Jessica Hart - His Temporary Cinderella

‘I’ll have you know this is one of my best dresses,’ she said, too cross with him to care what he thought about her clothes. ‘It’s an original cocktail dress from the Fifties. I had to save up to buy it online.’

‘You mean you handed over money for that?’ Philippe unfolded himself from the sofa. ‘Extraordinary.’

‘I love vintage clothes,’ said Caro. She held out the skirts and twirled. ‘I wonder who bought this dress when it was new. Did she buy it for a special occasion? Was she excited? Did she meet someone when she was wearing it? A dress like this has a history. I like that.’

Philippe blinked at the swirl of chiffon and the tantalising glimpse of a really excellent pair of legs. The dress was an improvement on the purple cheesecloth, there was no doubt about that, but he wished that she had put on something a little less … eccentric. A little less provoking. Only Caroline Cartwright would choose to wear a sixty-year-old dress!

Maybe it did suit those luscious curves, but it still looked odd to Philippe, and he scowled as he sat in the back of the limousine next to Caro. He had decided to ignore—loftily—her fashion faux pas, and was annoyed to discover that the wretched dress kept snagging at his attention anyway. He blamed Caro, who kept tugging surreptitiously at the neckline, which only drew his eyes to the deep cleavage. Or she was crossing those legs so that the chiffon skirt slithered over her thighs. Philippe shifted uneasily, adjusting his seat belt. He was sure he could hear the material whispering silkily against her bare skin. She had twisted up the mass of nut-brown hair and fixed it with a clip so obviously casually shoved in that he expected any moment that it would all tumble free.

It was very distracting. Caro wasn’t supposed to be distracting. She was supposed to be convenient. That was all.

‘I can’t believe you got a table!’ Caro looked as if she couldn’t decide whether to be delighted or aggrieved when the limousine pulled up outside the Star and Garter.

‘I didn’t. Yan did.’ Philippe nodded at an impassive giant who sat next to the driver in the front seat.

Caro lowered her voice and leant closer, giving Philippe a whiff of a clean fresh scent. ‘Is he your bodyguard?’

‘He prefers to be known as my personal protection officer,’ said Philippe. ‘He’s a very handy man to have around, especially when it comes to getting tables.’

‘Everyone else has to wait months. I suppose he dropped your title?’ she said disapprovingly.

‘I’m sure he did. What else is it for?’

‘We can go somewhere else if you object to Yan pulling rank,’ he said, but Caro shook her head quickly, so that more strands escaped from the clip. She smoothed them from her face.

‘I’ve always wanted to eat here,’ she confessed. ‘It’s horrendously expensive and most people only come for special occasions. I wanted to come with George when we got engaged, but he didn’t think it was worth the money.’ She sighed a little and the generous mouth curved downwards. ‘We had pizza instead.’

To Philippe, who had eaten at some of the world’s top restaurants, there was nothing special about the Star and Garter. It was pleasant enough, he allowed, simply decorated with subtle lighting and enough tables for the place to feel lively without being so close together you were forced to listen to anyone else’s conversation.

He was used to the way the buzz of conversation paused when he walked into a restaurant, used to ignoring it while the manager came to greet him personally, used to exchanging pleasantries on automatic pilot, but all the time he could feel Caro beside him as clearly as if she were touching him. He kept his eyes courteously on the manager, but he didn’t need to look at Caro to know that she was looking eagerly around her, practically humming with anticipation, careless of the fact that her fashion sense was fifty years out of date. Her eyes would be bright, that wretched, tantalising hair escaping from its clip.

And then, abruptly, he felt her stiffen and inhale sharply, and he broke off in mid-sentence to glance at her. She was rigid, her face white and frozen. Philippe followed her stricken gaze across the restaurant to where a couple were staring incredulously back at her.

It wasn’t his problem, Philippe told himself, but somehow his arm went round Caro and he pulled her into his side in a possessive gesture. ‘I hope you’re hungry, chérie?’ he said, trying not to notice how the dress slipped over her skin beneath his hand.

Caro looked blindly up at him. ‘Wh… What?’

‘Do you want to go straight to the table or would you rather have a drink at the bar first?’ He kept a firm hold on her until the blankness faded from her eyes and understanding dawned.

‘Oh.’ She moistened her lips. ‘Let’s go to the table.’

‘Excellent.’ Philippe turned to the manager. ‘We’ll have a bottle of your best champagne.’

‘Certainly, Your Highness.’

Caro was tense within the circle of his arm as they followed the waiter to their table. She didn’t look again at the couple, but her lips were pressed tightly together in distress or anger, Philippe couldn’t tell.

‘All right?’ he asked, when the waiter had gone.

‘Yes, I … yes.’ Caro shook out her napkin and smoothed it on her lap with hands that were not quite steady. ‘It was just a shock to see them here.’

‘That was your ex, I take it?’

‘George, yes, and his new fiancée.’ Her voice vibrated with suppressed anger. ‘I can’t believe he brought Melanie here. She doesn’t even eat! That’s how she looks like a stick insect.’

Philippe glanced over at the table. As far as he could see, Melanie was slim and pretty and blonde, but she would look muted next to Caro.

‘I wonder if they’re celebrating their engagement?’ Caro went on, but he was glad to see the colour back in her face. Shock, it seemed, had been superseded by fury. ‘Clearly, Melanie’s too good for pizza!’ She practically spat out the word.

‘Maybe she’ll wish that they’d gone for pizza instead now that you’ve arrived,’ said Philippe, picking up the menu. ‘It can’t be much fun trying to celebrate your engagement when your fiancé's ex is on the other side of the room and he can’t take his eyes off her.’

‘Oh, he’s not looking at me,’ said Caro bitterly. ‘He’s looking at you and wondering what on earth a guy like you is doing with a boring frump like me!’

Philippe’s dark brows shot up. ‘Boring? You? ‘

His surprise was some consolation, Caro supposed. She opened the menu and pretended to read it, but the words were a blur and all she saw instead was George’s face the day he’d told her it was over. He’d waited until she came back from the supermarket, and told her while she was unpacking the bags. Now Caro couldn’t look at a carton of orange juice without feeling queasy.

‘George thinks I’m boring.’ She pressed her lips together against the jab of memory. ‘He always said that he wanted to marry someone like me, but then he fell in love with Melanie because she was sexy and fun and everything I’m not, apparently.’

Turning a page unseeingly, she went on, ‘There’s a certain irony in that. I spent five years being careful and dressing conventionally, and deliberately not being fun or obvious, just so that I would fit into his world. I’d have done anything for him.’

Whenever she thought about how much she had loved George, her voice would crack like that. It was mortifying because she was over him now. Pretty much.

‘Lotty said you’d been engaged, but that it was over,’ Philippe said in that cool, couldn’t-give-a-damn voice. ‘It’s one of the reasons she thought you might like to come to Montluce. A chance to get away for a while.’