His Temporary Cinderella

Caro tilted her head on one side as she pretended to consider his reply. ‘OK, that’s one answer,’ she allowed. ‘Another might be: why wouldn’t anyone believe that I could be in love with you? Don’t change a thing; you’re beautiful as you are.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Just a suggestion, of course!’

‘See?’ said Philippe. ‘That’s what makes you perfect. I can be honest with you if you’re not a real girlfriend.’

‘Stop, you’re making me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!’

He smiled at that, and went back to sit on the sofa. ‘Look, just think about it seriously for a moment, Caro. You don’t need to come for the whole six months. Two or three would probably be enough for Lotty to get away. We’d both know where we were. There would no expectations, nobody needs to get hurt and, at the end of two months or whatever, we could say goodbye with no hard feelings. I stop my great-aunt hassling me about marriage, you get two months away living in a palace—’ the glance he sent around the sitting room made it clear what a change that would be ‘—and Lotty gets a chance to escape and have a life of her own for a while.’

He paused. ‘Lotty … Lotty needs this, Caro. You know what she’s like. Always restrained, always dignified. She wasn’t going to cry or anything, but I could tell how desperate she feels. She’s been good all her life, and just when it looks as if a door is opening for her at last, the Dowager and my father are trying to slam it closed again.’

‘I know, it’s so unfair, but—’

‘And you did say you wanted to reinvent yourself,’ Philippe reminded her.

Caro winced. She had said that. She clutched at her hair, careless of the way it tumbled out of its clip. ‘I just don’t know … There’s so much to consider, and I can’t think when I’m hungry like this!’ Uncurling her legs, she put her feet on the floor. ‘I’m going to get a biscuit,’ she announced.

‘I’ve got a better idea,’ said Philippe, checking the Rolex on his wrist. ‘Why don’t I take you out to dinner? We can talk about the practicalities then, and I could do with a proper drink, not that disgusting stuff,’ he said with a revolted glance at his tea. ‘Where’s the best place to eat around here?’

‘The Star and Garter at Littendon,’ said Caro automatically, perking up at the prospect of dinner. There was the diet, of course, but she couldn’t be expected to make life-changing decisions on a salad and three biscuits, could she? Besides, it was Saturday. It was dinner with a prince, or stay at home with herbal tea and Mr Sexy online.

The prince in question might not be quite as charming as in the fairy tales, but it still wasn’t what you’d call a hard choice.

‘But you’ll never get in on a Saturday,’ she added as Philippe took out a super-slim phone and slid it open. ‘They get booked up months in advance.’

Ignoring her, Philippe put the phone to his ear. ‘Why don’t you go and get changed?’ was all he said. ‘I’m not taking you out in that purple thing.’

The purple thing happened to be one of Caro’s favourites, and she was still bristling as she pulled it over her head. She hoped the Star and Garter refused him a table and told His Obnoxious Highness that he’d have to wait three months like everyone else.

On the other hand, she reminded herself, the food was reputed to be fabulous. Way out of her price range, but no doubt peanuts to Philippe. It wouldn’t be so bad if he got a table after all.

Now, what to wear? The Star and Garter—if that was where they were going, and Caro had the feeling that Philippe usually got what he wanted—deserved one of her best dresses. Caro ran her eye over her collection of vintage clothes and picked a pale blue cocktail dress made of flocked chiffon. Perhaps the neckline was a little low, but she loved the way the pleated skirt swished around her legs when she sashayed her hips.

Sucking in her breath to do up the side zip, Caro tugged up the neckline as far as she could and sauntered back downstairs with a confidence she was far from feeling. Philippe was still on the sofa, looking utterly incongruous. Unaware of her arrival—she could have spared herself the sauntering—he was leaning forward, reading something on the laptop she had abandoned earlier when she had gone in search of biscuits.

Her laptop! Too late, Caro remembered what she had been doing when depression had sent her to the kitchen. Shooting across the room, she banged the laptop closed, narrowing missing Philippe’s fingers.

‘What are you doing?’

Not at all perturbed, Philippe sat back and looked up at her.

‘You know, I’m not sure Mr Sexy is the right guy for you.’

‘You shouldn’t look at other people’s computers.’ Caro was mortified that he had witnessed how she had been spending her Saturday night. She glared at him. ‘It’s very rude.’

‘It was open on the table,’ Philippe pointed out, unfazed. ‘I couldn’t help but see what you’d been doing. It was quite an eye-opener, I must say. I’ve never looked at a dating site before.’

Well, there was a surprise. Young, rich, handsome, a prince, and he’d never had to resort to internet dating. Incredible, thought Caro.

‘I don’t see you finding Mr Right amongst that lot, though,’ he said. ‘They’re not exactly oozing charisma, are they?’

‘They can’t all be princes,’ snapped Caro, pushing him out of the way so she could shut the computer down. ‘That’s not what I’m looking for either. I just want an ordinary life with an ordinary guy, which is not something you’d be able to understand.’

Philippe shook his head. ‘You know, I don’t think you’ve been entirely honest in your profile,’ he said, nodding at the computer. ‘You didn’t say anything about how prickly you are.’

‘You read my profile?‘

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘It’s called research. If we’re going to be spending time together, I need to know what I’m going to be dealing with. I must say, I don’t think that picture does you justice,’ he went on.

He eyed Caro’s dress, unimpressed. ‘You might want to warn any prospective matches about your odd taste in clothes before you meet,’ he added with unnecessary provocation. ‘What are you wearing now?’

‘I’ll have you know this is one of my best dresses,’ she said, too cross with him to care what he thought about her clothes. ‘It’s an original cocktail dress from the Fifties. I had to save up to buy it online.’

‘You mean you handed over money for that?’ Philippe unfolded himself from the sofa. ‘Extraordinary.’

‘I love vintage clothes,’ said Caro. She held out the skirts and twirled. ‘I wonder who bought this dress when it was new. Did she buy it for a special occasion? Was she excited? Did she meet someone when she was wearing it? A dress like this has a history. I like that.’

Philippe blinked at the swirl of chiffon and the tantalising glimpse of a really excellent pair of legs. The dress was an improvement on the purple cheesecloth, there was no doubt about that, but he wished that she had put on something a little less … eccentric. A little less provoking. Only Caroline Cartwright would choose to wear a sixty-year-old dress!

Maybe it did suit those luscious curves, but it still looked odd to Philippe, and he scowled as he sat in the back of the limousine next to Caro. He had decided to ignore—loftily—her fashion faux pas, and was annoyed to discover that the wretched dress kept snagging at his attention anyway. He blamed Caro, who kept tugging surreptitiously at the neckline, which only drew his eyes to the deep cleavage. Or she was crossing those legs so that the chiffon skirt slithered over her thighs. Philippe shifted uneasily, adjusting his seat belt. He was sure he could hear the material whispering silkily against her bare skin. She had twisted up the mass of nut-brown hair and fixed it with a clip so obviously casually shoved in that he expected any moment that it would all tumble free.

It was very distracting. Caro wasn’t supposed to be distracting. She was supposed to be convenient. That was all.

‘I can’t believe you got a table!’ Caro looked as if she couldn’t decide whether to be delighted or aggrieved when the limousine pulled up outside the Star and Garter.

‘I didn’t. Yan did.’ Philippe nodded at an impassive giant who sat next to the driver in the front seat.

Caro lowered her voice and leant closer, giving Philippe a whiff of a clean fresh scent. ‘Is he your bodyguard?’

‘He prefers to be known as my personal protection officer,’ said Philippe. ‘He’s a very handy man to have around, especially when it comes to getting tables.’

‘Everyone else has to wait months. I suppose he dropped your title?’ she said disapprovingly.

‘I’m sure he did. What else is it for?’

‘We can go somewhere else if you object to Yan pulling rank,’ he said, but Caro shook her head quickly, so that more strands escaped from the clip. She smoothed them from her face.

‘I’ve always wanted to eat here,’ she confessed. ‘It’s horrendously expensive and most people only come for special occasions. I wanted to come with George when we got engaged, but he didn’t think it was worth the money.’ She sighed a little and the generous mouth curved downwards. ‘We had pizza instead.’

To Philippe, who had eaten at some of the world’s top restaurants, there was nothing special about the Star and Garter. It was pleasant enough, he allowed, simply decorated with subtle lighting and enough tables for the place to feel lively without being so close together you were forced to listen to anyone else’s conversation.

He was used to the way the buzz of conversation paused when he walked into a restaurant, used to ignoring it while the manager came to greet him personally, used to exchanging pleasantries on automatic pilot, but all the time he could feel Caro beside him as clearly as if she were touching him. He kept his eyes courteously on the manager, but he didn’t need to look at Caro to know that she was looking eagerly around her, practically humming with anticipation, careless of the fact that her fashion sense was fifty years out of date. Her eyes would be bright, that wretched, tantalising hair escaping from its clip.

And then, abruptly, he felt her stiffen and inhale sharply, and he broke off in mid-sentence to glance at her. She was rigid, her face white and frozen. Philippe followed her stricken gaze across the restaurant to where a couple were staring incredulously back at her.

It wasn’t his problem, Philippe told himself, but somehow his arm went round Caro and he pulled her into his side in a possessive gesture. ‘I hope you’re hungry, chérie?’ he said, trying not to notice how the dress slipped over her skin beneath his hand.

Caro looked blindly up at him. ‘Wh… What?’

‘Do you want to go straight to the table or would you rather have a drink at the bar first?’ He kept a firm hold on her until the blankness faded from her eyes and understanding dawned.

‘Oh.’ She moistened her lips. ‘Let’s go to the table.’

‘Excellent.’ Philippe turned to the manager. ‘We’ll have a bottle of your best champagne.’

‘Certainly, Your Highness.’

Caro was tense within the circle of his arm as they followed the waiter to their table. She didn’t look again at the couple, but her lips were pressed tightly together in distress or anger, Philippe couldn’t tell.

‘All right?’ he asked, when the waiter had gone.

‘Yes, I … yes.’ Caro shook out her napkin and smoothed it on her lap with hands that were not quite steady. ‘It was just a shock to see them here.’

‘That was your ex, I take it?’

‘George, yes, and his new fiancée.’ Her voice vibrated with suppressed anger. ‘I can’t believe he brought Melanie here. She doesn’t even eat! That’s how she looks like a stick insect.’

Philippe glanced over at the table. As far as he could see, Melanie was slim and pretty and blonde, but she would look muted next to Caro.

‘I wonder if they’re celebrating their engagement?’ Caro went on, but he was glad to see the colour back in her face. Shock, it seemed, had been superseded by fury. ‘Clearly, Melanie’s too good for pizza!’ She practically spat out the word.

‘Maybe she’ll wish that they’d gone for pizza instead now that you’ve arrived,’ said Philippe, picking up the menu. ‘It can’t be much fun trying to celebrate your engagement when your fiancé's ex is on the other side of the room and he can’t take his eyes off her.’

‘Oh, he’s not looking at me,’ said Caro bitterly. ‘He’s looking at you and wondering what on earth a guy like you is doing with a boring frump like me!’

Philippe’s dark brows shot up. ‘Boring? You?‘

His surprise was some consolation, Caro supposed. She opened the menu and pretended to read it, but the words were a blur and all she saw instead was George’s face the day he’d told her it was over. He’d waited until she came back from the supermarket, and told her while she was unpacking the bags. Now Caro couldn’t look at a carton of orange juice without feeling queasy.

‘George thinks I’m boring.’ She pressed her lips together against the jab of memory. ‘He always said that he wanted to marry someone like me, but then he fell in love with Melanie because she was sexy and fun and everything I’m not, apparently.’

Turning a page unseeingly, she went on, ‘There’s a certain irony in that. I spent five years being careful and dressing conventionally, and deliberately not being fun or obvious, just so that I would fit into his world. I’d have done anything for him.’

Whenever she thought about how much she had loved George, her voice would crack like that. It was mortifying because she was over him now. Pretty much.

‘Lotty said you’d been engaged, but that it was over,’ Philippe said in that cool, couldn’t-give-a-damn voice. ‘It’s one of the reasons she thought you might like to come to Montluce. A chance to get away for a while.’

‘It would be nice.’ Caro hadn’t thought of that aspect of things before. She’d been too busy thinking what it would be like to spend two months with Philippe, who was sitting opposite her looking remote and gorgeous and totally out of reach in spite of being only a matter of inches away.

‘Ellerby’s a small town,’ she said, ‘and I spend a lot of time dreading that I’m going to bump into George, like just now.’

Although this time it hadn’t been so bad, after all, she realised. There’d been that horrible moment when she’d seen George there with Melanie, and she’d been gripped by that old mixture of misery and rage and humiliation. They were a cosy twosome and she was left alone … and then, suddenly, she hadn’t been on her own. Philippe had put his arm around her and made it look as if they were a couple, and she’d seen the astonishment flash in George’s face.

Caro looked at Philippe. The dark brows were drawn together as he studied the menu and, with those piercing eyes shielded for once, she could let her gaze travel down his straight nose to the cool set of his mouth, where it snagged in spite of her efforts to tear her eyes away. Looking at it made her feel quite … funny.

He hadn’t hesitated to step in and rescue her, while she had been floundering.

‘Thank you for earlier,’ she said.

‘Earlier?’

‘You know, making George think we were a couple.’ He’d been so quick, seeing instantly what was needed, before she’d even thought about how to react. ‘They always see me looking lonely and miserable and pathetic,’ she said, laying down the menu so that he could see how grateful she was. ‘I don’t look like that when I’m with you.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘ARE you still in love with him?’ Philippe asked and then looked as if the question had caught him unawares. ‘I mean, it would be difficult for you to act as my girlfriend if you were,’ he added.

‘No.’ She didn’t sound quite as sure as she should have done, Caro realised. ‘No,’ she said again. ‘I adored George. When he broke off our engagement, it broke my heart. For a long time I told myself that I wanted him back, that I still loved him, but now … now I think maybe I love the idea of him more than the reality.’

She saw Philippe flick a brief, uncomprehending glance at George. No, he wouldn’t understand.

‘I know he’s not particularly good-looking or glamorous, but he was everything I’ve ever wanted. He belongs.’

Philippe looked mystified.

‘I never belonged anywhere,’ she tried to explain. ‘My dad was a mechanical engineer, and when I was small we moved around from project to project overseas. Then he got ill, and we moved to St Wulfrida’s.’

‘That was Lotty’s school,’ he remembered, and Caro nodded.

‘That’s where we met. My mother got a teaching post there, Dad applied to be the handyman so they could be together, and I got a free education as part of the deal. Except I was never going to belong in a school like that, where all the other girls had titles or triple-bar-relled names. I wasn’t nearly posh enough for them. Lotty was my only friend, and I wouldn’t have got through it without her.’

‘Funny,’ said Philippe, ‘that’s what she said about you.’

Caro smiled. ‘We got each other through, I think. Neither of us could wait to leave. St Wulfrida’s doesn’t exactly excel in academic achievement, so after GCSEs Lotty went to finishing school, and I went to the local college to do A levels. I thought that would be better, but of course I didn’t fit in there either. I was too posh for them!’

‘What’s the big deal about belonging, anyway?’ asked Philippe. ‘You’re lucky. You can go wherever you like, do what you like. That’s what most of us want.’

‘I don’t,’ said Caro. ‘Dad died when I was fifteen, and my mother five years later, so I don’t have any family left.’

She smiled wistfully. ‘I suppose I’ve been looking for a home ever since. When I came to Ellerby and met George, I really thought I’d found a place to belong at last,’ she went on. ‘George’s family have been here for generations. He’s the third generation of solicitors, and he’s part of Ellerby.’ Caro searched her mind for an example. ‘He’s on the committee at the golf club.’

Philippe raised his brows.

‘I know,’ she said, even though he hadn’t said a word, ‘it doesn’t sound very exciting. But being with George made me feel safe. He had a house, and it felt like being part of the community. I think that’s what I miss more than anything else.’

The wine waiter arrived with the bottle of champagne just then, and they went through the whole palaver of showing Philippe the label, opening the bottle with a flourish, pouring the glasses.

Caro concentrated on the menu while all that was going on, a little embarrassed by how much she’d blurted out to Philippe. He was surprisingly easy to talk to, she realised. Perhaps it was because he so clearly didn’t care. Or maybe it was knowing that he was so far out of her league she didn’t even need to try and impress him with her coolness or her success. She wasn’t here to be clever or witty or interesting. It didn’t matter what he thought of George, or of her.

The realisation was strangely exhilarating.

When they’d ordered, Philippe picked up his glass and chinked it against hers. ‘Shall we drink to our plan?’

Anything for you, Lotty, she had said once. Still in the grip of that odd sense of liberation, Caro touched his glass back with the air of one making an irrevocable decision. ‘To our plan,’ she agreed. ‘And to Lotty’s escape.’

Philippe sat back in his chair and eyed her thoughtfully across the table. ‘You’re good friends, aren’t you?’

‘Lotty was wonderful to me when my father died.’ Caro turned the stem of her champagne glass between her thumb and fingers. ‘He’d been ill for months, and there was no question of us going on holiday, so Lotty asked me if I wanted to spend part of the summer with her, in her family villa in the south of France.’

She lifted her eyes and met Philippe’s cool ones. ‘You were there.’

‘Lotty said that we’d met once,’ he said. ‘I vaguely remember that she had a friend who was around and then suddenly gone. Was that you?’

‘Yes. I hung around with Lotty until my mother rang to say that Dad had had a relapse and was in hospital again. She said there was nothing I could do, and that I should stay in France and enjoy myself. She said that was what Dad wanted, but I couldn’t bear it. I was desperate to see him.’

The glass winked in the candlelight as Caro turned it round, round, round.

‘I didn’t have any money, and Mum was too worried about Dad to think of changing my ticket,’ she went on after a moment. ‘Lotty was only fifteen too, and she was so shy that she still stammered when she was anxious, but she didn’t even hesitate. She knew I needed to go home. She talked to people she would normally be too nervous to talk to, and she sorted everything out for me. She made sure I was booked onto a flight the next day. I’ve no idea how she did it, but she arranged for someone to pick me up at the airport in London and take me straight to the hospital.

‘Dad died the next day.’ Caro swallowed. Even after all that time, the thought of her beloved father made her throat tight. ‘If it hadn’t been for Lotty, I’d never have seen him again.’ She lifted her eyes to Philippe’s again. ‘I’ll always be grateful to her for that. I’ve often wished there was something I could do for her in return, and now I can. If spending two months pretending to be in love with you helps her escape, even if just for a little while, then I’ll do that.’

‘It must have been a hard time for you,’ said Philippe after a moment. ‘I know how I felt when my brother died. I wanted everything to just … stop. And I wasn’t a child, like you.’

He set his glass carefully on the table. ‘Lotty was good to me then, too. Everyone understood how tragic it was for my father to lose his perfect son, but Lotty was the only one who thought about what it might be like for me to lose a brother. She’s a very special person,’ he said. ‘She deserves a chance to live life on her own terms for a change. I know this is a mad plan,’ he went on, deliberately lightening the tone, ‘but it’s worth a shot, don’t you think?’

‘I do.’ Caro was happy to follow his lead. ‘If nothing else, it will convince George and Melanie that I’ve moved on to much bigger and better things!’

She shot George a victorious look, but Philippe shook his head. ‘Stop that,’ he said.

‘Stop what?’

‘Stop looking at him.’ He tutted. ‘When I take a girl out to dinner, I don’t expect her to spend her whole time thinking about another man!’

‘I’m not!’

‘You’re supposed to be thinking about me,’ said Philippe, ignoring her protest. ‘George is never going to believe we’re having a wild and passionate affair if he sees you sneaking glances at him.’

‘He’s never going to believe we’re having a wild and passionate affair anyway,’ said Caro, ruffled. ‘He thinks I’m too boring for that.’

‘Then why don’t you show him just how wrong he is?’ Philippe leant forward over the table and fixed Caro with his silver gaze. He really had extraordinary eyes, she found herself thinking irrelevantly. Wolf’s eyes, their lightness accentuated by the darkness of his features and the fringe of black lashes. It was easier to think about that than about the way her heart was thudding in her throat at his nearness.

‘How do you suggest I do that?’ she said, struggling to hold on to her composure. ‘We can hardly get down and dirty under the table!’

A faint contemptuous smile curled the corners of Philippe’s mouth. ‘Well, that would certainly make the point, but I was thinking of rather subtle ways of suggesting that we can’t keep our hands off each other. For a start, you could keep your attention fixed on me, rather than on him! If we were really sleeping together, we’d be absorbed in each other.’

‘It doesn’t always have to be about you, you know,’ grumbled Caro. ‘Anyway, I am looking at you.’ She fixed her eyes at him. ‘There. Satisfied?’