and guilty again. She couldn’t do this.
She put down her cup on a nearby table and straightened and looked at him, steeling herself. But her words dried in her mouth. Zac was looking at her with such searing explicitness that a shiver of anticipation raced through her.
She instructed herself with silent desperation. Say, Thank you for the coffee, but I really should be going. Because I never would have met you in a million years if it hadn’t been for—
And then Zac said, ‘Why do I think that you’re about to bolt, and that if you do I’ll never see you again?’
ZAC’S WORDS IMPACTED on Rose like a punch in the gut. Because I am, and you won’t. She knew that if she walked out of there right now she wouldn’t see him again, because this had been an exercise in madness.
She’d never in a million years expected to find herself in this situation, and maybe that was why she’d agreed to this extreme plan—because it had never entered her head that it could possibly become a reality.
Yet despite that she was there, and what had sprung to life between them was…unprecedented. It called to all of Rose’s unawakened desires. And she knew that if she wanted—against all the odds—she might quite possibly be able to fulfil the demands of his mother.
But she couldn’t do it.
Not now that she’d met him.
She couldn’t deceive this man and use him in whatever power play was going on with his mother. She had no right. And she should never have been tempted. Jocelyn Lyndon-Holt had appealed to her fear and vulnerability. Her lack of resources. And she’d shamelessly taken advantage of Rose’s father’s ill health to do so.
For a moment Rose had been terrified enough to agree. But now, facing the stark reality of putting the plan into action, she knew she couldn’t live with herself if she did. She would have to find another way to try and save her father. Which was what she would have had to do anyway. If she walked out of here right now they would be no worse off than if she hadn’t done this. She’d do anything but play with someone else’s life.
She reiterated more firmly, ‘I have to go.’
Bright blue eyes bored into hers and a hand closed around her upper arm. ‘Why? Give me one good reason.’
Anger spiked in Rose—anger that she was in this predicament with the one man she couldn’t have.
She pulled her arm free. ‘Because I’m not meant to be here.’
‘Says who?’
Rose glared at Zac and the anger bubbling up inside her was projected easily onto his arrogant tone.
She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Not everyone has to bow down to the mighty Zac Valenti.’
Zac’s cheeks flushed with dull colour. ‘I don’t expect everyone to bow down to me.’
But they always will just because of who you are.
That wasn’t fair. Rose’s anger drained away. He was not the object of her ire. He was the object of something else—something much darker and hotter. And if she didn’t get out now… Panic made her jerky as she looked around for her small clutch bag.
She couldn’t see it, and she stopped and took a breath, looked back at Zac. ‘I’m sorry. But I just…really have to go.’
Something in his expression hardened—again that glimpse of a more intimidating side. Intractability.
‘You’re married? You have a lover?’
Shocked, Rose answered with affront. ‘No! Nothing like that.’
Now he folded his arms across his chest. ‘Then tell me, Rose, why do you have to run?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Because it might be approaching midnight, but I don’t think you’ll turn into a pumpkin when the clock strikes, and you still have both your shoes.’
Something weakened inside Rose—some resistance she was desperately clinging on to. Zac filled her vision, filled every sense with his sheer charisma and masculine allure. And all of it was fixated on her.
She heard herself admitting, ‘I don’t want to leave.’
His stern expression immediately relaxed. He uncrossed his arms and stepped close to her again, cupping her jaw with a hand. ‘Then don’t. Stay, sweet Rose. Stay with me for tonight.’
She looked up into fathoms-deep, clear blue eyes and fell headlong into a dream where she did stay, and spent one beautiful, illicit night with the most exciting man she’d ever met.
A seductive voice whispered over her feverishly hot skin. You can do this if you really want to…take this night and keep it your secret forever.
Just then a shrill sound pierced the thick silence. Rose blinked out of the fantasy being woven in her head and saw Zac’s face tighten with irritation as he plucked a small phone out of his pocket. He looked at the screen and issued a curse.
He glanced at her. ‘I’m sorry, I have to take this for a moment…it’s an important call I’ve been waiting for. But don’t move…’
The phone kept ringing—insistent. Zac was looking at her, commanding her to his will, waiting for her promise that she wouldn’t leave.
Rose finally said, huskily, ‘Okay…’
But as she watched him walk away from her, with that powerful, lithe grace, she knew she’d just uttered a lie. This was her last chance. She had to leave—now.
At least, she told herself as she found her bag and stole out of the apartment, she wouldn’t be adding any further transgressions to her already blackened soul. She wouldn’t be betraying this man.
And she would never see him again.
Her chest grew tight and she bit her lip hard in the lift on her way back down to the ground level—a not so subtle reminder of where she belonged in the world. Not in the lofty heights of fantasy land, but here on the streets, among the millions of other anonymous New Yorkers who never got to taste the rarefied world inhabited by people like Zac Valenti.
Rose left through the main lobby and sent up silent thanks that George, the doorman, appeared to be busy with other residents. He barely spared her a glance.
When she emerged into the street she saw Zac’s car and driver nearby and quickly took off in the other direction, hailing a cab. She knew what she had to do now.
When she returned to the Lyndon-Holt residence, she slipped in through the staff entrance and went straight to the staffroom, where she’d left her own clothes after dressing earlier.
When she’d changed, at the last minute she obeyed a rogue urge, packing up the beautiful sparkly dress, knowing that it was wrong. But it would be the only tangible reminder she would have of a beautiful night with a beautiful man when the possibilities had seemed endless—even if just for a moment.
She crept back out of the house, after leaving a note for Mrs Lyndon-Holt.
I’m sorry, the plan didn’t work.
I’m resigning with immediate effect.
A short while later, on the subway back out to Queens, Rose swayed with the carriage and clutched her bag close on her lap, telling herself that it was ridiculous to feel such a sense of loss. She’d met Zac Valenti and been bathed in the sun of his incredible aura like thousands of other women—for a brief moment.
She was nothing special to him. She’d intrigued him, that was all, with her gauche manners and unsophistication. She was doing the right thing. The only thing she could do. She wanted her father to get better more than anything, but not at the expense of playing with someone