Julia James - Innocent Cinderella

She said, ‘You’re soaking wet. Your clothes must be ruined.’

‘They’ll survive,’ he said. ‘And so shall I.’

‘You mentioned the shower deliberately, didn’t you?’ she muttered. ‘So that they’ll think we’re going to take one together. This is what you meant by being more convincing.’

‘Of course,’ he said curtly. ‘What else did you expect?’ He added, ‘But, as we both know it isn’t true, why should you care?’

‘I—I don’t.’ Her response was swift, but not as definite as it should have been, and she knew it.

Knew also that he was far too experienced not to have gauged her reaction to his kiss. Even worse, he might even have been amused by it, and by the fact that he’d been the one to call a halt, she thought, dying inside.

He paused, the blue eyes travelling over her. ‘By the way, I seem to recall specifying a bikini to Lynne, and not some one-piece effort. What happened?’

‘I made a decision of my own,’ Marin said, lifting her chin. ‘Dressing for the part is one thing. Undressing is another.’

There was sudden amusement in his voice. ‘I’ll try to remember that.’

She searched hastily for a change of subject, something more impersonal. ‘How—how did your meeting go?’

‘It went well. Better than I could have hoped for a month ago.’ He paused, his mouth twisting into a faint smile. ‘And you’ve made a real hit with Graham. I suspect if he was your father he’d be asking my intentions.’

‘And you, of course, would be telling him they were strictly dishonourable.’ She managed somehow to infuse some lightness into her tone.

‘And leaving before he could find the shotgun,’ Jake agreed drily. ‘However, as part of the improvement in our relationship Graham’s asked me to play golf with him this afternoon. I said I’d check with you first—that you might like to go for a drive instead—see something of the countryside.’

‘No, no,’ Marin denied hurriedly. ‘Golf is fine.’

‘You could come too,’ he suggested. ‘Walk round with us.’

She remembered happy times doing exactly that with her stepfather, and for a moment was tempted. Then common sense reasserted itself, and she shook her head.

‘We hardly want to give the impression we’re joined at the hip,’ she said. ‘I don’t think anyone would believe that, either.’

Jake shrugged. ‘If you say so. But be warned, Diana has a croquet event planned after lunch. She’ll want revenge for this morning’s miscalculation.’

‘Then she’ll be disappointed,’ Marin said crisply. ‘For one thing, I wouldn’t trust myself around her with a mallet in my hand.’ She paused, then said with constraint, ‘Besides, the swimming thing was horrid.’

‘You deserved to win,’ he said. ‘You’re bloody good.’

She said, ‘But she fixed the draw, didn’t she, so we’d be in the final together?’

‘Almost certainly,’ Jake agreed.

‘So it was nothing to do with real swimming. But then nothing this weekend is what it seems.’

Least of all the way you kissed me, as if you were staking some claim, telling the world that I was yours, to be taken just as soon as we were alone…

‘No,’ Jake said abruptly. ‘It isn’t. But you must have known that’s how it would be.’ He gave a short sigh. ‘However, it will be over soon, and then it’s back to reality. Comfort yourself with that.’

Comfort, she thought, offering a small, taut smile, was hardly the word she’d have chosen.

As they reached her door, Jake made to hand over the Cristal, but Marin shook her head. ‘No, you keep it—please.’

‘Marin,’ he said quietly, ‘This is one of the truly great champagnes. You won it. It belongs to you.’

She turned away, reaching for the door handle. ‘It’s also very expensive. Even I know that. So it would be wasted on me, because it deserves a big occasion—a great reason to celebrate.’ She looked back at him, smiled. ‘And that’s far more your life than mine.’

She added, ‘A touch of the reality you mentioned.’

Then she went into her room and gently closed the door behind her.

Strange how time dragged when you were counting the hours, thought Marin, taking a reflective sip of her iced orange juice and bitter lemon.

Firstly, the hours until dinner. Then the hours until bedtime. Then the hours between breakfast and the blessed moment when Jake would drive them both back to London and it would all be over at last.

At which time her life would finally be able to resume some semblance of normality. Or so she hoped.

A new job to go to, she thought, and a chance to reassure Wendy Ingram that she was still to be totally relied upon. Plus—and maybe this was most important of all—a much-needed opportunity to get her head together and stop drifting off into the kind of forbidden fantasies she was ashamed to contemplate.

Jake had left for the golf club with Graham immediately after lunch, and she swiftly excused herself from the proposed croquet competition on the grounds that she wanted to go for a walk. No one, she noted with irony, had attempted to dissuade her.

She headed for the village, but most of it seemed to be shut—even the church—so she bought a drink in the village pub, discovered a shaded corner of its garden, found an unused page in her diary and began with a certain gritted determination to write down what she’d need to pack for Essex.

Planning for the future, she told herself, and letting the immediate present take care of itself. That was what she needed to do. And finding somewhere else to live when she returned from Essex was a matter of urgency.

Because she could not go on being Jake’s tenant, even in the short term. She had to distance herself from him totally. Make sure she had no reason even to set eyes on him again until she could be sure he was out of her system for good.

She might even have a man of her own beside her by then. Someone strong, kind, reliable and loving. Not a serial womaniser who used people then dumped them.

Out of Greg’s frying pan, she thought, her throat tightening, into Jake’s fire. Potentially, a far more damaging experience.

Belle-laide, she thought. Graham had meant it kindly, but it wasn’t the most flattering description.

Oh God, what had Jake been thinking of? she asked herself unhappily. Why hadn’t he picked someone who looked the part, at least? Why on earth had he chosen her?

Because you, said an inconvenient voice in her head, know this weekend is business, not personal, and that he trusts you to take the money and walk away afterwards, without causing him unnecessary aggravation.

Yes, she thought. But only she would ever know that his trust could be misplaced.

Because when she’d been showering before lunch, standing under the torrent of water, she’d allowed her thoughts to drift. To imagine that she wasn’t alone, that she felt the warmth of someone’s breath on the nape of her neck and hands touching her, applying the scented gel to her skin, stroking its fragrance into her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. Caressing her gently.

Jake’s hands…

Then paused, startled and ashamed, as she’d been forced to put out a hand to steady herself against the cubicle’s tiled wall; her legs had suddenly been shaking under her, matching the race of her heart and the fierce, heated trembling that was at the same time building inside her. As her senses shivered in renewed arousal at the remembrance of his kiss, the hard, lithe strength of his body and the warm, clean scent of his skin. Emotions—responses she’d never experienced before or wished to indulge in. Because no other man she’d ever met, however decent and attractive he might be, had offered the least incentive for her to do so.