breath. ‘Okay, if you really want to know, I had a poor experience when I was young. Take one pretty girl, making me so out of my normal comfort zone that I didn’t think twice about believing the clap trap she concocted, add a phoney pregnancy threat and I give you the sort of gold-digging experience that’s made me realise that, when it comes to permanence, the only kind I will ever go for is of the business arrangement variety. I’m a fast learner when it comes to mistakes and never making them again.’
‘That’s awful,’ Milly said, appalled. ‘How old were you?’
‘This isn’t a continuing discussion, Milly.’
‘But how old?’
Lucas shook his head, exasperated. ‘Nineteen.’
‘So you had a bad experience when you were a teenager and you’ve let it ruin your adult life and all the choices you make?’
‘Ruin? Wrong word. I prefer affect. Like I said, I learn from my mistakes.’
And he wasn’t about to budge. She could see that in his eyes and in the grim seriousness of his expression. It chilled her to the bone.
‘But what if you one day fall in love?’
‘Not on the cards. And, Milly, let’s put this conversation to rest now.’
‘I never thought that large scale lying was on the cards for me, yet here I am...’ She rested back and stared off at nothing in particular.
Lying was just not part of her nature and ye here she was, immersed in the biggest lie of her life, and all because she had had a vivid image of his mother, frail, vulnerable, bitterly saddened and disappointed at having to be told that she was the victim of a lying ex-girlfriend. She knew first-hand how much lies could wound. She also knew that men could be utterly blind when it came to health issues. If someone had been recently mown down by a bus and, when asked how they were, replied, ‘just fine,’ the average man would be insouciantly inclined to accept the answer at face value.
The average man would also be highly likely to underestimate the impact of disappointment on a sick and elderly person. Who knew how Antonia, Lucas’s mother, would react if she discovered the depth of the lies told to her? Stress killed. Everyone knew that. Whereas, if she were to see for herself just how unsuited Lucas was to her, Milly, then the termination of their so-called relationship would be no big deal. And unsuitable they most certainly were, especially after what he had just told her...
And, face it, there were all those other perks that would certainly make the horror story called her present situation so much easier to bear: job secured, accommodation secured, no nasty landlord banging on her door demanding to know when his rent would be paid.
She would be able to put her grandmother’s mind at ease that her life was back to normal and it would be.
‘I guess your mother was disappointed that you weren’t prepared to tie the knot with your girlfriend. I guess she doesn’t know about your hang-ups.’ She turned to him, wanting to hear just a little more about her competition, because now that they were en route to unchartered territory she could feel butterflies beginning to take up residence in her tummy.
‘My hang-ups. You really have a way with words. You conversationally go where no other woman has gone before. My mother may want me to settle down,’ he said drily, ‘But even she sussed that Isobel wasn’t going to be the perfect candidate for the position of stay-at-home wife.’
‘Because...?’
‘Because Isobel was more jet-setter than home-maker. I think it goes with the territory of being a supermodel. Something about being treated like a goddess when, in fact, you’re no more than a pretty face.’
‘Jet-setter...’
‘Glitz, glamour and an unnatural love of having cameras focused on her.’
‘The sort of girl you tend to go out with.’
‘Why the hundred and one questions, Milly?’
‘Because I’m nervous,’ she confessed. The way he described his ex was a fine example of a man who attached himself to just the sort of woman he was in no danger of wanting to commit to. Casual sex. She shouldn’t even bother to speculate on his motivations or lack of motivations when it came to women.
‘Think of the wonderful payback and your nerves will disappear. Trust me.’
Milly scowled because, however wonderful those paybacks were, they weren’t the reason she had agreed to engage in this little game of fiction and, the closer the plane got to their destination, the more she wondered whether her impulse to do what had felt right at the time really was such a clever idea.
Her impulses had been known to let her down.
‘I didn’t agree because of the...paybacks.’
Lucas’s eyebrows shot up and he gave her a slow, disbelieving smile.
‘You’re so suspicious,’ Milly muttered.
‘You’re telling me that your sole reason for agreeing to pretend to be my soon-to-be-departed fiancée is because you felt sorry for my mother, a woman you’ve never met in your life?’
‘Mostly. Yes.’
‘Nice word, mostly. Open to all sorts of conflicting interpretations.’
‘Sometimes you really annoy me, Lucas.’ Right now he was doing rather more than annoying her. Right now she wished that he would return to his obsessive contemplation of whatever high-powered deal he was in the middle of making, because his attention on her was making her feel all hot and bothered.
Having travelled with nothing suitable to wear for warmer temperatures, she was in a thermal T-shirt, jeans, her thick socks and trainers and the whole ensemble made her skin itch.
‘I’m just trying to... Wondering how...to pretend to be someone I’m not.’
‘You mean how to pretend to be someone in a relationship with me?’
‘I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m not the sort of girl who likes fooling people. It doesn’t seem kind and, whether you want to believe me or not, yes, the paybacks will certainly make my life a whole lot easier when I get back to London but mostly I’m doing this because I hate thinking that your mother’s had her hopes raised only to have them dashed, and cruelly dashed at that. I honestly can’t believe that anyone could tell such a horrendous lie to someone who hasn’t been well, just to get revenge because you let her down.
‘Has your mother ever been keen on any of your girlfriends?’
‘Not that I can recall offhand...’ And that had never bothered him until she began making noises about wanting him to settle down because ‘who knew what lay round the corner for her?’.
He knew what she thought of the Isobels of his life, the never-ending stream of decorative supermodels who enjoyed basking in his reflective glow; who simpered, acquiesced and tailored themselves to his needs. He, personally, had no problem with any of those traits; his work life was high-powered and stressed enough without adding more stress to the tally in the form of a demanding girlfriend. His mother, always grounded, was of a different opinion.
It occurred to him that this little game of make-believe might have an unexpected benefit.
Milly was as normal and as natural as the day was long. Were it not for his inherently suspicious nature, he would truly believe that, as she had stated, she had agreed to this well-intentioned charade from the goodness of her heart. She was just the sort of wholesome girl he would never seriously consider as a life partner in a million years. No; like it or not, if and when he decided to tie the knot, it would be with someone who saw marriage through the same eyes as his. It would be with someone who didn’t need his money, someone who understood the frailty of the institution and recognised, as he did, that marriage stood a far better chance of success if it was