Her Enemy With Benefits. Nicola Marsh

‘This isn’t about work, is it?’

      ‘’Course it is—’

      ‘Why don’t you just bonk him and get it out of your system, already? You’ll feel a lot better for it. Trust me.’

      Sapphie screwed up her nose. ‘Euw! Please don’t elaborate on how you and Jax managed to brainstorm that auction.’

      Her sister’s smug grin reeked of sin. Half her luck.

      Ruby laid down her pliers, pushed her loupe out of the way and crossed her arms.

      ‘You’ve been working like a maniac this last week. Why don’t you take the weekend off? Call Patrick? Get together—’

      ‘He’s taking me away for the weekend,’ she blurted, unable to keep it a secret any longer.

      She’d had no intention of telling Ruby anything, expecting to be teased, interrogated or both for the next millennium, but with her departure to destination unknown creeping ever closer Sapphie had to say something for no other reason than articulating made it real.

      Ruby clapped. ‘Way to go, Saph.’ She wiggled her eyebrows. ‘Dirty weekend away, huh?’

      Sapphie’s first instinct was to say It’s not like that, but after withholding the promise she’d made to their mum on her deathbed and the resultant fallout she’d vowed never to keep the truth from her sister again.

      Which meant full disclosure. Within reason.

      ‘I haven’t been out with anyone in a while, he seems keen, so it’s a bit of harmless fun.’

      ‘Uh-huh.’ Ruby nodded, her sly grin particularly worrying. ‘So it’s just a fling, right? Nothing serious?’

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘Then why are you so flustered?’

      ‘I’m not,’ Sapphie said, making a mockery of her declaration by edging backwards and tripping over a crate.

      Ruby chuckled. ‘I’ve never seen you this worked up over a guy before. It’s cute.’

      ‘Cute is puppies and newborns. Cute is not the relationship I have with Patrick.’

      ‘Oh? Then what would you call it?’

      Raunchy. Decadent. Naughty.

      Very, very naughty.

      Images of what they’d done in her bathroom and the boardroom and via Skype in her bedroom earlier this week flashed across her memory and heat touched her cheeks.

      Ruby held up her hands. ‘Never mind. Spare me the details. I can see how good it is written all over your face.’ She slugged her on the arm. ‘Proud of you.’

      At least that made one of them. Sapphie wasn’t entirely proud of using Patrick—for that was exactly what she was doing. He wasn’t her type, and she had no intention of continuing this dalliance once their work together on Fashion Week ended, so using him didn’t sit well.

      The fact he seemed more than happy to use her back was a moot point.

      ‘Stop thinking so hard. You’ll get frown lines.’ Ruby swiped a finger between her brows. ‘There’s nothing to overanalyse here, sis. Mutual gratification. Fling. Whatever you want to call it—just enjoy.’

      She fully intended to. As for what happened after? She’d cross that mannequin when she came to it.

      ‘Where are you taking her?’ Serge propped himself on the end of Patrick’s desk, the epitome of male chic in one of Fourde’s five-grand-a-pop suits.

      ‘What’s it to you?’ Patrick practically snarled, and instantly regretted it. It wasn’t Serge’s fault a week’s worth of cold showers and iceberg documentaries hadn’t taken the edge off. Throw in the lack of sleep from working all hours to distract himself, and he was a grouch.

      ‘Come on, mate, we’ve always discussed our women in the past.’

      He’d deliberately shut the door on his past. And Sapphire was no ordinary woman.

      He didn’t want to discuss her with Serge, didn’t want to hear the usual ribald jokes and innuendo. Sapphire deserved better than that, and the last thing he needed as Fashion Week crept closer was to lose his right-hand man because he’d punched him in the mouth.

      Which led to the question: why did he feel so strongly about this? About her? He had a job to do in Melbourne: make Australia and the world sit up and take notice of Fourde Fash-ion’s latest branch before he moved on to bigger and better things. That was his primary goal.

      Sapphire was great as a temporary distraction but that was all she could ever be. Temporary.

      For he had monumental dreams. Ones that involved taking on his folks head-on back in Europe.

      Yeah, he’d do well to keep the endgame in sight. Despite the extremely attractive distraction.

      Serge slid off his desk and stalked towards a side table, pointing at the basketball-size globe. ‘Let me see.’ He spun the globe with a finger, jabbing at it to stop it when the map of Australia came around. ‘Well, look-ee here.’

      Patrick didn’t like where this was going. He’d played Serge’s stupid flag game in the past, when bedding women had gone in conjunction with partying. Not that he’d ever kept tally of the nationalities of the women he’d slept with, so he could stab a pin into a country as some kind of warped bedpost-notch equivalent, but he’d laughed when Serge had presented him with his round-the-world dalliances.

      Later, he’d kept the globe as proof of the life he’d left be-hind—a life deliberately shunned because it had left him feeling shallow and worthless. Two feelings he’d had a gutful of after his major screw-up.

      It served as a visual reminder of how far he’d come and a place he’d never return.

      Serge let out a low wolf-whistle. ‘Just as I suspected. No flag on Melbourne.’

      He hated Serge’s sly smirk.

      ‘I’m guessing that’s about to change come Monday.’

      ‘I haven’t got time for childish games.’ Patrick lowered his voice with effort. ‘And neither do you. Showtime in two weeks and we’re nowhere near ready.’

      ‘Chillax. We’ll get there. We always do.’

      Patrick wished he had half Serge’s confidence. He might be taking charge with Sapphire when it came to sex, but no amount of planning or executing could guarantee a faultless show.

      So many variables could go wrong—from a broken stiletto to a thread unravelling, from a model’s hissy fit to a competitor sabotaging.

      Patrick didn’t like the unknown. He intended on planning for every contingency and if that meant working night and day for the next fortnight so be it. After this weekend, that was.

      This weekend was all his. And maybe, just maybe, sex with Sapphire would ease his stress levels and make concentrating on work easier.

      ‘If I can’t talk about your dirty weekend, can I ask if you’ve had any feedback from Hardy and Joyce on the Fashion Week presentation?’

      Yeah, Patrick had heard from his folks. A vague, general go-ahead while they focussed on more important matters, like booking the Louvre for an innovative Fourde Fashion show or gearing up for Milan.

      As if they’d deem the Aussie office worthy of more than a cursory glance.

      Well, he had news for them. He’d make them sit up and take notice of Fourde in Melbourne. Then he’d confront them with his plans to take them on in Europe.

      They’d probably ignore him again, as they had the first time he’d mentioned it. When they realised he was for real they wouldn’t like it. Worse, they’d probably laugh at him.

      But