‘What are we going to do?’
‘I’m confused by your use of the plural. Haven’t I already done my bit?’
‘You’ve done more than justyour bit.’ Ellie thought of her mother preening and gazing at him, clearly mentally uploading photos of him as her future son-in-law about whom she would be able to boast to all the neighbours.
‘Explain.’
‘You...you... There was no need to go overboard with the charm!’ Ellie exclaimed despairingly.
‘I thought we’d agreed that it would be a good idea for me not to be cast in the role ofruthless, womanising cad? I thought...’
He paused and looked at her with his head tilted to one side. ‘I thought we’d come to the conclusion that if you didn’t want your mother unduly worrying it would be a good idea for her to at least understand that what we shared did not involve you being taken advantage of. Or, worse, didn’t involve you losing all sense of good judgement—at which point she might imagine that you were setting a precedent for making up for lost time by having random sex with guys who were no good for you?’
‘Yes, but...’
‘But nothing, Ellie. I’m here because you’ve been thrown into the deep end by Naomi and, believe it or not, I accept a great deal of responsibility for that. I’m willing to do what I can to level the playing field, but don’t forget that my presence here is for your benefit.’ He shrugged. ‘Left to me, I would brush off the inconvenient rumours without thinking too hard about it.’
‘I know.’ Ellie sighed. Could she blame him forbeing himself? He charmed. Could she blame her mother for warming to his charm? No.
She’d always had the choice to do what he would have done—to shrug off the inconvenient rumours without going into a tailspin. She could have explained everything to her mother over the telephone. She could have braved out the curiosity and gossip at work, knowing that everything faded in the fullness of time.
She hadn’t, so here she was, and she surely couldn’t start laying into him for just playing the part she’d asked him to play?
Which didn’t mean that she didn’t despair of the situation.
‘I’ll sort it out,’ she assured him. ‘You stay put here. Unpack. Have a shower. Noen suitebathroom, but there’s one at the end of the landing. Mum’s probably put towels in there for us.’ She tried to conceal a treacherous shiver at the thought of him standing naked under the shower, face upturned, eyes closed as the water poured over his impressive body. ‘I don’t care what you do but let me have half an hour or so to fill her in. The scenery outside is amazing. You can...er...stare through the window and appreciate it.’
Ellie didn’t give him time to muse on the joys of doing what she’d just told him to do. She raced down to the kitchen to find her mother busily setting the pine table. In the centre there was bunch of freshly picked flowers in a vase. The bread was out of the oven and Ellie’s mouth watered.
Her mother was pottering, humming something under her breath, and for a just a second Ellie was catapulted back in time to when her dad had still been alive...whenthiswas what life had been like...when life for her mother had been a place where humming took place and baking was a thing of pleasure.
She breathed in deeply and stepped forward with a smile pinned to her face.
James gave her half an hour. Picturesque though the scenery was, indeed as beautiful in its own grey majesty as the blistering blue skies on the opposite side of the world, there was only so much he could stare at when his mind was busy trying to project to whatever scene was taking place in the kitchen downstairs.
He couldn’t even focus on his laptop, which said something. For the first time, he felt as though he had walked, eyes wide open, into a situation the likes of which he had never dealt with before. He didn’t do personal dramas when it came to women. He had never allowed himself to fall victim to the one thing he loathed, namely the idiocy of getting so wrapped up with a woman that you ended up straying into her dilemmas, having views on problems that had nothing to do with him...
He was discomforted by the realisation that this wasn’t his comfort zone, and he could only placate his feverish brain by reminding himself that this was a temporary break in proceedings and that normal life would resume in no time at all.
In fact, he mused, pulling open the bedroom door and resisting the urge to take the stairs two at a time, he wouldn’t be hereat allwere it not for Naomi and her mischief-making. He would be in Hawaii, soaking up more sun, doing the whole work, women and song thing and catching up with his brother pre-wedding. He would be relishing some healthy distraction! He enjoyed women. Women enjoyed him. But, when he thought about enjoying the joys ofanythingwith another woman, his mind went blank and he felt as though he was staring into a fog.
He heard Angela’s voice through the kitchen door which was ajar, and he paused, not so much trying to hear what was being said as wondering how he should approach this situation, given Ellie would have broken the disappointing news to her mother that they were not the couple she had been led to believe. He barely recognised the alien sensation that momentarily swept through him as indecision, so accustomed was he to having complete control of whatever situation he happened to find himself in...
He pushed aside the unfamiliar feeling and nudged open the door. The first thing he saw was Ellie smiling, smiling and smiling, as though her face might crack at any second.
And, in that instant, he knew exactly what was going on.
How much deeper could this hole get? Ellie thought, wrung out at the end of a day that seemed to have stretched to infinity and beyond.
Aside from escaping briefly just before their early six o’clock dinner, so that she could finally get to the shower and have some tormented down-time to herself, she had been on the go. Fending off questions, feeling the incisive boring of James’s eyes on her, wherever she went, trying hard not to stare down at the calamitous abyss opening up at her feet. And, of course, silently thanking her boss for not cornering her so that he could ask the one question that must surely be on the tip of his tongue...
What the hell is going on?
She owed him an explanation but she was dreading what she foresaw as a showdown. He’d done her a favour in returning to London to rescue her from her own inexperience in dealing with the nightmare that had landed in her lap. He owed her. That would have been his take on things. Even if they hadn’t slept together, he would have seen her ashisresponsibility in any kind of awkward situation that might have been generated by him, because, put simply, he was one of the good guys, however tough and uncompromising he might be in the work arena.
Her mother retired early, at a little after eight, to read and have a bath and absorb the day’s events.
Kitchen clean and counters wiped, Ellie finally allowed herself to be cornered. Rather, barricaded in, because James positioned himself at the door of the kitchen, arms folded, eyebrows raised, and looked at her for a few seconds in silence.
