In Separate Bedrooms

‘I’m too much of a gentleman to say,’ Jack returned smoothly.

Just as well she wasn’t taking another sip of her wine when he said that! Gentleman, indeed!

Mattie shook her head. ‘I have a business to run, I can’t just disappear off to Paris for three days—’

‘Four,’ Jack corrected evenly. ‘And Friday and Monday are bank holidays,’ he reasoned. ‘So it will only be for the Saturday. I’m sure you must take time off; who looks after the shop then?’

She didn’t very often take holidays, but when she did she always called on her best friend Sam from their university days. Sam was married with a young baby now, but she loved to keep her hand in and work in the shop if she had the chance. Except Mattie really didn’t want to take this particular holiday!

‘It doesn’t matter how many days it is—I’m not going!’ Mattie repeated firmly.

‘No?’ He raised dark brows.

Mattie took a desperate swallow of her wine, managing to avoid choking herself this time, although the warmth of the alcohol did nothing to fill the cold hollow she could feel in the pit of her stomach.

Her deliberate act—an act Jack Beauchamp knew to be deliberate!—in changing those cards on the flowers he’d sent to the four women in his life had been a really stupid, unprofessional thing to do. Something else Jack Beauchamp was well aware of. As he was also aware he could make serious professional trouble for her if he chose to do so …

Blackmail. The man was using blackmail on her. A crime as serious—if not more so—than the one she had committed.

But that was the important thing here—the one she had committed …

Deliberately. Not cold-bloodedly. She had been too indignant, on behalf of those four unsuspecting women—as well as for herself, she admitted now—for it ever to be called that! But she had definitely acted with malice aforethought.

But that surely wasn’t punishable, courtesy of a weekend in Paris with this man—

What was she saying? A weekend in Paris with Jack Beauchamp wasn’t a punishment. At least, not one that any sane woman would see as punishment … The man was gorgeous, charming, so sexy he made her toes curl to look at him. Punishment! Most women would leap at the chance to go to Paris with him for the weekend.

Even her, if she were honest with herself …

She avoided his teasing gaze, moistening dry lips. ‘What would I tell my mother?’ Oh, Mattie, she inwardly chided; she knew she wasn’t in the least sophisticated, but she could at least try to act as if she were. What would her mother say, indeed!

Jack seemed to give the question serious thought, surprisingly no mockery in his expression as he did so. ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that your mother doesn’t know I’m the greedy pig you were talking about yesterday?’ he finally responded.

Once again Mattie couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘Er—’

‘She knows,’ he accepted economically. ‘Well, how about telling her the truth about this trip to Paris, then?’

‘The truth?’ Mattie gasped unbelievingly. ‘You want me to tell my mother that you’re blackmailing me into accompanying you to Paris because I did a totally unprofessional thing and you could ruin me because of it?’