CHAPTER SIX
MARC YANKED ON his DJ and strode to the connecting door, pulling it open and striding into Tara’s bedroom. He still could not believe he’d done what he’d done. Telling Celine that Tara was his fiancée! And then letting her kiss him—again. Had he gone mad? He must have. But had there been any other way of getting Hans’s damn wife to lay off him?
Even as he’d made that momentous announcement he’d been appalled at himself. Danger had shimmered all around. Every precept he’d lived his life by had been appalled.
And now he had to do what he was intent on doing—make it absolutely crystal-clear to Tara Mackenzie that he had spoken entirely on impulse, exasperated beyond the last of his patience by Celine. It was a final means to an end—nothing more than that. Being his fiancée was every bit as fictional as his original proposition.
His mouth set in a grim expression. That devastating kiss she’d given him had not been fictional in the least! It had been searingly, devastatingly real...
But he absolutely could not risk that. Risk anything like that at all! Not with Tara—the woman he should have nothing to do with whatsoever outside the playacting he was paying her for...
She can’t be anything in my life—I can’t risk it. And I can’t risk her thinking she can be anything in my life. Wanting any of this to be real...
His eyes went to her now. She was sitting at the dressing table, putting on her lipstick. She was quite at home in his villa, in this bedroom with its luxurious atmosphere, with its priceless pieces of Art Deco furniture, the silver dressing table set, the walls adorned with paintings from the thirties by artists whose prices in auction rooms were stratospheric.
Tara looked perfect in the setting—as if she belonged there...
But she doesn’t belong. I hired her to play a part, and the fact that the part has suddenly become that of my fiancée changes nothing!
That was what he had to remember.
That the searing desire he felt for her was not something he could permit.
Part of him registered that, yet again, she was looking totally stunning. The russet silk halter-necked evening gown left her sculpted shoulders bare and skimmed the slender contours of her spectacular body, and her glorious hair waved lustrously over her shoulders in rich abandon.
Her head swivelled sharply as he strode in, and she dropped her lipstick on a silver tray.
‘We need to talk!’ Marc’s voice was brusquer than he’d intended, but he did not care.
Tara’s chin lifted, her eyes defiant. She got to her feet and got in first. ‘Don’t look at me like that!’ she said. ‘I know I was impulsive, kissing you like that, but—’
He strode up to her, took her shoulders. He’d had to wait hours for this moment! He’d had to endure babysitting Hans at the yacht broker’s so he didn’t end up buying a damn yacht for his appalling wife, then endure the car ride back to the villa, and then endure Tara disappearing up to her room to shower and dress for the evening. He was not going to wait a single interminable moment longer!
‘It was totally unnecessary!’ he barked.
‘It was totally necessary!’ Tara shot back. She wrenched herself free. ‘Look, you’d just dropped that on me out of the blue! Saying I was your fiancée! I didn’t know what to do—only that I had to follow your lead and make it look real!’
‘Dieu, it looked real, all right! It damn near earned a round of applause from everyone there! And, worse, it nearly got seen by Hans.’ He took a rasping breath. ‘Hans must not know anything about this—do you understand? Because it isn’t real! You do understand that, don’t you?’
His eyes were skewering hers and his hand slashed the air for emphasis.
‘There is no relationship between us! No engagement! Do not think otherwise!’
He saw her expression tighten, her eyes flash.
‘Of course I do!’ she snapped.
‘Then behave like you understand it!’ he shot back. He drew a deep, if ragged, breath to calm himself, get himself back under iron control. Because if he didn’t...
She was standing there, breasts heaving, eyes fired with retaliation, looking so incredibly beautiful that with a single impulse he could have swept her up into his arms and buried his mouth in hers, feasting on those lush, silken lips...
And he dared not—dared not do anything of the sort. It would be madness. All he could do was what he did now. School his features, take another breath...
He held up a hand, silencing any utterance she might be going to say. He needed to say his piece first. ‘OK, so I dropped a bombshell...went off-script. And OK...’ his expression changed ‘...if I must I can accept that you acted on impulse to give credibility to what I’d just thrown at you.’
His breathing was still heavy, but he forced it back. Went on with what he had to say.
‘But from now on, although we’ve told Celine we’re engaged, we absolutely must not let Hans think so!’ He took another ragged breath, ran his hand through his hair. ‘Or he will believe it.’