Innocent Cinderella. Julia James
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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.
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