a bit out of control, but her audience were so beside themselves at the news that she casually dismissed her concerns.
The admiration and envy that she’d been basking in were utterly shallow, of course, not to mention completely baseless, but it had felt so good to stand there as an equal for a change. To feel her rapidly dwindling self-esteem soar and everything else she’d been worrying about lately melt away. And to have them jealous of her for once. Particularly gratifying was the sucking-on-a-lemon look on the face of Samantha Newark, the newly installed Countess of Shipley and Zoe’s number one tormentor, who might have swapped mousey frizzy hair and pie-crust collared blouses for a sleek blonde up-do and a designer wardrobe at some point in the last fifteen years, but was still, apparently, intent on being her bête noire.
So while inventing a boyfriend had been rash and mad and faintly pathetic, it had succeeded where her professional prowess had failed and Zoe had to admit that she couldn’t entirely regret it.
She did, however, regret deciding to bring him to life, because for that there had been no excuse. She’d been doing marvellously, adeptly treading a fine line between awesomeness and implausibility and just about keeping on top of all the lies she was telling.
So what had happened? What had tipped her over the edge? When Samantha had scoffed at her and said he sounded far too good to be true, why hadn’t she just shrugged nonchalantly and smiled enigmatically and left her to think what she liked? Why had she let it goad her into actually producing said boyfriend?
Had she got carried away by a false sense of security? Had she started to believe her own story? Or had it been wishful thinking that someone as fantastic as her fake boyfriend would actually turn up for real?
Whatever it had been, it had been a mistake, that much was certain. Because even as the words ‘Oh, and here he is!’ were spilling out of her mouth, a little voice inside her head had been yelling at her to stop, and the heady feeling of triumph had rapidly turned into alarm then panic and desperation and complete and utter disbelief that having come so far she was about to ruin everything.
Which she couldn’t let happen, so what choice had she then had but to find a suitable candidate?
When she’d first spotted him she’d had no idea whether he was suitable. She hadn’t even really clocked what he looked like; being a head taller than everyone else he was simply the first person she’d noticed. But then she’d registered the dark hair and the handsome face and, deciding he at least fulfilled the ‘gorgeous’ element of her fake boyfriend’s qualities, she’d wasted no time in going after him.
The idea of kissing him, though, hadn’t really come to her until she was standing in front of him, suddenly feeling warm and tingly all over. She’d somehow found herself staring at his mouth and she’d been filled with a quite desperate urge to know what it would feel like on hers.
Conveniently telling herself that, firstly, if he really had been her boyfriend kissing him would be a totally natural thing to do and that, secondly, even though he wasn’t it would validate the fiction she’d created, Zoe had embraced the role, pressed herself against him and planted her mouth on his.
For the briefest of moments she’d got the impression that he’d wanted to kiss her back, but then he’d pushed her away. Which hadn’t been the most auspicious of starts but perhaps one she would have anticipated had she not completely lost her marbles, because frankly if the roles had been reversed she’d have done the same thing.
However, right now hindsight and retrospective regret were pointless; having staked her claim on him, she could hardly go and find someone else. And with the evening teetering on the edge of a nail-biting climax she didn’t want to leave.
So all she could do now was appeal to his better nature and put her case forward as best she could, and hope he’d take pity on her and agree to help her out.
* * *
‘Well?’ said Dan, thinking that whoever she was and whatever was going through her cunning little mind she’d had quite long enough to come up with a plausible story.
‘My name’s Zoe Montgomery,’ she said, looking up at him and giving him a blinding smile that wasn’t exactly a surprise seeing as she’d probably just made God knew how much money, ‘but as for what I’m doing, well, that’s something I’ve been asking myself quite a lot over the last half an hour.’
What did come as a surprise, though, he thought, narrowing his eyes and fixing her with a stare designed to discomfort and disconcert, was the way her smile seemed to slice through his suspicion and strike him right in the chest. It was undoubtedly down to the shock of the past five minutes still making a mess of his brain, but nevertheless it did prove that he needed to keep his wits about him, because right now he wasn’t in the mood for smiles. Of any kind. ‘Enlighten me,’ he said abruptly.
At his tone her smile faded, much to his relief, and her eyes clouded over for a second. ‘I’m not sure I can.’
‘Well, try.’
‘Look, you have every right to be furious,’ she said with an apologetic shrug. ‘I shouldn’t have accosted you like that. I’m sorry.’
Dan gritted his teeth and ignored the sensuous way her dress shifted over her body with the movement. ‘If that picture ends up in the paper, you will be.’
She frowned. ‘What?’
‘The kiss,’ he said flatly, ruthlessly stamping down the heat that threatened to shoot through him at the memory of how hot and soft she’d felt as she’d pressed herself up against him. ‘The set-up.’
Her jaw dropped and what looked like genuine surprise flashed across her face. ‘How could you possibly know about that? I only thought of it myself a minute or two ago.’
‘Experience.’
Her eyebrows shot up. ‘This has happened to you before?’
‘Once.’ And that was quite enough, he thought, snapping that train of thought off before it could take root and bring back all the feelings of foolishness, disillusionment and betrayal he’d experienced following his most recent ex-girlfriend’s duplicity. ‘And you might as well know now you won’t get a penny. My lawyers will slap an injunction on you and your photographer friend so fast your head will spin.’
‘What photographer friend?’
He glanced round in search of her camera-wielding pap sidekick, but whoever it was had clearly fled because from what he could see none of the people who surrounded them was showing the slightest bit of interest in either of them or the kiss that she’d just planted on him.
But that didn’t mean he hadn’t been there.
‘Innocence doesn’t suit someone who looks like a sexy fallen angel,’ he said grimly, shifting his gaze back to her and watching her closely.
Her eyes darkened and her cheeks went pink while her lips parted to let out a little gasp. ‘You think I look like a sexy fallen angel?’ she echoed, her voice sounding a bit breathy.
With all that tumbling blonde hair, eyes the colour of liquid dark chocolate and those killer curves Dan actually thought she looked like every fantasy he’d ever had. To his consternation he could all too easily picture her lying sprawled on his bed, her hair fanning out over his pillows as he loomed over her, watching her writhe beneath him and listening to her pant and plead and beg him to do filthy things to her.
At the vividness of the image his head swam and the entire reason for this conversation nearly shot clean from his mind. Nearly, but not quite. ‘With the morals of a phone-hacking tabloid journalist,’ he added sharply, because it suddenly seemed important to remember that bit.
She recoiled and took a hasty step back. ‘Crikey, that’s a bit much, isn’t it?’ she murmured, staring at him in astonishment. ‘It was only a quick kiss.’
Yeah, right, he thought, rather rattled by the discovery that the self-control he’d always taken for granted wasn’t