, low enough that he could see right down her top to the curve of her breasts. ‘My pitch is that we should sleep with each other before I actually lose my mind with lust.’

  Any blood in his body that was still doing its actual job, rather than just getting overheated, gave up and flooded south.

  Jay swallowed down the last of his drink, got to his feet, then held out his hand to Daisy. He didn’t care what her logic was, she obviously needed this as much as he did.

  And he wasn’t letting any damn goat stop him this time.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said, and she nodded.

  They were halfway out of the door before he remembered about the stupid hill back to the villa. Even then, he didn’t let it slow them down for too long.

  Daisy laughed, the sound music on the breeze as he dragged her up the winding path. ‘Somebody’s eager.’

  ‘You have no idea,’ he growled. ‘I have been dreaming of this moment ever since you tumbled into my arms on the car ride up here.’

  ‘Me too,’ she whispered, so softly he only just caught it. The admission just made him more desperate, and he picked up speed again. Hell, he’d pick her up and carry her if he had to.

  ‘No, before then,’ he corrected himself. If they were being open and honest, he might as well go all the way. He could always blame the alcohol later. ‘Since I kissed you onstage, and pretended it was just for show.’

  Her only response to that was a small, desperate gasp. Jay smiled and redoubled his efforts to get them home quickly.

  Finally, finally, they reached the top of the hill, and then the front door. It was late enough that the builders had finished work and gone home hours ago, and even Genevieve seemed to have found somewhere else to be.

  Jay pulled Daisy close, spinning her so her back was against the front door. He’d intended to give her an opportunity to back out, to change her mind. But as he saw her there, flushed in the fading sunlight, her short black hair just falling against her cheekbone, her skin glowing, he realised something.

  ‘I haven’t even kissed you properly yet. Not without an audience. I’m half crazed for you, and I haven’t even kissed you.’ How could it be she had such an effect on him? When just a week or two ago he’d been so sure no woman besides Milli ever could?

  Maybe his mother was right about true love only striking once, but it seemed that true lust could come in many shapes and sizes.

  Then Daisy tilted her chin up, looked him straight
in the eye and said, ‘So kiss me,’ and he decided that wondering about that sort of thing could definitely wait for another day.

  Right now, he had something much more important to do.

  * * *

  The wood of the door was still warm from the sun, a pleasant heat against her back—but nothing compared to the one between her and Jay. He was going to kiss her. And then he was going to make love to her. And that... Daisy couldn’t quite decide if it was terrifying or glorious. Maybe both.

  Either way, there was no chance in hell she was going to stop it now.

  His mouth met hers and she sank into the kiss, clutching at his arms to get closer, closer. This wasn’t like any other first—or technically second—kiss in her experience. Those were drunken, fumbling, probing things. This kiss...

  This kiss was something else. Jay’s lips were confident and sure on hers, no hint of him being affected by the drinks they’d shared at the bar, although she could still taste the shots. His hands stroked up her side, her shoulder, just brushing against the curve of her breast rather than grabbing and groping her. And when she opened her eyes, he was staring right into them, so she could see the restraint in them. The desperate attempt to hold back from what he wanted.

  What they both wanted.

  ‘Okay?’ he murmured against her lips.

  Daisy shook her head, then grabbed him as he made to move away. ‘More.’

  That was all it took.

  Jay fumbled with the handle until the door fell away behind them, and then they were inside, tripping over each other as they kissed their way to the bedroom, reluctant to let go for even a moment. Daisy stripped the shirt from his shoulders as he backed her towards the bed, popping the buttons from their holes in one swift movement to get her hands on the smooth skin of his shoulders and the muscles beneath. His chest was smattered with sandy hair, and she scratched her nails through it, working downwards to the buttons of his jeans.

  The backs of her knees hit the bed frame—were they in her room or his? She hadn’t been paying attention—and she sat abruptly, smiling as she realised she was now at exactly the right level to get those jeans off him. But Jay had other ideas. Raising her arms, he pulled her top up over her head, revealing the satin and lace half bra she’d chosen when planning the evening. With a small groan, he sank to his knees, taking one breast in his hand, the other in his mouth.