He turned around and Violet was pinned to the spot as he narrowed his eyes on her hovering figure. She was still wearing the shapeless, voluminous coat she had worn when she had come to the office to see him on her begging mission, but now her fair hair was loose and it spilled over her shoulders in waves of gold and vanilla. Against the black coat, it was a dramatic contrast. He doubted she ever went to the hairdresser for anything more than a basic cut, and yet he knew that there were women who would have given an arm and a leg to achieve the vibrant, casually tousled effect she effortlessly had.
‘You’re on time,’ he said, striding towards her, and Violet instinctively fell back. ‘My mother is looking forward to meeting you. I see you didn’t take advantage of the offer of a shopping spree.’
‘I think that either someone will like me or not like me, but hopefully it won’t be because of what I happen to be wearing.’ She fell into step beside him. Although she tried her best to maintain a healthy distance, there was a magnetism about him that seemed to want to draw her closer, a powerful pull on her senses that defied reason. She had to resist the strangest urge to look across at him and to just keep looking.
He was explaining that his mother had wanted to find out everything about her, that he had been sketchy on detail but had fabricated nothing at all. She had been intrigued to find out that he was dating a teacher, he said.
‘And did we meet in the canteen at school?’ Violet asked politely as she walked briskly to keep up with him.
‘I thought I’d leave it to you to come good with the romantic touches,’ Damien told her drily.
‘Doesn’t it upset you at all that you’re lying to your own mother?’
‘It would upset me more to think that her health might be compromised because she was worried about my stability.’ He glanced down at her fair head. She barely reached his shoulder. He could feel her reluctance pouring through every fibre of her being and he marvelled that she could be so morally outraged at a simple deception that was being done in the best possible faith and yet forgiving of her sister, who had committed a far greater fraud. He wondered whether that was the outcome of family dynamics. Just as quickly as his curiosity reared its head, he dismissed it. He wasn’t in the habit of delving too deeply into female motivations. He enjoyed women and was happy to move on before simple enjoyment could become too fraught with complications. And yet this wasn’t just another female to be enjoyed, was she? In fact, enjoyment didn’t actually feature on his list when it came to Violet Drew.
They had taken the lift up to the floor on which Eleanor Carver had a private room. It was a large teaching hospital with a confusing number of lifts, all of which seemed to have different, exclusive destinations to specialised departments.
‘I don’t know anything about you,’ Violet said in a sudden rush of panic. She tugged him to a stop before they could enter the room where his mother was awaiting her arrival. ‘I mean, I know about your brother...but where did you grow up? Where did you go to school? What are your friends like? Do you even have any friends?’
She had pulled him to the side, where they were huddled by the wall as the business of the hospital rushed around them.
‘Now that’s just the sort of thing that’s guaranteed to make my mother suspicious,’ Damien murmured, looking down at her into those remarkable violet eyes. ‘A girlfriend who thinks that her guy is such a loser that he can’t possibly have any friends. You’re supposed to be crazy about me...’ He reached out and trailed his finger along her cheek and for a few heart-stopping seconds Violet froze. She literally found that she couldn’t breathe. The noise and clatter around her faded into a dull background blur. She was held captive by deep blue eyes that bored into her and set up a series of involuntary reactions that terrified and thrilled her at the same time. She could still feel the blazing path his finger had forged against her skin and belatedly she pulled away and glared at him.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I know. Crazy, isn’t it? Actually touching the woman who is supposed to be head over heels in love with me. You didn’t think the charade would just involve you sitting across the bed from me and making small talk for half an hour, did you?’
‘I... I...’
‘The occasional gesture of affection might be necessary. It’ll certainly make up for the fact that we’re practically strangers.’ Damien pushed himself away from the wall against which he had been indolently leaning. He thought of Annalise, the wife who never was. He had fully deluded himself into thinking that he had known her. In fact, it turned out that he hadn’t known her at all. He had seen the perfect picture which had been presented to him and he had taken it at face value. He had committed himself to the highly intelligent, beautiful career woman and had failed to probe deeper to the shallow upwardly mobile social climber. So the fact that he and his so-called girlfriend were strangers hardly made the union less believable as far as he was concerned.
Violet hadn’t banked on gestures of affection. In fact, she had naively assumed that she would just be sitting across a hospital bed from him and making small talk with his mother.
‘There’s no need to look so uncomfortable,’ he drawled lazily.
‘I’m not uncomfortable,’ Violet hurriedly asserted. ‘I just hadn’t thought about that side of things.’
‘There is no that side of things. There’s the pretence of affection.’
‘Oh yes. I forgot. You only like women who are decked out in designer gear and have the bodies of giraffes!’
Damien threw back his head and laughed and a few heads turned to stare for a couple of seconds. ‘Are you offended because you’re not my type?’ He thought of Phillipa. How on earth could two sisters be so completely different? One brash and narcissistic, the other hesitant and self-conscious? Yet, curiously, so much more genuine? Intriguing.
Violet blushed furiously. ‘I think we’ve already established that you’re not my type either!’ she bristled. ‘And shall we just go in now?’
‘Is your moment of panic over?’
‘I really dislike you, do you know that?’
‘You bristle like a furious little bull terrier...’
‘Thank you very much for that!’
‘And entering the room with that angry expression isn’t going to work...’
Violet’s mouth was parted as she prepared to respond appropriately to that smug little smile on his face. His mouth covered hers with an erotic gentleness that took her breath away. He delicately prised a way past her startled speechlessness and his tongue against hers was an invasion that slammed into her with the force of a hurricane. It was the most sensational kiss she had ever experienced and all she wanted to do was pull him closer so that she could continue it. Her skin burned and she felt a pool of honeyed dampness spread between her legs. She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her treacherous body whole as he gently eased himself away to push open the door to his mother’s room.
He was smiling broadly as he entered and she could not have looked more like a woman in love. He had kissed her at the right time and the right place and her flushed cheeks and uneven breathing and dilated pupils were telling a story that had no foundation in fact.
He wanted his mother to believe that they were all loved up and Violet smarted from the realisation that one clever kiss had done the job. Eleanor Carver was smiling at them both, her arms outstretched in a warm gesture of welcome.
She was smaller than Violet had imagined. Whilst her son was well over six feet tall, Eleanor Carver was diminutive in stature. She looked impossibly frail against the bed sheets but her eyes were razor sharp as she rushed into inquisitive chatter.
‘Don’t excite yourself, Mother. You know what the consultant said.’
‘He didn’t say anything about not exciting myself! Besides, how can I fail to be excited when you’ve brought me this delightful girl of yours to meet?’
Violet stood back and watched as Damien fussed around his mother. He was so big and so powerful and yet there was a gentleness about him as he bent down to kiss her on the cheek and make sure that she was propped up just right against the pillows. It was as though he had slowed his pace to accommodate her and it brought an unwelcome lump to Violet’s throat.
‘He’s like a mother hen now that I’m cooped up here.’ Eleanor smiled and patted him on the hand.
Violet smiled back and thought that he was more fox in the coop than innocent hen and, as if he could read her mind, Damien grinned at her with raised eyebrows.
‘Violet would be the first to agree that I’m the soul of sensitivity...’ He moved so that he was standing next to her and she tried not to stiffen in alarm as he slipped his arm around her.
‘I’m not entirely sure that’s the description that springs to mind...’ Violet unbuttoned her coat and slipped it off. In the process, she managed to edge skilfully past him to the chair next to the bed.