Bride for Hire. Jessica Hart

won’t tell,’ he promised. ‘It’ll be a refreshing change to have a meal with a woman who doesn’t just push salad around her plate all evening.’

      Trusting that to mean that she would be allowed a pudding as well, Daisy ordered the most substantial starter she could find and then dithered happily over a choice of main course until Seth grew impatient and ordered for her.

      ‘She’ll have the lamb,’ he said to the waiter, who had been standing there with his pencil patiently poised for some time.

      ‘I was just going to order the poussin,’ hissed Daisy indignantly as the waiter removed the menus with admirably concealed relief.

      ‘I thought you were hungry?’ he retorted. ‘If I hadn’t made the decision for you we’d have been here all night.’

      Daisy contented herself with muttering under her breath and buttering her roll with a certain lavish defiance.

      ‘Talking of “all night”,’ Seth went on, leaning casually back in his chair, ‘you’d better move into my suite tomorrow.’

      Daisy’s head jerked up, knife poised in mid-butter. ‘Move in?’ she echoed in dismay. ‘Why?’

      ‘It’s not for that rather nice body of yours which you keep so cleverly concealed beneath those shapeless clothes,’ he said with a dryness that sent the colour rushing to her cheeks.

      Grateful for the dim light, Daisy reapplied herself to her roll and forced down the treacherous memory of his hands curving around her breasts and sliding down her spine, warm against her skin. ‘I don’t see why I have to move in with you.’

      ‘Because, Daisy, word will soon get around if I’m seen putting you chastely into a taxi every night and, while you and I may know that we’re not going to fall into bed as soon as we get in, we want everyone else to think that we can’t keep our hands off each other, don’t we?’

      ‘I don’t see how anyone’s going to know whether we sleep together or not,’ grumbled Daisy, who wished that she couldn’t imagine the prospect in quite such unnerving detail and was desperately trying to disguise her perturbation with bolshiness. ‘Why can’t I just sneak out the back way?’

      ‘Someone would be bound to see you and the next thing we’d know there’d be a snippet in the gossip columns, speculating about just how close our relationship was.’

      ‘But who cares what we do?’ cried Daisy. ‘Who on earth is going to be interested in what time I go home?’

      Seth shrugged. ‘You’d be surprised. I’m afraid it’s one of the drawbacks of fame. People seem to think that as soon as you acquire money or influence you forfeit your right to privacy. It’s something you’re just going to have to get used to over the next few weeks. If no one was interested in me or Astra there wouldn’t be any need for you to be here at all, so you can thank the gossip columns for your job...and your job is living with me for the moment.’

      ‘Will...?’ She hesitated, cleared her throat and tried to sound unconcerned. ‘We won’t have to share a bed as well, will we?’

      ‘No.’ Seth’s eyes gleamed with ironic understanding. ‘There’s another room in the suite. Maria’s been using it, but she’s going to stay with friends so she won’t need it. She’ll come in during the day, but I’ll need you to be there, too, so you might as well stay.’

      ‘What do you need me for?’ Marginally reassured by the promise of a room to herself, Daisy had just taken a bite of her roll and her voice was rather indistinct.

      ‘In case people turn up.’ The wine waiter was presenting the bottle for Seth’s inspection, and he tasted the wine before giving a cursory nod and turning back to Daisy. ‘I’ve got a number of business meetings scheduled, but other people tend to drop by for one reason or another and that means you being there to prove that I can’t bear not to have you at my side.’

      ‘I can’t sit around all day just on the off chance that someone’s going to drop by,’ she protested. ‘I’ll go potty without anything to do.’

      Seth watched the waiter pour the wine into her glass. ‘I’d have thought you’d be used to that.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ asked Daisy indignantly. Most days she hardly got a chance to sit down at all!

      ‘Being an out-of-work actress,’ he explained, raising an eyebrow at her expression. ‘I’ve always imagined that meant sitting by the phone, waiting for the call to stardom.’

      She had forgotten that she was meant to be an actress. ‘That’s the advantage of an answering machine,’ she said. Really, she was getting quite good at lying! ‘It means I can keep busy.’

      ‘Doing what?’ Or can I guess from that very talented performance you gave this afternoon?’

      Daisy shot him a hostile look. She didn’t want to be reminded about that particular performance. ‘Actually, I work in a flower shop,’ she said coldly, deciding that it was best to keep as close to the truth as possible. ‘When I haven’t got a part, that is,’ she added, just to remind him of her acting credentials.

      ‘I don’t suppose you earn much in a flower shop?’ said Seth, who could have bought a whole chain of flower shops without even noticing a blip in his bank balance.

      She sighed, thinking of the last difficult year when business had fallen off and the bills had mounted. ‘No.’

      ‘I’d have thought a girl with your interest in money would have jumped at the chance of being paid to sit around,’ he said in his caustic voice. ‘It’s not as if it’s going to be hard work. There’s a television and a health club and, if the worst comes to the worst, you can always read a book.’

      ‘I suppose so,’ said Daisy without enthusiasm.

      A silence fell. Running her finger around the rim of her glass, Daisy studied the deep golden colour of the wine. She wished that she could stop noticing Seth’s hands; wished her eyes would stop following the line of his jaw back to the place below his ear where she had first kissed him. He was drinking his wine, but she could feel his uncomfortably acute gaze on her face and had the sudden, horrible certainty that he knew exactly what she was thinking.

      ‘Have you told Astra about us?’ she asked awkwardly. It was the first thing that came into her head as she searched desperately for something to say, but as soon as the words came out she could hear the implied intimacy in that ‘us’. ‘I mean, have you told her about me?’

      Seth’s expression was curiously shuttered. ‘Yes.’

      ‘What did she say?’

      ‘She was pleased, of course.’

      ‘Oh.’ Daisy felt unaccountably put out. ‘Did you tell her that I wasn’t Dee Pearce?’

      ‘I said that I’d come to an agreement with you instead of Dee,’ said Seth. ‘I didn’t go into details.’

      ‘Didn’t she want to know what I was like?’ If she had been in love with Seth Carrington she would want to know exactly who he was going to be spending so much time with, Daisy reflected. Perhaps Astra Bentingger knew that she didn’t have to worry.

      ‘I told her that you didn’t really look right for the part,’ said Seth, sounding so bored that Daisy was nettled.

      ‘Did you tell her how I convinced you to give me the part anyway?’ she asked sourly, hoping to embarrass him, but she might have known that it was impossible to do that.

      Seth merely looked across the table at her, his grey eyes inscrutable. ‘I told her that you were a better actress than you looked,’ he said. ‘I also said that I thought it extremely likely that you’d drive me round the bend but that, having got so far, I’d just have to put up with you.’

      CHAPTER THREE

      THE