mean to sound so didactic. Especially over pizza toppings.’
‘Apology accepted.’
Zander checked the menu, focused on the words and realised the irony of his own criticism. As a child, restaurants had been a nightmare for him—unable to decode the menus, he had simply pointed randomly to items with a varied degree of success. Or requested a staple generic dish that he knew would be on the menu.
The waiter returned with a long wooden board that held bread and three slender bottles of olive oil. ‘Rosemary, chilli and plain,’ he explained, then took their order and departed.
As she helped herself, Gabby glanced across at him. ‘So,’ she said, ‘I’m intrigued. To be honest, I can’t imagine what kind of business you have in mind.’
A sudden heat touched her cheekbones and she looked down at the piece of bread she held. A flash of insight told him with complete certainty that she had suddenly been hit with exactly the sort of business he currently had in mind.
Say something, Zander. Before the silence stretches so taut it snaps.
‘Before we go any further, I need to know if you are in a relationship.’
‘I can’t see how that could possibly pertain to a business proposition.’
Her voice had a definite chill factor and he couldn’t blame her.
‘Humour me. Please. Just a simple yes or no will suffice. Then I’ll explain.’
Gabby narrowed her eyes but then shrugged. ‘No.’
Out-of-all-proportion relief touched him that his assumption had been correct. It was an assumption based purely on the sheer intensity of the kiss they had shared. Somehow he’d been sure that if Gabby was seeing someone, she wouldn’t have kissed him like that.
‘So explain,’ she said flatly.
‘It all started with that kiss. There were some rather unfortunate repercussions.’
The waiter reappeared with their wine, and the interlude gave him time to gather his thoughts and marshal them into coherence.
She tilted her head, waited for him to continue.
‘You know my circumstances?’
‘Sure. You run a highly successful consultancy company, with offices in London, Germany and Ireland, you made your first million by the time you were twenty-seven, and you started your business from a rented garage whilst you slept in an ancient caravan because you gambled everything.’
Guilt delivered another sucker punch. He’d done all of that. His wife had died and it had kick-started his route to a success she would never see—a success that would not have happened had she lived.
It’s not that I don’t believe in you, Zan. It’s just not worth the risk. What’s wrong with what we have now? If you do something like that, I’ll never see you. I want us to be together, have a family, not risk losing the roof over our heads.
Claudia’s words were so clear in his head, but there was no point pursuing that path. Right or wrong, he’d done what he’d done.
‘All that is correct,’ he said. ‘But I meant my personal circumstances.’ Though he couldn’t blame Gabby for citing his business ones. This was supposed to be all about business.
‘I know that you were widowed. And as I said on Saturday I’m so very sorry. You must have been devastated.’
How to explain it? Explain that he had been blasted with grief—grief at the loss of a life so young, grief that the girl he’d fallen in love with aged sixteen should have been taken, grief at the waste, the sadness, the sheer horror of watching someone you cared about fight and lose, slowly get weaker and fade away.
‘It was difficult,’ he said.
He waited as their pizzas arrived, black pepper and parmesan were dispensed. Then he continued, aware of the intent concentration of her expression, grateful for the lack of question or comment. Gabby was letting him tell the story as he wanted.
‘Since Claudia’s death I haven’t had another relationship, and to be honest I am good with that. I haven’t wanted one and I still don’t. However, my family have different ideas. They are worried about me, think I need to move forward...and they spend way too much of their time trying to set me up.’ He paused to sample the pizza and nodded. ‘You’re right. This is incredible.’
‘Glad you like it.’ She paused to pour chilli oil over her pizza. ‘It’s nice that your family cares.’
For a second he saw wistfulness cross her face.
‘Yes. But on Saturday, after our...encounter, I went back to Mum and Dad’s and everyone fell on me with joy.’
‘Why?’
He sighed. ‘We were spotted by one of my mum’s friends. Edna Harris, if you want to know full details.’ The woman had an uncanny ability to nose out secrets, to be in the ‘right’ place at the ‘right’ time. ‘She headed straight for Casa Grosvenor to share the glad tidings and my family are thrilled.’
Gabby’s face held bemusement. ‘OK. But I’m still not seeing this. All you had to do was explain you were helping out an old schoolmate with a hen challenge. End of.’
‘Given the detail Edna went into about what she saw, it would have been a tricky explanation.’
Gabby speared an artichoke heart and shook her head. ‘Yes, but...’
‘You’re right. I could have explained it. I decided not to.’
‘Because...?’
The artichoke was halted, halfway to her mouth, and for a moment his gaze snagged on her lips. He remembered their feel, the taste of her, the sheer unexpected passion and desire that kiss had evoked...
Deep breath. He decided he might as well go for it. ‘Because I thought it would be a great idea to pretend you are my girlfriend.’
The artichoke heart fell from her fork.
‘That’s why I’m here. I want to hire you to be my fake girlfriend.’
GABBY WATCHED THE descent of the artichoke heart on to the tomato sauce of her pizza as her brain scrambled for a response to his words...questioned whether she could have heard them correctly. Perhaps this was Zander Grosvenor’s idea of some sort of bizarre joke. Perhaps her tomato-splattering response was being recorded by an unseen camera. If so, the image could be labelled The Personification of Stupefaction. Or maybe she had misheard him?
Trying not to gibber, she surveyed his expression—outwardly calm, with a hint of tension in his jawline.
Eventually her brain decided on a single syllable. ‘Why?’ Immediate hindsight suggested a simple no would have been a better choice, followed by a rapid exit.
Zander sipped his wine, then placed the glass down, his fingers still around the base. For a second she studied his hand—its size, its strength, the very faint smattering of hair, the sturdiness of his wrist—and a funny little thrill shot through her.
Wrenching her gaze away, she looked up. ‘Why would you want to hire a fake girlfriend? If you need a girlfriend, I’m pretty sure you could muster up a real one.’ The man was gorgeous and loaded and—oh, God, had she just given him the wrong idea? ‘Not me, obvs. But I’m sure there would be plenty of women who would go out with you for nothing.’
‘I don’t want a real girlfriend. I don’t want a real relationship. Not right now.’ The words or ever seemed to hover unspoken over the table, implicit in his tone, and Gabby could have kicked herself around