Bride for Hire. Jessica Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ ironic understanding. ‘There’s another room in the suite. Maria’s been using it, but she’s going to stay with friends so she won’t need it. She’ll come in during the day, but I’ll need you to be there, too, so you might as well stay.’

      ‘What do you need me for?’ Marginally reassured by the promise of a room to herself, Daisy had just taken a bite of her roll and her voice was rather indistinct.

      ‘In case people turn up.’ The wine waiter was presenting the bottle for Seth’s inspection, and he tasted the wine before giving a cursory nod and turning back to Daisy. ‘I’ve got a number of business meetings scheduled, but other people tend to drop by for one reason or another and that means you being there to prove that I can’t bear not to have you at my side.’

      ‘I can’t sit around all day just on the off chance that someone’s going to drop by,’ she protested. ‘I’ll go potty without anything to do.’

      Seth watched the waiter pour the wine into her glass. ‘I’d have thought you’d be used to that.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ asked Daisy indignantly. Most days she hardly got a chance to sit down at all!

      ‘Being an out-of-work actress,’ he explained, raising an eyebrow at her expression. ‘I’ve always imagined that meant sitting by the phone, waiting for the call to stardom.’

      She had forgotten that she was meant to be an actress. ‘That’s the advantage of an answering machine,’ she said. Really, she was getting quite good at lying! ‘It means I can keep busy.’

      ‘Doing what?’ Or can I guess from that very talented performance you gave this afternoon?’

      Daisy shot him a hostile look. She didn’t want to be reminded about that particular performance. ‘Actually, I work in a flower shop,’ she said coldly, deciding that it was best to keep as close to the truth as possible. ‘When I haven’t got a part, that is,’ she added, just to remind him of her acting credentials.

      ‘I don’t suppose you earn much in a flower shop?’ said Seth, who could have bought a whole chain of flower shops without even noticing a blip in his bank balance.

      She sighed, thinking of the last difficult year when business had fallen off and the bills had mounted. ‘No.’

      ‘I’d have thought a girl with your interest in money would have jumped at the chance of being paid to sit around,’ he said in his caustic voice. ‘It’s not as if it’s going to be hard work. There’s a television and a health club and, if the worst comes to the worst, you can always read a book.’

      ‘I suppose so,’ said Daisy without enthusiasm.

      A silence fell. Running her finger around the rim of her glass, Daisy studied the deep golden colour of the wine. She wished that she could stop noticing Seth’s hands; wished her eyes would stop following the line of his jaw back to the place below his ear where she had first kissed him. He was drinking his wine, but she could feel his uncomfortably acute gaze on her face and had the sudden, horrible certainty that he knew exactly what she was thinking.

      ‘Have you told Astra about us?’ she asked awkwardly. It was the first thing that came into her head as she searched desperately for something to say, but as soon as the words came out she could hear the implied intimacy in that ‘us’. ‘I mean, have you told her about me?’

      Seth’s expression was curiously shuttered. ‘Yes.’

      ‘What did she say?’

      ‘She was pleased, of course.’

      ‘Oh.’ Daisy felt unaccountably put out. ‘Did you tell her that I wasn’t Dee Pearce?’

      ‘I said that I’d come to an agreement with you instead of Dee,’ said Seth. ‘I didn’t go into details.’

      ‘Didn’t she want to know what I was like?’ If she had been in love with Seth Carrington she would want to know exactly who he was going to be spending so much time with, Daisy reflected. Perhaps Astra Bentingger knew that she didn’t have to worry.

      ‘I told her that you didn’t really look right for the part,’ said Seth, sounding so bored that Daisy was nettled.

      ‘Did you tell her how I convinced you to give me the part anyway?’ she asked sourly, hoping to embarrass him, but she might have known that it was impossible to do that.

      Seth merely looked across the table at her, his grey eyes inscrutable. ‘I told her that you were a better actress than you looked,’ he said. ‘I also said that I thought it extremely likely that you’d drive me round the bend but that, having got so far, I’d just have to put up with you.’

      CHAPTER THREE

      THE disgruntled silence—at least on Daisy’s side of the table—was broken by the waiter, arriving with exquisitely presented plates.

      Daisy was glad of the excuse to concentrate on her food. She found that she didn’t like the idea of Seth coolly discussing her with Astra. Have to put up with her, indeed! No wonder Astra was pleased if he had talked about her like that! Even a superwoman might have a few qualms at the idea of her man pretending to be in love with another girl, but it must have been pretty obvious that Daisy could not even be considered a rival.

      Her lobster salad with asparagus was delicious but it might as well have been ashes in Daisy’s mouth until she pulled herself together. She didn’t care what Seth and Astra thought about her. She only wanted to find Tom, and it would be a lot easier if she remembered more often that she was simply here as part of the job.

      She glanced across at Seth, who was quite unbothered by her sulky silence. It was easier to look at him when his eyes were on his plate and, as if for the first time, she noted the lines starring the corners of his eyes and the dark hair which was already beginning to show a few strands of grey at the temples. Her gaze was just following the flat, angular planes of his cheeks and the arrogant line of his nose down to his mouth when he looked up unexpectedly and caught her watching him. Daisy’s heart gave an odd little somersault as she met that steely, skewering gaze, bumping back into place so abruptly that it left her slightly breathless.

      ‘I...I suppose I should know something about you,’ she stammered, not quite sure why she felt the need to explain herself. ‘A real girlfriend would know more about you than the fact that you’re American and stinking rich.’

      ‘What more do you need to know?’ asked Seth sardonically.

      ‘Well...about your family?’ Daisy suggested. ‘Where you live, what you do...that kind of thing.’

      ‘I never talk about my family,’ he said flatly. ‘No one will expect you to know anything about them.’

      Daisy was longing to ask whether Astra knew, but there was a grim finality in Seth’s tone that warned her to steer well clear of the subject. ‘What about where you live, then?’ she asked instead. ‘Or is that a state secret too?’

      ‘I’ve got several places,’ he said indifferently. ‘Manhattan, Malibu, Cape Cod, a skiing lodge in Utah...and Cutlass Cay in the Caribbean.’

      ‘But which one’s home?’

      She СКАЧАТЬ