A Man For The Night

WHEN JOSIE FELT she could not delay any longer, she turned back to face him.

“Ready now,” she said in what she hoped was a casual yet confident voice. In truth, she hadn’t felt either casual or confident since she’d opened the front door and come face to face with a physical replica of her favorite fantasy lover.

Josie shrank from thinking back over the way she’d acted since that moment. The gobbling him up with her eyes. Her gushing over his looks, not to mention blushing over his perfectly innocent use of the word performance.

Of course, her wicked mind had immediately put a sexual connotation on it, after which her imagination had been off and running….

Her imagination had been off and running from the moment she’d set eyes on the man.

As she walked slowly back to where he was still standing in the front hall—looking oh so cool—Josie found it hard to believe her escort was only in his midtwenties. There was an air of masculine maturity about Callum McCloud that most young guys simply didn’t have.

Still, most young guys weren’t built like him. Neither did their marginally post-adolescent features have such definition. Josie really liked his strong, if somewhat sharp nose, his firmly sculpted mouth and determinedly macho jawline. She especially liked his hard blue eyes and outdoorsy tan.

His rugged good looks probably weren’t to every girl’s taste; hence his endearingly modest surprise that she thought him so handsome. But to her, he was the stuff her dreams were made of. Which meant she found him far too attractive for her to totally behave herself tonight.

But he’s supposed to be your boyfriend, Josie, the voice of temptation whispered as her gaze took in his fantastic body once more, shown off to perfection in that fabulous black suit. It would be only natural for you to hold his hand sometimes, or his arm, or even snuggle right up to him.

And then there’d be the dancing!

Josie’s heart quickened. There was sure to be music and dancing at some stage tonight. It was a party, after all.

The thought of his holding her close in his arms took Josie’s breath away. Lord, but she was going to have some super fantasies during the course of this evening, that was for sure.

Suddenly, Amber and her crowd were far from Josie’s mind as she recalled the fantastic fantasy which had swept her away at work the other day, where she’d hired a man for the night, not as an escort but as the kind of lover described in that magazine article.

What she wouldn’t give for that scenario to come true!

But of course it wasn’t going to. Despite his being her perfect dream man to look at, Callum McCloud was not here to fulfil her sexual fantasies. He was here to do the job she’d hired him for and which she should get her mind back onto, pronto, or risk making a bigger fool of herself than she had at the last reunion.

Chastened, Josie summoned up a polite smile and refrained from taking her pretend boyfriend’s arm as she joined him.

“I just have to lock up,” she said, glancing briefly up at him but carefully avoiding more than a fleeting contact with those sexy blue eyes. Looking into them too much was asking for trouble.

“Is this your house?” he inquired as she proceeded to lock the dead lock as well as the normal lock.

“Heavens, no, I could never afford a place like this. No, this is my parents’ home. I’m house-sitting for them while they’re overseas, doing Europe in six weeks flat. Silly time to go in November with winter on their doorstep, but my mother refused to go during peak tourist season. She hates crowds. It’s a bit of a pain having to look after the garden and feed the gold-fish every other day, but how could I refuse?” She smiled up at him.

“No brothers or sisters to help?” Callum asked her as she popped the keys into her black beaded evening purse then pulled the drawstring tight.

“No. Afraid not. I’m an only child. To be honest this house-sitting job hasn’t been nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I’ve been sharing an old place at Milsons Point with a couple of girlfriends for nearly three years now and I think I must have needed a break. I always imagined that living alone would be awfully lonely, and perhaps it would be, in the long term. But at the moment, I quite like coming home to peace and quiet, with no one to interfere with whatever I want to do, or say.”

Too late, Josie realized she’d been staring up into his eyes for far too long, because all of a sudden, she found herself wallowing in a new fantasy where Callum brought her home tonight and simply didn’t leave. Not for the whole time her parents were away. He’d be waiting for her every evening when she came home from work. Waiting and willing to do whatever she wanted him to do…

“I know exactly what you mean,” he said ruefully. “I like my own space. I would never live with anyone else.”