Four Christmas Treats
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What was puzzling him, though, was why on earth she had felt it necessary to hire a man. With those looks and that figure he would have expected her to be fighting men off, not paying them to escort her. Normally his own taste ran to tall, slim soignée brunettes of the French persuasion—that was to say women of intelligence who played the game of woman-to-man relationships like grand chess masters. But his hormones, lacking the discretion of his brain, were suddenly putting up a good argument for five foot six, gold and honey streaked hair, greenish-gold eyes, full soft pink lips, and a deliciously curvy hourglass figure.
He had, Silas decided, done Joe more than one favour in standing in for him. His impressionable sibling wouldn’t have stood a chance of treating this as a professional exercise. Not, of course, that Silas was tempted. And even if he had been there was too much at stake from his own professional point of view for him to risk getting physically involved with Matilda. Matilda! Who on earth had been responsible for giving such a beauty the name Matilda?
What was the matter with her? Tilly wondered feverishly. She was twenty-eight years old, mature, responsible, sensible, and she just did not behave like this around men, or react to them as she did to this man. It wasn’t the man who was causing her uncharacteristic behaviour, she reassured herself. It was the situation. Uncomfortably she remembered that sharp, hot, sweetly erotic surge of desire she had felt earlier. Her body still ached a little with it, and that ache intensified every time her female radar picked up the invisible forcefield of male pheromones surrounding Silas. Her body seemed to be reacting to them like metal to a magnet.
She grimaced as she looked up at the December grey-clouded sky. It had started to rain and the pavement was wet. Wet, and treacherously slippery if you happened to be wearing new shoes with leather soles, Tilly recognised as she suddenly started to lose her balance.
Silas caught her just before she cannoned into the open taxi door. Tilly could feel the strength of his grip through the soft fabric of the sleeve of her coat and the jumper she was wearing beneath it. She could also feel its warmth…his warmth, she recognised, and suddenly found it hard to breathe normally. Who would have thought that such a subtle scent of cologne—so subtle, in fact, that she had to stop herself from leaning closer so she could smell it better—could make her feel this dizzy?
She looked up at Silas, intending to thank him for saving her from a fall. He was looking back down at her. Tilly blinked and felt her gaze slip helplessly down the chiselled perfection of his straight nose to his mouth. Her own, she discovered, had gone uncomfortably dry. So dry that she was tempted to run the tip of her tongue along her lips.
‘I ’aven’t got all day, mate…’
The impatient voice of the taxi driver brought Tilly back to reality. Thanking Silas, she clambered into the taxi while he held the door open for her before joining her.
Joe would never have been able to deal with a woman like this, Silas decided grimly as the taxi set off. Hell, after the way she had just been looking at his mouth, he was struggling with the kind of physical reaction that hadn’t caught him so off-guard since he had left his teens behind. In the welcome shadowy interior of the cab he moved discreetly, to allow his suit jacket to conceal the tell-tale tightness of the fabric of his chinos.
‘Why don’t I take charge of the passports and travel documentation?’ he suggested to Tilly. ‘After all, if I’m supposed to be your escort—’
‘My fiancé,’ Tilly corrected him.
‘Your what?’
‘You did get my e-mail, didn’t you?’ she asked uncertainly. ‘The one I sent you explaining the situation, and the role you would be required to play?’
For the first time Silas noticed that she was wearing a solitaire diamond ring on the third finger of her left hand.
‘My understanding was that I was simply to be your escort,’ he told her coolly. ‘If that’s changed…’
There was a look in his eyes that Tilly wasn’t sure she liked. A cynical world-weary look that held neither respect nor liking for her. What exactly was a man like this doing working for an escort agency anyway? she wondered. He looked as though he ought to be running a company, or…or climbing mountains—not hiring himself out to escort women.
‘You will be my escort, but you will also be my fiancé. That is the whole purpose of us going to Spain.’
‘Really? I understood the purpose was for us to attend a wedding.’
She hadn’t mistaken that cynicism, Tilly realised. ‘We will be attending a wedding. My mother’s. Unfortunately my mother has told her husband-to-be that I am engaged—don’t ask me why; I’m not sure I know the answer myself. All I do know is that, according to her, it’s imperative that I turn up with a fiancé.’
‘I see.’And he did. Only too well. He had been right to suspect that there was a seedy side to this whole escort situation. His mouth compressed and, seeing it, Tilly began to wish that the agency had sent her someone else. She didn’t think she was up to coping with a man like this as her fake fiancé.
‘What else was in this e-mail that I ought to know about?’
Tilly’s chin lifted. ‘Nothing. My mother, of course, knows the truth, and naturally I’ve told her that we will have to have separate rooms.’
‘Naturally?’Silas quirked an eyebrow. ‘Surely there is nothing natural about an engaged couple sleeping apart?’
Tilly suspected there would certainly be no sleeping apart from a woman he was really involved with. Immediately, intimate images she hadn’t known she was capable of creating filled her head, causing her to look out of the taxi’s window just in case Silas saw in her eyes exactly what she was thinking.
‘What we do in private is our business,’ she told him quickly.
‘I should hope so,’ he agreed, sotto voce. ‘Personally, I’ve never seen the appeal of voyeurism.’
Tilly’s head turned almost of its own accord, the colour sweeping up over her throat with betraying heat.
‘Which terminal do you want, gov?’ the taxi driver asked.
‘We’re flying out in a privately owned plane. Here’s where we need to go.’ Tilly fumbled for the documents, almost dropping them when Silas reached out and took them from her, his fingers touching hers. She was behaving like a complete idiot, she chided herself, as Silas leaned forward to give the taxi driver directions—and, what was more, behaving like an idiot who was completely out of her depth.
Probably because she felt completely out of her depth. Silas just wasn’t what she had been expecting. For a start she had assumed he would be younger, more like the boys at work than a man quite obviously in his thirties, and then there was his raw sexuality. She just wasn’t used to that kind of thing. It was almost a physical presence in the cab with them.
How on earth was she going to get through nearly four weeks of pretending that he was her fiancé? How on earth was she going to be able to convince anyone, and especially Art’s daughters, that they were a couple when they were sleeping in separate rooms? This just wasn’t a man who did separate rooms, and no woman worthy of the name would want to sleep apart from him if they were really lovers. Anxiously she clung to her mother’s warning that her husband-to-be was very moralistic. They could say that they were occupying separate rooms out of respect for his views, couldn’t they?
‘We’re here,’ Silas said as the taxi jerked to a halt. ‘You can explain to me exactly what is going on once we’re on board.’
She could explain to him?
But there was no point arguing as he had already turned away to speak with the taxi driver.
CHAPTER TWO
THE only other occasion when Tilly had travelled in a private jet had been in the company of half a dozen of her male colleagues, and the plane had been owned by one of bank’s wealthiest clients. She hadn’t dreamed then that the next time she would be driven up to the gangway of such a jet, where a steward and stewardess were waiting to relieve them of their luggage and usher them up into luxurious comfort, the jet would be owned by her stepfather-to-be.
Tilly wasn’t quite sure why she found it necessary to draw attention to her large and fake solitaire “engagement ring” by playing with it when she saw the way the stewardess was smiling at Silas. It certainly seemed to focus both the other girl’s and Silas’s attention on her, though.
‘Ms Aspinall.’ The male steward’s voice was as soothing as his look was flattering. ‘No need to ask if you travel a lot.’ He signalled to someone to take their luggage on board. ‘Everyone in the know travels light and buys on arrival—especially when they’re flying to somewhere like Madrid.’
Tilly hoped her answering smile didn’t look as false as it felt. The reason she was ‘travelling light’, as he had put it, was quite simply because she had assumed that this castle her mother’s new man had hired came complete with a washing machine. The demands of her working life meant that she rarely shopped. A couple of times a year she restocked her working wardrobe with more Armani suits and plain white shirts.
But, bullied by Sally, she had allowed herself to be dragged down Knightsbridge to Harvey Nicks, in order to find a less businesslike outfit for the wedding, and a dress for Christmas day. The jeans she was wearing today were her standard weekend wear, even if they were slightly less well fitting than usual, thanks to her anxiety over her mother’s decision to marry again.
Once inside the jet she settled herself in her seat, trying not to give in to her increasing urge to look at her new ‘fiancé,’ who seemed very much at home in the world of the super-rich for someone who needed to boost his income by hiring himself out as an escort.
Jason, the steward, offered them champagne. Tilly didn’t drink very much, but she accepted the glass he was holding out to her, hoping that it might help ease the tension caused by her unwanted awareness of Silas’s potent sexuality. Silas, on the other hand, shook his head.
‘I prefer not to drink alcohol when I’m flying,’ he told Jason. ‘I’ll have some water instead.’
Why did she suddenly feel that drinking one glass of champagne had turned her into a potential alcoholic who couldn’t pass up on the chance to have a drink? Rebelliously she took a quick gulp of the fizzing bubbles, and then tried not to pull a face when she realised how dry the champagne was.
They were taxiing down the runway already, the jet lifting easily and smoothly into the grey sky. Tilly wasn’t a keen flyer, and she could feel her stomach tensing with nervous energy as she waited for the plane to level off. Silas, on the other hand, looked coolly unmoved as he reached for a copy of the Economist.
‘Right, you’d better tell me what’s going on,’ he said, flicking through the pages of the magazine. ‘I was informed that you wanted an escort to accompany you to your mother’s wedding.’
‘Yes, that’s right—I do,’Tilly agreed. ‘An escort who is my fiancé—I did explain it all to you in the e-mail I sent,’ she insisted defensively when she saw the way he was looking at her.
‘E-mails are notoriously unreliable.’ But not, perhaps, as unreliable at passing on information as his dear brother, Silas acknowledged grimly. ‘You’d better explain again.’
Tilly glanced over her shoulder to make sure they were alone in the cabin. This was her mother’s new man’s plane, staffed by his employees. ‘My mother’s husband-to-be is an American. He has very strong ideas about family life and…and family relationships. He has two daughters from his first marriage, both married with children, and my mother…’ She paused and took a deep breath. Why on earth should she be finding this so discomfiting? As though somehow she were on trial and had to prove herself? She was the one hiring Silas, the one in charge, not the other way around.
‘My mother feels that Art’s daughters aren’t entirely happy about their marriage.’
Silas’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Why not? You’ve just said that they’re both married with children. Surely they should be happy to see their father find happiness?’
‘Well, yes…But the thing is…’
Tilly chewed anxiously on her bottom lip—a small action which automatically drew Silas’s attention to her mouth. How adept the female sex was at focusing male attention on it, Silas thought cynically. Mind you, with a mouth as full and soft-looking as hers, Tilly hardly needed to employ such tired old tricks to get a man to look at it and wonder how it would feel beneath his own. His imagination had been there already, and gone further. Much further, in fact, he admitted reluctantly.
How did she put this, Tilly wondered, without being disloyal to her mother? ‘My mother doesn’t think that Art’s daughters feel she will make him happy.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, he’s a widower, and Ma is a divorcee.’
Silas gave a small brusque shrug. ‘So your mother made a mistake? It’s hardly unusual in this day and age.’
‘No…but…’
‘But?’
‘But Ma has made rather more than just one mistake,’ Tilly informed him cautiously.
‘You mean she’s been married more than once?’
‘Yes.’
‘How much more than once?’
‘Well, four times, actually. She can’t help it.’ Tilly defended her mother quickly when she saw Silas’s expression. ‘She just falls in love so easily, you see, and men fall in love with her, and then—’
‘And then she divorces them, and starts over with a bigger bank balance and a richer man?’
Tilly was shocked. ‘No! She’s not like that. Ma would never marry just for money.’
Silas registered the ‘just’ and said cynically, ‘But she finds it easier to love a rich man than one who is poor?’
‘You’re just like Art’s daughters and their husbands. You’re criticising my mother without knowing her. She loves Art. Or at least she believes she does. I know it sounds illogical, but Ma is illogical at times. She’s afraid that Art’s daughters will be even more antagonistic towards her if they know that I’m single.Art was boasting to her about his daughters and their marriages, and Ma lost the plot a bit and told him that I was engaged.’
It was such a ridiculous story that it had to be true, Silas decided. ‘And you don’t know any single available men you could have asked to help you out?’
Of course she did. She knew any number of them. But none whom she felt she could rely on to act the part convincingly enough.
‘No, not really.’ How easily the fib slipped from her lips. She was obviously more her mother’s daughter than she had known, she admitted guiltily. But Silas knew nothing of her personal and professional circumstances—or the fact that she would have rather walked barefoot over hot coals than let the boisterous and youthful sexual predators who made up her staff know about her lack of a sexual partner. Even if it was by choice. As far as Tilly was concerned it was a small and harmless deceit—she wasn’t to know that Silas, in between flying in and out of the country to complete an assignment in Brussels after his meeting with Joe, had done as much background-checking on her as he could, and thus knew exactly what her professional circumstances were.
No available men in her life? Silas was hard put to it to bite back the cynical retort he longed to make and ask why she didn’t use her status as the head of her own department to provide herself with a fake fiancé from one of the ten-plus young men who worked under her.
On the other hand, for reasons he was not prepared to investigate too closely, it brought him a certain sense of relief to know that he had found her out as a liar and therefore not to be trusted. And he certainly wasn’t going to be taken in by that pseudo-concern she had expressed for a mother who sounded as though she was more than a match for any number of protective daughters and their husbands.
Not, of course, that Art’s daughters were exactly your run-of-the-mill average daughters. Silas had learned all about them when he had done his initial search on their father. They had learned their politics and their financial know-how at their father’s knee, and while they adopted a Southern Belle manner in public, in private they were not just steel magnolias but steel magnolias with chariot spikes attached to their wheels.
More than one person had been eager to relate to him some of the urban mythology surrounding the family, about the way Art’s daughters had targeted their husbands-to-be: disposing of a couple of fiancés, and at least one illegitimate child, plus a handful of quashed drink-driving and drug charges on their way to the altar.
If one thing was certain it was that they would not tolerate their father marrying a woman they themselves had not sourced and checked out.
‘Okay, so your mother is afraid that her potential stepdaughters might persuade their father not to go ahead with the wedding. But I still don’t understand how you turning up with a fiancé can have any effect on that.’
‘Neither can I, really, but my mother was getting herself in such a state it just seemed easier to give in and go along with what she wanted.’
‘Easier, but surely not entirely advisable? I should have thought a calm, analytical discussion—’
‘You don’t know my mother. She doesn’t do calm or analytical,’ Tilly said, before adding protectively, ‘I’m making her sound like a drama queen, but she isn’t. She’s just a person who lives in and on her emotions. My guess is that she simply got carried away with trying to compete with Art in the perfect daughter stakes. I’ve told her that I’ve managed to find someone to pose as my supposed fiancé, but I haven’t told her about using the agency,’ she warned. ‘She’ll probably assume that I already knew you.’
‘Or that we’re past lovers?’
Tilly was aghast. She shook her heed vehemently. ‘No, she won’t think that. She knows that I—’
‘That you what? Took a vow of chastity?’
For some reason the drawling cynicism in his voice hurt. ‘She knows that I don’t have any intention of ever getting married.’
‘Because you don’t believe in marriage?’
Tilly gave him a level look and replied coolly, ‘No, because I don’t believe in divorce.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Not really. I daresay any number of children with divorced parents feel the same way. Why are you asking me so many questions? You sound more like a…a barrister than an actor. I thought actors liked talking about themselves, not asking questions.’
‘I can assure you that I am most definitely not a barrister. And surely actors need to study others in order to play their roles effectively?’
Not a barrister. But she was astute enough to have recognised his instinctive need to probe and cross-question, Silas recognised.
What was it about the quality of a certain kind of silence that made a person feel so acutely uncomfortable? Tilly wondered as she hunted feverishly for a safer topic of conversation. Or in this instance was it the man himself who was making her feel so acutely conscious of things about herself and her attitude to life? Things she didn’t really want to think about.
‘I was a bit worried that the agency wouldn’t be able to find someone suitable who was prepared to work over Christmas,’ she offered, holding out a conversational olive branch as brightly as she could in an attempt to establish the proper kind of employer—her—and employee—him—relations. Not that it was true, of course. The truth was that she would have been delighted if Sally’s plan to provide her with a fiancé had proved impossible to carry through.
‘If that’s a supposedly subtle attempt to find out if I have a partner, the answer is no, I don’t. And as for working over Christmas, any number of people do it.’
Tilly had to swallow the hot ball of outrage that had lodged in her throat. She could almost visualise the small smouldering pile of charcoal that had been her olive branch.
‘I was not asking if you had a partner. I was simply trying to make polite conversation,’ she told him.
‘More champers?’
Tilly smiled up at Jason in relief, welcoming his interruption of a conversation that was leading deeper and deeper into far too personal and dangerous territory. Far too personal and dangerous for her, that was.
‘We’ll be landing in ten minutes,’ Jason warned them. ‘There’ll be a car and driver waiting for you, of course.’
Tilly smiled, but less warmly.
‘What’s wrong?’ Silas asked her.
‘Nothing. Well, not really.’ She gave a small shrug as Jason moved out of earshot. ‘I know I should be enjoying this luxury, and of course in a way I am, but it still makes me feel guilty when I think about how many people there are struggling just to feed themselves.’
‘A banker who wants to save the world?’ Silas mocked her.
Immediately Tilly tensed. ‘How did you know that? About me being a banker?’
Silently Silas cursed himself for his small slip. ‘I don’t know. The agency must have told me, I suppose,’ he said dismissively.
‘Sometimes it’s easier to change things from the inside than from the outside,’ Tilly explained after a slight pause.
‘Indeed. But something tells me that it would take one hell of a lot of inner change to get the City types to think about saving the planet. Or were you thinking of some kind of inducement to help them? A new Porsche, perhaps?’
‘Toys for boys goes with the territory, but they grow out of them—usually about the same time as their first child is born,’ Tilly told him lightly.
The jet had started its descent, and Jason’s return to the cabin brought their conversation to an end.
CHAPTER THREE
SNOW in Spain. Who knew? She supposed she ought to have done, Tilly admitted, as she huddled deeper into her coat, grateful for the warmth inside the large four-wheel drive that had been waiting at the airport to transport them up to the castle.
Silas had fired some rapid words in Spanish to their driver at the start of their journey, but had made no attempt to engage her in conversation, and the long, muscular arm he had stretched out across the back of the seat they were sharing was hardly likely to give anyone the impression that they were besotted with one another.
The castle was up in the mountains, beyond the ancient town of Segovia. Tilly had viewed the e-mail attachment her mother had sent, showing a perfect fairy-tale castle against a backdrop of crisp white snow, but foolishly she hadn’t taken on board that the snow as well as the castle was a reality. Now, with the afternoon light fading, the landscape outside the car windows looked more hostile than beautiful.
It didn’t help when Silas suddenly drawled, ‘I hope you’ve packed your thermals.’
‘No, I haven’t,’ she was forced to reply. ‘But the castle is bound to be centrally heated.’
The now-familiar lift of dark eyebrows made her stomach lurch with anxiety.
‘You think so?’
‘I know so. My mother hates the cold, and she would never tolerate staying anywhere that wasn’t properly heated.’
‘Well, she’s your mother, but my experience is that most owners of ancient castles hate spending money on heating them—especially when they are hiring them out to other people. Maybe on this occasion, since your mother, like us, has love to keep her warm, she won’t feel the cold.’
Tilly gave him a look of smouldering antipathy. ‘That wasn’t funny.’
‘It wasn’t meant to be. Have you given any real thought as to just how intimately we’ll have to interact with each other, given that we’re going to be part of a very small and potentially very explosive private house party?’
‘We won’t have to interact intimately at all,’Tilly protested, hot-faced. ‘People will accept that we’re an engaged couple because we’ll have told them we are. We won’t be expected to indulge in public displays of physical passion to prove that we’re engaged. Besides, I’m wearing a ring.’