Chapter Five
IT DIDN’T TAKE long before the car was pulling up outside a grand hotel and they stepped back out into the searing heat. It felt strange to be in a busy, vibrant city and yet to know that the sea was just a hop and a skip away. Sammy imagined that she could almost smell the salt in the air.
And the people looked different. Relaxed, sun-kissed, moving at a slower pace.
She had to keep reminding herself that this wasn’t the break her mother had told her she needed but she could still feel a holiday spirit pushing through until they were shown up to their massive suite and she gazed around in confusion because there was just the one bedroom.
‘Is this it?’ she asked, as soon as their bags were deposited and the bellboy had left, quietly closing the door behind him.
Leo, immune to his surroundings as always, was heading to the well-stocked kitchen where he proceeded to fetch them both a bottle of ice-cold water.
‘You’ll find yourself drinking this by the gallon,’ he promised.
‘I would recommend that you carry a bottle in your bag whenever you’re out.
The heat over here can be ferocious and we don’t want you getting dehydrated, do we? ’
Sammy took the bottle from him. ‘Thank you very much for your health tips, Leo, but where is my bedroom?’
Leo carried on drinking, looking at her as he drank, then, dumping the empty bottle on the kitchen counter and strolling towards the sitting area, he nodded in the direction of the bedroom.
‘What?’ She tripped along and watched as he coolly pulled out his computer and flipped it open, attention focused on whatever he had called up to peruse.
‘Leo, could you at least look at me when I’m trying to have a conversation?’
‘You wanted to know where your bedroom is and I showed you. It’s behind me and yes, there’s only the one room.’
‘But...’
‘But what did you expect, Sammy?’
‘Not just one bedroom with one bed in it!’
‘No?’ he drawled coolly. ‘Did you think that I would book us into separate rooms? Maybe on different floors? Or why stop there? Different hotels?’
‘You’re deliberately misunderstanding me.’
‘I’m not deliberately misunderstanding you. Frankly, I think you are the one deliberately misunderstanding the situation. Did you honestly imagine that as a newly engaged couple we wouldn’t be sharing a bedroom?’
‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ Sammy stuttered.
‘Engaged couples tend to share bedrooms these days. There was no chance, after all of this, that I would risk anyone suspecting that all is not what it appears to be in the land of the soon-to-be wed lovebirds.’
He was right, of course. They weren’t living in an era of chaperoned walks in the park and a ban on all forms of physical contact bar holding hands.
She hadn’t really thought about that angle at all, just as she hadn’t really thought about how open to scrutiny they would be because she had had no idea of the world he occupied.
Sammy dropped into the chair facing him.
She wondered how she hadn’t really noticed the huge differences between them sooner and then thought that that was probably because she hadn’t seen him on enough of a regular basis over the years and, when she had seen him, it had always been in the rural setting of his father’s house.
She had ceased to be awestruck at the mansion in which Harold lived and he was such a lovable and down-to-earth man that, in the setting of his rolling country estate, Leo had been a lot more of an ordinary guy.
But he wasn’t an ordinary guy. This wasn’t going to be a low-key two-week situation. He hadn’t overplayed the amount of attention they might generate.
‘We’re in this together for the next week and a half, so you might as well get used to it.’
‘Thank goodness it’s just going to be for a week and a half,’ Sammy breathed with sincerity. ‘I don’t think I could live in it for any longer than that.’
‘Oh, really?’
Leo imbued those two simple words with such sarcastic disbelief that she flushed and glared at him.
‘I wouldn’t want to live in a goldfish bowl,’ she asserted dismissively. ‘I’d hate to think that there might be people with cameras wherever I went, waiting to get a picture of me.’
‘And yet you seemed to be mightily impressed by the first-class lounge and the first-class cabin and the chauffeur-driven car...’
Sammy blushed, hating him just at that moment because he was right; she really had enjoyed that feeling of being treated like royalty.
‘That’s because it’s a novelty. I’d soon tire of it,’ she insisted and he shrugged with an expression that indicated that he was suddenly bored with the whole conversation.
‘Which is just as well,’ Leo drawled, ‘considering the novelty isn’t going to last very long. It would be a nuisance if you started getting too accustomed to it.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Like I said to you before, you’re ideal for this role because you wouldn’t be interested in prolonging it.
Indeed, the fact that you don’t like this lifestyle could come in very handy when it comes to citing reasons for our break-up.
Two people, opposites drawn together by a powerful attraction only, sadly, to discover that opposites, in the end, do not have what it takes to make lasting relationships.
But, getting back to the matter of the bedroom.
.. We’re sharing it and I’m afraid you’re just going to have to deal with that.
Let’s not forget here that you’re not in this because you’re an altruistic saint only concerned with my father’s welfare.
You’re in this because the price was right. ’
Sammy went bright red. He had sliced through the waffle and got straight to the point and she couldn’t dispute the truth of what he was saying.
She also knew that, for what she was being paid, sharing a bedroom was not exactly too high a price to pay.
And what, exactly, was her cause for concern, anyway?
It wasn’t as though he was attracted to her.
In fact, she could tell that he was struggling not to let his attention wander back to whatever report she had interrupted.
And as soon as they were away from public view, he made no attempt to come near her or to even look at her as though she belonged to the female sex.
She was only his type when she had to be, which was when they were being observed.
She stood up stiffly. ‘Okay. Fair enough.’
* * *
Leo’s dark-eyed gaze narrowed. So she had bought into a situation and was now discovering that it came with certain clauses she might not have taken into account.
He felt a degree of sympathy for her, even though he had no intention of revealing that because, as far as he was concerned, when you put your signature on the dotted line you agreed to all the terms and conditions.
But she wasn’t like the women he was accustomed to dating. Naturally, she would have had experience of sharing a bed with a man—she wasn’t a teenager, after all—but he was a virtual stranger and she was weirdly disingenuous.
Yet, after her initial appalled reaction, she had accepted it without further ado.
‘You’re perfectly safe with me,’ he told her roughly and Sammy paused, her heartbeat suddenly accelerating as their eyes met.
She didn’t know what to say and even if there had been anything remotely resembling a coherent thought in her head she wouldn’t have been able to vocalise it because her mouth was dry and her vocal cords had stopped working.
‘You don’t have to worry,’ he explained into the deafening silence, ‘that I’m going to lunge for you in the middle of the night.
I would offer to sleep on the sofa but it seems a ridiculous amount of hassle to make a sofa up with whatever spare linen we can rustle up from a cupboard, only to unmake it first thing in the morning. ’
‘I’m not complaining.’ Sammy finally found her voice and was pleased that it sounded relatively normal.
‘I was just a little taken aback, that’s all.
’ She told herself that this was a job, as he had made sure to remind her, and part of the job would be to sleep next to him.
No big deal. She would be well and truly covered up.
It wasn’t as though her change of wardrobe had extended to a collection of French knickers and frilly negligees.
It would be as unthreatening as if she were sleeping next to a potted plant.
‘If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go have a bath now, freshen up. What are our plans for tomorrow?’ She was still furiously trying to quieten her nerves at the prospect of sharing a bed with him and pretending that he was the equivalent of a potted plant.
Leo afforded her his sole undivided attention for a few seconds.
‘I expect,’ he said slowly, ‘that it will involve you meeting the Jamieson woman at some point. My lawyers have emailed me over the proposal they’ve put to her lawyers and instinct tells me that she’s not going to be over the moon.
That’s in the afternoon. Tomorrow morning, I suggest we visit a few shops. ’
‘Why?’
‘Is that your response to the offer of going shopping?’ Leo was amused.
‘I don’t like shopping,’ Sammy admitted. She tilted her chin at a defiant angle. ‘You can probably see for yourself why!’
‘Come again?’
Sammy spread her hands down in a sweeping gesture and laughed. ‘I’m not exactly built like a model. You, of all people, should be able to see that for yourself, considering you only date models. And actresses who have model bodies.’
‘What does that have to do with anything?’ Leo was genuinely bewildered and Sammy was already regretting her impulse to put herself down but, when it came to her appearance, it was something that had always come as second nature.
If you laughed at yourself first, then it deflected other people from laughing at you.