Chapter 10

Dave saw his guests out and came back to where Lea was sipping a glass of champagne on one of the sofas overlooking the ocean view. If he closed his eyes, he could take himself back to the moment of their kiss at the ceremony. Damn it—he didn’t even need to close his eyes. He could still taste the milk and honey sweetness of her mouth—he could still feel the thrum of lust deep in his body. He wasn't supposed to feel those emotions, he was supposed to make things civil and businesslike, but he couldn't help himself.

He was relieved that he was good at concealing his emotions because that kiss had rocked him to the core. He hadn’t wanted it to end. He had lost track of where they were and why they were there. All he’d cared about and craved was the smooth, soft, sweet delicacy of her mouth moving against his. The shy playfulness of her tongue had sent a rocket blast of need to his groin. Triggering a need that was still humming in the background—a low, persistent hum he was doing his level best to ignore.

Their marriage was on paper. That was the deal. It was for one year and one year only, and then it would be over.

No damage done. Just that. No string attachment, no commitment, no—damn it! He was losing it. Losing the will not to kiss those wonderful, sweet lips.

But that kiss had already done damage because he wanted to kiss her again. Their kiss had made him think about taking things further and doing things he had no business doing with her. Things he had no business doing with anyone. He didn’t do long-term intimate relationships.

Not again.

But that kiss had stirred something inside him—something that until now had been lying dormant, in a coma, dead. The touch of Lea’s pillow-soft lips had sent electrodes of awareness to every part of his body, jolting it awake and making his flesh hungry and greedy for sensual satiation. Not for the quick-fix, hook-up-type sex he had indulged in during the last few months. He would be fooling himself if he said he had enjoyed those encounters beyond the brief physical relief they had provided.

But he suspected making love with Lea would be entirely different, which was why he couldn’t allow himself to go there. He couldn't allow himself permission to even think about the possibility. There would be too many complications when it came to ending their arrangement. The sort of complications he could well do without.

Lea was out of reach, she was like a forbidden fruit. Tasty and risky.

Lea turned her head to look at him, still cradling her champagne, her expression bland. “So, here we are, then.”

Dave fought to keep a frown off his face and tried a crooked smile instead, but wasn’t sure it was too convincing. "Yes." He picked up the bottle of champagne in the ice bucket and brought it over to where she was sitting to refill her glass. “More?”

She placed her hand over the top of the glass. “Better not. I might start saying things I wouldn’t normally say.” She gave a twisted smile and added, “In vino veritas and all that.”

“In the wine lies the truth.” Dave grunted in agreement, topping up his own glass, and then put the champagne bottle back in the ice bucket with a rattle against the ice cubes and continued, “Drunk words, sober thoughts.” He wondered what she would say if he told her what he was thinking. What he’d been thinking ever since he’d kissed her. No, even before that—when he’d encountered her in the north tower at Brathellae. Something had happened, something had changed between them, and he wasn’t sure how to change it back.

There was a beat or two of silence.

Dave turned back to look at her. “Feel free to speak your mind with me, Lea. I don’t expect you to have to drink in excess in order to do it.”

She leaned forward to put her glass on the coffee table, her eyes slipping out of reach of his. She sat back and smoothed a crease out of her dress before returning her gaze to his with disquieting intensity. “Why did you kiss me like that at the ceremony?”

Dave took a sip of his champagne before responding. Not because he needed alcohol, but because he didn’t know how to answer without betraying himself. He wanted to kiss her again. Now. And not just kiss her, but explore her beautiful body with the same thoroughness. He wanted to run his hands through the silk cloud of her hair. He wanted to kiss the soft, creamy skin at the base of her throat, trail his tongue along the contours of her collarbones, and breathe in the flowery scent of her until he was drunk with it.

“It seemed the right thing to do at the time.” Dave’s tone held no trace of the battle going on inside him. “Our friends, um,we, indeed the celebrant, would have thought it strange if we hadn’t kissed.”

A tiny frown wrinkled her brow. “True. But you kissed me as if you didn’t want to stop.” Her teeth snagged her bottom lip, and she added, “Was that just acting?” Her voice had a note of uncertainty that was strangely touching.

Dave put his champagne glass down and released a long breath. “No. It wasn’t just acting.” He closed his eyes in a slow blink and dragged a hand down his face. “It was a moment of foolishness that won’t be repeated.”

She nodded her head, which made him sigh. Damn! He thought all he ever wanted was to kiss her again and again.

Must not be repeated. Must not. Must not. Must not. He drummed it into his head, but his body was offline. Off-script.

There was a silence broken only by the sound of waves pulsing against the shore.

Lea rose from the sofa and wandered over to look out of the open balcony doors to the beach below. Her arms were around her midsection, and her posture was stiff and guarded, as if she were shielding herself from an expected insult. “So, you didn’t enjoy it, then?” Her voice still echoed with self-doubt.

Dave told himself to stay where he was—to keep his distance. To not tempt himself beyond his endurance by crossing the floor to her. But step by step, he went, programmed by a force he had no way of countering. He placed his hands on the tops of her shoulders, turning her to face him. Her grey-green gaze assiduously avoided his, so he tipped up her chin with one of his fingers, so she had no choice but to meet his eyes. “I enjoyed it way too much, and therein lies our problem.”

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, making them even more unbearably tempting. “Why is that a problem?” Her voice was as low and husky as a whispered secret, and it sent shivers racing down his spine.

Shit!

Dave stroked his thumb across her cheek, marvelling at the creamy softness of her skin. “You know why.” His tone was so low and rough it sounded like he’d been filing his tonsils with a blacksmith’s rasp.

“Because of our paper marriage?” Her eyes reminded him of cloudy sea glass.

He couldn’t seem to stop his thumb from stroking her cheek, and he couldn’t stop his gaze from drinking in every nuance of her features. Couldn’t stop the thrum of lust that assailed his body like an invisible invader. Marching through every inch of his flesh, aching, wanting, and needing. “We have to be sensible about this, Lea.”

I have to be sensible. I have to be in control.

She reached up with her hand and stroked his jaw from his cheekbone to his chin, her eyes luminous. “I think I must have already had too much champagne because right now I want you to kiss me again. I want to know if the first time was a fluke or... or something else.”

It was ‘something else’ that most worried Dave. He fought every aroused cell in his body, but it was a battle he was worried he might not win, or at least not in the long run. One year of this level of temptation, and he would be a certifiable mess. How much temptation could a man endure? Especially for a man who had actively avoided contact as intimate as this.

Kissing a hook-up date was one thing, kissing someone he had known for months and was currently married to was another. Their paper marriage would be incinerated and obliterated if he gave in to the temptation to kiss her again. One taste of her mouth had already unleashed something feral inside him, something he wasn’t sure he could control for too much longer.

Calling on every bit of willpower he possessed, Dave dropped his hand from her face and took a step back. “I’m sorry, Lea, but this can’t happen. I made the rules for a reason.”

Lea’s eyes moistened, and she smirked. “I know…”

Her gaze reminded him of the still surface of a lake. Calm. Controlled. But there was a faint ripple of disappointment around the edges. “Okey-dokey.” Her words and tone were flippant given the topic under discussion. So too her overly bright, breezy smile. “We’ll leave it at that, then. Yeah? Yes, sure.” She moved across the room to where the champagne bottle was and topped up her glass. She turned and held her glass up in a toast, her expression faintly mocking. “Long live the rules. Hehe!”

Dave ground his teeth so hard that he mentally apologised to his dentist. “Listen—I’m not doing this to insult you. It’s not personal.”

“Isn’t it?” Her eyes were glittering as brightly as the diamonds on her left hand next to her wedding ring. Not glittering with tears but with anger.

He let out a slowly controlled breath, anchoring his hands on his hips like he was about to deliver an important lecture. Which he was, but he suspected he was the one who needed to hear it most. “Think about it. If we were to have a normal relationship, it would be much more complicated to end it when the year was up. This way, we can get an annulment and leave it at that. No harm done.”

He dropped his hands from his hips. “I’m not saying it will be an easy year. But we’re both mature adults, and I want us to remain friends at the end of it.”

She rolled her lips together, her arms crossed, with her champagne glass tilted at a threatening-to-spill angle. “What have you told your sister about us? Does she know it’s just a paper marriage?”

Dave folded back the cuffs of his shirt for something to do with his hands. “I haven’t spoken to her yet. He hasn’t answered any of my calls, texts, or emails.”

Unfortunately, this wasn’t unusual when Mary was on one of her vacations in the Caribbean with Tyler and the kids.

“But what will you tell her?”

It was a question Dave had been asking himself for the last few days. He hadn’t been able to contact his sister to talk about anything, much less his sudden marriage to Lea, the housekeeper’s great-niece. “She will have seen the will by now, but I’m hoping she’ll accept our marriage as the real deal. It’s not as if you and I are complete strangers, and he knows my grandfather always had a soft spot for you.” Lie. He knew this was Mary’s idea.

“It might be tricky convincing Mary we’re a genuine couple when she comes home to Brathellae sometime. You know what she’s like—she often arrives unannounced. If we’re sleeping on opposite sides of the castle, it will look kind of odd.”

Dave could see her point. His sister might be immature sometimes, but she wasn’t a total fool. It wouldn’t take Mary long to pick up on any irregularities in Dave’s relationship with Lea and their living arrangements in particular. “We could move into the west tower. The large suite that has the connecting bedrooms.” He would be far closer to her than he’d intended—sleeping with just a door between them.

A door he would keep locked—literally and mentally.

“Fine,” Lea said, draining her glass. “But can I make a request?”

“Sure.”

She put her glass down and faced him squarely. “When we’re pretending to be happily married to Mary and anyone else, will you use terms of endearment or just call me Lea?”

“What would you prefer?”

“You can call me anything but babe.” She gave a faint shudder, as if even saying the word had upset her.

“Why not babe?”

A hard light came into her eyes, and her expression set like fast-acting glue. “Someone I used to know used it a lot. I’ve loathed it ever since.”

Before Dave could ask her to elaborate, she turned and walked out of the room, leaving him with just the lingering fragrance of her perfume.