her by the shoulders and pulling her against his broad chest and plundering her mouth with his.
Yes, plundering, like one of those swashbuckling heroes in the period dramas she loved to watch on rainy Sunday afternoons.
Luke stepped closer and placed his hand beneath her chin, his fingers warm and firm against her skin. She couldn’t remember him ever touching her before, apart from That Night, but the same thing happened now. Nerves she didn’t know she possessed leapt and danced and all but fainted at his touch. The space between their bodies pulsated with magnetic energy—energy that rippled in the air like an invisible current.
His eyes held hers in a searing tether that made something in her core quiver and a shiver rolled down her spine like a runaway firecracker. This close she could see every thick lash fringing his mesmerising lapis lazuli eyes, the way his pupils were black and wide like bottomless pools of ink. She could see the detailed sculpture of his mouth, the deep philtrum ridge and the well-defined vermillion borders, and wondered again what it would feel like to have those lips clamped to hers.
‘Read my lips.’ His voice was so firm it sounded as if it was underlined. In bold and italics for good measure. ‘I am not going to the ball. Got it?’
Abby was more than reading his lips. She was studying them as if she was swotting for a final exam. Had she ever seen a more gorgeous mouth? Not that it was a mouth that ever smiled. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him crack a grin. But then, his air of brooding gravitas had always secretly fascinated her.
Abby had to get him to change his mind about the ball. She had to. Had to. Had to. Her career depended on it. Her reputation. The children at risk charity she was raising funds for would not reach its target if she didn’t show up with a fiancé in tow.
She blew out a breath and cast him a shamefaced glance from beneath her lashes. ‘Okay, so I might have misled you a bit about that night. You didn’t kiss me. You didn’t even try but—’
‘Then why did you let me think I had?’ Luke dropped his hand from her face and frowned as if he was doing it for The Guinness Book of Records.
Abby’s cheeks were feeling so hot she thought she might end up with a world record herself. ‘I don’t know...’
‘You don’t know?’ His voice had a razor-sharp edge to it that nicked at her nerves.
She bit down on her lip. ‘I guess I was a bit shocked when I found you so out of it that night. I stupidly jumped to conclusions and assumed you were drunk.’
‘But why mislead me to believe I made a pass at you if I didn’t even touch you?’
‘Actually, you did touch me.’
His eyes flared as if her words shocked him to the core. ‘Where did I...?’ He left the question hanging in the air.
‘You put your arm around my waist when I helped you into bed,’ Abby said. ‘And you rested your head on my shoulder and looked at me kind of like you were thinking about kissing me.’ She couldn’t bring herself to mention the way he’d stroked her face.
‘There’s a big difference between thinking and doing.’
Abby looked up into his frowning gaze and blinked back the sting of tears. She’d taught herself not to cry over the years but she was scarily close to breaking point. ‘Please, Luke, don’t make me beg. I’m really sorry about my little white lie. I shouldn’t have made you think you’d almost kissed me. But I have a lot riding on this ball. It’s just one night and then it will be over and I won’t ask you to do another thing for me ever again. I promise.’
‘Why’s the ball such a big deal? Isn’t it just another one of your show pony parties?’
Show pony parties? Was that how he saw her? As some shallow little party hopper with nothing better to do than have a spray tan and get a manicure? Which reminded her—she had to get a spray tan and a manicure. ‘I know my career must seem ridiculously vacuous to a nerdy engineer like you, but I happen to love working at a gossip magazine and tomorrow night is the biggest fundraising event of the year,’ Abby said. ‘There’s a silent auction as well as a live auction and amazing lucky door prizes worth thousands of pounds and a dinner cooked by celebrity chefs to raise funds for a children at risk charity. The ball has a three-to four-year waiting list for tickets. I can’t not go because my boss will fire me when she finds out I’ve been pretending to be engaged all along. And I especially can’t show up without my other half since we were nominated as one of this year’s most popular and influential couples.’
His frown was a deep trench between his night sky eyes. ‘You’re going to have to tell everyone eventually you aren’t in a relationship.’
Abby knew she would have to announce some sort of breakup eventually, but how much easier would that be if Luke stood in as her fiancé at the ball? She could even blog and tweet breakup tips once the ball was out of the way. The thought of telling everyone that she, the relationships expert, was single and still a virgin was not something she wanted to do in a hurry—if ever. ‘But don’t you see? I need a stand-in fiancé in order to break up with him. I’ll find someone for myself eventually. Maybe I’ll try one of those dating apps. But I have to get through the ball first.’
He did an I-can’t-believe-you’re-for-real eye-roll and made a move to the sitting room door, holding it open in a pointed manner. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have some work to get back to.’
Abby knew this was her last chance to get him to change his mind. ‘Please, please, please do this for me, Luke. Just for a couple of hours. You can leave early—no one will suspect anything. Think of all those poor little disadvantaged kids you’ll be helping. You will literally be changing their lives by pretending to be my fiancé for two hours.’
He kept looking at her without speaking for so long she began to mentally dictate her resignation letter. But then he released a long and weighted sigh. ‘All right—you win. I’ll take you for two hours, tops. But you have to accept this is a one-off occasion and it will not be repeated.’
Abby was flooded with such a tide of relief she had to stop from flinging herself into his arms and hugging him. Or kissing him, which was even more tempting than she wanted to admit. ‘Okay. Okay. Of course. I only need you for one night. I promise.’
They briefly discussed arrangements about Luke picking her up and what to wear and then he walked her to the front door of his house. ‘One other thing,’ he said.
Abby glanced up at him. ‘Yes?’
He seemed to be having some trouble keeping his gaze away from her mouth. It kept tracking back to it as if programmed to do so. ‘I might be standing in for someone who doesn’t actually exist but that’s as far as your little fantasy goes. Understood?’
Abby wondered what he meant by such a comment. ‘I hope you’re not thinking I’d want you to actually marry me because that’s just utterly ridiculous.’
‘Good to know,’ he said. ‘See you tomorrow, Cinderella.’
LUKE CLOSED THE door after Abby left and let out a curse so blue he was mildly surprised to find the walls of his hallway were still white. Damn that girl. How had she got him to say yes? Had she cast some sort of spell on him? Why had he agreed to such a charade? He didn’t do balls. He didn’t do parties. He didn’t even do dinners unless work required it of him.
And he definitely didn’t date.
Since Kimberley’s death he’d had no motivation to date. He felt the urge now and again but he just as quickly squashed it. He was a bad bet when it came to relationships. He had tried with Kimberley. And tried damn hard because with his father playing musical partners like some sort of born-again playboy, Luke had wanted to prove to himself he wasn’t cut from the same cloth. But, for all his efforts to