A Vow of Obligation

‘Where?’

He named a famous department store. He scanned the jeans and checked shirt she wore with faded blue plimsolls and his wide sensual mouth twisted, for in such casual clothing she looked little older than a teenager. ‘What age are you?’

‘Twenty-three … you?’

‘Thirty.’

‘Speak French,’ he urged.

‘I’m a little rusty. I only get to see my grandmother about once a month now,’ Tawny told him.

‘Give me your mobile phone,’ he instructed.

‘My phone?’ Tawny exclaimed in dismay.

‘I can’t trust you with access to a phone when I need to ensure that you don’t pass information to anyone,’ he retorted levelly and extended a slim brown hand. ‘Your phone, please …’

The silence simmered. Tawny worried at her lower lip, reckoned that she could not fault his reasoning and reluctantly dug her phone out of her pocket. ‘You’re not allowed to go through it. There’s private stuff on there.’

‘Just like my laptop,’ Navarre quipped with a hard look, watching her redden and marvelling that she could still blush so easily.

He ushered her out of the suite and into the lift. She leant back against the wall.

‘Don’t slouch,’ he told her immediately.

With an exaggerated sigh, Tawny straightened. ‘We mix like oil and water.’

‘We only have to impress as a couple in company. Practise looking adoring,’ Navarre advised witheringly.

Tawny wrinkled her nose. ‘That’s not really my style—’

‘Try,’ he told her.

She preceded him out into the foyer, striving not to notice the heads craning at the reception desk to follow their progress out of the hotel. A limousine was waiting by the kerb and she climbed in, noting Elise’s neat blonde head behind the steering wheel.

‘Tell me about yourself … a potted history,’ Navarre instructed.

‘I’m an only child although I have two half-sisters through my father’s two marriages. He didn’t marry my mother, though, and he has never been involved in my life. I got my degree at art college and for a couple of years managed to make a living designing greeting cards. Unfortunately that wasn’t lucrative enough to pay the bills and I signed up as a maid so that I would have a regular wage coming in,’ she told him grudgingly. ‘I want to be a cartoonist but so far I haven’t managed to sell a single cartoon.’

‘A cartoonist,’ Navarre repeated, his interest caught by that unexpected ambition.

‘What about you? Were you born rich?’

‘No. I grew up in the back streets of Paris but I acquired a first-class degree at the Sorbonne. I was an investment banker until I became interested in telecommunications and set up my first business.’

‘Parents?’ she pressed.

His face tensed. ‘I was a foster child and lived in many homes. I have no relatives that I acknowledge.’

‘I know how we can tell people we met,’ Tawny said with a playful light in her eyes. ‘I was changing your bed when—’

Navarre was not amused by the suggestion but his attention lingered on her astonishingly vivid little face in which every expression was easily read. ‘I don’t think we need to admit that you were working as a hotel maid.’

‘Honesty is always the best policy.’

‘Says the woman whom I caught thieving.’

Her face froze as though he had slapped her, reality biting again. ‘I wasn’t thieving,’ she muttered tightly.

‘It really doesn’t matter as long as you keep your light fingers strictly to your own belongings while you’re with me,’ Navarre responded drily. ‘I hope the desire to steal is an impulse that you can resist as we will be mingling with some very wealthy people.’

Mortified by the comment, Tawny bent her bright head. ‘Yes, you don’t have to worry on that score.’

While Navarre took a comfortable seat in a private room in the store, Tawny was ushered off to try on evening gowns, and each one seemed more elaborate than the last. When the selection had been reduced to two she was propelled out to the waiting area, where Navarre was perusing the financial papers, for a second opinion.

‘That’s too old for her,’ he commented of the purple ball gown that she felt would not have looked out of place on Marie Antoinette.

When she walked out in the grey lace that fitted like a glove to below hip line before flaring out in a romantic arc of fullness round her knees, he actually set his newspaper down, the better to view her slender, shapely figure. ‘Sensationnel,’ he declared with crowd-pleasing enthusiasm while his shrewd green eyes scanned her with as much emotion as a wooden clothes horse might have inspired.

Yet for all that lack of feeling they were such unexpectedly beautiful eyes, she reflected helplessly, as cool and mysterious as the depths of the sea, set in that strong handsome face. Bemused by the unusually fanciful thought, Tawny was whisked back into the spacious changing room where two assistants were hanging up outfits for the stylist to choose from. There were trousers, skirts, dresses, tops and jackets as well as lingerie and a large selection of shoes and accessories. Every item was designer and classic and nothing was colourful enough or edgy enough to appeal to her personal taste. She would only be in the role of fake fiancée for a maximum of two weeks, she reminded herself with relief. Could such a vast number of garments really be necessary or was the stylist taking advantage of a buyer with famously deep pockets? She wondered what event the French industrialist was taking her to that required the over-the-top evening gown. She was not required to model any other clothing for his inspection. That was a relief for, stripped of her usual image and denied her streetwise fashion, she felt strangely naked and vulnerable clad in items that did not belong to her.

Navarre was on the phone talking in English when she returned to his side. As they walked back through the store he continued the conversation, his deep drawl a low-pitched sexy purr, and she guessed that he was chatting to a woman. They returned to the hotel in silence. She wanted to go home and collect some of her own things but was trying to pick the right moment in which to make that request. Navarre vanished into the bedroom, reappearing in a light grey suit ten minutes later and walking past her.

‘I’m going out. I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he told her silkily.

Her smooth brow furrowed. ‘Do I have to stay here?’

‘That’s the deal,’ he confirmed with a dismissive lack of interest that set her teeth on edge.

It was after midnight when Navarre came back to his suite with Jacques still at his heels. He had forgotten about Tawny so it was a surprise to walk in and see the lounge softly lit. Three heads turned from the table between them to glance at him, three of the individuals, members of his security team, instantly rising upright to greet him with an air of discomfiture beneath Jacques’s censorious appraisal. From the debris it was clear there had been takeout food eaten, and from the cards and small heaps of coins visible several games of poker. Tawny didn’t stand up. She stayed where she was curled up barefoot on the sofa.

Navarre shifted a hand in dismissal of his guards. Tawny had yet to break into her new wardrobe, for she wore faded skinny jeans with slits over the knee and a tee with a skeleton motif. Her hair fell in a torrent of spiralling curls halfway down her back, much longer than he had appreciated and providing a frame for her youthful piquant face that gave her an almost fey quality.

‘Where did you get those clothes from?’ he asked bluntly.

‘I gave Elise a list of things that I needed along with my keys and she was kind enough to go and pack a bag for me. I didn’t think that what I wore behind closed doors would matter.’ Tawny gazed back at him in silent challenge, striving not to react in any way to the fact that he was drop-dead gorgeous, particularly with that dark shadow of stubble roughening his masculine jawline and accentuating the sensual curve of his beautifully shaped mouth.

Navarre bent to lift the open sketch pad resting on the arm of the sofa. It was an amusing caricature of Elise and instantly recognisable as such. He flicked it back and found another, registering that she had drawn each of her companions. ‘You did these? They’re good.’

Tawny shifted a narrow shoulder in dismissal. ‘Not good enough to pay the bills,’ she said wryly, thinking of how often her mother had criticised her for choosing to study art rather than a subject that the older woman had deemed to be of more practical use.

‘A talent nonetheless.’

‘Where am I supposed to sleep tonight?’ Tawny asked flatly, in no mood to debate the topic.

‘You can sleep on the sofa,’ Navarre told her without hesitation, irritated that he had not thought of her requirements soon enough to ask for a suite with an extra bedroom. ‘It will only be for two nights and then we’ll be leaving London.’

‘To go where?’