‘It’s in Liverpool. I have to be there early to go through the presenting stuff. I don’t want you to have to sit around getting bored. I’ll get them to arrange a car for you. Meet you there. Does that work for you?’
‘Fine. Fine. I guess I’ll see you there.’
CHAPTER SIX
IF THE BACK of Lara’s wedding jumpsuit had been sent to test him, then surely this dress was going to end him. He was talking to his manager when she arrived. From the corner of his eye he had spotted long tanned legs, and it was only when his eyes had reached her face that he realised he was looking at Lara. He stopped talking abruptly, and when he heard his manager call his name for the third time he realised he’d been staring.
At the top, the dress was positively demure, cut high on the neck with sleeves past her wrist bones. Midnight-blue crystals covered her body, down over her hips to the top of her thighs, where the dress stopped abruptly, revealing those long soft thighs and the same strappy sandals he’d slipped from her ankles last Saturday night. She waved when she spotted him, and he forced his legs to move.
‘Hey, you’re here,’ he said, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek, remembering at the last minute that she was meant to be his date. He kissed her on the lips, but pulled away before he could be tempted to turn it into anything more than the lightest peck, a mere brush of skin against hers, gone practically before it had started.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said, eyes fixed on her face now. Her eyes were wide, lined with smoky black and grey, with long, long lashes that fluttered when she blinked.
‘You don’t look too bad yourself,’ she said, leaning back and tweaking the lapel of his dinner jacket. ‘I always loved you in black tie.’ He was just at the point where he was going to have to start untangling which parts of this were real and which were for show when his manager clapped him on the shoulder and held his hand out to shake with Lara.
‘You must be Lara. Glad the car got you here okay.’ He looked from Lara to Jannes with a smile on his face. ‘Okay, I’m going to let you guys catch up. Jannes can show you to your table. Look forward to talking to you more later, Lara.’
Jannes looked her up and down again, trying to form just one coherent thought and turn it into words.
‘You look amazing,’ he said.
She laughed awkwardly. ‘We did that bit already. What else have you got?’
‘Um, let’s find you a drink?’
‘Ah, much better,’ Lara said with a laugh. ‘But let’s make mine a sparkling water. If I’m the wingman tonight, I’m going to need to stay sober.’
‘Of course, the squeaky-clean image I’m meant to be cultivating,’ Jannes said. ‘But you don’t have to do or not do anything on my behalf. You’re perfect as you are,’ he said. ‘Just be yourself.’
‘Ah, there you go with the boyfriend of the year script again.’ But her cheeks had pinkened. Yes. Right. Because they were faking this. He loved her—as a friend. His hormones were briefly confused by the fact that they had kissed. But they weren’t doing any more than playing a part here—if he forgot that, Lara would end up getting hurt, and he wasn’t prepared to risk that. ‘You get the credit for briefing me in advance.’ He guided her towards the bar with a hand on the small of her back.
‘Well, if we’re going to make it look realistic...’
Because this wasn’t real, and he could never forget that he had good reasons for that. He had learned the hard way what happened when you cared more about someone than they cared back. He’d learned it when his parents had shipped him off to boarding school so that they could continue the travelling that they had put on hold when he had been born seven years earlier. He had spent his holidays with his mormor, his grandmother, in London. And saw his parents whenever their travel schedule allowed, which was something like twice a year by the time he was in his teens.
Which was why he could be sure that he could commit to this fakery with Lara. Even if he met someone who made him wonder if things could be different, he had long since given up acting on those feelings. What was the point when he already knew how it would end? So why hadn’t he just said that to Lara? Because it just seemed sad, somehow, to admit that at the age of thirty he was so afraid of being left—or of hurting someone to stop that happening—that he never even started a relationship. This thing with Lara was nothing like that.
She couldn’t leave him if it wasn’t real, if they were only acting. He couldn’t hurt her when they both knew that they were going to stop pretending just as soon as their arrangement was no longer convenient. He had to make sure he remembered that.
He showed Lara to their table as the ballroom started to fill with people, and he introduced her to his manager, agent and teammates. She saw the sidelong glances being thrown their way and wondered what they made of the situation. There was something about the knowing looks on his colleagues’ faces that made her wonder if she was missing something.
The room hushed as the lights dimmed and the awards ceremony began.
* * *
Lara was hyperconscious, now that she was sitting next to Jannes, of just how much skin her dress left exposed. Because every time Jannes leaned in to whisper something about one of the nominees or winners, the soft fabric of his trousers brushed against her bare thigh and made her shiver in response. It was just a
n involuntary physical reaction, she told herself. A reflex. Practically a sneeze. It shouldn’t make her think about his hands touching her there. She had to stop letting her brain do this to her. She was meant to be in charge here. And yet her body and her brain kept ganging up on her and trying to make her believe that indulging these fantasies about Jannes were a good idea. And if both her brain and her body were working against her, she didn’t know which part of her was meant to fight these urges.
He was her friend. That was what made this whole ‘date for a date’ thing a good idea. Neither of them had unrealistic expectations of the other. Neither of them had to air their commitment issues, because it wasn’t real. It was company and it was convenient and it didn’t need any more consideration than that.
Jannes went and did his presentation thing: she clapped him enthusiastically as he took to the stage and received his kiss on the cheek when he returned with hardly a flutter where she shouldn’t be fluttering.
In fact, she was just congratulating herself for how very responsible she was being when she realised she’d spaced out for a minute and missed something. Because on the big screen behind the stage was a picture of Jannes, soaking wet in a white dress shirt, and she couldn’t be sure that she wasn’t drooling a little. She snapped her mouth shut and smudged the corner of her lips with her finger, hoping it would look as if she was just fixing her lipstick.
She glanced across at Jannes and found him staring at her and thought that maybe she hadn’t got away with it after all. She looked back at the screen and kind of wished she hadn’t, because now Jannes was shirtless, still dripping wet, and more ripped than his narrow frame suggested. It didn’t exactly hurt that he was hanging off the side of a racing yacht, in a photoshoot that made it look as if he was in the process of winning one of those trophies that took up an entire wall of his house.
She worked out what was going on before Jannes did, which was perfect, because it meant that she got to watch as realisation dawned and just the very tips of his ears went red as he was announced as the winner of the special achievement award. The assembled guests burst into applause and whoops of celebration as she pushed Jannes to his feet. She stood too, and gave him a little push towards the stage. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her lips and she didn’t know whether it was because he was dazed or doing it for show or...she didn’t know why else. He was just maintaining their story, keeping their pretence going. It wasn’t real. It didn’t mean anything. She had to remember that, because at this minute her feelings were all too real.