Escape By The Sea. Trish Morey

      He swiped a card through the reader, holding the door open so she could precede him into the room. She ignored the flush of sensation as she brushed past him, tried not to think about how good he smelt or analyse the individual ingredients that made up his signature scent, and had the ring off her finger and back in its tiny box before the door had closed behind her. ‘Well, that’s that, then,’ she said brightly, snapping the box shut and setting it back on the coffee table. ‘I think that concludes our business tonight. Maybe you could summon up that car for me and I’ll get going.’

      ‘You said you didn’t have to rush off,’ he said, busy extracting a cork from what looked suspiciously like a bottle of French champagne he’d just pulled from an ice bucket she was sure hadn’t seen before, and felt her first shiver of apprehension.

      ‘I don’t remember that being there when we left.’

      ‘I asked the wait staff to organise it,’ he explained. ‘I thought a celebration was in order.’

      Another tremor. Another tiny inkling of…what? ‘A celebration?’

      ‘For pulling off tonight. For having everyone believe we were a couple. You had both Eric and Maureen, not to mention Richard and Felicity, eating out of your hand.’

      ‘It was a nice evening,’ she said warily, accepting a flute of the pale gold liquid, wishing he’d make a move to sit down, wishing he was anywhere in the suite but standing right there between her and the door. Knowing she could move away but that would only take her deeper into his suite. Knowing that was the last place she wanted to be. ‘They’re nice people.’

      ‘It was a perfect evening. In fact, you make the perfect virtual fiancée, Evelyn Carmichael. Perhaps you should even put that on your CV.’ He touched his glass to hers and raised it. ‘Here’s to you, my virtual PA, my virtual fiancée. Here’s to…us.’

      She could barely breathe, barely think. There was no us. But he had that look again, the look he’d had before they’d left the presidential suite that had her pulse quickening and beating in dark, secret places. And suddenly there was that image back in her mind, of tangled bedlinen and twisted limbs, and a strange sense of dislocation from the world, as if someone had changed the rules when she wasn’t looking and now black was white and up was down and nothing, especially not Leo Zamos, made any kind of sense.

      She shook her head, had to look away for a moment to try to clear her own tangled thoughts.

      ‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll be doing anything like this again.’

      ‘Why not? When you’re so clearly a natural at playing a part.’ He nodded in the direction of her untouched glass. ‘Wine not to your taste?’

      She blinked and took a sip, wondering if he was ever going to move away from the minibar and from blocking the door, moving closer to the wall at her back in case he was waiting for her to move first. ‘It’s lovely, thank you. And the Culshaws and Alvarezes are lovely people. I still can’t help but feel uncomfortable about deceiving them that way.’

      ‘That’s something I like about you, Evelyn.’ He moved at last, but not to go past her. He moved closer, touching the pad of one finger to her brow, shifted back a stray tendril of hair, a touch so gentle and light but so heated and powerful that she shivered under its impact. ‘That honest streak you have. That desire not to deceive. I have to admire that.’

      Warning bells rang out in her mind. There was a calm, controlled anger rippling through the underbelly of his words that she was sure hadn’t been there before, an iron fist beneath the velvet-gloved voice, and she wasn’t sure what he thought he was celebrating but she did know she didn’t want to be any part of it.

      ‘I should be going,’ she said, searching for the nearest horizontal surface on which to deposit her nearly untouched drink, finding it in the credenza at her side. ‘It’s late. Don’t bother your driver. I’ll get myself a cab.’

      He smiled then, as lazily and smugly as a crocodile who knew that all the efforts of its prey were futile for there was no escape. a smile that made her shiver, all the way down.

      ‘If you’ll just move out the way,’ she suggested, ‘I’ll go.’

      ‘Let you go?’ he questioned, retrieving her glass and holding it out to her. When she was so clearly leaving. ‘When I thought you might like to share a drink with me.’

      She ignored it. ‘I had one, thanks.’

      ‘No, that drink was a celebration. This one will be for old times’ sake. What do you say, Evelyn? Or maybe you’d prefer if I called you Eve.’

      And a tidal wave of fear crashed over her, cold and drenching and leaving her shuddering against the wall, thankful for its solidity in a world where the ground kept shifting. He knew! He knew and he was angry and there was no way he was going to move away from that door and let her calmly walk out of here. Her tongue found her lips, trying valiantly to moisten them, but her mouth was dry, her throat constricted. ‘I’m good with either,’ she said, trying for calm and serene and hearing her voice come out thready and desperate. ‘And I really should be going.’

      ‘Because I met an Eve once,’ he continued, his voice rich and smooth by comparison, apparently oblivious to her discomfiture, or simply enjoying it too much to put an end to it, ‘in an office overlooking Sydney Harbour. She had the most amazing blue eyes, a body built for sinful pleasures, and she was practically gagging for it. Come to think of it, she was gagging for it.’

      ‘I was not!’ she blurted, immediately regretting her outburst, wishing the shifting ground would crack open and swallow her whole, or that her pounding heart would break the door down so she could escape. Because she was kidding herself. Even if it hadn’t been how she usually acted, even if it had been an aberration, he was right. Because if that person hadn’t interrupted them in the midst of that frantic, heated encounter, she would have spread her legs for him right there and then, and what was that, if not gagging for it?

      And afterwards she’d been taking minutes, writing notes, even if she’d found it nearly impossible to transcribe them or remember what had actually been said when she’d returned to her office because of thoughts of what had almost happened in that filing room and what would happen during the night ahead.

      He curled his fingers under her chin, forced her to look at him, triumph glinting menacingly in his eyes. ‘You’ve been working with me for more than two years, sweet little Miss Evelyn don’t-like-to-deceive-anyone Carmichael. When exactly were you planning on telling me?’

      She looked up at him, hoping to reason with him, hoping that reason made sense. ‘There was nothing to tell.’

      ‘Nothing? When you were so hot for me you were practically molten. And you didn’t think I might be interested to know we’d more than just met before?’

      ‘But nothing happened! Not really. It was purely a coincidence that I came to work for you. You wanted a virtual PA. You sent a query on my webpage. You agreed the terms and I did the work you wanted and what did or didn’t happen between us one night in Sydney was irrelevant. It didn’t matter.’ She was babbling and she knew it, but she couldn’t stop herself, tripping over the words in the rush to get them out. ‘It wasn’t like we ever had to meet. If you hadn’t needed a pretend fiancée tonight, you would never have known.’

      ‘Oh, I get it. So it’s my fault, is it, that all this time you lied to me.’

      ‘I never lied.’

      ‘You lied by omission. You knew who I was, you knew what had so very nearly happened, and you failed to tell me that I knew you. You walked in here and hoped and prayed I wouldn’t recognise you and you almost got away with it.’

      ‘I didn’t ask to come tonight!’

      ‘No. And now I know why. Because you knew your dishonesty would come unstuck. All that talk about not deceiving people and you’ve happily been deceiving me for two years.’