Remy had to wait until they were in the car before he asked, ‘Did you know the banker was married when you hooked up with him?’
‘I didn’t hook up with him.’ She flicked some imaginary lint off her clothing. ‘I was photographed next to him in a hotel lobby. I was waiting for the porter to bring out my luggage.’
He frowned at her. ‘Are you seriously telling me you didn’t have anything to do with him? That you didn’t have a secret love tryst with him in that hotel?’
She gave him a bored look. ‘Does every woman you speak to end up sharing your bed?’ She held up her hand and gave her eyes a little roll. ‘No, don’t answer that. I already know. If they’re under the age of thirty, they probably do.’
‘I don’t do married women. I might be a playboy but I do have some standards.’
‘Good to know.’ There was something about her tone and the exaggerated way she inspected her perfectly manicured nails that irked him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s very reassuring, that’s all.’
He frowned again. He could sense she was up to something. ‘W
hat is?’
‘That you don’t do married women.’
‘Why’s that?’
Her look was arch when she turned to look at him. ‘Because I’m married.’
A surge of hot, unbridled lust rose in his loins. He could not think of a woman he wanted more than her right now. It was pounding through him like an unstoppable tide. It tapped into every thread of desire he had ever felt for her, thickening it, swelling it, reinforcing it.
He covered it with a laugh. ‘But not for much longer.’
She put her chin in the air and inspected her nails again. ‘That annulment can’t happen soon enough.’ She lowered her hand back down to her lap and studied it for a moment. ‘I can’t think of a worse forty-eight hours in my life.’
‘Hell of a short marriage,’ he said after a little pause. ‘Do you think that’s some sort of record?’
She shrugged one of her slim shoulders a little without looking at him. ‘Maybe.’
Another silence.
‘Are you heading back to Paris after this?’ Remy asked. ‘This’ being the sign-off of their brief marriage. He didn’t want to admit it but he would miss her. A bit. A niggly bit. She was incredibly annoying but vastly entertaining. He could think of worse things to do with his time than spar with her. She stimulated him physically and intellectually. Not many women did that.
In fact, he couldn’t think of the last one that had...
‘I have a shoot in Barbados.’ Her shoulders went down dejectedly. ‘I have to lose at least three pounds before then.’
‘You’re joking, surely?’
She gave him a resigned look. ‘No one wants to see a bloated belly in a bikini they’re going to pay a hundred and fifty pounds for, are they?’
‘But you’ve got an amazing belly.’ He’d been having shower fantasies about it for years. He compared other women to her. He knew it was wrong but he couldn’t help it. She was his benchmark. That billboard in New York all those years ago had nailed it for him. No one even came close.
He suddenly found himself imagining her belly swelling...growing larger with the bloom of a child...his child...
Whoa! What are you thinking?
She pressed her lips together. ‘I’ve got a belly like every other woman. It has its good days and its bad days.’
Remy studied her for a moment. ‘Is that why you don’t eat?’
She visibly bristled. ‘I do eat.’