by Abby Green
She was tempted to plead again that she didn’t need a lift, but the driver looked nice and she didn’t want to get him into trouble.
She thanked him as she got in, and within seconds he was executing a neat U-turn in the street and driving her away from the man she knew she’d never forget. Not now. Not now she knew how he tasted. How he felt up close. Holding her. Touching her. And it had all been a cruel act to humiliate her. To prove that she was something she wasn’t.
If she’d been able to think clearly she would have pretended that she was equally unmoved. But it was too late for that now.
To try and distract herself she took out her phone and saw a message from Cassie, who must have arrived in the United States by now.
You were right about the dress, Ash. I’m not even the most naked woman here... But what happened with the tux? You had one job, Ash!!
Ashling quickly typed a perky reply.
It was a little late, sorry! Everything okay in the end. Don’t worry and enjoy the wedding! Xx
She groaned and let her head fall back. She was so busted.
* * *
The following day Ashling was gritty-eyed, after a night of broken sleep dominated by scary dreams in which she’d been in a room full of people looking for someone...looking for him. When she’d finally found him the relief had been intense. She’d put a hand on his arm but he’d turned around and looked down at her, saying coldly, ‘Take your hand off me. I would never touch a woman like you. You don’t belong here.’
Now, Ashling switched the heavier shopping bag to her other hand. She didn’t need to be a genius to know that meeting Temple again, and the fact that he’d recognised her, was bringing up all her insecurities and deeply buried fears. Stuff she didn’t even talk to Cassie about as it felt too pathetic.
Like the fact that she’d never really felt she belonged...anywhere. Hence her very haphazard life, working at about a million different jobs to see if anything fitted. Or felt like home. And the fact that she wore bright, eclectic clothes as a sort of rebellion against her instinctive need to fade into the background in a bid to please her father so he might accept her. Even after all these years.
She scowled. She hated Temple even more now. For what he was. For what he’d done to her last night.
You were with him all the way...begging, reminded a little inner voice.
She scowled harder in rejection of that, even though it was true. Mostly she hated Temple for making her feel vulnerable. Exposed. For reminding her of the guilt she’d always carried since that night. Except she had no one to blame for that but herself.
She was so busy thinking about Zachary Temple that when he got out of the back of the same sleek car that had driven her home last night all she could do was blink at him. He looked completely out of place in the quiet, leafy residential street, in a steel-grey three-piece suit. No less impressive than he’d been in a tuxedo.
Ashling blinked again, sure that her too-vivid imagination was playing tricks on her. Especially after that dream. But he didn’t disappear.
All she could think of to say was, ‘Are you really here?’
His grim expression told her that he most likely was real. She became very aware of her pulled back hair, make-up-free face, three-quarter-length bright blue joggers, flip-flops and pink tank top. She’d been planning a yoga practice after returning from the shop.
He held something out. She looked at it. It was a shoe. One of the shoes she’d been wearing last night. She must have left it behind in her rush to change and get out of Temple’s house.
Ashling cringed. She was no Cinderella, and he probably thought she’d left it behind on purpose.
She couldn’t take it as her hands were full of bags of shopping. She put one down, feeling flustered. He’d hardly come just to give her a shoe. She reached out and took it, pushing it into one of the bags, uncaring if it cracked an egg.
She stood up again. ‘You didn’t have to come all the way here. If you’d let me know I would have picked it up.’ She could imagine Peters, the butler, handing it over, pinched between his fingers, as if it smelled bad.
‘It was on my way.’
Ashling looked at him, still too stunned to move, even though they were right outside the house where she shared the ground-floor apartment with Cassie.
Temple said, ‘We need to talk. We can do it here, or...?’
Ashling’s pulse tripled at the thought of him in her apartment, but they couldn’t stay standing in the street. She could already see curtains twitching.
She moved past him, saying reluctantly, ‘Please, come in.’
She thought she heard a dry, ‘I thought you’d never ask...’ from behind her, but she couldn’t be sure.
She opened the front door and immediately a thin voice floated down from the floor above. ‘Is that you, Ashling dear? With my shopping?’
Ashling called up, ‘Yes, Mrs Whyte. I’ll bring it up now.’
She looked at Temple, who had a bemused expression on his face at this little domestic exchange. Did the man ever smile? she wondered snarkily. And then she remembered him smiling seductively before he’d kissed her. Maybe it was better that he didn’t smile.
She put down the bags and opened the door into her and Cassie’s flat, saying, ‘I need to take Mrs Whyte her shopping first. It’ll just take me a few minutes, if you don’t mind. She gets anxious.’
Temple pushed open the door with a finger and stepped over the threshold. ‘Please, don’t keep Mrs Whyte waiting.’
Ashling took the stairs two at a time with the shopping for her neighbour. She took as long as she imagined would be tolerable to keep a man like Zachary Temple waiting, her insides churning as she tried to figure out why he was here.
When she returned to the apartment Temple had his back to her. He was looking at a framed photo collage that hung on the wall near the fireplace.
He pointed to a photo without turning around. ‘This is you and Cassie?’
Ashling knew without checking which photo he was looking at. A picture of her and Cassie, arms wrapped tight around each other, pulling faces.
‘Yes, we were about ten.’
It was her favourite photo of them. There were also pictures of her and her mother, with her bright red dyed hair piled high on her head and heavily lashed blue eyes, wearing a kaftan and ornate earrings. Her mother’s typically understated attire. Not. It had embarrassed Ashling as a child who had just wanted to fit in, but now she was proud of her unorthodox mother. She’d come through so much on her own.
She became very conscious of the apartment as Temple would see it. The crystals in the windows, sending out little rainbows of light across the walls and ceiling. Plants populated almost every corner. Her yoga mat was on the floor. There was a large Buddha statue in the corner, where the stick of incense that Ashling had lit earlier was almost burned through, leaving the scent of sage in the air.
Feeling panicky, Ashling said to Temple’s broad back, ‘What can I do for you, Mr Temple?’
He turned around, looked at her, and said, ‘I want you to come to Paris with me.’
* * *
Ashling was looking at him as if he’d grown two heads. Zach kept his gaze up, even though he wanted to let it rove over her lithe body, where nothing much was left to the imagination, with Lycra clinging to slim curves.
The lurid clashing colours of her clothes did little to detract from her appeal. Even though her hair was pulled back and she wore no make-up, she really was extraordinarily pretty.
Last night she’d been beautiful.
And sexy.
Sexy enough to make him lose his mind for a moment.
Sexy enough to make him almost forget who she was, what she’d done, and what she owed him.
A debt.
A debt he had every intention of calling in.
&nbs
p; He knew it wasn’t entirely rational to take her to Paris with him, but his every instinct was screaming at him to keep her close. Where he could keep an eye on her. In case she ran before he felt she’d paid her due.
Not because he wanted her. He had more control than that.
That ill-judged attempt to see how far she would go if he were to push her, hadn’t been enough in terms of satisfying his thirst for revenge over what she’d done.
She’d wittingly—or unwittingly, according to her—exploded a bomb in his life at a time when he’d been most vulnerable. In many respects he’d had to start over again. Prove that he was reliable. Not out of his depth, or a dilettante. Since then his liaisons with women had been carefully judged and discreet. And his work ethic left no room for error.
Eventually she said, ‘Of all the things you could have said to me, that is literally the last thing I would have expected. Why on earth would you ask me to come to Paris with you?’
Yes, why would you? asked a voice that he ignored. He knew what he was doing.
‘Because you owe me a debt and this is how you’ll pay it off.’
Ashling went very still, and then her eyes widened and her cheeks flushed with colour. ‘I told you I’m not a call girl.’
Her outrage was authentic. Zach could see that. He said coolly, ‘I’m not suggesting you pay off your debt in my bed. I have an important meeting in Paris and I need someone to come with me as an assistant. As I’m without Gwen and Cassie, you can save me the trouble of going through HR to find someone else at short notice on the weekend.’
The colour had receded a little from her cheeks now. ‘You want me to act as your assistant?’
‘It’s the least you can do.’
She started to get agitated, moving around. It only drew Zach’s eye to her slim form.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’ve said I’m sorry. That night I was doing someone a favour... I knew it was unorthodox, but I had no idea of the repercussions. I was young and naive. I should have known better. I’m sorry.’ She stopped moving and looked at him, beseeching. ‘But I can’t just drop everything and go to another country with you because you demand it.’
Zach looked around, taking in the surprisingly homely apartment. The scene didn’t entirely fit with his image of her as a con woman—or a call girl, for that matter. But then, perhaps Cassie’s influence was the dominant one here.
There was a comfortable couch. A massive TV. Books on shelves. He could imagine Ashling curled up on the couch, engrossed in something. There was a yoga mat on the floor, the lingering smell of fresh coffee in the air, and something he couldn’t identify. Something New Agey.
To his surprise, it caused a pang in his chest. Brought back a memory of his mother standing behind him, her hands on his shoulders as she’d said, ‘Look around you, Zach. This is not where you belong. You belong far from here. You belong in a place that the people here will never see in their lifetimes. But you will, because it’s your due.’
Zach clamped down on the memory, irritated by its resurgence. He glanced at his watch and looked at Ashling. ‘You have fifteen minutes. I’ll be waiting in the car. We’ll return this evening.’
He was almost at the door when she said, ‘Now, wait just a minute—’
He turned around. ‘No. You owe me, Miss Doyle, and I’m collecting. If what you say is true, that Cassie knows nothing of this, and you want to keep it that way, then you’ll do as I say.’
She went pale. ‘That’s blackmail.’
‘Fifteen minutes or I’ll come and get you. Dress smartly.’
* * *
Ashling spent five minutes after Temple had left the apartment pacing up and down and vacillating between anger at his arrogance and fear that he would tell Cassie what she’d done.
Ashling could imagine the look of disappointment on her friend’s face. Cassie had never hidden the fact that she thought Ashling had gone over a line that night, and it had only compounded Ashling’s own feelings of guilt and remorse. Cassie had worked so hard to get to where she was. She had a great relationship with Temple, and Ashling would hate to damage that.
So, if anything, the fact that Temple was offering her a chance to prove that Cassie wasn’t involved and redeem herself...was a good thing. They would be quits.
She cringed, though, when she thought of the first place her mind had gone when he’d mentioned Paris. Bed. Sex. And the rush of very conflicting reactions in her body. Shock. Relief because he did fancy her. Excitement. And only then disgust at what he was insinuating. That she could pay him back on her back.
But he hadn’t meant that at all. Because he didn’t fancy her. As if she needed reminding.
She stopped pacing. She could see the sleek car outside the window. Imagined Temple sitting in the back, growing impatient. She really didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t bear to see the disappointment on Cassie’s face. Or, worse, get her into trouble. He was right. She did owe him. This much at least. After a day in her company no doubt he’d be only too happy to see the back of her.
* * *
When Ashling got into the back of the car approximately ten minutes later. Temple gave her a once-over and as the car pulled away from the kerb. ‘What are you wearing?’
Ashling felt defensive. ‘You said to dress smartly. This is smart.’ For her. She’d even borrowed one of Cassie’s cream silk shirts with a pussycat bow.
Temple was looking at her lap. ‘Is that a leather mini-skirt?’
‘It’s fake leather,’ Ashling replied, indignant that he would assume it was real.
She’d paired the skirt with black sheer tights with black dots and flat leather brogues. For her, this was positively conservative.
Temple’s gaze went to her head. He said dryly, ‘I’m sure my French counterparts will appreciate the authentic touch.’
Ashling resisted the urge to take off her jaunty beret. ‘I’m sure they will.’
She put the briefcase she’d also borrowed out of Cassie’s wardrobe on her lap. She’d stuffed in notebooks and pens, not sure what would be required of her.
In a bid to try and distract herself from the enormity of the fact that she was going to Paris for a day with Zachary Temple, Ashling asked, ‘So what exactly is the meeting about?’
‘You don’t need to worry about the details. You’ll be making sure everyone has water...that kind of thing.’
Ashling smarted at his dismissive tone—but then this was payback.
She said, ‘I have the notes from last night on my phone. If you need them I can transcribe them.’
He frowned. ‘Notes?’
‘That’s why you asked me to accompany you yesterday evening...’ But then something occurred to her and she cursed her naivety. ‘You didn’t need notes taken at all, did you? You just wanted to watch me squirm because you knew who I was.’
Temple didn’t even look remotely sorry.
At that moment his phone rang and he took it out of his inside pocket, answering and proceeding to conduct a conversation in fluent French, which made him sound even sexier than he usually did. Even when he was being hateful.
Ashling scowled and looked out of her window, willing the day to be over already.
* * *
Ashling had never been on a private jet before. She’d naively assumed they would be taking the train to Paris. But, no, they’d driven to a private airfield beside one of London’s biggest airports, where a gleaming silver Learjet had been waiting.
It was seriously plush inside. Cream leather seats. Luxurious carpets. Temple settled in without a second glance, opening up his laptop. Ashling hovered, unsure what to do...totally intimidated.
Temple looked at her. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’ She chose a seat on its own by a window. Her phone buzzed from her—from Cassie’s—briefcase, and Ashling took it out, rel
ieved to have something to do with her hands. It was another text from Cassie, and Ashling’s eyes widened as she read it. Cassie had apparently slept with the man she’d gone to the States to spy on.
Ashling sneaked a glance at Temple, in case he could somehow magically read the text from a few feet away—she wouldn’t put it past him—but he was engrossed in his laptop. She fired back an incredulous response, telling herself that Cassie obviously had enough on her plate to be dealing with, without hearing about Ashling’s temporary new job as Temple’s assistant.
She put the phone away. One of the stewards came over when they were in the air. ‘Would you like some champagne, Miss Doyle?’
Ashling blanched. Maybe that was what was offered to Temple’s usual companions. Women he brought with him for far more recreational reasons. Not for punishment. ‘Er...no, thanks. Water would be fine. Or, coffee, if you have it.’
She would need all the help she could get to stay alert around the most disturbing man she’d ever met.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘HAVE YOU BEEN to Paris before, Miss Doyle?’
Ashling tensed and turned away from the car window, where she’d been sighing at the sight of the Eiffel Tower in the distance. ‘You can call me Ashling. “Miss Doyle” makes me sound like a schoolteacher.’
‘Very well. Ashling.’
She immediately regretted saying that. He hadn’t even called her Ashling last night, when he’d been making love to her. Humiliating her.
But then he said, ‘You can call me Zach. I don’t usually stand on ceremony with employees.’
A neat reminder—as if she needed it—that her initial assumption that he meant to bring her to Paris to sleep with her was about as likely as her becoming CEO of a company some day.
‘So, Ashling, have you been here before?’
She swallowed, not liking how hearing him say her name made her feel. ‘Just once before, with my mother. For my eighteenth birthday.’