Aerin chewed at one side of her lower lip. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She began to step away, but he reached out and placed his broad-spanned and tanned hand on her forearm. Her cashmere coat wasn’t enough of a barrier to block the electric heat of his touch. She could not think of a time when he had ever touched her before—or at least not since he had teasingly ruffled her hair when she was a kid. Her gaze connected to his and another fizz of awareness shot through her.
His hand fell away from her arm as if he too had felt the same current of energy, his frown deepening above his dark brown eyes. ‘Is everything all right?’ His voice was pitched low, a deep rough burr of sound that sent another delicate shiver along her spine.
Aerin swallowed thickly and gave him a strained smile. ‘Can we take this somewhere a little more private?’
‘Sure.’
He led the way to the front of his office building and Aerin followed, wondering if she was being a fool for even contemplating asking him to be a stand-in date for her reunion. But who else could she ask? She didn’t want to take a stranger or someone off a dating app. She needed someone who could act convincingly as her love interest for the weekend meet-up in Scotland. Drake was the most experienced man she knew and, even better, he had known her for years. He was perfect...well, not exactly perfect according to her soulmate checklist but good enough to get her over the line. She could not suffer the embarrassment of being the only single person at her school reunion weekend—their last reunion before one of the girls emigrated to Australia with her husband. If Aerin didn’t show up, they would assume it was because of her feelings about still being alone. She had to go and she had to take a stand-in partner. That was the plan.
‘My office is on the top floor,’ Drake said, walking past the four lifts situated on one side of the marble-floored foyer.
Aerin gave him a sideways glance of horror. ‘You’re not expecting me to walk up fifty flights of stairs?’
His mouth tilted in one of his wry smiles that never failed to make her stomach flip-flop. ‘I have my own private lift back here.’ He shouldered open a door and indicated for her to come through while he held it open for her. She moved past him in the doorway, catching an alluring waft of his lemon-and-lime-based aftershave on her way past his tall and lean athletic frame. The door closed behind him with a solid thump, and he led her to a lift marked Private. Drake took out a security tag from his trouser pocket and used it against the sensor and the doors swished open. He held one muscular arm against the lift door and said, ‘After you.’
Aerin stepped inside the lift and he followed her in, the doors closing on a whisper behind him. The sensation of being enclosed in a small space alone with Drake Cawthorn sent her heart rate soaring. The lift was mirrored on three sides, and she caught a glimpse of her flushed features and inwardly cringed. Why did she always have to act like an awkward teenage girl around him? Was it because he was the epitome of sophisticated man about town? A self-made billionaire playboy who had women from all over the globe flocking after him? She was a successful businesswoman, not a gauche teenager.
Well...a single-and-hating-it successful businesswoman. She loved the success, not the singledom.
There was a pinging sound when the lift arrived at Drake’s floor. ‘This way,’ he said, and she followed him down a wide plushily carpeted corridor, past a reception area where a middle-aged woman was typing on a computer. Aerin was fairly certain it was the same woman she had spoken to on a couple of occasions when she’d called to book an appointment for clients.
‘Hold my calls, please, Cathleen,’ Drake said.
Cathleen’s smile of greeting was friendly towards her but Aerin wasn’t sure if it was one of recognition or not. ‘Will do.’
Drake led Aerin to a door marked with his name on a simple plaque. He opened the door and gave a brief on-off smile to indicate for her to go in. She stepped over the threshold and glanced around at the neat but understated décor. Drake’s qualifications were framed on one wall to the left of his large wooden desk. She suspected they were only there to display to his clients he was more than qualified to act for them rather than out of any sense of pride in his own achievements. She knew that Drake had graduated with First Class Honours and taken out the university prize, but she had heard that from her brother, not Drake. There was a selection of artwork on the other walls—nothing too over the top but tasteful landscapes in an old-world style—and the windows afforded a spectacular view over the River Thames and Tower Bridge.
‘Take a seat. Can I get Cathleen to bring you a coffee or tea?’ Drake asked, shrugging off his coat and hanging it inside a cupboard near his desk.
‘No, thanks. I had one not long ago.’ Actually, she’d had three, which was probably why her pulse was racing so fast. Caffeine courage instead of Dutch courage was never a good idea. Her heart was palpitating from the stimulant...or was it because the thought of asking Drake Cawthorn this favour was sending her heart rhythm way out of whack?
Aerin sat, knowing he was too polite to take his own seat until she had taken hers. She placed her tote bag on her lap and laid her hands on top to keep it from slipping to the floor.
Drake sat in his office chair and rolled it closer to his desk, his forearms resting on the polished surface, his fingers loosely interlaced. Aerin’s gaze drifted to those long, tanned fingers and she wondered what it would feel like to have them glide along her skin. She tried to disguise a little shiver, tried but failed. Why was she suddenly thinking about his hands touching her? He was not the type of man she could ever build a future with. He was too worldly, too cynical.
‘Are you cold? I can turn up the heating if you like.’
‘No, I’m fine...’ She licked her lips and forced a smile, conscious of the glowing warmth in her cheeks and the nerves eating at the lining of her stomach like piranha teeth. ‘I have a...a favour to ask.’
He lifted his scar-interrupted eyebrow in an arc, his sharply intelligent gaze unwavering on hers. ‘Go on.’
Aerin gripped her tote bag a little more firmly. Her heart beat out a syncopated rhythm in her chest.Boom-pitty-boom...pitty-pitty-boom-boom.
‘I have a high school reunion this weekend. It’s a drinks and dinner catch-up in a remote village an hour out of Edinburgh, close to our old boarding school, and I... I have no one to take me.’
Drake lifted his arms off his desk and leaned back in his chair, his expression unreadable. ‘Why can’t you go on your own?’
Another wave of heat exploded in her cheeks. ‘For the last twelve years I’ve met up with my school friends once a year just before Christmas and I’ve always gone alone. It wasn’t so bad in the early years because some of the girls were single or between partners. But I’m now the only one without a partner. I can’t face yet another year without producing a date. It’s so mortifying to be the last singleton. I’ll never hear the end of it. They teased me so much last time I thought I would die of embarrassment.’
‘Then why go if they’re only going to give you a hard time?’
Aerin absently fiddled with the silver buckle on her tote bag. His gaze flicked to her busy fingers and she forced herself to stop their restive movements. She got the sense he was reading her, analysing her, observing every nuance of her expression and it made her feel exposed and terribly unsophisticated. He was only seven years older than her but in terms of experience it was more like a century. An aeon.
‘We have a perfect track record of meeting up. Twelve years and not one of us has failed to show up. I don’t want to be the one to break it. But if I were not to show up, everyone is going to assume I’m embarrassed about still being single, so I have to show up with someone—I can’t win either way. I was talking to Harper and she suggested I ask you, since you’ve known me a long time. It’s either that or hire a male escort.’
Drake shot out of his chair, his features set in frowning lines. ‘You willnotdo that.’ The stern note of authority in his tone would have annoyed her on any other occasion but for some strange reason, this time, it did not.
She looked up at him hopefully. ‘So, does that mean you’ll be my date for the night?’