Four Christmas Treats. Jessica Hart
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suggested dryly.
After her mother had gone she examined the room and its adjoining bathroom. The bath was, as her mother had said, truly Edwardian. Of massive proportions, it stood in the middle of a linoleum-covered floor in a room that was so cold Tilly was shivering even though she was still wearing her coat. There was also a shower, and a separate lavatory.
She heard the outer door reopening, and hurried back into the bedroom, saying despairingly, ‘Ma. I don’t—Oh, it’s you.’ She came to an abrupt halt as she saw Silas standing just inside the door, holding it open for a young man carrying their luggage.
She had to wait for him to put it down and leave before she could speak. ‘I’m really sorry about this. My mother seems to have allowed Art’s daughters to bully her into letting them take the two-bedroom suite she had earmarked for us, and this appears to be the only room that’s left.’
‘And presumably the only bed?’ Silas asked silkily.
‘I don’t like this any more than you do,’Tilly assured him. ‘But there’s nothing I can do except offer to sleep on the floor.’
‘And of course you’re fully prepared to do that?’
‘Actually, yes, I am,’ Tilly said. She didn’t like the tone he was using, and she didn’t like the way he was looking at her either. If she had thought the bedroom and the icy-cold bathroom were cold enough to chill her blood, they were nothing compared to the coldness of the look Silas was giving her.
‘Do you make a habit of this?’ It infuriated Silas that she didn’t seem to think he had the intelligence to see through what she was doing.
‘Do I make a habit of what?’ Tilly demanded, perplexed.
‘Hiring men to have sex with you.’
Tilly was glad she had the bed behind her to sink down onto. His accusation hadn’t just shocked her, it had also blocked her chest with a huge lump of indigestible and unwanted emotional vulnerability—and pain. Pain? Because a man she didn’t know was misjudging her? Why should that cause her to feel like this? She had only just met Silas. He meant nothing whatsoever to her, and yet here she was reacting to his unpleasant remarks with the kind of hurt feelings and sense of betrayal that were more appropriate for a long-standing and far more intimate relationship. Was that it? Did she secretly want to have sex with him? Had he somehow sensed that, even though she hadn’t been aware of it herself? Was that the reason for his accusation, and her own emotional reaction to it?
This time when Tilly shivered it wasn’t just because she was cold. She didn’t like what was happening. She had never wanted to do any of this in the first place—not coming here, not hiring herself an escort, and most certainly not sharing a bed with Silas. She took a deep breath.
‘I do not hire men to have sex with me. I don’t need to.’Well, it was true, wasn’t it? ‘I’ve already made it perfectly clear to you why I need an escort, and if you thought I was lying or had some ulterior motive then surely it was up to you to refuse the commission. You don’t strike me as the kind of man who would allow himself to be put in a situation you don’t want,’ she told him shrewdly.
Her reaction wasn’t what Silas had been expecting. He had assumed that she would use his accusation as an excuse to lay her cards on the table. At which point he had intended to make it plain that, while he was prepared to act as her fiancé in public, making use of the intimacy provided by their shared accommodation was most definitely not on the agenda.
The nature of his profession meant that Silas was immediately and instinctively suspicious of everyone’s motives. As far as he was concerned, everyone had something to hide, something they were prepared to sell, and something they were prepared to buy. He himself wanted to hide the fact that he was using his position as a fake fiancé to get closer to Art, but he was only prepared to sell his time, not his body. He was also a man who hated being wrong-footed and forced to accept that he had made an error of judgement—especially by a woman he had no reason whatsoever to respect.
‘I thought your explanation owed more to imagination than truth,’ he told her uncompromisingly. ‘As far as I am concerned, and in view of what has transpired, I was right to question the validity of what you were telling me. Not, I must say, that I admire your taste in sexual boltholes,’ he added disparagingly. ‘Apart from anything else, it’s freezing. Are those radiators on?’ He walked over to one of them and put his hand against it.
‘Apparently Art’s daughters have messed up the delicate balance of radiator temperature and fair heating for all,’ Tilly told him tiredly. ‘Or at least I think that’s what my mother was trying to tell me.’
Somehow Tilly managed to answer his mundane question with an equally mundane answer, even though her heart was pumping so much blood through her veins she could actually feel the adrenaline surge. There was no way she was going to let his insults go unchallenged.
‘You don’t have to stay here, you know,’ she told him. ‘There’s nothing to stop you leaving if you want. I certainly won’t be trying.’ She tried to put as much withering scorn into her words as she could.
Silas gave her a derisory look. ‘We’ve only just arrived, and we’re supposed to be engaged. I can hardly walk out now.’
‘Why not?’ Tilly demanded, in a brittle voice that betrayed her tension. ‘Engaged couples do quarrel and break up. It happens all the time. In fact, I think it’s a very good idea.’
She could feel the comfort of her own relief at the thought of him leaving. He was having an effect on her she really did not like or want. It—he—had made her feel uncomfortable and on edge even before he had accused her of lying to him. There was no way she wanted to spend a week sharing a room with a man who thought she was gagging for sex with him and about to pounce on him at any minute. She might be being a tad old-fashioned, but the truth was that she much preferred the traditional scenario in which she was the one imagining that he might pounce on her. Not that she wanted him to do so, of course. Not for one minute.
‘In fact,’ she continued fiercely, ‘I think it would be an excellent idea if I went down right now to find my mother and tell her that the engagement is off.’
‘Wouldn’t that be somewhat counter-productive? I thought the whole idea of this was to help your mother.’ The conversation and Tilly’s behaviour were taking a direction Silas hadn’t expected, and one he did not want. Tilly was quite obviously working herself up into a mood of moral outrage and, worse, she was throwing out the kind of challenges he had no intention of taking up.
It wasn’t like him to misjudge a situation, and it irked him that he might have here. But Tilly was behaving in a way he considered out of character for the slot he had mentally fitted her into. He despised women who insisted on playing games, and normally he wouldn’t have tolerated an assumed ‘injured innocent’ act, but right now he had too much at stake to risk her carrying out her threat. Much as he disliked having to admit it, he recognised that it night have been wiser for him to have played along with her pretence for a bit longer before letting her know that he had guessed what she was planning. He couldn’t allow this new situation to accelerate.
He might not mind walking out on Tilly, but if he did he would also be walking out on his chance to talk to Art. He had already sown the seeds for what he hoped would become more informative confidences once Art had let down his guard a bit more.
He walked over to the bed and eyed it assessingly. At least it was large enough for him to ensure that Tilly kept her distance from him.
He was standing next to her when they both heard Annabelle calling out from the other side of the door. ‘It’s only us, darlings!’
‘That’s my mother now,’ Tilly told him unnecessarily. ‘I’ve made up my mind. There’s no way I want to continue with this charade now, after the accusations you’ve just made. I’m going to tell her that we’ve had a row, that our engagement is over and that you’re leaving.’
She