by Jessica Hart
‘I don’t know what to say.’ Clara looked around her a little helplessly. ‘I can’t believe I’ll really get to sleep in a room like this! Thank you,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘It’s beautiful.’
When Simon saw the room that Clara had been expected to share with a great pile of kit, he was quite cross. Barely more than a cupboard, it was adequate for his own needs, of course, but she would have been really uncomfortable.
He tossed his bag on the bed, and opened his laptop on the desk. They had agreed to meet a couple of hours later, but for now he was alone and could get on with some work. At last!
Rolling up his sleeves, Simon settled down at his computer, but the figures on the screen kept wavering as Clara’s smile shimmered before his eyes instead. It was exasperating. There he was, trying to work, and all he could see was Clara, turning around, all bright red sweater and lime-green cast and long legs, smiling at him. Thank you. It’s beautiful.
There was absolutely no reason for her smile to make him feel that good.
No reason for his chest to tighten.
No reason for him not to focus on work.
None at all.
* * *
In the end, Simon gave up and went down early to the chic lobby, where he sat on possibly the most uncomfortable chair he had ever tried and tried to focus on the Financial Times. Clara breezed in a few minutes later, brandishing an old-fashioned umbrella.
‘Look what they gave me in Reception!’ she said. ‘It’s going to be perfect!’
‘Perfect?’ Simon got to his feet and looked out through the doors, to where the rain was falling like stair rods into the courtyard. ‘Clara, have you seen the weather? It’s hard to imagine anything less perfect!’
But Clara refused to be daunted. ‘What could be more romantic than sharing an umbrella as you wander around Paris? Maybe we’ll get you and Stella to have a discussion under an umbrella,’ she said excitedly.
‘It won’t be much of a discussion if no one can hear anything except the rain crashing onto the umbrella,’ Simon pointed out and she waved her plaster cast to dismiss the problem.
‘Details, details. The sound guy can work all that out.’
Swinging the umbrella in her good hand, she offered him a sunny smile quite at odds with the weather. ‘Now, let’s go and find us some romantic locations!’
She sounded so jaunty that Simon eyed the swinging umbrella with foreboding. ‘Please tell me you’re not going to start singing in the rain!’
Even he had heard of that song.
‘It’s funny you should mention that.’ Clara sent him a wicked smile. ‘It’s one of my favourite routines.’ And before Simon could stop her she was tap dancing around the umbrella and humming loudly while assorted well-dressed guests turned to stare.
‘For God’s sake, everybody’s looking!’ Simon scowled and snatched the umbrella back. ‘I’m keeping this!’
Taking her by the arm, he propelled her towards the entrance. A doorman leapt to open the doors for them, and Simon let Clara go so that he could put up the umbrella with a snap.
‘I forgot for a moment there what an exhibitionist you are!’
Clara wasn’t in the least chastened. ‘I just love to dance when I’m happy.’
‘What is there to be happy about?’ he grumbled as they picked their way through the puddles.
‘Oh, it’s not so bad, is it?’
‘Clara, it’s tipping it down! My shoes are soaked already. If you’re trying to convince me that this is romantic, you’re going the wrong way about it.’
‘Wait till we’re in Montmartre,’ said Clara. ‘Even you will have to admit it’s romantic then!’
She made him climb all the way up the hill to the great white basilica of Sacré-Coeur. Simon was prepared to admit that the narrow streets would have been picturesque if they had been able to see much beyond the confines of the umbrella, and the view from the top probably was impressive if only it hadn’t been obscured by sheets of rain.
He had been to Paris before, of course, but only to meetings in the financial district. Even if he had had the time, Montmartre’s bohemian charm and street painters wouldn’t have appealed. Perhaps because of the rain, it wasn’t quite as touristy as he had feared. It felt as if they had the quartier to themselves. Everyone else was sensibly inside.
Only Clara would think of going out in this weather, he thought, exasperated. She was relentlessly upbeat about it, too, her face animated as she wittered on about mood and atmosphere and what she persisted in calling ‘the romance of it all’, while the neon-green cast swept through the gloomy light.
‘Remind me again why this is romantic,’ sighed Simon. They were standing under the umbrella in front of Sacré-Coeur, peering out over the terraced gardens to where Paris was lost in the murk. The rain drummed on the plastic over their heads, and splashed into the puddles. The bottom of Simon’s trousers were soaked to the knees, and as for his shoes…!
Worst of all was being so aware of Clara beside him, exuding a warmth and vitality that banished the cold and the wet and the greyness beyond the shelter of the umbrella. They had to stand close together to keep out of the rain, and the shininess of her hair kept catching at the edge of his eye. Simon could smell it, a fresh, flowery fragrance that made him think of hot summer nights, which was odd when it was hard to imagine a more miserable February day.
It irritated Simon that he was finding it so hard to concentrate, especially when Clara herself didn’t seem at all bothered by how close they were standing.
‘I fail to see what’s romantic about wet feet,’ he added crossly.
‘All right, it might not be romantic for us, but if we were lovers, you wouldn’t be thinking about your feet,’ said Clara, who hadn’t been thinking about hers since they left the hotel. She had been too busy thinking about how much bigger Simon was when you were standing right next to him, how much more solid and steadying. How safe it felt to be with him.
It was weird now to remember how boring she had thought him at first. There was something about him that grew on you, Clara had decided. Simon was never going to be gorgeous, of course, but once you had started noticing the cool line of his mouth, or the firm angle of his jaw, you kept on noticing.
In fact, Clara wished that she could stop finding little details that made him, if not exactly hot, at least more attractive than expected: the squareness of his hands, the set of his shoulders, the creases at the edges of his eyes. There was a bit beneath his ear where his jaw met his throat, and every time Clara looked at it she felt a slow, disturbing thump that started low in her belly and muddled up her breathing.
The way it was doing then.
Simon was still grouchy. ‘It would take a lot to make me forget about my feet right now,’ he said.
‘That’s because you don’t get romance.’ Clara forced herself to sound bright and breezy, and not as if the blood was thudding along her veins and booming in her ears. ‘If you were a romantic, it would be enough for you to be alone with your lover.’
She dragged her eyes from his throat and gestured at the umbrella above them. ‘I mean, what could be more intimate? Just two of you under an umbrella, cut off from the rest of the world by the rain. You wouldn’t car
e about how wet your feet were then. You’d just care that you were alone.’
Her expression grew misty. ‘And when you kissed, the rain would disappear and you’d forget about your feet…’
‘Then let’s try it,’ said Simon.
‘Try what?’ said Clara, who was still caught up in her imagined scene. She could picture it perfectly. The two lovers, the rain, the passion… She should be producing romantic films, not documentaries.
‘A kiss.’
Clara snapped back to attention. ‘What?’
‘I’m prepared to try anything to forget about my wet feet,’ he said, straight-faced, and she smiled uncertainly.
‘You’re not serious?’
‘Why not? You keep telling me this is all romantic. I thought you could demonstrate.’
‘But you don’t want to kiss me!’ Clara objected, still unable to decide whether he was joking or not.
‘I thought you could kiss me,’ said Simon. ‘I’m prepared to be persuaded that there’s something romantic about this situation,’ he added, looking down at his sodden shoes, ‘although I’ve got to say I’m not convinced so far!’
His gaze came back to Clara’s doubtful face and he raised his brows. ‘No? Fair enough. I suppose it’s not that romantic, but if nothing else I thought it would take my mind off my feet.’
‘Oh, I expect I could do that,’ said Clara with an assumption of nonchalance that covered a pounding pulse and a mouth that was suddenly dry.
And the alarming knowledge that there was nothing she would like more than to kiss him.
‘You’re the talent, after all,’ she said, ‘and Roland would expect me to do whatever it took to keep you happy, even if it’s just distracting you from your wet feet!’
That was it, she congratulated herself. Make a joke of it. She was good at that. And really, what was the problem? It would only be a kiss. She had been an actor, hadn’t she? Kissing was just part of the job at times.
Besides, she might not get a better chance to convince Simon that there was such a thing as romance. He was so determinedly pragmatic about everything. Surely even he couldn’t kiss pragmatically?
She would show him what a kiss could do, thought Clara, on her mettle. Simon might not want to admit that romance existed, but she would show him. She would pretend that he was Matt and give him a kiss he would never forget!
Lifting her chin, she turned to face him and stepped a little closer. It didn’t take much to rest her palms flat against his chest. His body was broad and solid beneath the black coat.
Clara studied the raindrops spangled on the wool before she raised her eyes to Simon’s. He was watching her steadily, his expression indecipherable.
‘We have to imagine that we’re in love,’ she said as she slid her hands up to his shoulders.
Simon’s expression didn’t change, but Clara could see a muscle jumping in his cheek. It made her think that he might not be quite as cool as he seemed, and her confidence grew.
‘Whatever that means,’ he said.
‘It means that when we’re together, we don’t need anybody else,’ said Clara, letting herself remember how she had felt when she was with Matt. ‘It means that all we want is to be together, and to be able to touch each other.’ Her palms smoothed thoughtfully around the collar of his coat. ‘We can’t keep our hands off each other, in fact. We don’t care who might be watching.’
‘Nobody is going to be watching in this rain,’ Simon pointed out, but that telltale muscle in his cheek was still twitching.
‘We don’t even notice the rain when we’re together,’ Clara told him firmly.
‘Why are we bothering with an umbrella in that case?’
‘Don’t be difficult,’ she said, folding her lips together to stop herself laughing. She wasn’t supposed to be laughing! But perversely it was easier now that she had remembered what she was doing. She had forgotten to be sad about Matt, and could tell herself that she was just trying to convince Simon of the power of romance.
Lowering her voice until it was suitably husky, she murmured, ‘We’re so in love that we don’t care about anything but how right it feels when I kiss your throat like this…’
She touched her mouth to that tantalising place beneath his ear, and tried not to notice how good it did feel. His skin smelt wonderful: clean, crisp, male.
‘If we were in love, you’d like it when I did that,’ she told him.
‘Maybe I like it anyway.’ Simon’s voice had deepened too. Clara could feel it reverberating through her, and she smiled.
‘And this?’ she asked, pressing little kisses along his jaw to the corner of his mouth.
‘That too.’
‘Then maybe you’re getting the idea,’ she said.
CHAPTER FIVE
The rain beat down around them but beneath the umbrella it felt as if they were in a cocoon. Angling her mouth more comfortably, Clara pressed her lips against the firm warmth of his, and she felt him smile a little.
Simon Valentine, smiling. Who would have thought it? Heat fluttered through her, snaring the breath in her throat.
‘How are those feet?’ she asked, her voice not as steady as she would have liked.
‘What feet?’
She laughed breathlessly, and Simon’s arm came round her to pull her closer, while the hand holding the umbrella lowered until it was almost touching their heads.
Then he kissed her.
Well.
Well. Who would have thought that a stuffed shirt like Simon Valentine could kiss like that?
Clara was gripped by a strange giddy feeling. She forgot that she was supposed to be proving a point. She forgot the programme. She forgot everything but the warmth of Simon’s skin and the comforting solidity of his body as she leant against it.
Kissing him felt wonderful. His lips were so sure, and his arm around her so solid. It felt so good, in fact, that Clara was aware of a momentary disquiet. It was enough to make her consider drawing back before the kiss went any further, but the bit of her brain that thought that was a good idea didn’t stand a chance against the whoosh of response that ignited deep inside her, that pressed her tighter against him and sent her arms winding round his neck as if of their own accord.
Perhaps it would have been sensible to stop then, but Clara had never been one to choose the sensible option when there was a reckless, exciting one on offer. She gave herself up to the kiss, to the sheer pleasure of it, as it grew deeper and hungrier and more urgent.
Clara never knew how long they would have stood there, kissing, or how they would have ended it—although she had a nasty feeling that it wouldn’t have been her who called a halt. As it turned out, the decision was taken out of their hands, or their lips, or whatever other organs were driving the kiss.
One moment they were deep in the kiss, oblivious to anything but the heat surging between them. The next a gust of wind blew up the hill, turned the umbrella inside out and hurled a sky’s worth of rain into their faces. It was like being pitched into a river without warning.
Gasping in shock, Simon and Clara jerked apart.
‘Yeurgh…!’ Pointlessly, Clara tried to rub the rain from her eyes while Simon cursed as he
wrestled the umbrella back into shape.
Eventually he managed to get it the right way out and held it above their heads, but by then they were both drenched and Clara was shivering. ‘So much for romance,’ he said, his voice the only dry thing about them. ‘Still, I think I needed that!’
Take it lightly, Clara told herself. She wrung out her hair and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, not that it made much difference. ‘Well, it took your mind off your feet, didn’t it?’
‘It certainly did that.’
‘It works better when you’re in love,’ she added, just in case he misinterpreted the eagerness of her response to him.
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Simon. ‘Look, I’ve had enough rain, if you don’t mind. Can we go somewhere dry and unromantic?’
The romance of rain was rather lost on Clara too by that point. Her teeth were chattering, and water from her wet hair was running down her neck. She was more than happy to follow Simon into the first café they came across. It turned out to be a cosy bistro, and they sat together on a banquette near the fire where they could hang up their sodden coats and steam gently in the warmth.
Simon took charge, ordering a bottle of red wine and steak-frites in excruciating but effective French, while Clara plucked at her damp clothes and grimaced.
The wine made her feel much better, though, and as she began to dry out she looked around her, because that was easier than looking at Simon and remembering that kiss.
It had ended so suddenly. One minute locked together, the next running for shelter. Clara could almost believe that it had never happened at all.
Except for the fact that her lips were still tingling, and her heart was still thudding and every last cell in her body was sulking at the interruption.
And except for the fact her senses jumped with awareness when Simon had finished hanging up their coats and sat down beside her.