Эбби Грин – A Very French Affair: Bought for the Frenchman's Pleasure / Breaking the Boss's Rules / Her Secret Husband (страница 19)

She was? She had to be careful. To her consternation, she was finding that he was all too easy to talk to. It would be very easy to let something slip out that she wasn’t ready to talk about.

She shrugged minutely. ‘Well, you saw what it was like. A room full of movers and shakers. We were there primarily as adornments. People look at us and think: Models—ergo stupid. It’s all about seeing and being seen.’

She looked out to the lake. ‘In the early days it was all fabulously exciting to be in the same room as the Mayor of New York, or the biggest, newest film star, but really…your illusions get stripped away pretty quickly. Coming from somewhere like Ireland, I think I have a pretty good inbuilt detector for anyone who isn’t genuine. And about one per cent of that crowd are genuine…’

What she said brought back a niggling sense of déjà vu, but before he could dwell on it, pin it down, the waiter returned and took their order. Romain ordered more beers, and Sorcha was surprised to see they’d already been talking for some time. Her eyes took in his relaxed stance, his T-shirt straining across the muscles of his chest. She remembered seeing him emerge from the sea in Ireland. He smiled and she couldn’t breathe. The brown column of his throat looked all too touchable.

It felt as if a silken cord of intimacy was wrapping itself around Sorcha.

She spoke to fill the silence which seemed far too heavy and potent for her, seizing on the first thing that came into her head.

‘I was here before…’ She answered his questioning look, ‘On a backpacking trip with my friend Katie, when we were twenty-one. We’d been on a shoot in Delhi, and decided to do a little travelling before going home. We stayed at a tiny hostel just across the water there somewhere. We used to sit in our window, drinking beers. We’d dream about being over here, having a sumptuous meal, fine wine…’

She couldn’t stop a sudden giggle from rising, and Romain watched her. She didn’t realise how infectious her grin was. She knew part of it was a slightly hysterical reaction to being here in the first place, sharing such an intimate space with this man. At how fast things were moving, changing…

‘I’m sorry—it’s just that if Katie could see me now, she’d be so horrified…’ The giggle crept higher, and Sorcha bit her lip to stop it erupting. But when she saw a twitch on Romain’s mouth she couldn’t help it spilling out.

‘The fact that I’m here in shorts and a T-shirt, fulfilling our fantasy…and drinking beer…’ A tear escaped from her eye and she had to wipe it away, laughing in earnest now. ‘She’d kill me!’

A grin broke out on Romain’s face, and that sobered her up quicker than anything—the sheer masculine perfection of his features.

Her giggles died away with a little hiccup. ‘Sorry…it’s just if you’d seen the place we were staying…If Katie was here, she’d be dignity personified…not like me, swilling beer and corrupting your fine palate. Maybe you should have brought her,’ she said lightly, too lightly.

Romain shook his head. ‘I’m not interested in her.’

Sorcha’s heart pounded uncomfortably into the silence.

‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘you’re good friends?’

Sorcha nodded emphatically. This was easy. ‘The best. She’s been there for me since—’ She broke off, stopping her runaway mouth, and finished, ‘Since for ever. We’ve known each other since we were ten…and got discovered at the same time by a scout from Dublin when we were fifteen.’

At that moment their food was delivered. With relief at finding his intense focus off her for a moment, Sorcha tucked into the food, suddenly ravenous. They shared starters of traditional samosas and spring rolls wrapped Vietnamese-style in rice paper. Then Sorcha had ordered a main dish of steamed sea bass, while Romain had opted for a dish unique to the region, khad khargosh—wild hare.

When his meal was placed in front of him, and he saw Sorcha wrinkle her nose slightly, he asked, with a quirk to his mouth, ‘You don’t approve?’

Horrified to be caught like that, she said quickly, ‘Oh, no. It’s just the thought of the poor little hare…sorry.’

He speared a morsel and ate it, completely unperturbed. ‘But you’re not a vegetarian. You ordered steak that day in Dublin.’

When she’d fled the restaurant like a bolshy teenager…

She looked slightly shame faced and put her fork down for a moment, lifting her eyes to his. All he could see was their luminosity. Her colouring was exotic against this backdrop.

‘I don’t normally run out like that.’

He inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement. And felt surprised. He was used to women being petulant, yet that day he knew she hadn’t been. Her speedy exit had come from something much deeper. He’d touched on a raw nerve, and he remembered that they’d been talking about her project—the outreach centre. What he’d said then seemed to him to be unbelievably insensitive now. He’d still been labouring under his misapprehension, not believing that she might be different, reformed.

And was she?

Introspection kept him quiet. He was thinking about how professional she was. So far she’d been nothing but pleasant, polite, helpful, quiet…not a hint of divadom at all. All qualities his aunt had professed her to have again when he’d taken her for dinner. A dinner in which he’d had to focus just to get Sorcha out of his head. That was why he’d largely ignored her when Dominic had called him up to the set in New York. He’d known that seeing her would have the potential to scramble his brain. And he was not comfortable with that at all. He’d known her for less than three weeks, and hadn’t even slept with her…yet.

With the last succulent morsel of sea bass dissolving on her tongue, Sorcha sat back and dabbed her napkin to her mouth. ‘That was…amazing.’

Romain sat back too. ‘Yes. And if you want you can tell Kate you had champagne…the works…I’ll back up your story.’

Sorcha grinned and held up her bottle of beer to gently clink it with his in collusion. It was only when she took a swallow and saw some kind of triumphant gleam in his eye that her blood ran cold. What was he doing? Acting as if she and he might be in a situation in the future where they would create this little in joke to share with Katie…or whoever? Almost as if they were a couple.

And what the hell was she doing? This man was the enemy…and yet at this lunch it felt as if he was anything but. She felt shivery and trembly inside. This man was playing with her, that was all.

The plates were cleared away, a clean table lay between them. And then her fears were compounded.

He leant forward, two elbows on the table. Intent. ‘I owe you an apology.’

Sorcha tensed slightly. ‘You do?’

He nodded. ‘That day in Dublin, what I said about your outreach centre, it was unforgivable. I had no right to judge something you’ve been working on—no right to judge your motivations for doing something like that.’

Sorcha floundered. This Romain was way, way more dangerous to deal with than the autocratic, overbearing Romain.

‘Well, thank you.’

Now please drop it, she begged silently.

‘Would you tell me about it?’

Sorcha fought against closing her eyes. Her plea had gone spectacularly unanswered. She thought quickly. What harm could it do to tell him just a little? Surely it wouldn’t really give away anything? She took a deep breath.

Romain had seen the conflict cross her face, the shadows in her eyes again, the effort it was taking for her to open up to him at all. It made him feel a whole host of conflicting emotions, not least the desire to ask himself, what does she have to hide?

Sorcha looked out to the lake, and when she looked back to Romain her eyes were guarded. ‘When my father died…Well, we were very close.’

Romain gave a tiny nod of his head, encouraging her to go on. She looked at him steadily, and he was aware at that moment of something powerful passing between them.

‘He was my best friend, my confidante.’ She shrugged lightly and looked down for a second. ‘I was the ultimate daddy’s girl. He used to happily tell everyone that he was wrapped around my finger…he’d bring me to his office…everywhere. He died suddenly. No warning—nothing. I got the call from my mum while I was at school. My older brother was away with his family…’ She shrugged again, and this time it was jerky, as though she was fighting to keep the emotion down.

‘I kind of went off the rails a bit. I left school that summer, and Katie and I had both been offered work in London. Unfortunately I got involved with a crowd of less than savoury characters, and a guy called Christian. I was still very angry about my father’s death, and hadn’t really dealt with it. At that age there’s not a lot of emotional support unless you get it at home…’

Romain stayed very still and quiet, his eyes holding hers, and when she looked at him they seemed to her to be like beacons. Crazy…but very, very seductive. She kept talking.

‘I guess that’s where the desire came from to do…something. For years I’ve always thought that if there had been some place…somewhere to go…that had offered impartial, confidential advice and support, I might have gone. And I might not have…’ She didn’t finish, and couldn’t look at him any more.