Jessica Hart - His Temporary Cinderella

Still spluttering, Caro patted her throat and blinked at him through watering eyes. ‘I’m—’ It came out as a croak, and she coughed and tried again. ‘I’m Caro,’ she managed at last.

Dear God, thought Philippe, keeping his smile in place with an effort. Caro’s lovely, Lotty had said. She’ll be perfect.

What had Lotty been thinking? There was no way this Caro could carry off what they had in mind. He’d pictured someone coolly elegant, like Lotty, but there was nothing cool and certainly nothing elegant about this girl. Built on Junoesque lines, she’d opened the door like a slap in the face, and then spat biscuit all over him. He’d had an impression of lushness, of untidy warmth. Of dark blue eyes and fierce brows and a lot of messy brown hair falling out of its clips.

And of a perfectly appalling top made of purple cheesecloth. It might possibly have been fashionable forty years earlier, although it was hard to imagine anyone ever picking it up and thinking it would look nice on. Caro Cartwright must get dressed in the dark.

Philippe was tempted to turn on his heel and get Yan to drive him back to London, but Lotty’s face swam into his mind. She had looked so desperate that day she had come to see him. She hadn’t cried, but something about the set of her mouth, about the strained look around her eyes had touched the heart Philippe had spent years hardening.

Caro will help, I know she will, she had said. This is my only chance, Philippe. Please say you’ll do it.

So he’d promised, and now he couldn’t go back on his word.

Dammit.

Well, he was here, and now he’d better make the best of it. Philippe forced warmth into his smile, the one that more than one woman had told him was irresistible. ‘I’m Lotty’s cousin, Ph—’ he began, but Caro waved him to silence, still patting her throat.

‘I know who you are,’ she said squeakily, apparently resisting the smile without any trouble at all. ‘What are you doing here?’

Philippe was momentarily nonplussed, which annoyed him. He wasn’t used to being taken aback, and he certainly wasn’t used to having his presence questioned quite so abruptly. ‘Didn’t Lotty tell you?’

‘She said you would ring.’

That was definitely an accusing note in her voice. Philippe looked down his chiselled nose. ‘I thought it would be easier to explain face to face,’ he said haughtily.

Easier for him, maybe, thought Caro. He hadn’t been caught unawares with no make-up on and a mouthful of biscuit.

There was something surreal about seeing him standing there, framed against the austere terrace of houses across the road. Ellerby was a quiet northern town on the edge of the moors, while Philippe in his immaculately tailored trousers and the dark blue shirt open at the neck appeared to have stepped straight out of the pages of Glitz. He was tall and tanned with that indefinable aura of wealth and glamour, the assurance that took red carpets as its due.

A pampered playboy prince … Caro longed to dismiss him as no more than that, but there was nothing soft about the line of his mouth, or the hard angles of cheek and jaw. Nothing self-indulgent about the lean, hard-muscled body, nothing yielding in those unnervingly light eyes.

Still, no reason for her to go all breathless and silly.

‘You should have rung,’ she said severely. ‘I might have been going out.’

‘Are you going out?’ asked Philippe, and his expression as his gaze swept over her spoke louder than words. Who in God’s name, it seemed to say, would even consider going out in a purple cheesecloth shirt?

Caro lifted her chin. ‘As it happens, no.’

‘Then perhaps I could come in and tell you what Lotty wants,’ he said smoothly. ‘Unless you’d like to discuss it on the doorstep?’

Please say you’ll help. Caro bit her lip. She had forgotten Lotty for a moment there. ‘No, of course not.’

Behind Philippe, a sleek black limousine with tinted windows waited at the kerb, its engine idling. Tinted windows! Curtains would be twitching up and down the street.

No, this wasn’t a conversation she wanted to be having in full view of the neighbours. Caro stood back and held the door open, tacitly conceding defeat. ‘You’d better come in.’

The hallway was very narrow, and she sucked in her breath to make herself slimmer as Philippe stepped past her. Perhaps that explained why she suddenly felt dizzy and out of breath. It was as if a panther had strolled past her, all sleek, coiled power and dangerous grace. Had Philippe always been that big? That solid? That overwhelmingly male?

She gestured him into the sitting room. It was a mess in there, but that was too bad. If he didn’t have the courtesy to ring and let her know he was coming, he couldn’t expect the red carpet to be rolled out.

Philippe’s lips tightened with distaste as he glanced around the room. He couldn’t remember ever being anywhere quite so messy before. Tights hung over radiators and there were clothes and shoes and books and God only knew what else in heaps all over the carpet. A laptop stood open on the coffee table, which was equally cluttered with cosmetics, nail polishes, battery chargers, magazines and cups of half drunk coffee.

He should have known as soon as the car drew up outside that Caro wasn’t going to be one of Lotty’s usual friends, who were all sophisticated and accomplished and perfectly groomed. They lived on family estates or in spacious apartments in the centre of London or Paris or New York, not in poky provincial terraces like this one.

What, in God’s name, had Lotty been thinking?

‘Would you like some tea?’ Caro asked.

Tea? It was eight o’clock in the evening! Who in their right mind drank tea at this hour? Philippe stifled a sigh. He’d need more than tea to get himself through this mess he’d somehow got himself into.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve got anything stronger?’

‘If I’d known you were coming I would have stocked up on the Krug,’ she said sharply. ‘As it is, you’ll have to make do with herbal tea.’

Philippe liked to think of himself as imperturbable, but he clearly wasn’t guarding his expression as well as he normally did, because amusement tugged at the corner of Caroline Cartwright’s generous mouth. ‘I can offer nettle, gingko, milk thistle…’

The dark blue eyes gleamed. She was making fun of him, Philippe realised.

‘Whatever you’re having,’ he said, irritated by the fact that he sounded stiff and pompous.

He was never pompous. He was never stiff either. He was famous for being relaxed, in fact. There was just something about this girl that rubbed him up the wrong way. Philippe felt as if he’d strayed into a different world, where the usual rules didn’t apply. He should be at some bar drinking cocktails with a gorgeous woman who knew just how the game should be played, not feeling disgruntled in this tip of a house being offered tea— and herbal tea at that!—by a girl who thought he was amusing.

‘A mug of dandelion and horny goat weed tea coming up,’ she said. ‘Sit down, I’ll just be a minute.’

Philippe couldn’t wait.

With a sigh, he pushed aside the clutter on the sofa and sat down. He’d let Lotty talk him into this, and now he was going to have to go through with it. And it suited him, Philippe remembered. If Caroline Cartwright was half what Lotty said she was, she would be ideal.

She’s not pretty, exactly, Lotty had said. She’s more interesting than that.

Caro certainly wasn’t pretty, but she had a mobile face, with a long upper lip and expressive eyes as dark and blue as the ocean. Philippe could see that she might have the potential to be striking if she tidied herself up and put on some decent clothes. Not his type, of course—he liked his women slender and sophisticated, and Caro was neither—but that was all to the good. The whole point was for her to be someone he wouldn’t want to get involved with.