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And then she remembered again how his day had been a thousand times worse than hers and had to resist the urge to pull him close and comfort him.
‘Hey—you found it okay?’
‘Yeah.’ He waved his phone vaguely at her. ‘Just a little help from this. I’ve not been here since I was a kid.’
‘Of course—your dad used to stay here back then. I’d forgotten you must have been here too.’
She stepped back so that he could get through the door. From her little cobbled mews she could barely hear the traffic from the main road nearby, muffled by the square of white stucco pillared houses around the private, locked garden. She showed Joss upstairs to her apartment—a legacy of the time when the building would have had stables downstairs and living quarters for servants of the wealthy above, all tucked away behind the grand mansions on the square.
Eva loved the understated elegance of her home, with clipped bay trees at the door, original cobbles paving the passage and soft heritage colours on the doors and windows.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Joss said as he reached the top of the stairs and crossed to the living room, where great tall windows flooded light in one side of the room. ‘Have you been living here long?’
‘Since I started at Dawson’s.’
Joss looked intrigued. ‘I thought my dad had got rid of this place.’
‘He had—sort of,’ Eva said, reaching for a bottle of wine and raising a glass in question at Joss.
He nodded and reached to take it from her when it was full.
‘He realised it was mostly sitting empty while it was a company flat, so he decided to rent it out. When I started working for the company I was stuck for somewhere to stay. Your dad didn’t have a tenant at the time, and needed someone to house-sit, so he offered me this place.’
Joss raised his eyebrows. ‘Lucky you.’
‘Yeah, I don’t like to move a lot, and he offered me a long-term lease. I like it here.’
‘So I’m going to have a hard time convincing you to move in with me?’
Eva snorted, and winced at the sting of wine in her nose.
‘That part’s non-negotiable,’ she confirmed. ‘This is my home and I’m not leaving it.’
‘So you’re coming round to the rest of it? Good.’
She should have given him an outright no—told him there and then that there was absolutely no way she was going along with his ridiculous scheme. But somehow, with him here in her home, in her space, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. All of a sudden she wasn’t sure about anything.
That was what happened when the only stable part of your life upped and threatened to leave. It had sunk in on her short walk home from the office that she could be about to lose her job—the first point of stability she’d ever had in her life. The safe place that she’d built for herself in the twelve years that she’d been with the company.
She would have thought she’d have been used to it by now. She’d had her whole childhood to practise, after all. Every time her mother or her father had shipped out, or they’d all packed up and moved to another army base, she’d told herself it was the last time she’d care. The last time she’d cry.
She’d not managed to stick to her word until the final time. The time her mother hadn’t come home at all.
Her father had packed her off to boarding school then, not long after she’d begged him to leave the army, to stop moving her around and give her some stability. She’d taken herself straight off to university after school, and from there straight into business, landing in Edward’s team and working her way up to be his executive assistant.
Her parents had never managed to give her the stability she’d craved, so she’d found her own—with Dawson’s. It was a family business, its history stretching into the last century and the one before that. The company had been around long before Edward, and she had no doubt that it would continue without him.
But how was it ever going to feel the same after he was gone? And what else was going to change?
The succession plans that had been approved by the board had appointed her as Joss’s new EA—she was tied to the job role, not to the holder—but once his father was gone Joss had no reason to stick with that decision. She could be out through the door as soon as Edward was dead.
An engagement to the heir apparent—even a fake one—was another tie to the company. To the family. Another bond to the life that she’d built for herself. An obstacle between her and everything falling away. Was that completely crazy? Maybe. But that didn’t mean she didn’t feel it.
‘Here.’ She passed Joss a bowl of potatoes and a salad. ‘Can you stick these on the table? The chicken will be just another minute.’
He took the bowls from her and glanced at the pan on the hob.
‘That looks amazing. You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble, though. We could have ordered something.’
She shrugged. ‘It was no trouble. I’d have been cooking for myself anyway.’
‘You cook like this every night?’
She narrowed her eyes as she tried to work out his angle. ‘Are you asking if that’s part of the deal?’
‘I’m making conversation. At least, I’m trying to.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She shook her head as she grabbed a couple of plates and started serving up. ‘Everything just feels so...weird. I can’t get my head around it.’
‘It doesn’t need to be weird.’
‘Joss, this afternoon you asked me to pretend to be your fiancée. Now you’re asking me to move in with you. How can it be anything but weird?’
‘Because it’s not real, Eva.’
She brandished a set of tongs at him. ‘That makes it worse! How can faking something like that not feel weird to you? Lying to your father won’t feel weird?’
He held his hands up and shrugged, though his expression belied his casual attitude. ‘Do you tell your parents everything that’s going on with you?’
‘There’s just my dad. We’re not close. But I’ve never invented a fiancé.’
Before now, she added in her head. Because this conversation seemed to be gathering momentum, and she wasn’t sure she was going to put a stop to it. She hadn’t come out and told Edward that it wasn’t true yet, so at the very least she was complicit in the lie getting this far.
It was only when Joss had mentioned it that she’d even thought about the fact that she might have to tell her dad. How was it that she’d put more emotional energy into worrying that she was lying to Edward than into the fact that she would also have to lie to her own father? She’d not even considered that going through with this would affect him too.
Maybe it didn’t have to. Maybe she could keep the whole thing from him—it wasn’t as if they spoke often. Or at all, really.
‘You’re quiet,’ Joss commented as they sat down to eat at the dining table tucked into the corner of the living room.
‘Thinking,’ she replied, helping herself to salad and potatoes.
‘Enlighten me,’ Joss instructed, equally economical with his words.
Eva sighed, but he was here to talk and they weren’t going to get anywhere if neither of them opened up. And, if what she’d seen of Joss over the years was anything to go by, she would be waiting a long time for an emotional outpouring from his end.
‘I’m not sure that this is a good idea.’ A good start, she thought. Get her cards on the table. ‘We’re lying to your father. It’s likely we’ll be found out. It’s a distraction when we should be concentrating on what he needs.’
Joss raised an eyebrow.
‘What?’ Eva asked.
‘We’re doing it for my father. You saw how happy it’s making him.’
Joss had said that they needed to talk, but it was only now she realised that he thought he was here to sort out details—not to convince her. He was assuming that she would just go along with it. He’d taken her decision not to tell Edward the truth from the start as approval, and he was here to iron out the fine print.
‘You really think I’m going to go along with this?’
Joss looked up and held her gaze for a beat longer than was comfortable.
‘I think you already are.’
A shiver ran through her at the tone of his voice. So commanding. So sure of himself. So arrogant. She’d had no idea before this moment that that did something for her, but the heat between her legs and the tightness in her belly told her it definitely did.
‘If you were going to back out,’ he continued, ‘you would have done it back at the office. Or just told my father the truth on the spot. Why are we bothering to dance around this when we both know you’ve made up your mind?’
She fixed him with a stare and muttered an Arabic curse under her breath, trying not to show him how right she knew he was. Because she could have called a halt to this hours ago. The fact that she hadn’t told them both all they needed to know.
‘I’m doing it to make your father happy,’ she clarified, still holding that gaze, making sure Joss could see that she wasn’t backing down or giving in to him. She was making her own decisions for her own very good reasons.
‘I know.’ He nodded, taking a sip of his wine, breaking their eye contact and cutting into his chicken.
‘I mean it,’ he said, after he’d polished off half the plate. ‘I could get used to this.’
‘Good,’ she said, standing up and picking up her plate, suddenly losing her appetite. ‘You can get used to doing the washing up as well.’
Joss finished his food and followed her through to the little kitchen. ‘You think you’re going to scare me away with threats of stacking the dishwasher?’
She gestured around the bijou kitchen. ‘You see a dishwasher in here?’
He glanced around. ‘Fine. So we’ll get someone in. I’ll pay,’ he added when she started to shake her head.
‘It’s not about the money.’
‘What? It’s about me being willing to get my hands wet? Fine. But I’m not a martyr, Eva. If you’re hoping to scare me then I might as well tell you now that it’s not going to work.’
‘You don’t want to move in here. There’s no space.’
He leaned back against the kitchen counter, a hand either side of his hips. His man-spreading made his intentions clear. It would have been more subtle if he’d marked the doorframe with his scent.
‘I decide for myself what I do and don’t want, Eva. This is where you live, so it’s where I’ll live too. You’ve stated your ground rules; now I’m stating mine.’
She folded her arms and leant back against the kitchen counter. ‘There’s not even any space in the wardrobe.’
‘You can’t expect us to live apart.’
‘We’re going to see each other all the time at work. Isn’t moving in together a bit much?’
He took a step towards her, and Eva had to admit that his height was a little intimidating in the tiny kitchen.
‘And how many people are going to believe our story if we’re not living together?’
‘We could tell people we’re waiting until after the wedding.’
He shook his head and, much as she hated it, Eva knew he was right.
‘They’d ask us which century we’re living in. Perhaps if this was a real relationship we’d say to hell with what they think. But we need to make them believe us. I don’t want to give them any reason not to. I’ll start moving some stuff in on Monday.’
He moved to leave, and somehow, although it was what her rational brain wanted, it seemed her body wasn’t expecting it. Disappointment washed through her. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to living alone. She loved having her own space. But they’d been through a lot today, and she wasn’t particularly keen on being left alone with her thoughts.
‘Do you want a coffee before you go?’ she asked, flicking on the kettle behind her.
‘Sure,’ Joss said, watching her carefully. ‘Something wrong?’
‘No,’ she replied, rubbing her forehead and realising she wasn’t being very convincing. ‘Just a lot to take in. Weird day.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Joss said, leaning back on the counter.
Eva looked up and realised that it wasn’t a figure of speech.
‘No, no—it’s fine,’ she said.
‘I can listen. Even help.’
‘I can’t, Joss. He’s your dad. You don’t want to... It should be me asking if you’re okay.’
‘I don’t get an exclusive on it, Eva. I know you care for him too.’
‘I just can’t believe I didn’t know...you know.’
She made two coffees and carried them back through to the living room. Plonking them on the coffee table, she just had time to wish she had space for a bigger sofa before Joss appeared behind her.
‘Do you sit and spy on your neighbours?’ Joss asked, pointing out the way the sofa was angled towards the big picture window out onto the mews.
‘More like bask in the sun. I get enough gossip at work.’
He looked surprised.
‘What? Don’t tell me you hadn’t noticed.’
He shook his head. ‘What do people gossip about?’
‘Oh, you know—the usual. Who’s sleeping with who. Who’s angling for a promotion. Who’s getting fired.’
‘So why don’t I hear any of this?’
Eva rolled her eyes. With all his expensive business education, did he seriously not understand how an office worked? She was clearly going to have to spell this out to him.
‘Of course you don’t hear the gossip,’ she said. ‘One, you’re practically the boss. No one gossips in front of the boss. Two, you’re hardly ever in the office. And three, you’re not exactly Mr Friendly over the coffee machine when you are there.’
