Jessica Hart - His Temporary Cinderella

She could feel his arousal, and she pulled her mouth from his so that she could gasp for breath.

‘Philippe …’

She wasn’t even sure what she meant to say, but Philippe, who was kissing her throat and making her shiver with delight at the heat and the hunger of it, stilled as if she had whacked him across the head.

Caro felt him draw a ragged breath, then another. ‘Good God,’ he said, sounding shaken, and let her go. ‘Maybe that’s enough practice for now.’

Practice? Desperately, Caro tried to bring her scattered senses back under control. She needed a decompression chamber, somewhere to learn to breathe again, a staging post between heady pleasure and the slap of reality where there was no touch, no taste, no feel, no giddy swing of the senses but only the chill of standing alone on a summer’s night remembering that none of it had been real.

MONTLUCE was such a tiny country that it didn’t even have its own airport, so they were to fly to France and drive the rest of the way. In Caro’s experience, flying meant a lot of queuing, a lot of delays, a lot of shuffling onto a crowded plane and shifting impatiently for the inevitable passenger who blocked the aisle for long minutes while he fussed about stashing away his duty-free in the overhead lockers.

Flying with Philippe was very different. The limousine he’d sent to pick her up in Ellerby that morning bypassed the terminal and deposited her right by the plane on the tarmac. Her bags were whisked away while Caro climbed out and stood looking dubiously up at the private jet. It looked very small. The wind was whipping tendrils of hair around her face and plastering them against her lips as fast as she could pull them free.

She was very nervous.

And cross with herself for feeling that way. Everything was going ahead exactly as they’d planned. Lotty was ecstatically grateful and would be gone before Caro and Philippe arrived. Once in Montluce, there would just be the two of them.

Which would be fine, Caro told herself. They had agreed to be friends, hadn’t they? If it hadn’t been for that stupid kiss.

But she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about that. It had been a mistake, they’d agreed afterwards. Both of them had been carried away by the pretence, but pretence was all it had been. It wasn’t as if it had been a real kiss.

The trouble was that it had felt real. The firm curve of his mouth, his breath against her skin, the insistence of the sure hands cupping her buttocks and pulling her into him … oh, yes, it had felt real, all right. She could still feel the glittery rush, the heat. Philippe had been so hard, so surprisingly solid, so male. Every time Caro thought about him, her muscles would clench and a disturbing sensation, half shiver, half shudder, would snake its way down her spine.

Not that she would make the mistake of believing it had meant anything to Philippe. Just because she could admit he was attractive didn’t mean that she was going to lose her mind. Caro might be many things, but she wasn’t a fool.

After announcing their relationship to a relieved Lotty and a furious Dowager Blanche, Philippe had escorted his equally disappointed father to Paris to start his treatment, but for the last three or four days he’d been in London. Caro knew this because she’d seen his picture in Glitz. He’d been snapped coming out of a nightclub with Francesca Allen. Usually referred to as ‘Britain’s favourite actress', Francesca was famously beautiful, famously intelligent, famously nice—and famously married. The tabloids were having a field day speculating about what they were doing together.

It was a stupid thing to have done, given everything Philippe had had to say about convincing the Dowager Blanche that he was serious about her, Caro thought, and told herself that was the only reason she was feeling monumentally miffed. She wasn’t silly enough to be jealous. I’m more than capable of keeping my hands to myself, Philippe had said, and Caro had no problem believing him, kiss or no kiss. A man like Philippe, used to hanging around with beautiful women the likes of Francesca Allen, was hardly likely to be tempted by an ordinary, overweight, eccentrically dressed Caroline Cartwright, was he?

No, being friends was the only way to get through the next few weeks. As a friend, she wouldn’t have to worry about what she looked like, and there would be no need to feel twitchy about other, far more beautiful, women prowling around him. She could relax and enjoy herself with a friend.

Caro had barely reminded herself of that when Philippe appeared, ducking out of the cabin, long and lean and tautly muscled in a pale yellow polo shirt and chinos, and the breath whooshed out of her. He looked the same, and yet different, more immediate somehow: the cool mouth, the winged brows, the crisp line of his jaw, the startling contrast between the icy eyes and the darkness of his hair.

It must be something to do with the brightness of the light, the freshness of the breeze. Why else would the sight of him sharpen her senses and make her feel as if every cell in her body was alert and tingling?

At the top of the steps, Philippe looked down at Caro and was startled by how pleased he was to see her.

Of course, it would have been horribly awkward if she’d changed her mind, Philippe told himself. His announcement that he was bringing a girlfriend no one had ever heard of back to Montluce hadn’t gone down well, to say the least, and he’d been subjected to endless harangues on the subject from his great-aunt, while his father had retreated into bitter disappointment as usual. Only Lotty, hugging him with a speaking look of gratitude, had stopped him from telling them what they could all do with their duty and responsibility and booking himself on the first plane back to Buenos Aires.

Philippe had been glad to escape to London and enjoy his last few days of freedom for a while. He’d met up with friends, played polo at the Guards Club, been to parties and dinners and renewed his acquaintance with the beautiful Francesca Allen. He wasn’t looking forward to the next six months, and couldn’t decide whether this mad pretence with Caro Cartwright was going to make things better or worse. She was so different from the other women he knew. Not beautiful, not glamorous. Just ordinary. And yet Philippe had been surprised at how vividly he remembered her.

How vividly he remembered that kiss.

He’d been prepared for awkwardness, not for sweetness. Not for softness a man could lose himself in if he wasn’t careful.

The memory made Philippe uncomfortable. He didn’t do losing himself. But he’d been taken unawares by the way the dress slipped over her skin. The heat shooting through him had sucked the air from his brain, and the message to step back and keep his cool hadn’t reached his hands.

Or his mouth.

Or the rest of him.

Philippe didn’t understand it. Caro Cartwright ought to be the last woman to have that kind of effect on him. She wasn’t even pretty, and as for her clothes …! Today she wore jeans and boots, with a plain white T-shirt, which wouldn’t have looked too bad if she hadn’t spoiled it by wearing an oversize man’s dinner jacket over the top, its sleeves rolled up to show a brilliant scarlet lining. At least she was tall enough to carry it off with a certain panache, he allowed grudgingly.

No, Caro wasn’t his type at all.

And yet there she stood, blue eyes wary and all that hair blowing around her face, and his heart unmistakably lifted.

Odd.

‘There you are,’ he said, pushing the discomfited feeling aside. It was too late to change his mind now. He went down the steps to greet her. ‘I was beginning to wonder if you’d changed your mind.’