Fiancée for One Night

But she’d barely pulled it open an inch before a hand pushed it closed over her shoulder. ‘There’s no need to run away.’

No need? Who was he trying to kid? What about the fact a near-naked man was standing a bare few inches away from her and filling the air she breathed with a near-fatal mix of soap and citrus and pure, unadulterated testosterone? A man she’d once been prepared to spend the night with, a lost night she’d fantasised about ever since. A man standing so close she could feel his warm breath fanning the loose ends of her hair, sending warm shivers down her neck. What more reason did a girl need to flee?

Apart from the knowledge that it wasn’t the beast she had to be afraid of after all. It wasn’t the beast she couldn’t trust.

It was her own unquenched desires.

‘Stay. Help yourself to something from the minibar while I get dressed next door. I promise I won’t be long.’

‘Thanks,’ she whispered softly to the door, not sure if she was thanking him for the offer of a drink or for the fact he was intending to put some clothes on. But she was sure about not turning around before he removed his arm from over her shoulder and moved away. Far, far away with any luck. ‘I’ll do that.’

And then the arm withdrew and she sensed the air shift and swirl as he departed, leaving her feeling strangely bereft instead of relieved, like she’d expected. Bereft and embarrassed. God, she must seem so unsophisticated and gauche compared to the usual kind of woman he entertained, practically bolting from the room with her cheeks on fire like some schoolgirl who’d wandered into the wrong loos by mistake!

She could actually do with a stiff drink right now, she mused, still shaky as she pulled open the minibar fridge, assuming she could open her throat wide enough to drink it. Then again, tonight would be a very good night not to drink alcohol, and not just because she probably had no tolerance for it these days. But because drinking anything with anaesthetic qualities in this man’s presence would be a very, very bad idea.

Especially given she was already half-intoxicated just being in his presence.

True to his word, he was already returning from the room beyond by the time she’d made her selection, a pair of slim-fitting black trousers encasing those powerful-looking legs and a crisp white shirt buttoned over his broad chest. Even dressed, he still looked like a god rather than any mere mortal, tall, dynamic and harshly beautiful, and yet for one insane, irrational moment her eyes actually mourned the loss of naked skin to feast upon, until he joined her at the minibar and it occurred to her that at least now she might be able to speak coherently.

‘Did you find something?’ he asked, as she moved aside to give him room as he pulled a beer from the fridge.

‘Yes, thanks,’ she said, twisting the cap from a bottle of mineral water and grabbing a glass, still discomfited by his presence. Then again, it was impossible to see him clothed and not think about those broad shoulders, the pebbled nipples and the cluster of dark hair between them that swirled like storm fronts on a weather map, before heading south, circling his navel and arrowing still downwards…

She sucked in a rush of air, cursing when it came once again laced with his tell-tale scent. Distance was what she needed and soon, and she took advantage of his phone ringing again to find it. She did a quick risk assessment of the sitting room and decided an armchair was the safest option. She needed to stop thinking about Leo Zamos with no clothes on and start thinking about something else. Something that didn’t return the flush to her skin and the heat to her face.

Like the decor. Her eyes latched onto a triptych set above the sofa. Perfect. The three black and white prints featured photographs of Melbourne streetscapes from the Fifties and Sixties, their brushed gold frames softening their impact against the cream-coloured wall. Understated. Tasteful. Like the rest of the furnishings, she thought, drinking in the elegant surrounds of the sitting area and admiring how the decorator had so successfully combined a mix of fabrics, patterns and textures. Maybe she should try for something similar…

And then Leo finished the call and dropped onto the sofa opposite, scuttling every thought in her head.

He stretched one arm out along the top of the cushions, crossed one long leg over the other and took a swig from his beer, all the while studying her until her skin prickled with the intensity of his gaze and her heart cranked up in her chest till she was afraid to breathe.

‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Evelyn Carmichael, my virtual PA. I have to say I’m delighted to find you’re very much real and not so virtual after all.’ And then he shook his head slowly and Eve’s lungs shut down on the panicked thought, He knows! Except his mouth turned up into a wry smile. ‘Why did I ever imagine you were middle-aged?’

And breath whooshed from her lungs, so relieved she even managed a smile. ‘Not quite yet, thankfully.’

‘But your credentials—your CV was a mile long. What did you do, leave school when you were ten?’

The question threw her, amazed he’d remembered the details she’d supplied when he’d first sent his enquiry through her website. But better he remember those details rather than a frenetic encounter in a filing room with a PA with a raging libido. ‘I was seventeen. I did my commercial degree part time. I was lucky enough to make a few good contacts and get head-hunted to a few high-end roles.’

His eyes narrowed again and she could almost see the cogs turning inside his head. ‘Surely that’s every PA’s dream. What made you leave all that and go out on your own? It must have been a huge risk.’

‘Oh, you know…’ she said, her hands fluttering around her glass. ‘Just things. I’d been working in an office a long time and…’

‘And?’

And I got pregnant to one of the firm’s interstate consultants…

She shrugged. ‘It was time for a change.’

He leaned forward, held out his beer towards her in a toast. ‘Well, the bricks and mortar office world’s loss is my gain. It’s a pleasure meeting you at last after all this time, Evelyn. You don’t know how much of a pleasure it is.’

They touched drinks, her glass against his bottle, his bottomless eyes not leaving hers for a moment, and now she’d reeled in her panic, she remembered the heat and the sheer power of that gaze and the way it could find a place deep down inside her that seemed to unfurl and blossom in the warmth.

‘And you,’ she murmured, taking a sip of her sparkling water, needing the coolness against her heated skin, tempted to hold the glass up to her burning cheeks.

Nothing had changed, she thought as the cooling waters slid down her throat. Leo Zamos was still the same. Intense, powerful, and as dangerous as sin.

And it was no consolation to learn that after everything she’d been through these last few years, everything she’d learned, she was just as affected, just as vulnerable.

No consolation at all.

She was perfect. Absolutely perfect. He sipped his beer and reflected on the list of qualities he’d wanted in a pretend fiancée as he watched the woman sitting opposite him, trying so hard to look at ease as she perched awkwardly on the edge of her seat, picking up her glass and then putting it down, forgetting to drink from it before picking it up again and going through the same nervous ritual before she excused herself to use the powder room.

She’d been so reluctant to come tonight. What was that about when clearly she ticked every box? She was intelligent, he knew that for a fact given the calibre of the work she did for him. And that dress and that classically upswept hair spoke of class, nothing cheap or tacky there.

As for charming, he’d never seen anything as charming as the way she’d blushed, totally mortified when confronted by his state of undress before she’d tried to flee from the room. He’d had no idea she was there or he would never have scared her like that, but, then, how long had it been since a woman had run the other way when they’d seen him without his clothes on? Even room service the world over weren’t that precious, and yet she’d taken off like the devil himself had been after her. What was her problem? It wasn’t like he was a complete stranger to her after all. Then again, she’d made plain her disapproval of his long line of companions. Maybe she was scared she might end up on it.

Now, there was a thought…

He discounted the idea as quickly as it had come. She was his PA after all, even if a virtual one, and a rule was a rule. Maybe a shame, on reflection, that he’d made that rule, but he’d made it knowing he might be tempted from time to time and he’d made it for good reason. But at least he knew he wouldn’t have to spend the night forcing himself to smile at a woman he wasn’t interested in. He found it easy to smile at her now, as she returned from the powder room, coyly avoiding his eyes. She was uncannily, serendipitously perfect, from the top of her honey-caramel hair to the tips of the lacquered toenails peeping out of her shoes. And he had to smile. To think he’d imagined her middle-aged and taking nanna naps! How wrong could a man be? He would have no trouble at all feigning interest in this woman, no trouble at all.

He rose, heading her off before she could sit down, her eyes widening as he approached and blocked off the route to her armchair so she was forced to stop, even in heels forced to tilt her head up to look at him. Even now her colour was unnaturally high, her bright eyes alert as if she was poised on the brink of escape.

There was no chance of escape.

Oh no. His clever, classy little virtual PA wasn’t going anywhere yet. Not before he’d convinced Culshaw that he had nothing to fear from dealing with him, and that he was a rock-solid family man. Which meant he just had to convince Evelyn that she had nothing to fear from him.

‘Are we late?’ she asked, sounding breathless and edgy. ‘Is it time to go?’

He could be annoyed at her clear display of nerves. He should be if her nervousness put his plans at risk. But somehow the entire package was so enticing. He liked it that he so obviously affected her. And so what that she wasn’t plain? She wasn’t exactly classically pretty either—her green eyes were perhaps too wide, her nose too narrow, but they were balanced by a wide mouth that lent itself to both the artist’s paintbrush and to thoughts of long afternoons of lazy sex.

Not necessarily in that order.

For just one moment he thought he’d noted those precise details in a face before, but the snatch of memory was fleeting, if in fact it was memory at all, and flittered away before he could pin it down to a place or time. No matter. Nothing mattered right now but that she was there and that he had a good feeling about tonight. His lips curved into a smile. A very good feeling.

‘Not yet. Dinner is set for eight in the presidential suite.’

She glanced at the sparkly evening watch on her wrist and then over her shoulder, edging ever so slightly towards the door, and as much as he found her agitation gratifying, he knew he had to sort this out. ‘Maybe I should check with the staff that everything’s good with the dinner,’ she suggested. ‘Just remind them that it’s for a party of six now…’

He shook his head benevolently, imagining this was how gamekeepers felt when they soothed nervous animals. ‘Evelyn, it’s all under control. Besides, there’s something more important you should be doing right now.’ He touched the pad of his middle finger, just one finger, to her shoulder and she jumped and shrank back.

‘And what might that be?’ she asked, breathless and trembling and trying to mask it by feigning interest in the closest photographic print on the wall. A picture of the riverbank, he noticed with a glance, of trees and park benches and some old man sitting in the middle of the bench, gazing out at the river. That wouldn’t hold her attention for long. Not when he did this…

‘You’re perfect,’ he said, lifting his hand to a stray tendril of hair that had come loose and feeling her shudder as his fingertips caressed her neck. ‘I couldn’t have asked for a better pretend fiancée.’

Her eyelids fluttered as he swore she swayed into his touch until she seemed to snap herself awake and shift the other way. ‘I sense a “but” coming.’

‘No buts,’ he said, pretending to focus on the print on the wall before them. ‘We just have to get our stories straight, in case someone asks us how we met. I was thinking it would make sense to keep things as close to the truth as possible. That you were working as my PA and one thing led to another.’