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Emily straightened her spine. ‘Fine. I’ll just have to enter the lion’s den single and strong and shod in killer heels.’
‘They’re already packed.’
Emily raised an eyebrow. ‘How ruthlessly efficient.’
Anna inclined her head. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s not a compliment.’
But Anna wasn’t paying attention. She was staring over Emily’s shoulder, and her expression became dreamy. ‘I think this might be him. Bang on time too.’
Emily turned to look at the man striding towards them. He was tall, broad-shouldered and very good-looking, and a dart of awareness shivered through her. ‘If it is,’ she murmured, watching the sun glinting off his dark hair, ‘I may just forgive you.’
After that her composure had taken such a hammering she couldn’t really remember what had happened. Her sensible court-shoe-wearing sister had batted her eyelashes and giggled her way through some very rudimentary questions about his integrity and his intentions, had established that Luke Harrison was single, solvent, and in possession of a plane, and had then bundled Emily into his car without so much as a backward glance. Was it any wonder that she’d been unable to formulate a sensible sentence throughout the journey to the airport?
‘So, why are you here?’
Luke’s voice jerked her out of her reverie. ‘Oh, er—’ She stopped. She could hardly tell him the truth. Revealing that she was heading to her ex-fiancé’s wedding to another woman would rather negate her earlier declaration that she was neither lonely nor desperate. ‘A friend’s getting married near Nice, and Anna was under the misapprehension that I wanted to go to the wedding.’
‘Scheduled airlines a little pedestrian?’
Emily bristled. ‘Of course a man who has a private plane wouldn’t know about anything as trivial as industrial action, but for us mere mortals a baggage handlers’ strike does tend to put a spanner in the works.’
Luke had the grace to look a little apologetic. Only fleetingly, but it was enough to mollify her. ‘The only flights that weren’t cancelled were full. Which suited me fine.’ Emily twiddled a lock of hair around her finger. ‘I have better things to do with my weekend than go to a wedding I don’t want to attend.’
‘Why didn’t you say so earlier? I could have dropped you home on the way to the airport.’
‘I did think about it, but Anna probably has her spies ready and waiting in France, primed to report back on my every move from the moment I arrive. You saw her earlier. She’d broken into my house to pack and pick up my passport. She didn’t tell me that she’d put me up for auction until about half an hour before you showed up, and even then she deliberately waited until we were in a public place so I couldn’t throttle her.’ Not to mention the emotional blackmail that Anna had deployed with such success. Emily sighed. ‘She’s utterly devious. It’s not worth the grief. I’ll just have to grin and bear it and count down the hours until you take me back.’
‘She went to a hell of an effort so that you could attend this wedding. Why would she do that if she knew you didn’t want to go?’
Emily shrugged evasively. Those blue eyes of his were far too probing for her comfort. ‘Beats me. Before she went on maternity leave she used to troubleshoot for one of the big accountancy firms. I think she’s been missing the challenge. Do you have siblings?’
‘No. I do, however, have relatives with an over-zealous interest in my well-being, so I can sympathise.’
‘Perhaps they should meet. We could cast them into a parallel universe where they’re forced to watch reality TV on a ten-minute loop for all eternity.’
One corner of Luke’s mouth lifted and Emily was instantly transfixed by the movement. What did his lips feel like? she wondered. Soft or firm? What would they feel like moving over hers? Her own mouth tingled at the thought and her pulse leapt. An image of him tugging her into his arms, plastering her up against that hard body, kissing her senseless slammed into her head, making her dizzy and breathless. Then she noticed his smile fading. When she looked up his face was blank, but his eyes had darkened to indigo.
Something resembling irritation flashed across his face. Emily swallowed and tried to get a grip. ‘So, what exactly did the advert say?’
‘It offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a knight in shining armour. The chance to rescue a damsel in distress. And mentioned the more prosaic need for a plane, a passport and a free weekend.’
Emily bit her lip and nodded. Then she frowned. ‘That’s it?’
‘There was a photo.’
She went cold. ‘A photo?’ Oh, God. ‘Which one?’
‘You were on a beach.’
Emily went even colder. Please, no. She took a deep breath. ‘Green bikini?’
‘That’s the one.’
Freezing to red hot in under a second. It had to be a record, she thought, as her cheeks burned. If it was the picture she was thinking of, she was wearing a green rather-on-the-small-side bikini. In fact, she wasn’t so much wearing it as falling out of it. ‘I’m going to kill her,’ she muttered.
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ she spluttered. Oh, the humiliation.
‘You had over a hundred people bidding for you.’
‘Really?’ Emily’s pride swelled for a moment, before mortification squashed it. She dropped her head in her hands. ‘How could she do that?’ she mumbled. ‘Of all the photos...I don’t know why she didn’t just put a flyer in a phone box and be done with it.’
Luke laughed and the sound rumbled right through her, scrambling her brain momentarily.
‘Dare I ask which category she put me in?’
‘Are you sure you want to know?’
‘Not entirely. But you might as well complete my humiliation.’
‘Collectibles. Decorative Objects.’
Emily groaned. It went from bad to worse. How long could she stay there with her head buried in her hands? For ever? At some point she’d have to look up. Denial, that was the thing. Generally she wasn’t a fan of denial, but this was an exceptional circumstance.
Fixing a neutral expression on her face, Emily lifted her head and shot him a curious glance. ‘Why did you bid?’
Luke went still and his gaze dropped to his papers. Then he shrugged. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure.’
A flicker of something that Emily couldn’t identify passed over his face. Whatever his motives had been, like her, he wasn’t sharing. ‘A rash impulse?’ she suggested helpfully, when no further answer seemed forthcoming.
Luke sat back and looked at her, that faint smile still playing around his mouth and doing all sorts of strange, fluttery things to her stomach.
‘Maybe it appealed to my adventurous side.’
Emily considered this. Adventurous? For a man who must regularly fly by private jet? She shook her head. ‘Nope, sorry, I’m sticking with the rash impulse.’
‘Maybe I was intrigued by the idea of being a knight in shining armour.’
Right. Sure. She didn’t believe that for a second either. ‘With a plane instead of a horse?’
‘A suit instead of the armour.’
‘Same thing sometimes,’ she batted back.
He tilted his head and regarded her thoughtfully. ‘Very true,’ he said finally.
‘With a laptop instead of a lance,’ she added, tapping a finger against her mouth. ‘Of course, no real knight would be anything without a castle.’
Luke rubbed his jaw. ‘A castle?’
‘At the very least. A palace would be ideal.’
‘Would a penthouse in Mayfair do instead?’
She pretended to give it some consideration. ‘Lots of chrome and steel and glass and thoroughly pointless gadgets?’
Luke nodded. ‘Goes without saying.’
‘In that case, congratulations. You’re really rather well-qualified for the role of knight.’
‘Thank you. How well-suited are you to being a damsel in distress?’
‘Not well at all, I’m afraid,’ she said with a rueful smile. ‘No flowing locks and no ivory tower.’
‘No evil father and wicked stepmother either, I hope.’ Amusement glinted in his eyes.
‘No parents at all,’ she said evenly.
The amusement faded. ‘I’m sorry.’
Emily shrugged. ‘Don’t be. They died a long time ago.’ The lightness of her tone belied the clench of her heart. She knew it did. She’d spent years perfecting it. Swallowing down the lump that had lodged in her throat, she gave him a bright smile. ‘So, knights in shining armour aside, do you often look for women on the internet?’
From the scowl that appeared on his face, Emily deduced that he didn’t appreciate what she was implying. ‘Sorry,’ she said, flushing slightly. ‘That didn’t come out quite the way I expected.’
Luke picked up his pen and uncapped it. ‘It’s an inevitable assumption. But, no, I don’t trawl the internet looking for women.’
Of course he didn’t, she mused. He probably had women tripping over themselves to appear on his arm. He clearly hadn’t entered into the bidding war because he’d been over-whelmed by her curves.
‘A friend of mine e-mailed me the link. I was going to Nice anyway. I was curious.’
Bizarre. It was bizarre enough to be true. She hardly knew him. It might be exactly the sort of thing he would do. How did she know?
‘Just out of interest, how much did I fetch?’
He smiled suddenly at her, and her breath caught. ‘Do you want it in dollars, euros or pounds? It’s a global market out there, you know.’
She couldn’t help smiling back. ‘An estimate will do.’
‘Around six figures.’
Emily nearly knocked over her glass.
‘Are you mad?’
His jaw tightened. ‘Very possibly.’
A tiny trickle of ice shivered down her spine at his tone. He wasn’t joking. Emily stared at him as he raked a hand through his hair and yanked open the top button of his shirt. On a plane with a madman, however gorgeous, was not top of her list of ideal scenarios and if he’d said ‘yes’ instead of ‘possibly’ she’d be reaching for the nearest parachute. ‘At least it’s tax deductible.’
‘There is that,’ he agreed.
‘Why are you going to Nice?’
‘Meetings in Monte Carlo.’
She tilted her head. ‘Convenient.’
‘You don’t believe me.’
Emily shot him an assessing glance. ‘I’m not sure.’
He clutched his chest as if in pain. ‘I’m wounded.’
‘I’m devastated that you’re wounded.’
‘You should be. Your sister accepted my reasons without question.’
Did she? Emily’s eyes narrowed. ‘My sister’s brain has been pulverised by motherhood,’ she said darkly.
‘You’re more wary?’
‘Maybe,’ she murmured, wrenching her eyes from his and looking down at where her fingers were playing with the ends of the scarf tied round her head.
That particular avenue of conversation was not one she wanted to pursue. Weaving the strands between her fingers, she found herself wondering whether it was true. She’d spent hours analysing her relationship with Tom and what had gone wrong, but she hadn’t looked at the effects it had left behind.
She probably had become more wary since breaking up with him, she acknowledged, her brow creasing. Five years with the same man was a long time, even if the last year had been pretty rocky, and her dating skills were rusty. Plus, she thought she’d known her ex-fiancé inside out, and it turned out she hadn’t known him at all.
Perhaps Anna was right. Perhaps she did need closure. It wasn’t normal for a girl of twenty-eight to hang up her dating shoes. She did need to get Out There.
At least her reaction to Luke proved that she was still capable of feeling sexual desire. Emily stole a peek at him from beneath her lashes just to make sure that it was still there. He was reading a report with amazing speed, underlining sections, writing notes, his long fingers flicking though the pages, almost caressing the paper. Oh, yes, sexual desire was definitely still there, if the bolt of fire that spread through her was any proof. Her gaze slid up to where a wedge of chest was exposed by the open collar of his shirt. Her focus zoomed in on the fine dark hairs that emerged from the bottom of the V, and she had to ball her hands into fists to stop her fingers whipping up and ripping open another couple of buttons.
‘I can’t concentrate on my report if you keep staring at me like that.’
Emily froze. Oh, God. He was watching her watching him! Had she been caught in the act? How excruciating. She tentatively lifted her gaze further, fully expecting to see a mocking glint in his eyes, but he was still looking down. That was even worse: he’d been able to feel her eyes devouring him. She went crimson and clapped her hands to her cheeks, turning an involuntary groan of shame into a lengthy cough.
‘Would you like some water?’ he enquired mildly, still apparently absorbed.
She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, but don’t worry. I’ll get it.’ Standing up and moving around would do her good. It might even give her body the opportunity to redistribute her blood away from her face. ‘I wouldn’t want your concentration to be disturbed any further,’ she added, levering herself out of the seat.
She wandered across the cream carpet towards the drinks cabinet where Luke had poured her champagne when they’d boarded. What a way to travel. No interminable check-in queues, no stuffing your case into an overfilled overhead locker and yourself into an uncomfortable seat. And a travelling companion that looked like Luke. Her skin prickled and she went warm.
‘Would you like anything?’ she asked, taking a bottle of water out of the fridge and filling a glass. She pressed the cold bottle against her cheek and felt it cool her overheated body.
Sticking a hand in the back pocket of her jeans, she took a sip and bent down to look out of the window at the great expanse of azure sky.
‘No, thanks. And you’re disturbing me.’
