His Mistress Proposal?: Public Scandal, Private Mistress / His Mistress, His Terms / The Secret Mistress Arrangement

His eyes were dark. She added that to the list of things she knew about him, her gaze going quickly to his right hand to also tick off the fact that he wore no wedding ring. A little of the nervous tension holding her spine rigid relaxed, and she crossed her legs, slanting them aside in what Karen had informed her during their short time in London together was the most slimming of poses.

When the waitress sauntered over Veronica was ready with her order. She would have actually liked a thirst-quenching beer, but didn’t think that that would project the image she was looking to create—although: ‘I’m having what he’s having,’ might have been an ice-breaker. However, at the moment he appeared to be more granite than ice. Whatever he was reading in the paper was putting a scowl on his face. It wasn’t L’Equipe, which she had seen him reading before, but the French equivalent of scandal-mongering weekly tabloid, so it probably wasn’t simply a matter of his favourite tennis player being knocked out of a tournament.

‘Un Kir, s’il vous plaît,’ she murmured to the waitress.

The chilled glass was placed before her a few minutes later accompanied by a friendly burst of rapid French. Veronica spread her hands, palm up, with a rueful smile.

‘Excusez-moi, mais je ne comprends pas,’ she said carefully, in her phrase-book French.

‘Ah! Anglaise,’the girl instantly pounced on her accent.

Veronica shook her head, setting fiery sparks dancing in the graduated layers of red-brown hair falling thickly down to her shoulders on either side of her central parting.

‘Nouvelle Zélande,’ she said, hoping a European might find that exotic, since in the intimate confines of the small premises the man across the way would be able to hear every word she said, even if he was ostensibly not listening.

Veronica took a delicate sip of her drink, enjoying the crispness of the white wine mingled with the sweet tang of crème de cassis. She looked brazenly at her quarry.

At close range his face was a series of bold lines, his sun-kissed olive skin fine-textured and smooth except for the bloom of dark re-growth along his jaw. His arched black brows were lowered, sensuous lower lip pushed out as he brooded into the dregs of his beer.

Eyes fixed on his face, she took another hasty sip of liquid courage, and the stem of her glass clicked loudly as she put it down a little too hard on the table.

His long, thick lashes flew up and she suddenly found herself pinned by a fierce black look. Even if he had been studiously ignoring her he had obviously been aware of her concentrated stare.

She didn’t make the mistake of smiling. She sensed that was what he was expecting her to do, and didn’t want to give him the opportunity to snub her even before she had got to open her mouth, so instead she simply held his gaze coolly, her wide grey eyes drifting slightly out of focus as if she weren’t really seeing him at all, but absently thinking of something—or someone—else.

She might not be very experienced at seduction—her ex-fiancé had been very conservative in the bedroom—or have the advantage of her sister’s spectacular beauty, but she was intelligent and well-read, and she knew that there were more subtle ways to tease a man’s interest. Some of the most famous, and infamous, seductresses in history had been women who had more wit than beauty. Attraction started in the brain, after all.

She saw his eyelids flicker and his lower lip tighten. Her lack of reaction had disconcerted him, disclosing a dichotomy in his nature. He might not want attention, but neither did he like to be ignored, she decided. He was used to it being his choice as to whether or not he interacted with people.

He leaned back in his chair, picking up one foot to rest the heel of his high-end athletic shoe on his opposing knee, his pre-stressed designer jeans whitening along the seams at his crotch, his thighs splayed towards her in a stark display of male insolence.

Was he partially aroused already, or just more generously endowed than the classical male? she wondered naughtily, mentally comparing him to all the nude statuary she had perused in the last few days.

Now she allowed herself a small, reminiscent smile as she toyed with her drink, her pale fingers sliding delicately up and down on the long stem of the glass.

He picked up his paper from the table and snapped it open in front of his face with a sharp rattle, but Veronica noticed with a small sizzle of satisfaction that he was holding the top of it just below the level of his eyes. He was covertly observing her, just as she was studying him.

Her lashes lowered, and she saw a tiny teardrop of condensation weeping down the outside of the curved bowl of her glass. Acting on a primitive instinct, she chased it back up to the rim with her forefinger, lifting the captured little pearl of liquid away on the tip of her finger and inspecting it before placing it inside her mouth and sucking off the distilled droplet. She noticed the side of the newspaper crinkle under his tightened grip, and, alarmed by her own boldness, she polished off the rest of her drink in a single toss of her head and ordered a second Kir.

Almost immediately, he signalled for another beer.

Veronica almost fainted with nervous relief. He wasn’t just going to get up and leave! Although at this rate they were going to drink each other under the table before they said a word to each other, she thought with an inward gurgle of amusement.

For a while she was content to sit and bide her time, listening and occasionally being drawn in by the general comments about the heatwave and the state of the city that the Patron periodically offered around the bar—in heavily accented English to Veronica, Spanish to the waitress and French to the man barely pretending to read his newspaper, who replied with concise, but perfectly amiable comments in both of the Romance languages.

How appropriate … the whispered thought brought a husky laugh to Veronica’s lips, the unusually deep voice, which had often embarrassed her as a teenager, suddenly an advantage as it drew dark eyes snapping to her face.

This time she was ready for him. She let her laugh die to a natural throaty chuckle as she held his gaze, picked up her drink, and walked the three steps to his table.

‘Parlez-vous Anglais?’ she asked, her resonant voice warm with the remnants of laughter.

He tilted his head back to look up at her and folded his arms across his chest, the open paper lying forgotten across his splayed knees.

‘Non!’ The uncompromisingly curt answer was delivered like a flung gauntlet.

His eyes weren’t black, as she had first thought, but brown, like the darkest of dark chocolate, the best and most expensive kind … intense, slightly bitter at first but delivering the most delicious sensory thrill.

At the moment they were veiled and enigmatic, not giving a hint as to his thoughts as he waited to see how she would handle the flat rejection.

‘Oh.’ She sank into the chair on the other side of his narrow table. ‘Je ne parle pas bien française.’

Her trusty little French phrase book was tucked in her purse, but tonight wasn’t a night for going by the book.

He shrugged, pushing out that sullen lower lip to indicate his unspoken contempt. Trying to look unruffled, she took a leisurely sip of her drink. She knew he spoke some Spanish, but that was no help as far as she was concerned.

‘Italiano?’ she tested, although she only spoke a basic word or two herself.

His stony expression didn’t change. ‘Non.’

‘Hmm …’ She eyed the angle of his chin, and understood that he was going to stick stubbornly to French, whatever she said. But she could be stubborn, too. It was one of her greatest strengths … and her biggest flaw, according to Neil, her ex-fiancé.

‘Te reo Maori?’ she threw in mischievously, seriously doubting that he would be of the minority speakers of New Zealand’s second language, especially when he didn’t even speak the first—English.

Or did he?

She detected a dark glimmer in the back of the brown eyes as his mouth compressed. Was that a tiny quiver of amusement at the down-turned corner? She felt a surge of elation.

She decided to let go of her security blanket and allowed her wrap to slide from her shoulders, turning to drape it across the back of her chair, her twisting movements drawing attention to the whiteness of her lightly freckled shoulders against the blackness of the chiffon top.

As she turned back she almost blushed to feel the nervous rise and fall of her breasts, cupped in their luxuriant nests of embroidered tulle, against the sheer silk. Every breath felt like a wanton act of provocation.

And naturally he looked … he was a man, after all … with a thoughtful expression that was somehow more stimulating than a leer, and Veronica was thankful for the strategic pleats of tulle when she felt the tips of her breasts begin to tingle and harden into betraying little points.

‘Russian? Icelandic?’ A slight breathlessness made her voice even more husky as she resumed their game.

His gaze fell back to his newspaper and for a shattering moment she feared that she had overplayed her hand. She looked around for inspiration, glancing over at the owner of the bar, who had been following the progress of their encounter with frank interest. To her chagrin he grinned and gave an expressive shrug, as if to indicate the hopelessness of her case.

‘Sprechen Sie Deutsches?’

Veronica’s head whipped back to find the chocolate-brown eyes waiting for her, banked with a taunting amusement, the roughly folded newspaper wedged down the side of the table.

The wretch!

‘Nein,’ she said, giving him look for look. ‘Je parle anglais seulement,’ she stressed, admitting her language deficiency with a defiant tilt of her chin.

A slow, sexy smile trawled across his mouth.

‘Je suis désolé,’he said, placing a mocking hand across his heart.