Jessica Hart - British Bachelors - Gorgeous and Impossible - My Greek Island Fling / Back in the Lion's Den / We'll Always Have Paris

Bad tingles. Very bad tingles.

Not ideal qualities for a professional writer.

This was the man who’d accused her of being her father’s accomplice and almost thrown her out yesterday. As far as Mark Belmont was concerned she was here to work. And that was all. She had to keep her head together!

It was time to turn on a cheery nonsense gossipy voice and the fixed smile that had become her standard mask to the world. Busy, busy, busy. Chatter, chatter, chatter. That was the role she played. He wouldn’t be able to get a word in edgeways, and she could keep her distance.

Deep breath. Cue, Lexi. Action!

‘Good morning, Mr Belmont.’ She smiled, nervously rearranging the cutlery to hide her complete mental disarray. ‘I hope you’re ready for breakfast, since I’ve been on a mission of mercy and made the village baker and shopkeeper very happy. But please don’t be worried about your reputation as a ladies’ man. I told them I was only here for a few days to help with a business project and I’d be heading back to the office ASAP.’

Oh, and now she was babbling about his love life. Great. Could she be more pathetic?

‘My reputation?’ Mark repeated, staring at her through those incredibly cute spectacles as he leant against the worktop, his hands in his trouser pockets. Casual, handsome, devastating. ‘How very thoughtful of you. But why did you think it necessary to go on a mission of mercy?’

‘I was brave enough to rummage around inside your freezer looking for breakfast. Behind the bags of ice cubes were a few ancient, dry bread rolls, which crumbled to pieces in my hands and were only fit for the birds, and an assortment of unlabelled mystery items which, judging by their greyish-green colour, were originally of biological origin. But they did have one thing in common. They were all inedible.’

She stopped cutting bread and looked up into Mark’s face. ‘It’s amazing what they have in small village shops on this island.’

‘Food shopping,’ he replied, running the fingers of one hand through his damp hair. ‘Ah. Yes. My housekeeper stocked up the refrigerator last week, but of course I wasn’t expecting visitors.’

‘No need to apologise,’ she said as brightly as she could. ‘But it has been my experience that we can get a lot more work done if we have food available in the house and don’t have to run out and stock up at the last minute. And, since the room service around here seems to be a little deficient, some creative thinking was required.’

He peered over her shoulder and the smell of citrus shower gel and coconut shampoo wafted past. She inhaled the delicious combination, which was far more enticing than the food and did absolutely nothing to cure her attack of the tingles.

But as he stepped forward Lexi heard his stomach growl noisily and raised her eyebrows at him.

‘It seems that I could use some breakfast. Um … What did you manage to scavenge?’

‘Since I don’t know if you prefer a sweet chocolatey cereal breakfast or a savoury eggs, bacon and tomatoes type breakfast, I bought both. I’ve already had scrambled eggs and toast, washed down with a gallon of tea.’

‘Tea is disgusting. But eggs and toast sound perfect if I can persuade you to go back to the frying pan. I’ll take care of my coffee. It’s one of my few weaknesses. I’m very particular about what coffee I drink, where it came from and how it was made.’

‘Of course, Mr Belmont,’ Lexi replied, with no hint of sarcasm in her voice, and turned back towards the cooker.

‘It’s Mark.’

‘Oh,’ she replied, whizzing round towards him and making a point of taking out her earphones. ‘Did you say something?’

Mark crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes, well aware that she had heard what he said but was making a play of it since she had just scored a point. ‘I said, since we will be working together, I would prefer it if you called me Mark.’

‘If that is your instruction, Mr Belmont.’ She smiled and relaxed a little. ‘I’d be very happy to call you Mark. But only if you call me Lexi in return. Not Alexis, or Ali, or Lex, but Lexi.’

Then she turned back to the hob and added a knob of butter to the hot pan before breaking more eggs into a bowl.

‘Breakfast will be with you in about five minutes, Mark. I do hope you like orange juice. That was the only—’

The sound of a rock band belted out from her cell phone, and Lexi quickly wiped her hands on a kitchen towel before pressing a few buttons.

‘Anything interesting?’ Mark asked casually as he reached for the coffee.

‘I always receive interesting messages.’ Lexi twisted to one side and peered at the display. ‘But in this case they were two new messages from my ex-boyfriend, which are now deleted. Unread, of course. Which I find deeply satisfying.’

‘I see. I thought you might be a heartbreaking sort of girl.’

‘It cannot be denied. But in this particular situation it transpired he was cheating on me with a girl who took great satisfaction in enticing him away from me.’

Mark’s eyebrows went skywards and his lips did a strange quivery dance as his hands stilled on the cafetière. ‘He cheated on you?’ he repeated in an incredulous voice, then shook his head once before going back to his coffee. ‘Do you always share details of your fascinating-but-tragic love life with people you’ve only just met?’ he asked with a quick glance in her direction.

Lexi shrugged, and was about to make some dismissive quip when it struck her that he was actually trying to have a conversation this morning.

That was different.

He’d barely said a word over their light dinner of crackers, cheese and sweet tomatoes apart from commenting on the local red wine. The meal had been so awkward that she’d felt she was walking on eggshells every time she tried to break the silence.

She wasn’t complaining, and it helped that she now wasn’t the only one talking, but she wasn’t used to having one-to-one, intelligent, hangover-free conversations with her clients at this time in the morning. Perhaps Mark Belmont had a few more surprises for her?

‘Oh, yes,’ Lexi replied with a shrug as she added lightly beaten eggs to the sizzling butter in the pan and immediately started working the mix. ‘But, if you think about it, my job is to help you share details of your fascinating-but-tragic love life with strangers whom you are never going to meet. This way we are both in the same business. I think it works.’

‘Ah.’ Mark pressed his lips together and gave Lexi a small nod as he carried the coffee over to the table. ‘Good point. I should probably tell you that I am not totally thrilled by that prospect.’

‘I understand that. Not everyone is a natural extrovert.’ She shrugged just as the bread popped up from the toaster. ‘But that’s why you called me in.’

‘I prefer keeping my private life just that. Private. I would much rather stick to the facts.’

‘Are you speaking from past experience?’ Lexi asked quietly, flashing him a lightning-quick glance as she quickly tipped hot scrambled egg onto a thick slice of golden toast.

‘Perhaps it is,’ Mark replied between sips of juice. ‘And perhaps it isn’t.’

‘I see.’ Lexi slid the plate onto the table. ‘Well, I can tell you one thing. If you want this biography to work you’re going to have to trust me and get that private life out for the world to see, Mark.’

His response was a close-mouthed frown which spoke volumes.

Oh, this was turning out so well.

Lexi nodded towards the food. ‘Enjoy your breakfast. Then I really do need to find out how much work you’ve done so far on the manuscript. Perhaps you could show me your mother’s study? That’d be a good place to start. In the meantime I’m off to feed the cats. Bye.’