Theo burst out laughing. ‘If I had one of those stashed up my sleeve,’ he mused, ‘then don’t you think I would have pulled her out by now? No, if I were to present my mother with any of the women from my little black book, she would run screaming in horror. She’s had her fill of my women over the years. I honestly don’t think her heart could take any more.’
‘Why do you go out with them if they’re so unsuitable?’
‘Whoever said that they were unsuitable for me?’ Theo answered smoothly. ‘At any rate, it’s irrelevant. Even if there was someone whose services I could avail myself of, it would be an unworkable arrangement.’
‘Why?’ Becky wondered whether he was actually aware of how insulting his remarks were.
‘Because it would lead to all sorts of complications.’ He thought of some of his girlfriends who had started daydreaming about rings and white dresses even though he had always made it clear from the outset that neither would be on the agenda. ‘They might start blurring the line between fact and fiction.’
‘How do you know that I won’t do that?’ Becky surprised herself by asking the question but this was a level playing field. He could say what he wanted, without any regard for her feelings, so why should she tiptoe round what she had to say to him?
‘Because,’ he countered silkily, ‘you made it clear from the start that I wasn’t your type and I don’t see you getting any unfortunate ideas into your head.’ She’d never told him what had driven her into the Cotswolds, what heartbreak had made her want to bury herself in the middle of nowhere. He wondered what the guy had been like. Nice, he concluded. So nice that he hadn’t had the balls to entice her between the sheets. He couldn’t stop a swell of pure, masculine satisfaction that not nice had done the trick.
‘You’re here because I offered you a deal you couldn’t refuse and that suits me fine. No misunderstandings, no demands springing from nowhere, no unrealistic ambitions.’
And no sex... That could only be a good thing when it came to those nasty misunderstandings... Besides, if he had been having uninvited fantasies about her, then surely seeing her out of context, awkward and ill at ease in his territory as she was now, would slowly prove to him that her novelty value had been her only powerful draw...?
At the moment, he was still finding it difficult to look at her without mentally stripping her of her clothes, which was infuriating.
‘But cutting to the chase...’ He looked at the food which had been prepared earlier and was neatly in copper pans on the hob. He switched on the hob and had a quick think to ascertain the location of the plates. ‘We met...?’
Becky shrugged. ‘Why lie? Tell your mother where I live and that we met at my cottage. Tell her that you got lost because of the snow and ended up staying over for a few days.’
‘That won’t work,’ Theo said sharply. He flushed and cursed the lie that could not now be retracted. ‘Love at first sight might be a bit improbable.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s not in my psyche, and anyone who knows me at all would know that.’
‘So what is in your psyche?’ Somehow, she had been so engrossed talking to him, that food had found its way to a plate and was now in front of her. Delicious, simple food, a fish casserole and some broad beans. With her nerves all over the place, her appetite should have deserted her, but it hadn’t. The food was divine and she dug in with gusto.
Theo watched her, absently enjoying her lack of restraint. ‘We met one another. After a diet of tall, thin models, beautiful but intellectually unchallenging, I fell, without even realising it, in love with someone who had a brain and made me jump through hoops to get her.’
Becky felt slow, hot colour invade her cheeks because, in that low, sexy, husky voice, it could have truly been a declaration of love. ‘You mean you went for someone short and fat.’ She covered over her embarrassment with a high-pitched, self-deprecating laugh and Theo frowned.
‘Don’t run yourself down,’ he said gruffly. For a moment, he was weirdly disconcerted, but he recovered quickly and continued with cool speculation, ‘There’s no way I would ever have gone for someone who didn’t like herself...’
‘I like myself,’ Becky muttered, glaring.
Theo grinned. ‘Good. You should. Tall, thin and glamorous is definitely not all it’s cracked up to be.’
Becky blushed, confused, because there was a flirtatious undercurrent to his voice, which she must have misheard because there had certainly been nothing flirtatious in his manner since she had arrived.
‘And there’s something else my mother would never buy,’ he said slowly, pushing his plate to one side and relaxing back in the chair, his hands clasped behind his head so that he was looking down at her.
‘What?’
‘Your wardrobe.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You can’t show up in clothes you would wear on a house visit to see to a sick dog. You’re going to have to lose the jeans and practical footwear. We’re going to be staying on the coast, anyway. Much warmer than it is over here. You’ll have to bid farewell to the jumpers, Becky, and the layers.’
‘This is me,’ she protested furiously. ‘Aren’t you supposed to have fallen for completely the opposite of the models you’ve always gone out with?’
‘I’m not asking you to buy clothes that could be folded to the size of handkerchiefs but, if we’re going to do this, then we’re going to do it right. You’ll have an unlimited budget to buy whatever you want...but it’s time to kiss sweet goodbye to what you’ve brought with you...’
CHAPTER SIX
THEO GLANCED AT his watch and eyed the suite of rooms which Becky had been inhabiting with a hint of impatience.
His driver was waiting to take them to his private jet and he’d now been waiting for twenty minutes. Theo was all in favour of a woman’s right to be late, except Becky wasn’t that type, so what the hell was keeping her?
The vague dissatisfaction that had been plaguing him for the past forty-eight hours kicked in with a vengeance and he scowled, debating whether he should go and bang on her door to hurry her along.
The fact was that he had seen precious little of her since she had arrived at his apartment. They had discussed the nuts and bolts of what they would be doing but she had firmly rejected his offer to accompany her to the shops to buy a replacement wardrobe. She didn’t want to do it in the first place, she had mutinously maintained, and she certainly wasn’t going to have him traipsing around in her wake telling her what she could or couldn’t wear. It was bad enough that he wanted her to try and project a persona she didn’t have.
She’d made it quite clear that her decision to go along with the charade was one she had almost immediately regretted, and he’d been left in no doubt that only the prospect of having an uncertain future sorted out was the impetus behind her act of generosity. In other words, she’d been drawn by the offer of financial assistance. He was, above all else, practical. He could appreciate her sensible approach. He was grateful for the fact that there were absolutely no misplaced feelings of wanting more than the lucrative deal he had offered her. So, sex was off the agenda? He certainly wouldn’t be chasing her although it was highly ironic that they were no longer physically intimate when they were going to have to convince his mother that they were.
He caught himself thinking that it would have been a damned sight more convenient if they had just fallen into bed with one another, for they were supposed to be a loved-up item, and then was furious with himself because he knew that he was simply trying to justify his own weakness.
If he’d thought that seeing her out of her comfort zone, an awkward visitor to his world, would cure him of his galloping, unrestrained libido, then he had been mistaken.
He still felt that he had unfinished business with her and for once his cool, detached, analytical brain refused to master the more primitive side of him that wanted her.
Had she brought a uniform of shapeless jumpers and faded jeans in a targe
ted attempt to ensure that he didn’t try and make a pass?
Had she honestly thought that he would have forgotten what that body had felt like under his fingers?
He had become a victim of intense sexual frustration and he loathed it.
He wondered what she had bought to take to Italy and had already resigned himself to the possibility that she had just added to her supply of woefully unfashionable clothes as a protest against being told by him what to do.
Yet he had meant what he had told her...his mother knew him well enough to know that he liked well-dressed women. Or at least, she knew that the well-dressed woman was the sort of woman he was accustomed to dating. She’d certainly met enough of them over the years to have had that opinion well and truly cemented in her head. He might be able to sell her an intelligent woman as the woman who had finally won through but, intelligent or not, she’d never be convinced by a woman who couldn’t give a damn about her appearance.
So how would she react if Becky decided to turn up in jeans and a baggy tee shirt? Trainers? Or, worse, sturdy, flat, laced-up shoes suitable for tramping through fields?
And yet, as he had told her, no other woman could possibly do for the role. And he couldn’t think of a single one who would have held his interest long enough for his mother or anyone with two eyes in their head to believe that he was actually serious.
He smiled wryly because his mother would have been very amused if she could only see him here now, hovering by the door, glancing at his watch, prisoner of an unpredictable woman who wasn’t interested in impressing him.
He was scrolling through messages on his phone when he became aware that she had emerged into the open-plan living area where he had now been tapping his feet for the past forty minutes.
He didn’t have to look up.
He was as aware of her stealthy approach just as a tiger was aware of the soft tread of a gazelle.
He glanced up.
The battered bags, which he had insisted she replaced, were, of course, still there.
But everything else...
His eyes travelled the length of her, did a double take and then travelled the length of her all over again. He had been slouching against the wall. He now straightened. He knew that his mouth was hanging open but he had to make a big effort to close it because his entire nervous system seemed to have been rewired and had stopped obeying the commands from his brain.
Becky had had doubts about her drastic change of wardrobe. It had taken her far longer than necessary to get ready because she had wavered between wearing what she had bought and wearing what she was accustomed to wearing.
But he had got to her with those jibes about her clothes.
They had spent their glorious snatched time in the cottage snowed in, hanging around in old, comfy clothes. Because that was what the situation had demanded. But just how drab did he think she was? She had actually packed all of her summer wardrobe to take to Italy with her. She wasn’t an idiot. She had known that thick layers would be inappropriate. How could he imagine that she would have presented herself as his so-called girlfriend dressed like a tramp?
She had never been more grateful for her decision to make sure he knew that the status of their relationship was purely business. If she had thought him not her type, then his stupid remarks about her having to change her appearance had consolidated that realisation.
How superficial was it to measure a woman’s attractiveness by the type of clothes she wore?
But some devil inside her had decided to take him at his word. He wanted her to dress up like a doll? Then she would do it! She’d never been the sort to enjoying shopping. Buying clothes had always been a necessity rather than a source of pleasure. And in her line of work there was certainly no need to invest in anything other than purely functional wear. Durability over frivolity. She was all too aware that even the summer items she had packed were of a sensible nature. Flat sandals for proper walking in the countryside, sneakers, lightweight jeans and tee shirts in block colours, grey and navy, because bright colours had never been her thing. Her sister had always pulled off reds and yellows far more successfully.
But that was what Theo would be expecting. Perhaps even dreading. The fake girlfriend letting her side down by appearing like a pigeon to all the peacocks he had dated in the past. Maybe he had envisioned having to sit his mother down and persuade her to believe that he could actually fall for someone who didn’t own a single mini-skirt and wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing anything with sequins or glitter. Or lace, for that matter. And that included her underwear.
She had been timid in shop number one. Indeed, she had wondered what the point of being daring and rebellious was for a so-called liaison that wasn’t destined to last longer than a fortnight.
But she had made herself go in and, by the time she had hit Harrods, she had found herself thoroughly enjoying the experience. How was it, she thought, that she had never sampled the carefree joy of trying on clothes, seeing herself as another person in a different light? How had she never realised that shedding her vet uniform could be downright liberating? She had retreated from trying to compete with her sister on the looks front and had pigeon-holed herself into the brainy bookworm with no time for playing silly dressing-up games. She had failed to see that there was a very healthy and very enjoyable middle ground.
In a vague way, as she had stood in one of the changing rooms, marvelling at the swirl of colour she had actually dared to try on, she had acknowledged that Theo was somehow responsible for this shift in her thinking. Just as he had been responsible, in a way, for hauling her out of her comfort zone, for taking her virginity, for being the one to make her enjoy the physical side of her.
Then she’d wondered what he would make of her change of wardrobe and that had spurred her on to be more daring than she might otherwise have been in colours, in styles, in shapes...
She’d even overhauled her lingerie, not that there had been any need, but why not?
And right now, in this breathless silence as he stood watching her with those amazing, brooding eyes, she thought that it had been worth every second of laborious trying on.
‘I see you’ve gone for barely there...’ Theo managed to get his legs working and his runaway brain back into gear.
The skirt was apricot and the top was dove-grey, and both fitted her like a glove, accentuating an hourglass figure that was the last word in sexy. The body that had driven him wild was on full display. Her tiny waist was clinched in, her full breasts were stunningly and lovingly outlined in the tight, stretchy top and even the grey trench-coat, which was as conventional as could be, seemed vaguely sensual because of the body it was incapable of covering up.
He’d told her that his mother would never have bought a girlfriend who dressed like a country vet, but he hadn’t expected to be taken at his word.
And he didn’t like it.
He scowled as he headed for her bags. ‘I see you stuck to the ancient suitcases.’
‘I thought it might be taking things a bit too far if I showed up with Louis Vuitton luggage considering I’m a working vet,’ she snapped, stung by his lack of response to her outfit.
Would it be asking too much for him at least to acknowledge that she had done as asked and bought herself some peacock clothes?
Theo stood back and looked at her. ‘No one would guess your profession from what you’ve got on.’
‘Is that why you were staring at me?’ she asked daringly. ‘Because you think I should have bought stuff more in keeping with what a working vet on holiday would wear?’
They were outside and a driver was springing to open the passenger door for her.
Theo shot him a look of grim warning because he hadn’t missed the man’s eyes sliding surreptitiously over her, taking in her body in a quick sweep.
Harry had worked for him for two years and, as far as Theo could recall, had never so much as glanced at any of the women he had ferried from his apartment.
&nb
sp; Theo flushed darkly. He turned to her as the car began purring away from the flash apartment block, through the impressive gates and in the direction of the airfield which, she had been told the day before, was an hour’s drive away.
‘When I suggested a change of wardrobe might be a good idea, I didn’t think you’d go from one extreme to the other.’
‘You said your mother would never find it credible that you would go out with someone who dressed the way I did. In other words, someone who looked like a bag lady.’
‘That’s quite the exaggeration.’ But he had the grace to flush because she wasn’t that far from the truth.
‘You wanted me to be more like the kind of women you’d go out with so...’ She shrugged.
Theo looked at her averted profile, the defensive tilt of her head, the way the skirt was riding provocatively up one thigh... He wondered whether she was wearing stockings or tights and his body responded enthusiastically to the direction of his thoughts.
‘The women I’m accustomed to dating are...built a little differently to you,’ he muttered truthfully. He had to shift to ease the pain of his sudden erection.
Becky’s defences were instantly on red-hot alert but, before she could launch a counter attack, he continued, clearing his throat.
‘They wouldn’t be able to pull off an outfit like that quite like you’re doing right now...’
‘What do you mean?’ Becky heard the husky breathlessness in her voice with dismay. This was a guy who had only got in touch because he had wanted something from her. A guy who had been happy to press on with his life after a couple of days. Even though she’d made a big deal of assuring him that there was no way he could ever have stayed the course with her, no way that she would want any more than the couple of days on offer, she’d be an idiot if she were to kid herself that she hadn’t hoped for some sort of follow-up. Even a text to tell her that he missed her just a bit.
Because she’d missed him and thought about him a lot more after he’d gone than she should have.
She might not have played on his mind, but he’d played on her mind.
Snowbound With His Innocent Temptation Page 9