The Plus-One Agreement (6 page)

‘Do you want to use the bathroom first? I mean, perhaps we should work out some kind of rota.’

‘For Pete’s sake, we don’t need a rota,’ he said, his tone exasperated. ‘It’s two days. You take the bathroom first. You’re bound to take longer.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ She made an indignant face. ‘That you look great just the way you are but I’m some hag who needs work?’

He laughed out loud.

‘No. It means I’ve never met a woman who takes less than half an hour to get ready.’

She turned towards the bathroom, her arms now full of toiletries.

‘And you don’t look like a hag,’ he called after her. ‘You never have.’

It was the nearest thing to a compliment he’d ever given her.

FIVE

Dan gazed
out of the open hotel room window and listened to the soft sound of falling water from the shower in the
en-suite
bathroom. It had kicked in five minutes after Emma had shut the door firmly and twisted the lock, as if she thought he might burst in on her.

The marquee was now bathed in early-evening golden sunshine. The sweeping lawns were perfectly manicured, and a lily pond lay on the far right of his view. If he leaned forward far enough he could see an ornate wrought-iron bench set to one side of it. He wondered how many brides’ backsides had been plonked there over the years. It really was the perfect photo opportunity.

He was at the cream of wedding venues in the south of England and it was only natural that it might whip up a few passing thoughts of his one and only brush with marriage, right? Just fleeting thoughts... That was all.

Maggie and Blob.

The name filtered back into his mind before he could stop it.

Blob, he had called him—or her—after the fuzzy early scan which had been completely unintelligible to both of them except for the blob with the strong and speedy heartbeat. It had made Maggie laugh. An interim holding name while they bandied about proper full-on names. Andy or Emily. Sam or Molly. To delete as appropriate once they knew the gender, at a later date that had never arrived.

Four months hadn’t been later enough.

Maggie and Blob.

An unexpected twist of long-suppressed dull pain flared in his chest—the blunt ache of an old injury. He wrenched his mind away forcibly. For Pete’s sake, what was he
doing?
He did
not
need a pointless trip down memory lane right now.

He rationalised madly. He hadn’t been near a wedding in donkey’s years. Without a family to speak of, things like weddings didn’t crop up all that often, and this place was Wedding Central. It was bound to stir things up. But that was all this was—just a momentary blip. He had dealt with Maggie and Blob. They were part of the past and he’d left them there with admirable efficiency. He’d dealt with it all and moved on.

Perhaps that was part of the problem. His life was drifting into predictability, leaving his mind free to wander where it shouldn’t be going. He needed to up the stakes at work—perhaps a new business venture. Work had always been the solution before.

The shower splashed on and on, and judging by the enormous bag of toiletries Emma had heaved in there with her she wasn’t going to be emerging any time soon. There was no time like the present when it came to refocusing your mind. He unzipped his laptop bag and sat down at the antique desk.

* * *

Emma gave her reflection one last glance in the steamy-edged mirror and paused to let her heart reconsider its decision to take a sprint. She knew she’d spent far too long rubbing in scented body lotion and blitzing body hair, telling herself it was because she wanted to make a good impression on Ernie’s family. For Adam. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Dan was on the other side of that door. He was fully rationalised. Whatever there was between them, it would always have terms. It would always be about work.

But he could easily have refused to accompany her here. I mean, really, what was in it for him? She knew she’d annoyed him with the public break-up thing, but he had no real understanding of how things were with her parents—how the pursuit of an easy life had become the norm for her. It was her defence mechanism against the endless nagging, and that was what Dan had been. Her route to an easy life. Shame it had all been fictional.

But still he was here.

And now there was that tiny nagging voice, whispering that he might just have come to his senses since she’d broken the news that she was leaving. He might have suddenly realised she meant more to him than a handy work date. Could that be why he now
wanted
the arrangement to end, despite his reluctance to let it go at first? Perhaps this weekend could lead to something more than a platonic agreement between them.

It was a
stupid
nagging voice. To listen to it, or even worse to act on it, would be to set herself up for humiliation. Was the Alistair debacle not enough evidence that she had warped judgement when it came to decoding male behaviour?

The twisty lurch of disappointment in her stomach when she opened the bathroom door told her she’d been stupid to read anything into his presence here.

He was still wearing the same jeans and T-shirt, he’d clearly made zero effort to unpack his minimal luggage, and worst of all he was leaning into his laptop where it stood open on the desk, surrounded by the usual scattering of work papers.

Had she actually thought for a moment that his presence here might have anything to do with an increased regard for her? What a fool she was. Nothing had changed between them at all. She was imagining the whole damn thing just because he’d shown her some support. Clearly she was desperate for attention now Alistair had humiliated her.

At best, Dan wanted to part on good terms—
that
was why he’d decided to accompany her to the wedding and help her out this last time. There was nothing more to it than that.

Undoubtedly the fact that the hotel had complimentary Wi-Fi had made the decision a whole lot easier for him.

* * *

Dan stared at her as she stood in the doorway, the deliciously sensual scent of her body lotion mingling with steam, epically failing to register the look of resigned disapproval on her face because of her transformation from office starch.

Her dark hair fell in damp tendrils, framing her heart-shaped face, and there was a pink hue to her usually pale skin. She was totally swamped by one of the enormous white his ’n’ hers hotel bathrobes, and his mind immediately insisted on debating what she might or might not be wearing underneath.

He stared hard at the e-mail on his computer screen until his eyes watered, in the hope that his stupid body would realise that they might be sharing a bedroom and a bathroom but their interaction was limited to the professional—just the way it always was. For the third time he read it without taking a single word in.

‘You’re working,’ she said with ill-hidden disappointment. ‘Don’t you ever take a break?’

He felt a surge of exasperation.

‘What else was I meant to do? Take a stroll round the grounds? Sit and watch the bathroom door? It’s just a couple of e-mails while I waited for you to be finished.’

‘Well, there’s no need to snap,’ she said, crossing the room to the bureau and squeezing a handful of her hair with the corner of a towel. ‘You could have gone first if you’d wanted to.’

Oh, for Pete’s sake! He hadn’t counted on the inconvenient need to be constantly polite that their space-sharing had caused. Without the shared goal of sleeping together it boiled down to a
you-go-first-no-you-I-insist
awkwardness about using the facilities.

With a monumental effort he curbed his irritation.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m just not really used to sharing my personal space, that’s all. I’m used to doing what I like whenever I want to.’

She glanced at him and smiled.

‘That’s OK.’

She began combing her long hair out, looking at her reflection in the mirror.

‘You have a different girlfriend every week,’ she said. ‘I’d have thought bedroom etiquette was your speciality.’

He watched as she sprayed perfume on her neck and pulse points. The intense scent of it made his senses reel.

‘That’s different.’

‘I don’t see how.’

He shrugged.

‘There’s no give and take needed. They stay over and the next morning they leave. There’s no personal belongings cluttering up every surface.’ He glanced at the bed, currently festooned with her clothes. ‘There’s no pussyfooting around each other over who’s hogging the bathroom. It’s done and dusted, with minimal disruption.’

And minimal emotional input. Which was exactly how he liked it.

‘You make it sound
so
romantic,’ she said sarcastically, dipping her finger in a pot of pink make-up and dabbing it gently over her mouth.

His eyes seemed to be glued to the tiny movements and to the delicious pink sheen it gave her luscious lower lip. She didn’t notice, focusing on what she was doing in the mirror.

‘It isn’t
meant
to be romantic,’ he said. ‘It is what it is.’

A temporary and very enjoyable diversion, with no lasting repercussions.

‘So it’s fine for them to stay over until you get what you want, and then they’re ejected from the premises at breakfast time? Is that it?’

‘You make it sound callous,’ he said, snapping his laptop shut and gathering up his work papers. ‘When actually it’s fun.’ She threw him a sceptical glance and he couldn’t resist adding, ‘Hot, steamy, no-holds-barred fun,’ just to see if he could make her blush again.

‘You have no scruples,’ she complained.

He saw the flush of pink creep softly along her cheekbones, highlighting them prettily. Sparring with her was actually turning out to be enjoyable.

‘I don’t need scruples,’ he said. ‘We’re all adults. I never make any promises that I don’t keep. I’m honest with them about not wanting anything serious and they appreciate that.’

‘No, they don’t,’ she said. ‘They might say they’re fine with it, but in reality they’re hoping it will turn into more. It’s not the same for women. Sleeping with someone isn’t some throwaway thing. It’s a big deal—an emotional investment. And, anyway, if you always put those limits in place when you meet someone you’re cutting out the chance of ever having a proper relationship. You could meet the perfect person for you and she’d just slip through your fingers unnoticed.’ She fluttered her fingers in the air to press her point. ‘You’d never even know. You’ll be perpetually single.’

‘And that,’ he said, grabbing his bag and making for the bathroom, ‘is exactly the point.’

He smiled at the roll of her eyes as he closed the door.

* * *

Emma didn’t usually go in for a second coat of mascara. Or a second squirt of perfume just to make sure it lasted the distance. But then she didn’t usually go in for room-sharing. She wished someone would tell her stupid pulse rate that it was supposed to be platonic.

He had the speediest bathroom habits she’d ever come across, and as a result she was still balancing on one leg, one foot in her knickers and the other out, when the lock clicked and the bathroom door opened. Heart thundering, she thanked her lucky stars that she’d decided to keep the bathrobe on while dressing, and covered her fluster by whipping her panties on at breakneck speed, clamping the robe around her and then giving him a manic grin that probably bordered on cheesy.

Her entire consciousness immediately zeroed in on the fact that he had a fluffy white towel wrapped around his muscular hips and absolutely nothing else. The faint hint of a tan highlighted his broad chest and the most defined set of abs she’d ever seen outside a magazine. He rubbed a second towel over his hair, spiking it even beyond the usual.

She forced her eyes away, snatched the bathrobe more tightly around her and crossed to the bed.

‘I think we should have a quick round-up of the ground rules for tonight,’ she said, flipping through some of the clothes laid out on the bed, not really seeing them, just aiming to look busy.

‘Did you just say “ground rules”?’

She glanced up and had to consciously drag her eyes upwards from his drum-tight torso. His amused grin told her that unfortunately he’d clocked her doing it, so she pressed the platonic angle hard to show him that they might be sharing a hotel room but she had no romantic interest in him whatsoever. None. Zilch.

‘I did. We need to pull off being the perfect couple.’

He let out an amused breath. ‘I think you can count on
me
to know how to do that,’ he said.

She silently marvelled. He obviously thought a few posh dinners and hot sex was all it took.

‘This is a whole different ball game. When you’ve been my date before it’s mostly been an hour or two alone with my family in a restaurant. A trained chimp could probably pull that off. This is going to be a lot more full-on. The place is going to be stuffed with Ernie’s family. We need to make a good impression for Adam. We have to look totally together but in an
über
-normal way, so we can counteract my parents’ dysfunctional relationship.’

He looked briefly skyward. One hand rested on the desk; the other was caught in his hair. By sheer will she didn’t look at the towel, held up only by a single fold. Instead she fixed her eyes on his face.

‘You’re over-analysing,’ he said. ‘Trust me on this.’

He pulled a few items from his bag and headed back to the bathroom with them slung over his arm.

‘I know how to pull off loved-up,’ he called over his shoulder, with not a hint of trepidation at the evening ahead when
she
was a bag of nerves. ‘Just like you know how to pull off professional couple. Just leave it to me.’

* * *

A couple of hours’ work had certainly done the trick in terms of refocusing him. He’d fired off a ton of important e-mails, had a look through some figures, and if he needed any more of a distraction to stop his mind dredging up the past, looking at Emma as he emerged from the bathroom again was it.

Fully dressed now, she was wearing her hair long again, this time brushed to one side, so it lay gleaming over one shoulder of the soft green maxi-dress she wore. Her newly applied perfume made his pulse jump and she wore more make-up than usual, highlighting her wide brown eyes and the delectable softness of her lips.

Playing the part of boyfriend to
that
for the evening was hardly going to be a chore.

He could tell she was nervous just by the way she was behaving. Give her a room full of professionals and she could network her way around it with the best of them, holding her own no matter who he introduced her to. But with the prospect of a weekend with her own family she was reduced to a quivering shadow of her work self.