by Lucy King
* * *
Four hours later, having escaped to the bathroom after interminable drinks, a sumptuous six-course dinner and an auction of promises during which the extravagant luxury of the lots and preposterous figures whizzing around had blown her mind, Kate was exhausted. Keeping a smile fixed to her face and gazing at Theo in adoration when all she wanted was to stab him with a hairpin was draining.
He was not playing fair. Having no intention of giving him any reason to think she wasn’t doing her best and therefore renege on his side of the bargain, she had thrown herself into her role. Theo, on the other hand, had not. He’d introduced her as his pregnant fiancée, and remained by her side, but that was pretty much it. He hadn’t smiled at her. He’d barely even looked at her. She’d had to do all the work, and once tonight was over they were very definitely going to be having words.
Unexpectedly, however, there had been some positives to the evening. After the initial flurry of interest, Kate had become pretty much invisible, which was a novelty. Everyone was far more interested in the man at her side. His appearance in public was apparently something of a rarity, and, despite his giving off such chilly vibes he could cause frostbite, people couldn’t get enough of him. The awe he was held in and the resultant fawning she witnessed made her stomach turn, but at least it meant she could observe instead of being observed for once.
And then there was the fact that he stood nearly a head above her. She had no need to slouch or try and make herself smaller. She could pull her shoulders back and hold herself straight and amazingly she still only just reached his chin. She might tower over everyone else but at Theo’s side, for the first time ever, she felt normal. So normal, in fact, that next time they went out she might even wear a pair of the heels she hadn’t been able to resist adding to the pile of new clothing she’d accumulated this morning.
Of course there’d also been some negatives, because unfortunately her body still hadn’t got the memo about what a despicable human being Theo was. Her body kept wanting to take advantage of the fake engagement and, well, snuggle. So much so that she found herself actually regretting the no kissing and no contact condition of hers, which was wrong on practically every level there was.
At least the evening was coming to an end. She couldn’t wait to get home and collapse into bed. She had the feeling that the continued attraction she felt, so obviously now one-sided, was going to become increasingly hard to handle, and she could only hope that Daniel Bridgeman got wind of the ‘engagement’, was fooled into thinking Theo’s unfortunate personality had undergone a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree change, and announced his plan to go ahead with the deal just as soon as was humanly possible.
What she couldn’t do was stay in here, much as she wouldn’t mind taking a quick nap, because the door to the bathroom had just opened and people had come in, no doubt wishing to use the stall she was occupying.
Fighting a yawn and rolling her head to ease the kinks in her neck, Kate pulled herself together. She stood up and smoothed her dress, and was just about to slide the lock when something about the conversation on the other side of the door made her go very still.
‘Yes, but who is she?’ she heard one woman ask, the incredulity in her voice as clear as a bell.
‘Apparently she works for him.’
‘Theo Knox dipping his nib in the company ink? That doesn’t sound like him.’
‘I agree. But, well, it wouldn’t be the first time a woman has trapped a man into marriage by getting pregnant, would it?’
‘I guess not.’
‘So, Miss Cassidy, what was it about gorgeous billionaire Theo Knox that first caught your eye?’
‘Why, his sparkling personality, of course.’
Catty laughter.
A pause.
What sounded like a rummage in a handbag.
Then, ‘No ring, I noticed.’
‘I noticed that, too.’
‘And he’s not exactly doting, is he?’
‘Well, would you be? Have you seen the size of her? She’s huge.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you really think the baby’s his?’
‘No idea. Pass me a tissue, would you?’
The conversation stopped and then came the vague sounds of make-up being reapplied but Kate barely registered any of it. Her head was spinning, her heart was racing and she was trembling from head to toe. Every word had slammed into her, leaving her battered and bruised and sore. She didn’t know why. Logically, they should not affect her. Her engagement to Theo was fake. She wasn’t a gold-digger. She most certainly didn’t want him to dote.
But they did. For some reason, they did. They sliced right through her and ripped her open, brutally exposing her innermost vulnerabilities and stabbing straight at them. When would she stop being a freak show? When would someone want her for real? What had she ever done to deserve any of this?
Her eyes stung and her throat tightened—blasted hormones—but she summoned up strength from somewhere deep inside and took a long, steadying breath, because she knew the truth. The gossip and these women meant nothing. And yes, she was abnormally tall, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it, so she could either crumple in a heap of self-pity or let it go, and, frankly, this dress was too gorgeous to ruin.
Mind made up, she briefly looked up at the ceiling and blinked rapidly to dispel the threat of tears, then pulled her shoulders back and set her jaw. Clinging onto her courage as if her life depended on it, she opened the door, walked to a basin to wash her hands and, with a wide beam at the two bitchy women who stared at her in dawning shock and horror, sailed out.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BACK AT THE table that Kate had left fifteen minutes ago, Theo rolled a tumbler of thirty-year-old single malt between his fingers and tuned out of the conversation going on around him to run a quick assessment of the evening. Socialising was not his forte. He loathed small talk and sycophancy as much as he abhorred the idea of the press poking into his background and his personal life. However, things had gone well tonight, and he had no doubt that the news of his newly altered civil status would soon reach the right ears.
Despite her vague threat to sabotage his plans, Kate had embraced the role of fiancée admirably, although he could have done with fewer of her dazzling smiles and the occasional touches to his arm. Each of the former momentarily blinded him and each of the latter sent stabs of electricity shooting through him.
His irritatingly intense response to her was the only fly in tonight’s ointment, and would have been a whole lot easier to ignore if he weren’t so constantly aware of her. When she’d emerged from her building earlier, wrapped in green satin and looking so spectacularly sexy he’d gone as hard as granite, his gut instinct had been to grab her hand and take her back upstairs. In the car, which he’d always considered roomy, he’d had to fight for air. Her understandable spikiness, which ought to have doused the desire rocketing through him, had only intensified it.
But he’d held it together then and he was holding it together now. No one had any inkling of the battle that had been raging inside him all evening, and it would stay that way. Even if Kate hadn’t imposed that no kissing, no inappropriate touching condition on their relationship, which now, perversely, was all he could think about, there was too much at stake to crack. He could not, and would not, concede even a millimetre of ground to anyone, let alone a woman who had once rendered him so unacceptably weak. Nevertheless, the tension gripping him was draining, and the minute Kate returned they’d leave. He’d drop her home and initiate the next step in the plan because, now, this evening, their work was done.
And here she was, he thought with a familiar bolt of heat, his gaze instinctively finding her as she wove sinuously between the tables towards him. Beneath the low, warm light of the chandeliers, she shimmered. Her hair gleamed and her skin glowed and the overall effect was irritat
ingly dazzling. But as she drew nearer, something struck him as wrong. The rest of her might be glowing but her face was pale. Her smile was too tight and no amount of smoky eye make-up could mask the fact that her eyes were overly bright.
Without even thinking to question why any of this was relevant, Theo abandoned his drink and got to his feet. He strode over to intercept her and took her elbow to draw her to one side, leading her through the French doors that opened onto the torch-lit terrace and into the warm jasmine-scented shadows. To his alarm, she didn’t protest.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said, noting the taut rigidity of her body and wondering whether it had anything to do with the pregnancy he was finding unexpectedly difficult to ignore.
She swallowed hard and stared at the ground an inch to his right. ‘Are we done here?’ she said, her voice strangely hoarse. ‘Because I’d like to leave.’
Theo frowned and thrust his hands in the pockets of his trousers. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Of course.’
‘Tired?’
‘I’m always tired.’
‘So what’s different?’
‘It’s not important.’
Frustration speared through him. How could he help if he didn’t know what was wrong? ‘Anything that might affect what I’m trying to achieve here is important.’
‘Ah, yes,’ she said with a bitterness he found he didn’t like. ‘It wouldn’t do to forget that.’
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing happened.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Okay, fine,’ she said, sighing in exasperation as she finally looked at him. ‘We’re fooling no one with this whole fake engagement thing, Theo.’
‘Oh?’ he said, the hurt in her eyes that she was trying so hard to hide hitting him in the gut and for some reason knocking him for six.
‘Apparently I’m a gold-digger who’s played the oldest trick in the book and trapped you into marriage by deliberately getting pregnant.’
What the hell? ‘According to who?’
‘Some women I overheard in the bathroom.’
‘I see.’
‘There’s no other possible explanation because someone like you would never see anything in someone like me.’
Wouldn’t he?
‘I did warn you,’ she added. ‘And they do have a point.’
No, they didn’t. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The glowering, Theo.’
He frowned. ‘The what?’
‘You’ve been glowering at me all evening. I’ve been working my socks off and you just, well, haven’t. Aren’t you supposed to at least be pretending you’re interested in me?’
Pretending was the trouble, he thought grimly. He was too interested. If he smiled at her, if he touched her anywhere other than the elbow, he might not be able to stop and, quite apart from the unacceptable lack of control that would incur, he would not breach her no kissing, no contact rule.
‘If you’re not going to meet me at least halfway,’ she continued, ‘you could do the decent thing and release me from this deal. There has to be another way. You could just let me go.’
There wasn’t another way. And let her go? For myriad reasons he didn’t care to analyse, that was not an option. But neither was this state of affairs because, despite her attempts to brush off what she’d heard in the bathroom, it had clearly upset her and he wasn’t having that.
‘I have a better idea,’ he muttered, taking her elbow again, wheeling her around and marching her back into the ballroom before she could protest. He came to a halt in the middle of the room, amidst the well-heeled, well-oiled guests milling about, and let her go. ‘Where are they?’
‘Where are who?’
‘The women you overheard.’
‘Oh.’
With a slight frown of concentration Kate scanned the room while Theo felt his displeasure rapidly morphing into anger.
‘The woman in purple sitting over there,’ she said after a moment, nodding in the direction of a table in the far corner, ‘and the woman in red next to her.’
He knew both and he’d have expected better. Too bad. He strode across the room and stopped at table twelve. ‘Samantha,’ he said icily, looking down at the owner of the PR company he used.
‘Theo,’ Samantha simpered while batting her eyelashes up at him. ‘So lovely to see you out. I was wondering if we might get together at some point to discuss—’
‘The Knox Group no longer requires your services.’
In the moment of silence that followed, Samantha’s eyes widened and her smile faltered. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, giving her head a quick shake as if she’d misheard. ‘What did you say?’
‘Your contract expires at the end of the month,’ he continued icily. ‘It will not be renewed.’
‘Oh, but—’ she spluttered, turning pink. ‘I mean... You can’t do that.’
‘I can.’ He snapped his gaze to the brunette in the red dress who was sitting open-mouthed beside her. ‘And you—Rebecca, isn’t it? Stand down as chair or I’ll find another charity to support.’
‘Wh-what?’ managed Rebecca, who, now he thought about it, was about as effective in her role as a wet dishcloth.
‘You heard,’ he said brutally. ‘Do it. By nine a.m. tomorrow. And the next time either of you feels like gossiping about my fiancée, don’t.’
* * *
If only Theo hadn’t leapt to her defence like that, thought Kate, tossing and turning in bed that night as the memory of it circled around in her head and an unwelcome, unshakeable fuzzy warmth enveloped her.
She couldn’t remember the last time someone had stood up for her, and the way he’d gone about it... The energy that had suddenly poured off him, the take-no-prisoners attitude of his and the sense of protectiveness... It was dangerously attractive and all too appealing to a certain someone who was starved of attention and achingly lonely. So appealing, in fact, that when they’d pulled up outside her building after a tautly silent journey, she’d inexplicably found herself wanting to ask him in for coffee, and maybe even more than that, which would have been unwise to say the least.
The trouble was, what he’d done made him so much harder to hate, and she needed to hate him because if she didn’t, she could well end up liking him, and then where would she be? At the top of a very slippery slope that plummeted from the dizzying heights of excitement and hope to the miserable depths of disappointment and heartbreak, that was where.
But she had no intention of venturing anywhere near that slide so she could not allow his brief moment of chivalry detract from the rest of his lousy personality. She had to focus on the blackmail and the ruthlessness and not the feel of his hand on her elbow that burned her like a brand and the mesmerising eyes, dark with seething outrage and grim determination on her behalf.
She also had to accept that realistically there’d be many more naysayers like Samantha and Rebecca out there. Who knew what the press would make of the engagement? Of her? And then there were her colleagues. Her sister. How were they going to react?
She had no idea about any of it, but one thing was certain. If she had any hope at all of surviving the next few weeks, with whatever Theo or circumstances threw at her, ice-cool control and steely self-possession were the way to do it.
* * *
By lunchtime the following day, Theo had fielded more messages of congratulations than his limited patience could take, and the anger that had led to the instant dismissal of two significant business partners had swelled to fury.
How dared they? was the thought that kept ricocheting around his head during the three meetings he’d already held and wouldn’t go away. How dared anyone attack what was his? Even temporarily his. So far the press had reported the facts without opinion, but if he ever heard anything in the way of sly accusation and measly
insinuation again more heads would roll. Big heads. The biggest there were, in fact.
That he hadn’t exactly behaved in an exemplary fashion himself was not on his conscience. Coercing Kate into a fake engagement by firing threats at her wasn’t the most ruthless thing he’d done in pursuit of a goal, and what was at stake outweighed everything else.
What did trouble his conscience, however, was that she’d been right about his lack of input last night. He could have done better at playing the besotted lover despite having zero experience in the field, and if he hadn’t been so wrapped up in frustration, he would have. It infuriated him now that he’d allowed himself to get so distracted, to lose sight of what was important.
However, it wasn’t too late to rectify the situation. News of their engagement was out and in need of consolidation and that was precisely what he was going to do. In fact, he’d already taken steps, and by the time he was done no one would have any doubt whatsoever about its veracity.
Picking up the phone, Theo dialled the extension for the accounts department. ‘Put me through to Kate Cassidy,’ he snapped when his call was answered.
‘I’m sorry, sir, she no longer works here.’
He scowled. What the hell? ‘Why not?’
‘She resigned this morning and was put on immediate gardening leave.’
‘Where did she go?’
‘Home, I believe, sir.’
‘Thank you.’
Theo hung up, grabbed his keys, wallet, phone and the box he’d picked up this morning, and stalked out. As the lift whizzed him down to the garage he rang her mobile but the call went straight to voicemail. He left a curt message and got in his car, irritation pummelling through him as he negotiated his way through heavy London traffic. Without warning, Kate had gone off script and he didn’t like it. Unpredictability led to confusion, which led to chaos, and he was not having his plans derailed by anyone or anything.