The Duke's Proposal

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It would have passed any lie detector test, she thought complacently. Cooper was her mother’s name. Jay Jay was what the family called her.

He nodded gravely. ‘Welcome to Pentecost, Jay Jay. Have you been in the Caribbean long?’

Jemima thought about the last time, in November. It had been a shoot for the Belinda project. They had all put up at a palatial villa on a private island. She had had a mountain of luggage, had never emerged from her suite without a full hair and make-up job, and had given interviews to the international gossip journalists every spare moment when she wasn’t actually working on the shoot.

She bit back a smile. ‘Off and on,’ she said airily.

‘Work or pleasure?’

‘This time it’s pleasure.’

He nodded. ‘So what do you do when you’re not bumming around on pleasure trips?’

She hadn’t prepared for that one and had to think quickly. ‘Nothing very interesting. Bit of this. Bit of that.’

He sent her a look that was part mockery, part suspicion. ‘What sort of this and that?’

‘Oh, I’ve waitressed,’ she said truthfully. Well, she had—when she was at school.

It was not enough. He was still waiting.

She thought wildly and borrowed from Izzy’s chequered career yet again. ‘Cruise ship hospitality. Typing and filing. Anything that pays the rent, basically.’

‘All to fund your travel habit?’

‘I suppose so.’

He nodded. ‘Me too.’

‘What?’

This time the look he gave he was different. Slower. Deeper. Also more thoughtful. Appraising, somehow. As if he was taking her in properly at last. And not trusting her an inch.

Jemima shifted in her seat, suddenly uneasy. He could not have disturbed her more if he had actually reached out and touched her.

But all he said was, ‘I’m a natural-born hobo too.’

She bridled at the too. Then reminded herself that was what she wanted him to think. Or did she? She couldn’t really care less what a beach bum thought about her, could she?

She was still pondering that one when he said, ‘I’ve been travelling the world for over fifteen years now. We’ve probably been to some of the same places.’

That brought her up sharp.

‘Um—probably,’ said Jemima in a hollow voice.

‘We must compare notes.’

‘Er—yes.’

‘Tonight, say? We’re going to be eating in the same place, after all. Why don’t I see you in the bar and we can eat together?’

‘Great.’ Jemima’s enthusiasm was so forced that it was amazing he did not notice it, she thought.

But he didn’t. ‘It’s a date,’ he said cheerfully.

Jemima could have screamed. So much for lying low and being her own woman! She had not been on this Toy Town island for more than a couple of hours and already she’d got a date she didn’t want with a man she didn’t like. A man, moreover, who had the hard, dissecting look of a Renaissance ruler who wouldn’t brook being lied to. Tonight, she thought furiously, was going to be hard work.

She stared straight ahead at the road shimmering in the heat and told herself she had to do better than this tomorrow. But for tonight she would just have to busk it. She could do that, surely? Just for one night.