Julia James - Innocent Cinderella

Now, as the memory came back to haunt her, Marin lifted her glass and drank deeply, trying to ease the dryness of her mouth as she felt her skin beginning to burn all over again, and a deep, yearning ache twist in the pit of her stomach. Oh God, she thought, her throat tightening. Why did it have to be Jake Radley-Smith of all people in the world who was making her feel like this?

But she had one shred of comfort. At least Jake didn’t—couldn’t, know the sensations he’d ignited in her hitherto unawakened flesh. She’d managed to conceal the fact that she was still quivering inwardly and give him an impersonal smile when he’d knocked at her door earlier to escort her to lunch.

She could only pray that he’d assume her unguarded response to his kiss that morning was simply role-playing. That she’d been actually doing something to earn the promised money, trying to stop the plan coming off the rails.

He and Graham were still at the golf course when she eventually got back to the house. The croquet tournament was still in full swing, to judge from the laughter intermingled with cries of triumph and despair coming from the lawn, so she was able to escape up to her room unnoticed.

She felt hot, sticky and generally on edge, so she indulged herself with a long, cool bath then anointed herself all over with the achingly expensive scented moisturiser which Lynne had insisted on and, more cautiously, the perfume that matched it. It had a soft, musky fragrance with under-notes of lily and jasmine that were released slowly by the warmth of her skin, and it was far more beguiling and sophisticated than anything she’d possessed before.

Frankly sexy, in fact, she realised uncomfortably as she tried to relax on her bed. An impression that the evening’s designated dress would do nothing to dispel.

Lynne had been right about the colour, she acknowledged ruefully, when later she looked at herself in the mirror after a life and death struggle to get the zip fastened.

The rose-leaf-green taffeta made her creamy skin glow in sensuous contrast, and added sparks of emerald to her hazel eyes. While the stark cut of the bustier managed somehow to enhance the slight curves it only just concealed.

My God, Marin thought, caught between laughter and shock. For the first time in my life, I have a cleavage.

She’d thought about swirling her hair up into a topknot, but decided she’d look slightly less naked if she let it hang in a soft and shining swathe round her shoulders. Her high-heeled sandals were simply a couple of green, sequined straps across the instep, and her tiny evening purse matched them.

And once more she was deliberately sparing in her use of cosmetics, merely darkening her long lashes and using a soft, pink lustre on her mouth. She had no wish to look as if she was trying too hard, she thought wryly.

Now it was again time to go downstairs and pretend. Except that the terms of this pretence had suddenly changed, and she was no longer sure exactly whom she was trying to fool.

It might even be—myself, she thought, swallowing.

She took one final look in the mirror, unease warring inside her with something that could easily be the wrong kind of excitement, then walked over to the communicating door.

She’d heard Jake return almost two hours before, and had half-expected a visit from him, but there’d only been silence from his room.

She knocked and was about to call, ‘I’m ready,’ when the door swung abruptly open and he confronted her.

She’d never seen him before in the formal elegance of dinner jacket and black tie, and realised just in time that she was actually gaping at him, her breath catching at his sheer glamour.

Jake looked her over in his turn for a long moment, his face inscrutable. When he spoke, his voice was light, even faintly amused. ‘As well as the raise, I must remember to give Lynne a very large bonus.’

‘She deserves it.’ Marin tried to match his tone, although her pulses were going haywire. ‘I fought her every step of the way.’

His mouth twisted. ‘I can well believe it.’ He let his gaze travel down her again from the wary, dark-fringed eyes to the length of slender leg revealed by the brief bell of her skirt. ‘You look almost as enticing as you did in that towel you wore at our first meeting.’

Her face warmed. ‘Something,’ she said, ‘that I have tried very hard to forget.’

‘Now, there we differ,’ Jake drawled. ‘Because I suspect it will always feature amongst my most cherished memories.’

‘Oh, please.’ Marin lifted her chin. ‘In a week’s time we’ll have problems remembering each other’s names, and you know it.’

‘Perhaps.’ He shrugged. ‘But it would hardly be chivalrous of me to say so.’

‘I wasn’t aware chivalry featured highly on your list of priorities, anyway.’

His mouth twisted mockingly. ‘I’m probably capable of it, if the situation demands.’ He paused. ‘Now, shall we go downstairs—face the lions in the arena one more time?’

She thought—But there are far worse things than lions…

Aloud, she said sedately, ‘Let them do their worst.’

And walked beside him in silence down to the drawing room.

IT PROBABLY WASN’T the worst evening she’d ever spent, Marin thought detachedly, but it was high on the list.

Diana had rounded up all the local grandees for the dinner, including the Chief Constable, but Marin gathered that other people had been invited later for dancing, and that a disco run by the doctor’s student son had been set up in the large conservatory at the rear of the house.

In the dining room, she’d found herself next to Chaz Stratton, who confined himself to telling her that she wouldn’t have found the croquet contest quite so easy, and that Diana had won.

Marin murmured politely, thinking how much she’d like to take his vichyssoise and upend it into his lap.

On her other side was the local Member of Parliament, a thin, greyish man who clearly preferred monologues conducted by himself to conversation, so she was required to do little but listen and try not to let her glance stray too obviously or wistfully to where Jake was sitting, being animatedly entertained by a very attractive brunette.

It occurred to her that this was what it must be like to be Jake’s girlfriend in reality. To be another Adela Mason, always wondering if every other woman in the room was a potential rival, and if so how to deal with it. Or to accept, like the unknown Celia Forrest, that Jake did not play for keeps and walk away before the inevitable happened.

And found she was putting down her dessert spoon, her appetite for floating island pudding suddenly replaced by a tight knot of unhappiness in her chest.

Finding herself overtaken by the startling and appalling realisation that no amount of money could ever make up for the kind of wretchedness that was going to be waiting for her once the weekend was over.

Oh God, she thought, swallowing. How can I have allowed this to happen to me? And let it get to this stage?

It wasn’t just her first confrontation with actual sexual temptation, or finding herself in close proximity to a diabolically attractive and experienced man. If that was so, she might have found some means of dealing with it.