Innocent Cinderella: His Untamed Innocent / Penniless and Purchased / Her Last Night of Innocence. Julia James

the victor, the spoils!’ she exclaimed brightly. She looked from Marin to Jake and back again, her glance darting like a snake’s tongue.

      ‘Although I suspect your real reward will come rather later,’ she added with a little trill of laughter which made Marin long to slap her hard.

      ‘Diana.’ Graham’s voice was quiet, but it found its mark. ‘You’re embarrassing Miss Wade.’

      ‘Oh, surely not? She’s a woman of the world, after all, and can stand a little teasing. All in all, she’s quite a revelation—isn’t she, Jake, darling?’

      He looked back at her, his face cool and unsmiling. ‘From the moment we met,’ he drawled, ‘She has never failed to take my breath away.’

      The smile never wavered, but there was a flash of real chagrin in Diana’s eyes.

      If I thought for one minute she was truly in love with him, Marin reflected with curious detachment as she accepted the Cristal with a sedate word of thanks, I could almost feel sorry for her.

      Because realising that you want the totally unattainable, and that no other man apart from him will ever fulfil you and make you happy, has to be the ultimate agony. Total heartbreak. The kind of nightmare from which you never wake.

      Something which I dare not risk.

      So why—why—did I kiss him back like that? Let him do what he did, as if it was no longer part of the pretence?

      I think, she told herself dazedly, that I must be going mad.

      Jake fetched her towel and wrapped it round her sarong-style. He said softly, ‘Come on, darling. Let’s get you showered and changed. It’s nearly lunchtime.’

      She heard herself murmur something that might have been assent in a small, wooden voice as she slid her feet into her sandals and handed him the champagne.

      Her legs were still trembling as she walked beside him back to the house.

      She said, ‘You’re soaking wet. Your clothes must be ruined.’

      ‘They’ll survive,’ he said. ‘And so shall I.’

      ‘You mentioned the shower deliberately, didn’t you?’ she muttered. ‘So that they’ll think we’re going to take one together. This is what you meant by being more convincing.’

      ‘Of course,’ he said curtly. ‘What else did you expect?’ He added, ‘But, as we both know it isn’t true, why should you care?’

      ‘I—I don’t.’ Her response was swift, but not as definite as it should have been, and she knew it.

      Knew also that he was far too experienced not to have gauged her reaction to his kiss. Even worse, he might even have been amused by it, and by the fact that he’d been the one to call a halt, she thought, dying inside.

      He paused, the blue eyes travelling over her. ‘By the way, I seem to recall specifying a bikini to Lynne, and not some one-piece effort. What happened?’

      ‘I made a decision of my own,’ Marin said, lifting her chin. ‘Dressing for the part is one thing. Undressing is another.’

      There was sudden amusement in his voice. ‘I’ll try to remember that.’

      She searched hastily for a change of subject, something more impersonal. ‘How—how did your meeting go?’

      ‘It went well. Better than I could have hoped for a month ago.’ He paused, his mouth twisting into a faint smile. ‘And you’ve made a real hit with Graham. I suspect if he was your father he’d be asking my intentions.’

      ‘And you, of course, would be telling him they were strictly dishonourable.’ She managed somehow to infuse some lightness into her tone.

      ‘And leaving before he could find the shotgun,’ Jake agreed drily. ‘However, as part of the improvement in our relationship Graham’s asked me to play golf with him this afternoon. I said I’d check with you first—that you might like to go for a drive instead—see something of the countryside.’

      ‘No, no,’ Marin denied hurriedly. ‘Golf is fine.’

      ‘You could come too,’ he suggested. ‘Walk round with us.’

      She remembered happy times doing exactly that with her stepfather, and for a moment was tempted. Then common sense reasserted itself, and she shook her head.

      ‘We hardly want to give the impression we’re joined at the hip,’ she said. ‘I don’t think anyone would believe that, either.’

      Jake shrugged. ‘If you say so. But be warned, Diana has a croquet event planned after lunch. She’ll want revenge for this morning’s miscalculation.’

      ‘Then she’ll be disappointed,’ Marin said crisply. ‘For one thing, I wouldn’t trust myself around her with a mallet in my hand.’ She paused, then said with constraint, ‘Besides, the swimming thing was horrid.’

      ‘You deserved to win,’ he said. ‘You’re bloody good.’

      She said, ‘But she fixed the draw, didn’t she, so we’d be in the final together?’

      ‘Almost certainly,’ Jake agreed.

      ‘So it was nothing to do with real swimming. But then nothing this weekend is what it seems.’

       Least of all the way you kissed me, as if you were staking some claim, telling the world that I was yours, to be taken just as soon as we were alone…

      ‘No,’ Jake said abruptly. ‘It isn’t. But you must have known that’s how it would be.’ He gave a short sigh. ‘However, it will be over soon, and then it’s back to reality. Comfort yourself with that.’

      Comfort, she thought, offering a small, taut smile, was hardly the word she’d have chosen.

      As they reached her door, Jake made to hand over the Cristal, but Marin shook her head. ‘No, you keep it—please.’

      ‘Marin,’ he said quietly, ‘This is one of the truly great champagnes. You won it. It belongs to you.’

      She turned away, reaching for the door handle. ‘It’s also very expensive. Even I know that. So it would be wasted on me, because it deserves a big occasion—a great reason to celebrate.’ She looked back at him, smiled. ‘And that’s far more your life than mine.’

      She added, ‘A touch of the reality you mentioned.’

      Then she went into her room and gently closed the door behind her.

      Strange how time dragged when you were counting the hours, thought Marin, taking a reflective sip of her iced orange juice and bitter lemon.

      Firstly, the hours until dinner. Then the hours until bedtime. Then the hours between breakfast and the blessed moment when Jake would drive them both back to London and it would all be over at last.

      At which time her life would finally be able to resume some semblance of normality. Or so she hoped.

      A new job to go to, she thought, and a chance to reassure Wendy Ingram that she was still to be totally relied upon. Plus—and maybe this was most important of all—a much-needed opportunity to get her head together and stop drifting off into the kind of forbidden fantasies she was ashamed to contemplate.

      Jake had left for the golf club with Graham immediately after lunch, and she swiftly excused herself from the proposed croquet competition on the grounds that she wanted to go for a walk. No one, she noted with irony, had attempted to dissuade her.

      She headed for the village, but most of it seemed to be shut—even the church—so she bought a drink in the village pub, discovered a shaded corner of its garden, found an unused page in her diary and began with a certain gritted determination to write down what she’d need to pack for Essex.

      Planning for the