With other boyfriends—with everyone, really, except David sometimes—she felt as though she was always pretending to be someone else. Someone she didn’t want to be—happy-go-lucky, ditsy Daisy, who never quite pulled it off, whether ‘it’ was a relationship or her career.
But with Rollo, it was different.
She felt different.
Unsurprisingly, she thought grimly. Even aside from his being one of the richest men in the country, it wasn’t exactly a run-of-the-mill relationship. Her other boyfriends might have been lazy and thoughtless and immature, but none had blackmailed her into playing their wife.
But it wasn’t just the framework of their relationship that was making her feel so blindsided. It was Rollo himself—or rather the way he demanded a truthfulness, an honesty, that other men did not. Not just with facts but with herself. With him there was nowhere to hide. He wanted all of her. The good, the bad and the pretend-it-never-happened. No one had ever got under her skin and turned her inside out like that.
It made her feel helpless, off balance, and yet in his arms she felt warm and secure, all her old fears and doubts about herself kept at bay by the steady beat of his heart.
She felt her own heartbeat stumble as a flush of heat crept over her cheeks.
That was the trouble with sex.
She’d been there before, and each time it had been the same old story. Sex felt so intimate. And it was—physically. Only really it was nothing but bodies wrapping round one another.
She frowned. It sounded if not bleak, then mechanical, and not at all like the way she had felt with Rollo. But then sex with him had been beyond anything she’d ever imagined. She’d never responded to any man like that—so fiercely, so freely. It was exhilarating—and terrifying. At times she couldn’t even recognise herself. Who was this woman who initiated and demanded so much? But it had felt good to be that woman. To be herself—the Daisy she had wanted to be for so many years.
Her thoughts slowed.
Being with Rollo felt right in other ways too. Maybe it was because they shared a secret. But it felt as though they knew other well. Almost as though they had been reunited after a long separation. Which was not only untrue, she admitted ruefully, but also made no sense whatsoever.
She felt his gaze on her face and, pushing aside her thoughts, she glanced to where his fingers were still doodling over her skin.
‘Oh, that.’ It was a small cut just above her knee. She felt a flush of heat rise over her face. ‘That’s where I banged into that board thing in your office.’
Beside her, Rollo tilted his head back, her words acting like an emergency brake on his runaway desire. His office! His hand trembled slightly against the scar on her leg.
How could he have forgotten how they met? Or the real reason she was here in his bed. He felt a flicker of irritation that he’d let his libido get in the way of business.
‘That reminds me—James Dunmore rang. He’s invited us to lunch. Apparently he very much wants to meet you.’
Daisy stared at him in silence. There was an expression on his face she didn’t quite recognise, and m
omentarily she thought it might be regret.
But his next statement instantly dispelled that idea.
‘Holiday’s over,’ he said casually. ‘Time to go back to work.’
His words echoed inside her head.
It hadn’t felt like a holiday. It had felt like a honeymoon. Either way, though, it was over.
Forcing herself to smile, she met his gaze.
‘That’s great,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll go and get dressed. We don’t want to keep him waiting.’
* * *
As the helicopter rose upwards, Daisy glanced furtively at the time on her phone. Her heart was beating nervously. Now that she was actually about to meet him, she would have liked more time to get to know the man for whom this charade was happening.
Damping down her panic, she cleared her throat. ‘Is there anything I should know about Mr Dunmore? I mean, I know the basics, but—’
Turning, Rollo stared at her, his cool expression a clear indication that the relaxed lover of the past few days had been replaced by the dispassionate property tycoon.
‘The basics will do just fine.’