‘You look terrified.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘I do know what we’re doing here, and I know that moving in with you isn’t a part of it. I just meant that I love the house. You need to stop freaking out every time that something I say makes you think I’m trying to trap you into committing to me. We’re not even together. I don’t understand why you keep thinking I’m trying to make you do something you don’t want to do. This was your idea.’
* * *
Because if he started to think that she might stay, then he had to be afraid that she might leave. It didn’t make any sense, of course it didn’t. He knew that they weren’t really dating. Knew that her trip to his home was part of their charade and nothing more. But irrational fears were just that—irrational. And any time that he got the feeling that Lara might want to stay, might want to make this thing more than a fantasy, he got this feeling like a hook in his gut, a wrench, an inkling of what it might feel like when she would inevitably leave him, and he couldn’t help but retreat.
He’d been here before. He knew he threw up these walls and barriers when he liked someone too much. It had destroyed relationships before, and he was determined that this wasn’t going to come between him and Lara. If he was willing to risk that, then he wouldn’t be so sure that fake dating was the only romantic future that was available to them.
‘Jannes!’ he heard shouted by someone in the crowd of people outside the yacht club, and he turned to see his agent walking towards him. Lara slipped her hand into his. She didn’t break her stride or even loo
k up at him, just gave him this little show of togetherness as though it was nothing.
He had to keep his head on the job here, which was securing sponsorship for his next transatlantic race. Otherwise, the three months he had pencilled in for the race next season started to stretch uncomfortably in front of him. Standing still always felt like this. He had learned as a kid that it was a lot less painful to tell himself that he was racing back to school for extra training than because it was better to walk away than be left somewhere. When he had signed up for every sports club and extracurricular activity, he had told himself that he was just a sporty kind of guy, not that he couldn’t bear the thought of sitting with nothing but his own thoughts to distract him.
‘Lara, lovely to see you again,’ Chris, Jannes’s agent, said, looking a little surprised to see her with him. Jannes rolled his eyes—was it so out of character that he turned up with the same girl twice? Okay, stupid question. But Chris was only giving him that look because of the bad press he’d been getting before this thing with Lara, and every word of those articles had been fictional. He had wanted to deny it publicly but, according to his manager, that would just add fuel to the fire, and now his career was at risk because his sponsors weren’t happy. He loved his job, but it came with a cost—and this was it. He would be happy if he never had to take another meeting with a sponsor again. But, unless he happened to find a spare few million to fund his ocean-going lifestyle, he couldn’t see that happening any time soon.
Chris dragged them over to meet Spencer, the representative from a new online bank who were looking to raise their profile with sponsorship, and within half a minute of him introducing Lara she had them charmed and eating out of her hand. It was always that way with her—she was so disarmingly friendly that it was impossible not to fall in love with her.
He remembered the first time he’d met her, at a party thrown by a sportswear brand. When she’d walked up to him with a tray of canapés she’d swiped from the wait staff, and had asked him if he was as bored as she was. She had suggested that they help out the servers to liven things up a bit. By the end of the night they’d been firm friends, and if he had known one thing it was that he wanted her in his life. Which put to bed any temptation he had felt to see if it could go further. Dating her would be a fast track to alienating her—he knew his limitations. He knew the damage that he carried around inside himself, and the harm that could do to others if they got too close. Hurting himself by taking a risk was unappealing. Hurting Lara was unthinkable.
He loved to watch her in action at events like this—her complete lack of social niceties, which translated into charm rather than rudeness. If anyone else said half the things that she did, they’d be met with stony silence. And yet Lara always managed to cultivate a circle of guffaws that followed her around a party. He could always locate her by listening for the most outraged laughter.
Spencer was not immune to her charms, it seemed. Lara was listening with rapt attention as he explained the features of his new banking app—a subject Jannes knew she wasn’t the least bit interested in. And all the time that she was nodding along and asking probing questions, she never once let go of his hand. It shouldn’t be the part of this that was holding his attention—and yet there was something about her warm palm pressing against his that had shut off key operating pathways in his brain.
He snapped back to attention when he heard mention of the transatlantic record attempt, and he looked from Spencer to Lara, trying to catch up with the conversation.
‘Lara was just telling me your plans for next summer. You’ve got your eye on that speed record, eh?’
‘Well, he’s already the youngest to cross single-handed and the youngest to skipper a circumnavigation,’ Lara said without hesitation. ‘I keep telling him to leave some records for somebody else, but he doesn’t listen to me.’
‘Well, I like your ambition,’ Spencer said. But Jannes was having difficulty looking away from Lara, or from ignoring the swelling in his chest he felt hearing her list his achievements. He hadn’t known she’d been paying that much attention to what he’d been up to—they rarely spoke about work. ‘And I know there’s an issue with the press coverage. Sorry to bring it up—’ he slid an apologetic look to Lara ‘—but you seem like a solid sort of chap to me.’
Which had to be entirely Lara’s doing, Jannes knew, mainly because he had barely managed to get a word in the entire conversation.
‘I’m not making any promises, of course,’ Spencer went on. ‘But I think that Chris and I have a lot to talk about.’
Jannes looked at Lara as Spencer walked away. ‘How do you do that?’ he asked her, mouth agape.
‘What?’ she asked with a bewildered smile.
‘Charm people like that?’ Jannes said. ‘He would have given you anything you asked for.’
‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘I listen. I talk. I’m honest.’
It was more than that. There was just something about Lara that was so easy to fall in love with. In a friendly way, he reminded himself, spotting the way that his thoughts were heading. He had only fallen in love with her in a friendly way. ‘You know,’ he observed lightly, ‘not everyone likes honesty.’
‘They do with me,’ Lara said with another smile, but narrowing her eyes at him.
‘I know. I noticed that. I’m wondering how we bottle that and sell it so you can be my next sponsor.’
She laughed, and Jannes breathed a sigh of relief that they had swum out of deeper waters, for now, anyway.
‘Well, if you figure it out, let me know. I think I could stand being a billionaire, as an entirely selfless act, of course. So, do you have any more meetings, or shall we go have fun?’
‘Why does it always make me nervous when you say things like that?’