‘It’s hard not to. It’s very comfortable.’
‘How do you usually travel?’
‘I don’t much.’
Oh? ‘I thought it was one of your hobbies.’
Her eyebrows rose. ‘Why would you think that?’
‘It was on your profile. Along with music and books.’
‘Oh. Right. Yes,’ she said after a pause. ‘I’m surprised you remember.’
‘I remember it all,’ he said. ‘The pictures in particular.’
She flushed and looked away. ‘Ah. Yes. Those.’
‘They seemed out of character.’
‘I was desperate and had had three glasses of wine.’ She gave a slight shrug. ‘Not a strategy I can currently deploy, unfortunately.’
‘Do you need to?’ he asked, wondering for a moment whether she was as unsettled by him as he was by her and finding it an oddly pleasing thought.
‘No, of course not,’ she said dryly. ‘What could possibly be stressful about being blackmailed into a fake engagement?’ Which, to his mild disappointment, firmly dispelled that idea. ‘Anyway, my real hobby is numbers.’
‘Numbers?’
She nodded. ‘That’s partly why I became an accountant. Outside work, I love puzzles and brainteasers and things, and don’t get me started on calculus. But I couldn’t exactly put that in my profile. Numbers are hardly sexy.’
They were when she was talking about them. Her whole face lit up and her eyes sparkled. ‘What do you like about numbers?’ he asked with a baffling desire to expand the topic so he could see her light up some more.
‘The reliability of them. They’re black and white. They never let you down.’ The look she shot him then was pointed. ‘You know where you are with numbers.’
‘Yet they’re easy to manipulate.’
She arched an eyebrow. ‘And you’d know all about manipulation, wouldn’t you?’
He ruthlessly ignored the flaring of his conscience. ‘I’m not going to apologise, Kate.’
‘I’d be flabbergasted if you did,’ she said. ‘So what about you? How do you relax?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Don’t you have hobbies?’
‘I don’t have time.’
‘All work and no play...’
‘Are you suggesting I’m dull?’
She tilted her head and regarded him, her gaze leaving trails of fire in its wake a
s it ran over him. ‘Dull is not the word I would use to describe you.’
‘Then what is?’
‘Single-minded. Devious. Merciless. Cold. Calculating. Completely lacking in empathy. Oh, and mercenary.’