Книга - It’s In His Kiss

It’s In His Kiss
Eve Devon


Who do you turn to when things go wrong?Your best friend. Obviously.Sephy King’s worked flat-out to make her new lingerie business a success, only there’s a tiny snag – the marketing photos for the launch party are a disaster.Luke Jackson will help her, won’t he? They just need to strip off, model gorgeous, sexy underwear together and take more photos! So what if the stunning body he’s been hiding makes Sephy’s eyes pop out? And when he holds her, she suddenly wishes they were in her bedroom…alone? He’s her best friend.Then Luke asks Sephy for a return favour: to pose as his fake fiancée to get his parents temporarily off his back. It’s a risky strategy – but she’s sure she can pull it off.Until he kisses her…









It’s In His Kiss

EVE DEVON







A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)


HarperImpulse an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2016

Copyright © Eve Devon 2016

Cover images © Shutterstock.com (http://www.Shutterstock.com)

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Cover design by Cherie Chapman

Eve Devon asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

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and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

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Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780007558476

Version 2016-03-30


For Lana and the oodles of joyful ‘Darth Daisy’ inspiration you supply and because one day you will be old enough to know what your ‘Mad Auntie Eve’ does for a living!


Table of Contents

Cover (#uaafeebc5-a0a5-5f2e-ab27-7d7380892d32)

Title Page (#ub4a20935-89b5-57ea-a12a-d17e16000e48)

Copyright (#u8d7de93d-95d4-5502-ac9b-d1066ee759e3)

Dedication (#u3532073c-54d4-5e76-aab7-da267233840f)

Chapter One (#u089419f0-894c-5e0f-acd4-53c61d83fe18)

Chapter Two (#u560c76a8-a1e2-5d9f-9171-4e158080c206)

Chapter Three (#u5ca4b3a6-b0fb-5978-9d2b-f61a3efaea76)

Chapter Four (#u3f05d904-d55d-5a76-b060-ae1cf6bf5430)

Chapter Five (#ub5f2b2b2-6e85-5f4c-b4ef-cac04eff20aa)



Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)



About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)



Also by Eve Devon (#litres_trial_promo)



About HarperImpulse (#litres_trial_promo)



About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




CHAPTER ONE (#ubb881ea2-9388-550c-aac5-b8e62c800f99)


‘Wait – what? Did you just ask me to sell sex at the launch party for your lingerie line?’

Luke Jackson’s usually reserved tone had taken on a new, gruff edge that trickled over Sephy King’s senses, making her heartbeat spike alarmingly. As if her heart needed any more of a workout.

Standing on the newly constructed catwalk in the large ballroom of the King’s family estate, it turned out that T minus two weeks to the launch of her new lingerie collection, Seraphic, and with her stress levels higher than the Shard with the Cheese Grater building stuck on top of it, Sephy’s heart was skipping, dipping and nose-diving quite enough, thank you very much.

Lord, could this go more spectacularly wrong? She should never have attempted to ask him without first practising. She already found his rock-solid approach to their friendship way hotter than she should, without introducing words like ‘sex’ to their banter.

She flicked a look to Luke and saw that her friend had gone from slouching in one of the two hundred gilt-framed chairs surrounding the catwalk, to sitting up a little more straight and a lot more alert.

Damn. There was now no way to retract her garbled plea.

Sephy tried to remind herself that she was good at thinking on her feet. That she excelled at rolling with the punches. But this was Luke she had just made a fool of herself in front of and embarrassment was brought to her on a whiff of defeat that had her shoulders dipping a little.

Clearing her throat she went with a lame, ‘It’s not that I want you to sell,’ she paused and flapped a hand about, creating a new and interesting gesture to indicate the word ‘sex’, ‘specifically – it’s more, the idea of it.’

‘The idea of it?’ Luke’s eyebrows remained in the region of his hairline. ‘I thought you asked me over here to check out how well it was all coming together before getting around to asking me to hand out a few catalogues on the night?’

‘Actually, I have someone for that. What I’m asking for involves a more,’ she licked her lips and searched her head for a tactful phrase, ‘hands-on approach.’

‘Hands-on?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Okay. So, then, you’re going to have to be more explicit about the sex thing.’

Sephy blinked as Luke relaxed back against the chair he was sitting on, his arms stretching out to rest against the backs of the chairs either side of him in a pose that practically shouted, ‘and Honey, I’m all ears.’

She forbade herself to drop her gaze to where his olive-green tee now stretched across his impressively honed chest. Friends weren’t supposed to notice things like that and it was bad enough that the tips of her ears had grown hot at hearing the words ‘explicit’ and ‘sex’ coming out of his mouth. No way did she need her eyes getting in on his act.

And it had to be an act, didn’t it? How could Luke not be as mortified as she to be having this conversation? But as her eyes disobeyed her, and tracked back from their circuit around the vaulted-ceilinged room to land on his face, she caught the unmistakable edge of a grin creeping on to his expression.

Double-triple-quadruple damn.

This had to mean the dimples were about to make an appearance.

Sephy steeled herself for their impact.

Mortification wasn’t even on his radar, was it?

Figured.

Okay, so she was going to have to pull on her big-girl panties and get explicit.

She could do that, right?

She’d already had to employ her most fierce expression while using words of one syllable to get the printer to correct all the signage she wanted for the launch party. Then, in order to get the contractor to finish the catwalk ahead of schedule so that she could see how it all looked and make any changes to the layout in good time, she’d had to go from a winning smile and cajoling tone to being downright expletively explicit.

Neither experience had made Sephy feel great. She didn’t usually have to operate by getting all up in a person’s face. Usually all she had to do was smile. She tried one out for Luke, now.

Just ask him, her sister Nora had calmly advised her when Sephy had told her that she had figured out what would absolutely fix the problem she had with her advertising campaign.

Sephy wanted to roll her eyes as she remembered exactly how many times Nora had thought her sage ‘just ask him’ advice bore repeating. It was at least once every time Sephy tried to think what else she could do to get around the fact that the problem with her marketing campaign was now perfectly encapsulated in the sleek banners that draped down from the ceiling either side of the catwalk and against the walls of the room.

She glanced at the banners now, hoping against hope that what she’d see would somehow have changed.

But no. The models on them, while looking gorgeously every-woman, like she had insisted upon, all made her lingerie look…okay.

Just – okay.

Sephy’s head dropped to her chest.

She wanted – needed the artwork to scream ‘Crave Me’.

Because although she believed in her designs, what she really needed, above everything, was to sell her designs.

In two weeks’ time she needed to be able to look herself in the eye and know that she had given her absolute all to secure the best-possible start for her business and Nora’s whole grinning-like-a-Cheshire-cat thing that had accompanied every one of her ‘just ask hims’ had made Sephy want to sock her in both eyes.

Like it was that easy to ask someone to do some modelling for you.

Like it was that easy to ask Luke.

What she should have done was phone her brother Jared for another business opinion. He could probably have convinced her that all the doubts plaguing her over how non-effective the advertising campaign she’d signed off on was, were all simply down to nerves.

Jared, though, was weeks away from marrying his fiancée Amanda and displaying all the signs of being so in love she wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d just grinned like a buffoon and offered up the same unhelpful advice as Nora.

Huh.

Now she came to think of it, Nora’s grinning was probably down to the fact that she had recently got engaged to Ethan Love.

Marriage.

Nuptials.

Weddings.

Sephy shuddered.

It was like some giant conspiracy.

She didn’t begrudge Jared and Nora finding their soul-mates, but she much preferred it when her brother and sister had been completely focused on their businesses. What she wouldn’t do now to go back and spend halcyon days soaking up their knowledge.

Not that she’d had the slightest interest in running a business then. She’d had other priorities. Namely: raising her daughter, Daisy.

Sephy felt a cramp forming in her shoulders and as her hands came up to knead the tight muscle and encourage them to decamp from the vicinity of her ears, she sighed.

Could she really do this?

Could she still devote the time and attention her precocious five-year-old needed, and make Seraphic a success?

Of course she could, she repeated to herself. She’d had clients come to her for couture lingerie for the past six months and she’d managed. She could step it up and expand.

She could.

She had to.

‘Hey, not to pressure you,’ Luke chimed in helpfully, ‘but how much longer are you planning on stalling explaining how I fit into this sex-plan thing of yours, because don’t you need to go pick Daisy up in an hour or so?’

‘It would only be your hands,’ Sephy blurted out.

Luke lifted his hands for inspection and as he held them up, Sephy sucked on her bottom lip.

Last night, in a mind-blowing turn of events, Sephy had learned that Luke Jackson had the most amazing, incredible, beautiful hands.

The discovery had taken place in her living room. A room she’d walked into every day for the last five years. But when she had entered her living room last night, it was to find Luke holding up one of her scarlet satin bras. Instead of looking bashful that he’d been caught trying to put it back into the bag it had fallen out of, Luke had looked…hot and maybe a little bit bothered.

To be fair, Sephy probably could have explained that she had stashed some of her more colourful bras into her bag to bring over here and see if a splash of colour might be the missing ingredient in the banners.

But she had been too busy zeroing in on the way his hands had held the bra, making it look like one of the sexiest garments she had ever designed.

Snapshot after snapshot had flooded her imagination.

Male hands on a female body, highlighting and showcasing the lingerie the model was wearing.

Luke’s hands.

‘I’m going to need more information,’ Luke said, his deep, rough voice exuding patience.

Dark-brown eyes met his moss-green ones.

‘More?’ Really, was it so difficult to understand? ‘I’m talking a few photographs of your hands…and your torso. Sans shirt.’ That last bit had totally been said under her breath because her eyes had taken another peek at the way that soft cotton pulled across hard muscle and more images had flooded her brain so that she was suddenly one-hundred-per-cent sure that what would make her collection fly off the shelf was if Luke’s upper body…his upper naked body was also somehow in the photos.

In desperation she looked around for her usually ever-present coffee. She needed a drink. Stat.

The next thing she knew Luke was fishing his phone out of his pocket.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘I’m making a doctor’s appointment,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘because one of us definitely needs some help. Either my ears need syringing or you really did ask me to take off my clothes so that you could use my body to sell sex at the opening of your lingerie line – in which case it’s you who needs the help.’

‘That’s exactly what I’m trying to ask you for, idiot – some help.’ He knew she wasn’t any good at this; couldn’t he at least cut her a little slack?

‘I’m thinking the kind of help you need comes more under the heading of–’

‘Hey,’ Sephy cocked a hip in indignation, ‘if you’re sitting there thinking this is a “men-in- white-coats job”, then it’s on you to help me sort out childcare.’

Luke’s head snapped up from his phone. ‘I’m sorry, but did you ask me for help. Again. As in twice in one day? Once for,’ Luke paused and gave his head a quick shake, as if even his massive brain couldn’t quite compute what she was asking him to do. ‘And then, again, just now?’

‘Oh, forget it,’ Sephy said, walking to the edge of the catwalk and hopping down. Normally she could stand a little being laughed at. She had learnt that getting over herself allowed her to concentrate on making sure Daisy’s needs came first. But, honestly, if she had known starting a business was going to turn her inside out like this…

She still would have done it, she thought on an inward sigh. She didn’t have any other choice. Waiting until she finished her degree in fashion and then trying to get an internship somewhere wasn’t going to cut it. Not now she needed funds for her and Daisy to live on.

Marching towards the heavy wooden double doors of the ballroom, she heard the scrape of a chair being pushed back.

‘Hey, wait up.’

‘Look, it was a dumb idea,’ Sephy said, shoving her long hair behind her ears before reaching out to grab the door handle. ‘Way too left-field.’ She tried out a light laugh to show it was no big deal, but when Luke didn’t murmur in acknowledgement, she added, ‘Put it down to me being so tired I can hardly think straight.’

When he stepped up behind her she nearly let out a squeal. They didn’t do getting in each other’s personal body space. But then, maybe the part where she tried asking him to pose semi-nude and model for her kind of switched things up.

‘Look, left field or not, at least explain why for me,’ Luke said, his voice now gentle and she hated that she had brought that out in him. She could not remember the last time someone had felt the need to treat her with kid gloves.

‘Come on, what’s the worst that could happen?’ he added.

Sephy swallowed and continued to stare at the century-old patina on the oak doors in front of her.

What was the worst that could happen?

The worst that could happen was that he would see her as needy.

As less than she wanted to be.

Then he would say ‘no’ anyway and it would be always there between them. She didn’t have time to then be worrying if he’d said ‘no’ because she had finally crossed that invisible line she’d so carefully carved into the sand between them.

‘Why is it you Kings have such a problem with asking for help?’ Luke said, stepping back and showing the first sign of impatience with her.

‘Just lucky, I guess,’ Sephy whispered and turned around to face him, still feeling that the only way to save her ad campaign was to have a proper shot at asking Luke to model for her.

‘Cursed, more like,’ Luke muttered and shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans.

He was right.

It was a curse of sorts.

The competitive streak that ran through the Kings bordered on the ridiculous. The fact that she and her siblings never wanted to appear like they couldn’t achieve whatever they set out to achieve was arrogant beyond belief, and the blame lay squarely at the feet of their father, Jeremy King.

Bracing automatically, she felt the wave of grief rise up to take a hefty swipe at her. The emotional maelstrom her father’s death had brought was in such opposition to the studied passivity she had strived for while he was alive that sometimes she wondered if he was up there just to punish her.

But because life was better when she wasn’t feeling angry or negative, she deliberately stepped away from her thoughts and concentrated on her current problem instead.

The difficulty in asking Luke for help really had little to do with wanting to achieve things herself and everything to do with how good he was at helping.

There was this remarkable generosity within him and Sephy was finding it harder and harder to keep the score of who helped who balanced.

He had already helped her develop a storefront for her website and made sure it could handle the extra traffic she hoped for. Now here she was, two weeks to the launch of Seraphic and he’d had to go and inspire her to come up with the perfect solution to her latest problem.

Trying to gather up her thoughts she side-stepped Luke, chose a chair at random, sat down and stared up at the banners.

‘What do you see when you look at these?’ she asked, gesturing to them.

Luke walked up to her and sat down on the chair next to hers, his head tipped up to the life-sized models staring back down at him.

‘I see underwear models.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Surely that’s the point,’ he said.

‘No. That is so not the point.’ Frustrated, Sephy twisted in her seat to look at him while she tried to explain. ‘I need you to see “I want you”.’

Luke went absolutely still.

The ballroom felt like it had shrunk to the size of a steam-room for two, and suddenly Sephy really wanted to play with her hair, or lick her lips, or meet Luke’s quiet and intense gaze with one of her own.

Wow. Okay. Of all the Freudian slip-ups, in all the world…

Dragging in a breath she tore her gaze away to face forward again and said, ‘I mean, if you were a woman looking at this banner,’ she opened her mouth to force in a little more oxygen, ‘nothing about this advert makes you drool or reach for your credit card, does it?’

For a moment, Sephy thought Luke wasn’t going to move, but then slowly he turned his head to look back at the banners.

‘Try to think about it from a female’s perspective,’ she urged. ‘And then think about all the other designer labels out there who sell lingerie.’

‘Okay,’ Luke conceded. ‘Maybe they don’t stand out as much as some of the big names, but those big names have a budget a quadrillion times larger than yours.’

‘You’re right about budget and I’m not looking to compete in that way yet, but tell me you don’t see that I could have made more of an impact with these banners.’

Luke frowned. ‘When the live models come down the catwalk–’

‘That’ll help, sure,’ she said, cutting him off. ‘But the guest list Nora helped me come up with would make London Fashion Week weep with jealousy and I need every single guest to be wowed from the moment they walk in.’

‘So where does sex come into play?’ Luke asked and Sephy tried not to blow her second chance by getting caught up in a game of how many times she could get him to say ‘sex’ and survive it.

‘You have to understand that achieving sales starts way before a buyer even gets their hands on the product. It starts with selling an experience. The most effective way to do that is to either tap into the lifestyle they already live and make the buyer associate your product with it, or, provide a snapshot of a lifestyle they want to aspire to. A lifestyle that they’ll fantasise about so much that they’ll buy my lingerie to get a step closer to it.’

Luke let out a low whistle. ‘You know, any lack of confidence you had about your ability to understand business and marketing is a crock. You have this stuff nailed.’

Sephy felt his quiet compliment warm her through. ‘Um, thank you.’

Luke shrugged like he was simply speaking the truth and cocked his head to the banners again. ‘So what is it you want these banners to sell to the women seeing them?’

‘Yeah, so, um…sex.’

‘O-kay.’

‘That’s putting it too basically.’ How could she explain that last night when she had seen him holding her bra it was as if the bra was saying ‘You want to buy me so that a guy with hands like the one holding me can take me off you,’ without, you know, having to actually say that to him?

‘Sex can be basic all the way through to advanced,’ Luke said drily, ‘I’m pretty sure I understand all the levels.’

Sephy’s stomach bounced up to meet her heart. ‘I know you do. I mean,’ she licked her lips and went for broke. ‘I can see that you could sell … that experience. That’s why, and here comes the left-field part, I really need you to be in these shots with the models.’

Silence while Luke’s eyes sought out, and then searched, hers.

Then, finally, ‘Look, I’m flattered that you feel that these,’ Luke held out his hands, ‘and this,’ he said, pointing to his upper body, ‘fit the bill, but this isn’t something you fix on the cheap. You need to hire a professional male model.’

Sephy winced. ‘I don’t have the money to do that.’

‘I’ll give you the money.’

Damn it, she didn’t want him to think this was some long-winded game of getting him to help her out with money. If she hadn’t accepted any from her brother or sister, there was absolutely, positively, no way, she was going to take it from Luke.

‘I don’t want your money, I want you.’

Luke’s square jaw went into granite mode and Sephy decided that what would help is if she quit saying she wanted him like that. It would definitely help her, because maybe deep, deep, deepest-down she could acknowledge wanting Luke, but she was never going to bring that up to a level where Luke gained first-hand knowledge of how rubbish she was at romantic entanglements. She valued the relationship they had too much.

‘All you’d need to do,’ she said, aiming for a no-big-deal tone as she steered determinedly away from a suggestion of ‘them’, ‘is stand behind the model and maybe put your hands on her hips, or something.’

‘You really think me simply standing shirtless with my hands on her body is going to sex up your lingerie shoot?’

Sephy swallowed. ‘Yes.’

Luke looked at her like she had lost it. Was it possible he spent so much time on his computer as creative director of his Zombie Freedom Fighter games that he had forgotten what he looked like?

‘Please don’t be insulted or freaked out,’ she begged. ‘Please, just think about it. I really don’t have time to source a professional model and Nora has a photographer lined up who will do the work ASAP at cost, to add to their portfolio of work.’

Sephy could feel herself coming very close to batting her eyelashes or laying a hand on his and letting it linger, but she would absolutely not use her femininity to get this from him.

‘I can give you the money you need to sort this problem,’ Luke said slowly. ‘I can loan you the money if it makes you feel better, but get my kit off, put my hands on these models and sell a sexier image of your lingerie? No.’

‘Why not?’

‘And the fact that you even have to ask,’ Luke said, running a hand through his hair in frustration.

Wait. Luke was now staring at her mouth. Had she just pouted? Oh God. She had. Pouting and Luke were verboten. Gentle flirting she could cope with, but she was always so careful not to let it become overt with him. His friendship was too important to her.

‘I’m a game designer, not a model,’ he reminded her.

‘If it’s your work you’re worried about, we could crop your head out of the shots.’

‘Sephy. Stop. You’re starting to sound desperate.’

‘I am desperate.’ Sephy mentally gave herself a slow hand-clap because that statement was hardly going to make Luke feel special.

‘You’re not desperate. You only think you are because you’ve got a quick fix in mind and you’re too tired to look at it with your business head on.

‘I am totally looking at this with my business head on. I admit it, okay? I got it wrong with this advertising campaign. Played it too safe. I should never have signed off on it.’ She shook her head slightly, as if to reject how overwhelmed, how under pressure, she felt to get this all right. ‘I can’t afford not to correct this mistake.’

‘Everyone who launches a business makes mistakes.’

‘Absolutely, but the ones who survive do so because they fix their mistakes. Come on, a couple of hours in the company of beautiful women. What’s not to like?’

‘No.’

Sephy stared at him as the simple word dropped from his lips to land between them like a boulder.

‘Wow,’ she whispered. He wasn’t even wavering? ‘I thought that last bit would tempt you, at least.’

‘Don’t make me feel bad about this,’ Luke said, standing up.

‘No. Absolutely not. Sorry.’

Luke stared down at her for a moment before turning to walk towards the ballroom’s double doors.

All of Nora’s ‘just ask hims’ must have sunk in deeper than she suspected. She had really thought, after explaining it all properly to him, he would agree.

His emphatic refusal had her reacting childishly. So childishly that as he reached the doors she heard herself emit a clucking sound.

Luke turned around, his expression a mixture of thunder and incredulity. ‘Oh, you did not just make the sound of a chicken.’




CHAPTER TWO (#ubb881ea2-9388-550c-aac5-b8e62c800f99)


Seraphina King had put sex and nakedness and ‘I Want You’ into spoken-out-loud sentences and quite frankly, even days later and watching Daisy for her in an effort to feel less bad about turning her down, Luke was still a little pissed off.

What the hell had she been thinking? Did she really not have any idea how long it took a guy to scour those kinds of words from his mind so that he got to enjoy a platonic friendship with someone like her?

He didn’t care how stressed she was over the launch of her business.

Okay.

He did.

He knew she had been finding it tough ever since her father died. Jeremy King’s reputation in business had to have her stressing over every decision, wondering what he would have thought. Or wondering what her brother, who ran a large property-acquisition company in New York and what her sister, who ran the family King Property Corporation, did think.

Plus, Luke knew her mother going to New York meant Sephy not only had to keep an eye on the estate, she also lost out on guaranteed childcare help, which meant fewer hours to sew and work on the launch.

Even so…

How did she not see that asking him to sex up her ad campaign was crossing a line?

And when he’d said no, like any sane non-professional-model friend would have, she had clucked at him like a chicken.

As if basically calling him a coward was going to help.

‘I now pronounce you husband and wife.’

Luke looked over the top of his laptop screen to where a half-pint Darth Vader was busy playing marriage celebrant to Princess Belle and a slightly dazed-looking Woody from Toy Story.

His smile reflex kicked in as Darth Vader, aka five-year-old Daisy King, decided the only obvious way to mark the end of the ceremony was to knight her newly married toys with her lightsaber.

Not quite what it had been designed for, but she definitely got points for imagination.

Bringing his gaze back to his laptop screen, Luke settled back against the sofa cushions and stared at his new computer-game project brief he’d helpfully titled: What Happens After All The Zombies Are Slain???

Two seconds into staring at it and his concentration wandered.

Helping out with Daisy was the kind of thing friends did for friends.

Helping out with that other thing? Insanity.

Thanks to Lily and Steve Jackson, Luke might not be the same shadow of a kid he had been under his biological mother’s roof, or all the other foster homes he had been placed in, but that didn’t mean he was happy being put on display.

He really had nothing to feel guilty about.

Daisy picked up Woody and Princess Belle and started walking them down the makeshift aisle she had created out of flowers pulled from the garden behind the row of garages that formed the ground floor of the apartment she and Sephy lived in on the King estate.

What he wouldn’t give right now for a dose of Daisy’s unfiltered imagination so that he could crack on with some work.

Actually, scratch that.

He had enough unfiltered, left-field, downright distracting imagination coming from her mother.

Luke stared at his screen and re-doubled his efforts to think about what types of challenges he wanted the users of his new world-building game to have to overcome, because his latest zombie evolution wasn’t cutting it for him any more. Lately, he’d get so far on development before hitting a brick wall, but he had to keep faith that the online multi-platform role-playing gaming community would love his new game as much as the Zombie Freedom Fighter series he had created.

He didn’t get why he was finding it so hard to create this new game. It wasn’t as if he was in the ‘second album’ slump of despair. He had managed to navigate that scary time by gritting his teeth and being so determined to succeed – to better the success of his first game even, that nothing could have stopped him.

So why the problem? This getting to the edge of a precipice and staring into the void beyond had started even before Sephy had thrown him a curve ball.

He tracked the mouse pad with his finger and clicked on his email inbox. If he couldn’t get into the design groove while Daisy was happy playing with her toys, he could at least deal with a few emails.

‘Traitor,’ he muttered under his breath when the arrow cursor on his screen bypassed the fresh batch of business emails and went straight to the middle of his inbox list.

Luke stared hard at the screen.

So, yeah, he thought he might know what had him so distracted from his work, and it all started and finished with the subject line: Get the cleaner in lad…Lily and I are coming for a visit!

It had to be the first time Steve and Lily Jackson had taken a break from fostering, and how had they chosen to celebrate that break? By visiting each of the brood that had flown the coop over the years, so that they could see them in their own habitats and check for themselves that they were all right.

Luke had taken great care over the years to assure them he was absolutely fine. Right up to the inclusion earlier this year of a little white lie that had put paid to the ever-increasing fretting that he was focusing way too much on work and not nearly enough on a personal life.

His fingers rubbed over his chest to ease the stab of guilt.

Yeah. Totally shouldn’t have lied like that.

Because now, if he didn’t come up with a plan and his lie was exposed, he was going to have to endure the unspoken lecture about how they had taught him differently. But worse than that, he would witness their disappointment morph into worry that they’d somehow failed him, and they deserved so much better than that.

‘Mummy!’ Daisy suddenly observed, at the sound of the front door opening, and Luke was saved from thinking about what he was going to do about the email and white-lie situation.

A couple of seconds later and Sephy King walked into her lounge.

Damn, but it was hard to stay mad at her, Luke thought, aware of his eyelids performing the slow-blink thing that they always did when he saw her.

He let the gesture slide because you couldn’t look at Sephy, register all the siren-like qualities – the oval-shaped face, almond-shaped eyes, bow-shaped lips, long jet-black silky hair, and a body that could, and probably had, made more than one man beg, and not react a little.

He was just lucky he had got it down to that small betraying tick.

Especially after what she’d so recently placed front and centre in his imagination.

‘Hey you,’ he greeted, as she came to a stop behind the sofa.

Swinging from her shoulder was the same huge soft brown leather tote exploding with vibrant-coloured interesting froufrou that had got him into trouble the other day. One of her hands clutched a tablet and large sketchbook and the other was wrapped around a travel mug. From the way she was white-knuckling the coffee receptacle, Luke guessed she was on at least her fifth refill of the day.

Dumping the tablet and sketchbook onto the sofa next to him, she let her shoulder slump so that the heavy bag could slip down to the cushions as well. With a hand now free she took the keys that she’d been gripping in her mouth, tossed them into the bowl on the coffee table and moved to flick her long hair over her shoulder with a grace that had absolutely no business beguiling him.

‘Hey you,’ she said on a long sigh, raising her ever-present drink to her lips to sip, before hesitating and obviously thinking better of it.

Definitely for the best, he thought. The snap and sizzle of energy barely kept in check was tangible from this proximity. Or was that the uneasy undercurrent running between them?

‘Did you find a model?’ he asked, really, really, hoping that she had.

‘That would be a negative,’ she said, glancing over at her daughter and taking in the Darth Vader helmet and cape with a slight shake of her head, before sliding her gaze back to Luke. ‘Was she all right for you?’

‘Yep,’ he replied, thinking they obviously weren’t at the laughing about him saying ‘no’ stage yet, then. ‘We went out for the Sunday papers and then she insisted on watching a DVD with me, before getting out every single one of her toys to perform multiple marriage ceremonies.’

‘God, don’t tell me,’ Sephy moaned, ‘Woody has committed bigamy again?’ There was an accompanying and exasperated shudder that had Luke grinning in spite of the new wariness between them.

‘You’d think Buzz would help a buddy out, but he’s obviously seeking out infinity and beyond,’ he said.

‘Actually he’s in my bag,’ Sephy confessed in a whisper. A smile chased out some of the stress as she looked again at her daughter. ‘I found him earlier when I was looking for my tape measure.

Luke wanted to ask her what the hell she had been measuring, given that she was supposed to be looking for a male model to re-shoot her ad campaign.

‘So,’ Sephy made a circling motion with her hand, as if to encompass Daisy’s Weddings R Us setup. ‘Is it only Woody who’s off to jail as soon as the honeymoon’s over, or did my daughter rope you in for a little bigamy too?’

‘Nope. No bigamy here.’

‘Phew,’ she said, blowing out an oversized breath of relief. ‘Not that I’m looking to get married.’

‘And not that I’m asking,’ he countered.

Sephy looked as if she was going to say something, but in a majestic show of self control, she walked around to the squashy armchair and plonked herself down instead.

‘Mummy,’ Daisy announced, ‘I think Luke will come back tomorrow and then you and he can get married like Belle and Woody.’

An interesting sensation spread under Luke’s chest wall as his gaze whipped to Sephy.

Her expression said it all. Comical horror that said in equal measures: ‘What the hell?’ and ‘We so need to remember my daughter has the hearing of a bat.’

Luke wondered if Sephy even realised her hand was rubbing unconsciously over her sternum, as if to chase away her instinctive recoil at the mere mention of a make-believe marriage.

Disappointment ditched its cloak and streaked naked through his head and Luke needed a couple of seconds to work out that Sephy’s reaction should mean nothing to him personally.

He was no longer a young boy facing rejection after rejection and she wasn’t rejecting him for real or otherwise.

The whole world knew Sephy King was marriage-phobic.

He didn’t know why, and probably never would. They weren’t the kind of friends to focus on their pasts and make that about who they were now. They were the kind of friends who bantered, supported and championed each other – but only with the lightest of touches.

All of which was fine by him.

At least it had been, until Sephy had had to go and break the rule she had put in place the first time they had met.

Luke cast his mind back to seeing Sephy for the first time. She had been sitting alone in their local college canteen one summer evening and instantly caught up in the pull of her, he had ended up performing a move so completely uncool, it was only sheer dumb luck no one had whipped out their phone, filmed it and stuck it up on YouTube.

One moment he had been Mr Jackson, after-school coding-club mentor, giving a little back to the community. The next, in an actual tripping-over-a-chair-leg, tray-flying-up-in-the-air moment, he had managed to recreate every teen-movie pastiche of the geek falling for the popular girl. The fact that he and Sephy were both a good few years past their teen incarnation hadn’t, in any way, made the move look ironic.

She had been so sweet about the coffee splash-landing against her portfolio and he had felt like such a schmuck when he had discovered she was waiting to interview for a place as a mature student on a degree course in fashion design. But as if used to men making an absolute fool of themselves in her vicinity, she had calmly mopped up the mess and offered to buy him a replacement after her interview.

Used to having way better game, Luke had spent the wait working out how to charm her into exchanging coffee for dinner. But when she had met with him thirty-five minutes later she’d had a determined look in her eyes that said she had cast their roles the moment of his initial bungled approach. They were going to be friends, nothing more.

Over that coffee, looking into eyes the colour of dark, good-for-your-heart chocolate, he had learnt that once Sephy King made her mind up about something that was that.

So friendship it was, and a year on neither of them had ever overstepped the terms Sephy had set out. Until she had asked him to be in her lingerie ad and he’d had to tamp down the spike of adrenalin that came with being reminded she had the power to surprise him.

‘Daisy,’ Sephy said mock-sternly and pulling Luke’s focus back to the present. ‘I know you know tomorrow is a school day. Stop fishing for more playtime.’

Daisy giggled.

‘Uh-huh,’ Sephy nodded. ‘Knew it. Besides, I really think I’m going to have to limit you on how many marriage ceremonies you perform a week. Your toys must be exhausted.’

‘No, Mummy, they love it,’ came the confident reply as Daisy promptly started preparing to marry another set of toys.

Luke could tell Sephy was chewing the inside of her cheeks to stop herself laughing and as she turned her attention back to him and he mentally took his cue to put her back into the friend box, he knew that aside from the unconscious sexuality she exuded, what really drew her to him, and had him accepting her boundaries, was simple. Put her daughter anywhere in her sightline and the softness that washed over her expression merged with a sort of defiant warrior-like strength that reminded him of the way Lily and Steve Jackson went about loving their kids.

Even him, which he knew he hadn’t made easy.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sephy said, flicking her gaze apologetically to his laptop, ‘I was much longer than I said I’d be and I know it’s impossible to work with Daisy running around.’

‘Relax. I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t happy to help out,’ and if Ididn’t feel guilty as hell for not helping you with the other thing. ‘Besides, it wasn’t Daisy who stopped me working. It was me.’ He glanced down at his laptop and closed the lid. ‘I’ll get there.’ At least he would as soon as he ‘fessed up his white lie to his foster parents and dealt with the fallout.

‘So are you staying for take-out, or is this a date-night for you?’ Sephy asked.

Luke’s gaze was drawn to the silks and satins and frothy laces hanging out of the leather bag next to him on the sofa and he remembered he hadn’t had a date in…quite a while.

Damn.

No wonder he was focusing so much on Sephy and her out-there request.

Maybe he ought to go home, grab a shower and give the woman from the gaming convention he had attended in London last week a call.

Amy, he thought her name was. Or was it Laney? Jamie?

His gaze slid to Sephy, who was looking at where he had been staring. He caught the tinge of pink high on her cheekbones and noticed she wouldn’t quite look at him as she stood back up and went to give Daisy a quick hug before wandering out to the kitchen, where he could hear her filling the kettle.

When he’d picked up the bra that had fallen out of her bag the other night, he hadn’t liked that his first thought – his only thought – had been that she must have been wearing the bra…and then she wasn’t.

Immediately that had expanded into wondering if it was because someone had taken it off her.

Ryan maybe?

Daisy’s father hadn’t been back on the scene for long, but Luke knew the man was busy trying to lay down all sorts of good impressions along with his good intentions.

A dart of jealousy had hit Luke clear between the eyes and he’d had to convince himself that Sephy was perfectly entitled to do whatever she wanted with whomever she wanted.

Except for with Ryan, he had thought, as his gut had tightened painfully.

Ryan would mean it was serious. She wouldn’t go there again, otherwise. She wouldn’t risk Daisy’s happiness if it didn’t work out.

Luke could still remember the feel of the satin between his fingertips, even as he’d scolded himself that he really did not need to be thinking about Sephy and sex.

With anyone.

‘No, no date tonight,’ Luke said now, ignoring the voice in his head telling him he really ought to go home and force himself to put in a few hours’ work. He wandered into the kitchen and added, ‘Take-out would be great.’

Sephy stared at him for a second longer than he was comfortable with and then, with a brisk nod, walked over to the dresser drawer, where she kept all the local take-out menus.

‘What do you feel like having?’ she asked, tucking a strand of hair back behind her ear.

You.

Luke balked and shoved his hands into his jeans back pockets. Crap. He had to nip this in the bud. Now, indeed ever, was not the time to be taking himself off the leash where he and Sephy were concerned. ‘I’m easy,’ he said and then cursed inwardly when she whipped around from the dresser, a teasing note lighting her eyes.

A heartbeat later and it was gone.

Like she too couldn’t get her head around how asking him to model had created this awkwardness between them.

He should have left while he’d had the chance. Now, tonight – later, when he was supposed to be thinking about work, he was going to be thinking about how he hated saying ‘no’ to people he cared about; hated being the bad guy.

Hated that her asking him to help her had made him think about all those times the car had come to pick him up from where he was living and take him to someone else’s home, where he’d been looked at and assessed for fitting in, and found wanting. Or rather…unwanted.

Luke knew his jaw had tightened when he felt the roots of his teeth protest. Deliberately he faked a yawn to try and relax and then tipped his head one way and then the other to try and release some of the built-up tension in his neck.

‘Why don’t I order while you get Daisy ready for bed?’ he asked, taking out his wallet to check what cash he had.

‘I can pay for a take-out, Luke.’

Luke studiously ignored the note of censure in her voice. ‘Does it matter who pays for it?’

There was a moment’s silence and then, ‘I take it you were the one who bought Daisy that Darth Vader outfit?’

Luke caught the catch of chastisement in her voice and wished he could decipher whether it was down to the fact that he’d spent money on Daisy when Sephy was touchy about money, or whether it was because he wasn’t Daisy’s dad.

‘I guess I should have run it past you, first.’ Feeling sheepish, he thought he might as well confess all. ‘I also bought her a lightsaber.’

Sephy reached over with a mug of coffee for him and Luke winced as the chunky porcelain landed extra hard on the large wooden kitchen table. The bee in her bonnet was definitely more about the money, then.

‘In my defence,’ he said lightly, ‘you were only saying the other day that you really hoped she got over her sickly pink phase soon.’

He risked a glance, caught the twitch of her lips and thought a smile might be in the offing.

‘So what you’re saying,’ Sephy said, ‘is that I should be thanking you for helping her transition from Princess to Sith?’

‘You’re welcome,’ he grinned.

Sephy rolled her eyes. ‘And you let her watch Star Wars again, didn’t you?’

Oops. ‘Have some pity. There are really only so many times a guy can watch Frozen.’

Now Sephy’s grin spread across her face as she lowered her mug to the table and said, ‘But Luke – don’t you know? Love is an open-’

‘Argh,’ Luke stuck his fingers in his ears as Sephy started singing a tune from the film. When she saw him cross his eyes in pain, she laughed and sang louder until he was forced to start humming the theme tune to Star Wars to drown her out.

The louder she sang, the louder he hummed, until Daisy walked in, dragged off her helmet and in solidarity with her mum performed her own ear-splittingly loud rendition of ‘Love is an Open Door’.

Luke and Sephy grinned at each other like big kids, near-argument over money and over-stepping the boundaries of friendship totally forgotten in the moment.

‘Right then, Darth Daisy,’ Sephy said once Daisy had completed every verse and chorus, ‘say goodnight to Luke while I get you a quick drink. Then its bath time, followed by bed.’

‘’Night Luke,’ Daisy said, making him proud when she started singing the theme tune to Star Wars.

‘You,’ Sephy said, pointing to him as she ushered Daisy out of the kitchen, drink in hand, ‘order take-out and don’t for one minute think that I’m not paying. If the food comes before I finish putting this one to bed, my purse is in my bag.’

Luke watched them depart the kitchen.

In their wake, the sudden silence reminded him of being in his own place and how he tried to avoid that as often as possible. Ears straining, he could just about make out Sephy and Daisy chatting away about their day. Glad of the background noise but needing more, Luke picked up his coffee and wandered back into the lounge to switch on the TV. He knew to leave at least fifteen minutes before he ordered food or it would be cold by the time Sephy got to it.

His gaze was drawn to where Daisy had set up her wedding chapel. With an amused shake of his head he tore his gaze away and made a grab for the TV remote control. Flicking through the channels to get the first station playing any kind of sport, he settled on the sofa and reached for his laptop again.

Opening up the email from his foster parents, he turned his head again towards ‘wedding central’, and damned if it didn’t get him thinking.

And then he did some thinking about Sephy’s predicament.

And then he started smiling.

He might just have come up with a genius idea.




CHAPTER THREE (#ubb881ea2-9388-550c-aac5-b8e62c800f99)


Sephy pulled the door of her daughter’s bedroom gently shut and turned to follow the scent of double pepperoni pizza.

At the top of the stairs, she stopped to drag a hand through her hair and then, instead of descending downstairs, backtracked down the corridor to her bedroom with its en suite, to freshen up.

‘Not for Luke’s benefit,’ she whispered to herself, mentally flicking the ears of the little devil she imagined perched on her shoulder, holding its belly to try and contain its peal of laughter.

No, all she was going to do was splash some cold water on her face, because, wow, was she tired.

The amount of work she still had to do to get Seraphic under way meant that even her check list had check lists, but the tiredness wasn’t going to magically disappear after the launch, so her only option was to suck it up and keep going.

In the mirror over the en suite vanity, Sephy peered at her reflection and took stock. Okay. It wasn’t too bad.

But she was definitely going to get rid of the smudge of hours-old eyeliner, and maybe swipe on some lip-gloss. What? she asked her reflection. It was important to keep your lips hydrated. Everyone knew that.

Reaching out she plucked a face-wipe from the pack and let out the breath she’d been holding, hoping that along with it would come the release of at least some of the stress of the day.

But all she felt was a grinding pain in her stomach.

It wasn’t hunger that was producing the sensation.

It was the certain knowledge that if she didn’t get some more money coming in soon, she and Daisy were going to have nothing left to live on. By her calculations they had enough for two months. Depending on orders for Seraphic, three months absolute tops.

God, she must have been mad to think launching Seraphic would make all her money problems disappear, but it had been the only way she could think of bypassing asking her mum or Jared or Nora for help.

Sephy stretched to try and ease the tension in her belly.

If it came down to it, she would forsake pride and go to them. No way was Daisy going to go without.

But she wasn’t quite there yet. First, she was going to try to fix things by herself.

It would work, she tried to reassure herself. It had to.

She wasn’t sure she could endure the look on the faces of her family if she had to go to them for funds. Not after spending month after month turning them all down so vociferously.

Jeremy King had done what he’d done. Arguing about how archaic the terms of his will were, or how they didn’t understand how he could have hurt her this way, wasn’t going to change anything.

Sephy needed her family to be able to love him, not spend more time resenting him. Leading by example was the only way they would all heal from the giant hole his passing had left.

She knew why he’d done what he’d done.

Putting Sephy’s inheritance into a trust fund for Daisy – making it so Daisy couldn’t access it until she turned twenty-one – wasn’t really as disrespectful to Sephy as the family thought.

Looking at things longterm, she even agreed with what he had done.

It was just this massive short-term problem it had created that she had to deal with.

Sephy looked at her reflection and reached for her lip-gloss. Slicking the wand over her lips, she supposed she could take on a few more couture clients.

But creating couture lingerie couldn’t be rushed and the only uninterrupted time she had was when Daisy was at school or asleep.

She was already maxing out those hours as it was.

Finding another seamstress who took as much care as she did over putting her designs together, again, took time and money she didn’t have.

No, the completely outside-of-her-comfort-zone forecasts and charts she had made herself do all told her the same thing. She needed the Seraphic ready-to-wear line to sell in volume.

Which brought her back to Luke.

Sort of.

She was a little mad at him still.

Not for saying no to her, although, yes, that did smart! It was more that as well as the shock on his face, she had glimpsed how difficult he’d found it to say no and had seen in the darkening of his eyes the temptation to say yes.

She was mad to be wondering what had made him say no. She didn’t have time to indulge an overactive imagination. Luke had said no and that was that. She only had time to move on and keep focusing on the launch.

Casting one last look at what she saw in the mirror, she left her room and jogged down the stairs.

Having set out the pizza box, plates and kitchen roll on her coffee table, Luke was on his knees picking up the wild flowers Daisy had pulled up from the garden. Next to him was a plastic beaker that he had filled up with water.

Bugger.

How could you stay mad at a man who put wilting wild flowers into water after your daughter had finished trampling her toys all over them?

He looked up as she entered the room and she could feel his eyes on her as she snagged herself a slice of pizza and a plate to put it on.

With her hands full she realised he had moved her bag, complete with all the underwear samples she carried around with her, to her favourite chair and the only place left to sit would be on the sofa next to him.

‘I see you’ve been checking out my underwear again,’ she said as she yanked off a piece of kitchen roll to use as a napkin.

‘Of course,’ Luke grinned, ‘but only as a way of getting into your purse. I had to take it all out to find your money for the pizza guy.’

‘Was there enough in there?’

‘Sure,’ Luke said, and the way he turned from her to put the bunch of flowers into the beaker and set them on the windowsill, Sephy knew that there hadn’t been.

‘How much do I owe you?’

‘Forget it,’ he said, walking over to open the pizza box.

‘No, I will not forget it. I said I’d pay. I’m paying. How much did you have to put in to make up the difference?’

‘Ten.’

Sephy reached over, set down her pizza and rose to her feet at the same instant Luke tried to walk past her and take his seat on the sofa. Their eyes locked as they brushed up against each other and when she pushed her hand into the pocket of her skinny jeans, Luke seemed to press closer, bringing with him a sizzling heat that had all her thought processes scattering.

Sephy’s insides felt as if they were tied to a bungee rope and were hurtling towards the ground before being yanked back up, and then Luke was springing backwards and she was finally remembering why her hand was in her pocket and withdrawing some notes.

Silently she passed him a ten.

Silently he took it from her and shoved it into his jeans pocket before snapping up the control to mute the volume on the TV.

‘I don’t mind if you wanted to watch that,’ Sephy said, glad her voice sounded normal, while everything else inside of her was screaming ‘how do I make it go back to the way it was before I asked him to model for me?’

As if Luke was thinking the exact same thing, he grabbed up his plate and said calmly, ‘You don’t think we ought to try and get past this new weirdness between us?’

‘Weirdness?’ she stalled, her mouth going dry. ‘What weirdness?’

‘The, “you asking me to pose nude in photos to sex up your ad campaign, and me saying no” weirdness.’

‘Oh, that,’ Sephy forced a grin. ‘I’m over that. Although, for the record, I did not ask you to pose in the nude. At least, not entirely,’ she added.

‘So even though you don’t have a model booked and the launch is in less than two weeks, you’re completely okay with how things are?’

Aiming for nonchalance, Sephy waved the hand holding the slice of pizza. ‘Everything will work out,’ she said.

‘You’re not even looking for a model, are you?’ Luke said on a huff of breath.

She stared at the silent TV. ‘I told you – I can’t afford one.’

‘And I told you I’m perfectly happy to help you out with that.’

‘No thanks,’ she said, shoving in a huge mouthful of delicious hot pizza in a bid to keep from following up with a lecture on how she didn’t need anyone’s money.

‘Have you come up with an alternative?’

‘I have chosen to let the banners stand as they are.’

‘And you’re completely happy to do that?’ he pressed.

‘No Mr Spanish Inquisitor,’ she said, with a roll of her eyes, ‘but I have to work with what I have. And what I have is a professionally shot ad campaign that I paid a lot of money for.’

‘Sephy –’

‘What?’ Sephy whipped her head around to look at him, ‘I asked you for help, but you said “no”.’ There was a flash of guilt that dulled the green of his eyes and she really didn’t like how that made her feel, so she added, ‘which you were perfectly entitled to do. I’m a big girl, Luke. I’m not going to hold that against you.’

‘Right. You’ve decided not to resent that the one time you asked me outright for something, I said no?’

‘That’s right, because the last time I checked, I wasn’t a child.’

‘Ha. Let’s put the clucking like a chicken on the evidence table.’

Sephy blushed. ‘That was a mistake.’ She took another bite of food and, after swallowing, said softly, ‘I really don’t resent you for saying no.’

Luke turned back to the TV and lifted the pizza to his mouth before dropping a casual, ‘You know, you could ask Ryan to be your model.’

Sephy snorted and lowered her plate to her lap in shock. ‘I am not asking Ryan.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because.’

Luke turned his head to watch her closely. ‘Because…?’

Because he’s not you.

Sephy was very afraid her eyes had become rather round and large as the realisation that she hadn’t even considered asking Ryan, or anyone else, took proper hold.

Ryan may still have his bad-boy, wild-child looks, but his previous lifestyle had added a tired and jaded edge and, if anything, he now looked like a man who simply wanted peace in his life.

Luke, on the other hand, looked…

Sephy fiddled with the crust of her pizza.

Luke looked like still waters ran deep.

Luke had this quiet, serious and confident, can-take-care-of-himself presence.

But then those dimples would come out to play and that automatically translated as ‘and-I-am-more-than-capable-of-taking-care-of-a-woman’s-needs-at-the-same-time’.

The moment she’d seen Luke holding her bra, she’d known unequivocally the response images of him would evoke. No, she couldn’t afford a professional model, but the truth was she didn’t want a professional model. She wanted Luke.

Not for herself. Obviously. She already knew that kind of complication would lead to her losing his friendship.

Picking off a piece of pepperoni she popped it into her mouth, curled her tongue around it and then said, ‘I’m only just getting to know Ryan again. We’re,’ she broke off to search for the right words, ‘we’re both somehow the complete opposite of how we were when we knew each other the first time round.’

Luke said nothing and, after a moment, reached past her for another slice of pizza.

Sephy’s gaze fixed on his sinewy forearm and the twist of brown leather cord that wrapped around his wrist and rubbed up alongside his chunky, masculine watch. She wondered if the leather had been a gift. God, his hands and arms really would have looked so wonderfully sexy in those photographs.

‘So how is it all going, with Ryan?’

‘Huh?’ She really, really had to snap out of sinking herself into the mental images she kept dreaming up to re-shoot her ad campaign.

‘I was asking about Ryan. It’s all going well?’

‘I guess,’ she answered and then frowned. ‘At least I thought it was.’

‘Why, what’s happened?’

Sephy didn’t know whether to tell him. She was probably worrying about nothing.

‘Seph,’ Luke pushed and the hint of protectiveness in his tone made her smile.

‘He broke up with his girlfriend.’

‘I see.’ Luke finished off the last bite of his pizza, tore off a piece of kitchen roll, rubbed it between his hands until it formed a ball and tossed it onto his plate. ‘And that’s your problem because?’

‘It’s not really,’ she answered, telling him what he wanted to hear and wondering if anyone would ever believe she could care about Ryan simply because he was the father of her child and not because she was starting to develop feelings for him again.

If there was one thing Sephy could rely on about herself it was that a lesson learned was a lesson learned. She didn’t do repeat mistakes. Years of trying to get her father to notice her had taught her that life was too short to keep banging your head against a brick wall.

‘You’re worried Ryan’s going to relapse?’ Luke asked.

‘Maybe.’ It was a distinct possibility. Breaking up with his girlfriend was Ryan’s first real test after coming out of rehab four months ago. What if the upset made him start gambling again?

Her sister Nora was engaged to Ryan’s brother Ethan and Sephy had been dithering over whether she should ring Ethan and let him know. She kind of hoped Ryan had already told him and had been leaning on him for support, but Nora hadn’t said anything and that made her question what shape Ryan was really in.

‘Haven’t you got enough to be worrying about at the minute?’ Luke prompted. ‘Ryan Love is not your responsibility.’

‘I know. I just want him to be the best version of himself. You know? For Daisy. She deserves to have a decent father figure in her life.’

‘She was doing okay before he came along.’

Sephy’s heart dipped at Luke’s automatic defence of her, and then dipped again because she knew that Daisy had already lost her granddad and the special bond the two of them had developed. Then, just as they were all getting to know Jared again, he’d had to return to his own life in New York.

The only constant male figure in Daisy’s life was Luke and in those hours before dawn when Sephy did most of her waking-up-in-a-cold-sweat-parental-worrying, she acknowledged her friendship with Luke was getting to be dangerously close to something she counted on. What if Daisy became too attached to Luke and Luke finally found someone to get serious with and drifted out of their lives?

‘All I really want is for Daisy to get to have that balanced parenting that Ryan could add,’ she admitted to Luke. Before Ryan had broken up with his girlfriend, Sephy had only allowed a few short visits so Daisy could start getting to know him. She hadn’t wanted to force too much contact until she could trust Ryan to stay in the area and want a relationship with his daughter. Now, she worried that if Ryan was struggling and needed to concentrate on himself for a while, and Daisy noticed, things were going to get messy.

‘I’m already dreading how to handle the teenage years,’ Sephy continued. ‘It’ll be just my luck if she ends up like I was at that age.’

‘And how were you when you were that age?’

‘I was –’ Sephy broke off as memories flooded her of all the times she hadn’t so much as snuck back into the house late at night as deliberately announced her return as loudly as possible. Back then she had seen any attention as good attention. She cleared her throat and finished with, ‘Let’s simply say I was not the best version of myself that I could have been.’

Luke looked like he wanted to know more, but she was suddenly filled with the need for a little reciprocation. ‘What were you like as a teenager?’ she asked.

He hesitated, as if quickly weighing up what to go with before finally responding with a one word answer of, ‘Shy.’

Sephy blinked. ‘Shy?’

‘Yep,’ he confirmed, staring down at his hands and flexing his fingers, as if he was deliberately trying to remain relaxed.

‘You?’ Sephy repeated, dumbfounded. ‘You were shy?’

‘I know.’ He flicked a quick glance at her. ‘I guess you can’t even imagine what that would be like, can you?’

‘Guess not.’ There had never been any room for shyness in the King household. ‘Is that why you wouldn’t entertain the idea of doing the photo shoot?’

‘Little bit, yeah.’

Sephy couldn’t believe the quietness she’d always appreciated in him might stem from shyness.

‘I guess I forget that because you don’t look like your typical geek. That doesn’t mean you’re not more comfortable surrounded by and communicating via a bank of computers, but you’re not shy around me,’ she added, thinking aloud.

‘You’re right, I’m not.’

Sephy was still trying to work out a way of asking him precisely what he meant by that when he sat back against the sofa cushions, reminding her how close they were and forcing her to appreciate that it wasn’t that her sofa was miniscule, it was that Luke could hold his own in the large-male-presence stakes.

‘Tell me about why you chose to specialise in underwear rather than outerwear,’ he asked in a fast-and-smooth change of subject that had Sephy needing a moment to catch up.

She stared fixedly at the lingerie on the armchair she usually sat on and decided to accept his change of subject on account of it meaning she could talk about something she understood, as opposed to what might or might not be going on under the surface of their friendship.

‘Why did I choose lingerie? I guess underwear is all about foundation.’

‘Not sexiness?’

Sephy’s nose wrinkled as she smiled, because what woman didn’t like to wear something that made her feel feminine, pretty, seductive and hot? ‘That too – but mostly designing lingerie is about getting the structure right.’

Luke appeared to think for a moment. ‘Feeling rock solid underneath equals feeling invincible on the outside?’

‘Um, yeah.’ Wow. Sephy let her breath out softly. He got it. She tried not to be too impressed.

‘What if someone prefers going commando?’ Luke asked.

‘Huh?’ Why had she thought this conversation would be safer again? And why, for the love of God, was she suddenly thinking about Luke and the way his jeans fit him and whether or not he preferred to go commando?

‘You know – someone who prefers not to wear any underwear.’

‘Yes. Thank you. I do know what going commando means.’ She would not look at him. She would not. Reaching forward she put her plate carefully back on the coffee table and tried to surreptitiously add another one or two millimetres of breathing space between them as she tucked a leg under her and eased back against the back of the sofa.

‘I guess,’ she said, as casually as she could manage, ‘if a person prefers not to wear underwear, well then I guess they’re not my customer.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Luke said with a quiet intensity that had her breath coming shorter. ‘I think your designs could convince them.’

‘I know you could,’ she whipped back.

Luke grinned. ‘And that’s absolutely all you’re asking me to do by posing in those photos? You really think I could help you sell more lingerie?’

‘Of course.’

‘And my head would be cropped from all the shots?’

Sephy felt the leap of excitement and tried not to get carried away. Slowly, she turned to face him more fully. ‘What exactly are you saying, here?’

‘I’m saying okay.’

‘Okay…?’ She had to have this wrong, didn’t she? Somehow the combination of pheromones and heat caused by her proximity to him had jumbled up the connections in her brain. He wasn’t really saying…

‘Okay, I will be your model.’

Sephy’s hand came up to her mouth. Oh. My. God.

She could kiss him.

Wait – no.

She really couldn’t.

A huge weight felt as if it had been lifted off her shoulders, making her want to jump up and happy-dance all over the living room.

‘On two conditions,’ Luke said.

The carousel of joy inside of her wound down and came to an abrupt halt.

‘What are your conditions?’ she made herself ask because, suddenly, with what she had asked for within touching distance, she realised she needed to keep her business head-on.

‘First condition: you are the model in the photographs with me.’

Sephy snorted. ‘Very funny. What’s your real condition?’

‘I mean it, Sephy. You are the model I model with. They’re your designs. You shouldn’t really have a problem with that.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not a –’ she stopped because Luke was looking at her like he was about to say touché. ‘What’s your second condition?’ she asked, needing something to take her mind off what it would feel like to have Luke see her in her underwear, because telling herself it would be like posing in a bikini wasn’t in any way having a dousing-with-cold-water effect.

Luke looked her calmly in the eye and said, ‘My second condition is that you agree to pose as my fiancée when my parents show up for a visit in a couple of weeks.’




CHAPTER FOUR (#ubb881ea2-9388-550c-aac5-b8e62c800f99)


It was crazy, Sephy thought, upping the intensity level of the elliptical she was on at Heathstead’s branch of Love Leisure.

‘Stupid’, she muttered under her breath, determined to work up a sweat and work off some of her feelings.

In fact, what it was – was crazy-stupid.

And she was certifiably both of those things to be even considering agreeing to Luke Jackson’s ridiculous conditions.

Sephy’s finger stabbed at the volume button on the MP3 player attached to her arm. Heavy dance beats dropped through her ear-buds, helping her push her body harder, faster. She only wished they were loud enough to completely drown out thoughts of Luke and how much she really wanted him to model in her lingerie shoot and what she would have to do in return.

Last night, when he had named his second condition, it was as if someone had opened up the cabinet of emotions inside of her, chosen the bottle marked hysteria, taken out its stopper and upended its contents.

She had totally misunderstood and had heard ‘actual fiancée’ instead of ‘fake fiancée’.

Scary-quick, she had jumped in her head from fiancée to wife to married. To Luke Jackson. All the while hysteria had bubbled and fizzed under her skin. Had Luke somehow got wind of her financial situation and concocted a convoluted plan to provide her with financial assistance? She wouldn’t totally put it past his level of generosity.

But thankfully Luke had kept talking as she had stared at him dumbfounded. Finally his continued explanation about how helping him out with his little white lie would be fair exchange for him helping her out had filtered through.

There was no way Luke could have found out about her father’s letter. The only people who knew its contents were Jared and Nora and they would never betray her like that.

She was safe from screaming from the rooftops that she wasn’t living in a Jane Austen novel and that she was more than capable of providing for Daisy without having to resort to marriage. Getting mixed up in a kind of fixed arrangement that elevated her out of a bad situation smacked of what her father had assumed she would do when he had tied up her inheritance.

A hand brushed against her arm and Sephy let out a squeal. Turning, she saw her ex and Daisy’s father, Ryan Love, standing beside her. Reaching up she pulled out her ear-buds and turned down the music.

‘Want to tell me what this machine has ever done to you?’ Ryan asked her with a grin.

‘Sorry,’ her breath came out in a rush and she realised she’d been pressing every button on the darned thing in her quest to exhaust her overactive imagination and beat it back into submission.

Ryan reached out and re-set the pace on the machine, and Sephy started to feel like she wasn’t going to have a heart attack after all.

‘You okay?’ he asked, running his gaze over her. ‘Only Ethan will kill me if I let one of our clients get injured.’

Ethan Love was the founder and CEO of the chain of deluxe gyms that made up Love Leisure. When Ryan had gone to him for help with his gambling addiction, Ethan had wanted to ensure his brother had a place to live and a place to work when he got out of rehab, so he had bought and refurbished this building, turned it into a branch of Love Leisure, and had then trained Ryan to manage it for him.

‘Actually, it’s good you came along,’ Sephy admitted. ‘I guess I got a little carried away trying to work through my –’ she stopped. She definitely didn’t need to be telling Ryan what was going on with her.

‘Frustrations?’ Ryan quipped.

Sephy felt herself blush as she heard the sexual connotation in the word. ‘Er, yes.’ Good grief, what was the matter with her? This was testament to how shaken up she was after Luke’s proposal. Non-proposal proposal, she reminded herself. She really was going to have to do better at remembering the fake part.

The fake part, after all, was probably what was going to allow her to agree to it.

Sephy’s stomach lurched – was she going to agree to it, then?

‘So you want to tell me what has you so frustrated, over a coffee?’ Ryan invited, thankfully interrupting her tracking mentally back to the one person she’d come in here to get a break from. ‘I seem to remember that was your drink of choice.’

Sephy stepped off the machine. ‘Can’t think of a better legally addictive stimulant, can you? Oh, crap,’ she put a hand up to her mouth, feeling all kinds of stupid. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to –’

‘Use the “A” word?’ Ryan shrugged. ‘An addict is what I am – what I’ll always be.’

‘Put a “recovering” in front of it and we’re all good here,’ Sephy said, and then was immediately worried. Aside from having Daisy’s best interests at heart, she wasn’t sure she should be telling Ryan how to talk about, or deal with, his problems. ‘Okay,’ she muttered, ‘Not my place, so sorry again.’

‘Relax. No offense taken. Come on. I know a great place around the corner that’s opened up. Or did you come in here for a quick workout before needing to be somewhere else?’

As Sephy eased into a couple of light stretches to cool down she determined to ignore the fact that she could feel Ryan’s eyes making a slow sweep of her again. Straightening up she confessed, ‘Actually I came in here hoping you would be around so that I could talk to you.’

The smile that lit up his face held such a potent reminder of the charming bad-boy she used to know that Sephy caught her lip between her teeth. She was under enough stress to be feeling like one sharp shock away from a meltdown as it was, so she pushed down the fear he was flirting with her.

As his eyes came up to meet hers she returned his stare steadily. Ryan’s old modus operandi had been to hide pain under slow, sure, wicked smiles and easy flirtation, so maybe that was what he was doing now.

‘I wanted to see how you were,’ she said, hoping her serious tone would cut through the mask.

‘Me? I’m fine.’

‘You are?’ Sephy searched his face for signs, but found it hard to get past that swagger of his. ‘Look, Heathstead is a small town. I heard about the breakup with Michelle and so I wanted to check. But if you say you’re fine…’

Ryan simply shrugged and went with, ‘Her loss, isn’t it?’

‘I guess.’ She supposed these days she didn’t deserve more than the ‘nothing touches me’ casual approach from him, but it irked that she recognised the attitude as one she had once mimicked to the max. ‘It must be hard, though,’ she pushed.

Ryan looked around the gym and then brought his gaze back to hers and lowered his voice. ‘You think I’m about to head for the nearest betting shop to numb the pain?’

‘Am I being silly? Do you really have this locked down?’ she pressed.

That slow grin teased as he leaned in and whispered, ‘How about if I admit that I’m going to extra meetings at the moment?’

‘Good.’ She took a subtle step back because it had been a long time since Ryan had whispered into her ear and it felt weird. ‘Is it helping?’

‘Well it’s certainly helping me not to gamble, at any rate.’

‘Great.’ Sephy pointed to the changing rooms. She could see she wasn’t going to get anywhere checking up on him in his place of work. ‘I’ll go grab my bag and we can head out for that coffee.’

Twenty minutes later Sephy peered over the top of her latte at Ryan and realised that agreeing to have coffee with him had upped the level of complication between them. Until now she had only met with him while Michelle, who had seemed nice enough, was there, or, with Daisy.

She decided he was going to have to put up with her butting in and came right out with, ‘Have you told Ethan about what’s happened?’

There was a flash of surprise in his eyes, but she couldn’t afford to let this go. Not if there was a chance he was struggling and had no one else to lean on. If Sephy had to step up and be there for him, well, hadn’t she had already implied she would, by agreeing to Ethan’s plan to help his brother all those months ago?

‘Ethan trusts me,’ Ryan said. He took a sip of his cappuccino, set it down on the hammered aluminium surface of the café table and added sombrely, ‘I understand why you might not.’

‘I’ll admit that this isn’t entirely comfortable territory for me.’

‘Trust me, it’s no picnic for me either. You think I want my ex stopping by to check I’m getting over a breakup simply because she doesn’t know me well enough to know whether or not I’ll relapse?’

‘Do you know yourself well enough to know whether or not you’ll relapse?’ she shot back.

Ryan laughed and the laughter seemed to relax something in him. ‘You know, I really never imagined you acting as my conscience. Although I admit you’re much prettier than the one I have.’

Again with the flirting and again she hoped it was simply a defence mechanism.

‘How about instead of seeing me as your conscience,’ she asked carefully, ‘you see me as a friend who has a vested interest in making sure you’re okay?’

‘How about you let me take you to dinner tonight and we discuss further how okay I am?’ Ryan replied, without missing a beat.

Sephy’s latte went down the wrong way. She hadn’t got this wrong. He was totally flirting with her. As she grabbed the napkin he held out to her, she blinked back her watering eyes, took in his giant grin and dragged in a steadying breath.

‘Ryan, I didn’t come here for a date. I came to check you were okay. For Daisy.’

At the mention of their daughter his face turned serious. ‘I’m not going to mess that up.’

‘Okay. Well, that’s good, then.’

‘So it’s a “no” to dinner?’

‘You’ve only just stopped seeing Michelle.’

‘Usually a woman thinks it’s a bonus when the man she accepts a dinner invitation from is single.’

‘I am not going to go out to dinner with you.’

She tried not to worry that she was making things harder for him, not easier. Luke had told her Ryan wasn’t her responsibility, but if she wanted him to have a good relationship with Daisy, he kind of was.

Sephy glanced to his hands holding his cup and making it look small. They were nice hands. They were hands that had travelled over every inch of her body, she remembered, taking a quick sip of coffee.

But they weren’t Luke’s hands, is that what it came down to?

Surreptitiously she swept her gaze over Ryan. The man managed a gym. He worked out. What was the matter with her that when she looked objectively at his body she didn’t see it in those banners sexing up her lingerie line?

‘You know, I thought it would be hard to see you like this,’ Ryan said, breaking into her inventory of his model looks.

‘This?’ she asked, hoping he wasn’t about to call her on her looking him over and use it to up the flirting.

‘You’re so different from how you were when we were –’

Oh. She couldn’t help the smile. ‘You mean when we were the ultimate cliché?’

He laughed. ‘I guess we were. The poor little rich kids running around town partying.’

‘It would be easier to look back on and not cringe if we had been much younger than we were.’ Sephy cleared her throat and raised her gaze to his. ‘We stayed with each other longer than we should have, Ryan. We fell into a lifestyle and had no one to pull us out of it.’

‘I guess having Daisy finally pulled you out of it,’ he said, nodding as he stared down at his coffee.

‘Having her made me grow up, yes.’

‘I wish I could tell you that if I’d stuck around I’d have grown up too.’

‘Forget it; it’s all in the past.’

This time Ryan’s smile was wry. ‘You always were quick to forgive people their sins.’

She’d had to be. How else would she have survived being the one King who showed no aptitude for the family company KPC? She’d had to understand her father and how his emotional connection to the business translated to those who didn’t share that, in order to forgive him enough to have any kind of relationship with him at all.

‘If it makes you feel better, I didn’t forgive you overnight,’ she told Ryan, her voice gentle.

‘It does. And who knows, maybe you’re starting to see how much I’ve changed.’

‘You don’t have to show me. You have to show Daisy.’

‘I will. But maybe I want to show you too.’

‘Ryan –’

‘What?’ His eyes searched hers. ‘That ship has sailed?’

‘I don’t want there to be any confusion.’ Getting mixed up with Ryan would massively complicate the relationship she wanted him to have with Daisy.

‘Is there someone in your life at the moment?’

She closed her eyes and saw Luke and felt the shock of that right down to her toes.

That was so completely messed up she didn’t even know what to do with it.

When she opened her eyes it was to see Ryan staring at her with a tenacity that she remembered.

Without thinking it through, other than to realise that Ryan believing she was already involved with someone would help make things less messy, she answered, ‘Yes.’

‘Is he good with Daisy?’ he asked.

Sephy grasped her glass of coffee and let the residual warmth steady her. ‘You haven’t yet earned the right to ask that question.’

‘That’s fair. Is he good for you?’

‘He’s – yes.’

‘You don’t sound too sure.’

‘I am sure.’ The last thing she needed was for Ryan to see her as a project to take on, to help keep his addiction at bay, or otherwise.

‘Is it Luke Jackson?’

Sephy’s latte glass clattered back down to the table. ‘I –’ She tried again, ‘what makes you think that?’

‘He came into the gym soon after it opened. Got the feeling he wasn’t checking out the premises so much as checking on the manager.’

She would kill Luke. ‘Did he say something to you?’

‘We exchanged a few pleasantries.’

‘A few…What the hell does that mean?’

‘It means he was being a good friend to you and Daisy.’

Sephy didn’t know what to say.

Ryan folded his arms and leaned forward. ‘Don’t tell me you’re still not used to people paying attention and looking out for you?’

‘Something like that,’ she cleared her throat. ‘It must be a novelty for you too.’

He seemed to be lost in thought for a moment and Sephy wondered if he was thinking about his parents and how ill equipped they were to deal with his gambling addiction – to deal with their sons in any way. Ryan was lucky he had his brother, Ethan, on his side.

‘I guess we’ll both have to try and get used to it,’ Ryan murmured.

‘I guess we will,’ Sephy answered.

‘So is it Luke?’

Maybe she should have listened to Nora all those months ago when her sister had told her to, for once, take having Ryan back living near her and Daisy to its worst-case scenario and properly decide if that was something she could handle before she said yes to Ethan helping him relocate.

Because what she couldn’t handle was Ryan deciding he wanted back into her life in any other capacity than being Daisy’s dad. He’d left her when she was at her most vulnerable, and even though she had truly forgiven him, she wasn’t about to forget all the small-town whisperings she had endured, or how he had made her feel like she sucked at relationships and wasn’t a safe bet as a partner in life.

Ryan was going to get swept up in learning to be a dad, and if he was going to be around her while he did that, she didn’t want him confusing matters and blurring the lines in his head.

It was better if he thought she and Luke were together, so she looked him straight in the eye and told her own little white lie. ‘It is Luke, yes.’

Sephy sat surrounded by signature antique gold-coloured tissue paper, rolls of sticky labels with the Seraphic emblem on, and different-sized samples from her lingerie collection. As she wrapped each sample in the beautiful paper, ready to place in goodie-bags for the buyers at her launch party, she was already starting to feel guilty about lying to Ryan.

It was for the good of their future relationship as Daisy’s parents, she told herself as her phone rang. Now all she had to do was tell Luke she was agreeing to his conditions and they could get the photo shoot under way and that would be one more thing checked off her endless list.

Ignoring the lick of fire igniting in her belly at the thought of telling Luke, she lifted up a pile of tissue paper and found her phone. Glancing at the screen to see who the caller was, she answered with a, ‘Hi, Sis,’ and tucking the phone between ear and shoulder, laid out another sheet of tissue paper and pulled matching camisole and French knickers in champagne-coloured silk off the pile.

‘I’m pulling rank,’ Nora said, without preamble. ‘You are coming into London this week and I’m taking you out for lunch and then we’re going shopping for shoes for the launch and that is all there is to it.’

‘I don’t have time,’ Sephy said automatically. Not being as obsessed with shoes as her sister was, she was pretty sure she could find a pair in her wardrobe that matched the LBD she had elected to wear.

‘Make the time. You know there won’t be any immediately following the launch.’

‘There might be,’ Sephy swallowed as her voice got small, ‘if no one places an order.’

‘That’s the way, keep talking positively like that and the sky’s the limit.’

‘Okay. Okay. I’ll try and free up some time.’

‘Great. So did you do it?’

‘What?’ Sephy had reached out to grab a goodie-bag, but stopped at the question.

‘Did you ask Luke The Question?’

‘I did.’ She snatched up a bag and shook it open.

‘And…?’

‘He has a couple of conditions.’

‘Oh my God, he’s actually going to do it?’

‘If I agree to his terms.’

‘Huh?’

Sephy stopped assembling samples and said into her phone, ‘He wants me to model with him.’

‘Delicious.’

‘Nora,’ Sephy warned.

‘I can’t help it.’

‘Yes, because you’ve never got yourself into a fix at all have you?’ Sephy muttered, thinking about the time Nora had super-glued her shoe to her hand in front of Ethan.

‘But mine worked out so well for me in the end. Maybe yours will as well.’

‘You didn’t have a daughter or your daughter’s dad come back onto the scene.’

‘What?’ Nora gasped. ‘You’re seeing Ryan?’

‘No. Of course not.’

‘Good. Because there’s complicating your life and then there’s complicating your life.’

Sephy agreed. That was why she had lied and told Ryan she was seeing Luke.

‘I’ll get in touch with Frazer today and set up the shoot,’ Nora said.

‘I haven’t exactly said yes, yet.’

‘Why not?’

‘Probably because of the other condition.’

‘Intriguing. Ooh,’ Nora said sounding excited, ‘does he want to do a private set of photos?’

‘Oh, would you please stop. There’s nothing tawdry going on here.’

Nora laughed. ‘Did you just use the word tawdry?’

‘Okay, I really need you to focus.’

‘But did you, though?’

‘You know, I think I’m too busy to come to London after all.’

‘Okay, okay, I’m sorry. So what’s his other condition?’

Sephy dragged in a breath. ‘He wants me to pretend to be his fiancée for a few weeks.’

There was a long pause and then, ‘Sephy that’s not even remotely a good idea.’

‘I know,’ Sephy said, immediately heading her sister off at the pass.

‘I mean, you just got through telling me you understood about not complicating your life.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s only that these things have a way of getting out of control.’

‘I know,’ Sephy repeated for the umpteenth time. What if she had to touch him in front of his parents? Kiss him, even? What if she forgot how playing with fire got your fingers burned?

‘Why does he want you to pose as his fiancée anyway?’

Sephy peeled off a Seraphic label and sealed the ends of the tissue-paper parcel of lingerie together.

‘Seph?’

‘Something to do with his parents visiting.’

‘What? He’s told his parents he’s engaged, when he isn’t?’

‘Apparently, yes.’

More silence, followed by, ‘You can’t worry about losing his friendship if you say no, and, Sephy, you should say no to this.’

‘If I say no, he won’t hold it against me. You know he’s not like that,’ she responded. She popped the lingerie into a bag and reached for another sheet of tissue paper. ‘He’s helped me out so many times.’

‘Don’t make it sound tit for tat. Friends don’t keep score.’

‘If I say no I don’t get my photo shoot.’

Sephy ran her gaze over her little production line of goodie bags. The boutique factory she had signed an agreement with had done an outstanding job of the samples. She didn’t want to even think about the debt she would incur if she didn’t get to place that first large order.

‘Is this about saving money?’ Nora surmised. ‘Damn it, you know I’ll cover it.’

Sephy winced. ‘It really isn’t only about the money.’

‘Then you lied to me when you told me you were over what Dad wrote to you in his last letter,’ Nora accused.

‘I really didn’t. Not completely or intentionally, anyway.’ This time the silence from Nora screamed at her. Sephy pushed out the breath stuck in her windpipe. ‘Okay. Yes, of course I was never going to be able to start a business and not think about Dad and what he would have thought.’

‘I can tell you what he would have thought,’ Nora interrupted indignantly. ‘I can tell you what he’s thinking right now as he’s looking down at you. He’s thinking, that’s my youngest girl and she’s doing everything I knew she could do in life – and more.’

Sephy’s vision blurred as she silently asked herself if her father might also be thinking, ‘Of course, she’s only doing it because I gave her that final push.’

‘Why can’t this be about two friends helping each other out?’ she whispered into her phone.

‘Sephy –’

‘I know. I know.’ Sephy sniffed and pulled herself upright. ‘I’ll let you know what I decided when I see you on Friday.’

‘Wow. You’re giving yourself a whole two days to think this through.’

‘Progress huh? A whole forty-eight hours longer than I usually give myself to make a decision. See you Friday.’

She ended the call, but kept the phone in her hand as she ran her gaze over the goodie-bags she was assembling.

Her gut said the women receiving those goodie-bags were going to be delighted after seeing Luke Jackson with his hands on the contents!

Her gut said getting to help Luke in return was all the justification she needed.

She looked down at her phone and before the butterflies swirling in her belly managed to break through her stomach lining and invade every part of her, she scrolled through her contacts list and found the entry she wanted.

‘Hey you,’ Luke greeted as he picked up.

‘I accept your conditions,’ said Sephy in a rush.

There was a fraction of a pause and then Luke said, ‘Great. My place. Tomorrow.’

‘What?’ She felt kind of breathy and on the back foot. He was talking like he was taking the lead in this, like it was his situation to control.

‘I thought time was of the essence,’ Luke said, when she ran out of words as quickly as she’d rushed them out.

‘I’m not sure I can get Frazer – that’s the name of the photographer, to make tomorrow.’ Not that she would necessarily be able to make it, either, because surely Nora was going to kill her for not even sleeping on her decision.

‘No problem. We’ll use tomorrow only for practising.’

‘Practising?’ Sephy’s voice went all high.

‘The more comfortable we are with each other, the better and quicker the shoot will go.’

‘I guess,’ Sephy said realising that was probably true. ‘But why your place?’

‘It’s less distracting than yours and afterwards you can tell me what I need to buy to make my place look more lived-in for when the parents visit.’

‘Oh. Okay. You want me to bring anything?’ Sephy rolled her eyes. God, what, like she should turn up with cake or something?

‘Just bring yourself. And your lingerie. Pop over once you’ve dropped Daisy off at school.’

‘Right. Me. Lingerie. Your place. Tomorrow.’ Sephy swallowed.

‘You okay?’

‘Sure,’ she said, thinking, of course she bloody well wasn’t okay. Otherwise her voice wouldn’t be all high and scratchy, while Luke’s voice in her ear sounded all deep and confident and…

‘See you tomorrow,’ she muttered into the phone before ending the call.

She dropped the phone into her lap like it was on fire and stared again at the line of goodie-bags.

Tomorrow was a business thing.

That was all.




CHAPTER FIVE (#ubb881ea2-9388-550c-aac5-b8e62c800f99)


‘It’s me.’

Luke heard Sephy’s voice over the intercom. He pressed the buzzer to open the gates that led to the sweeping driveway and newly built Georgian-styled house he had moved into on the success of Zombie Freedom Fighters I, II, and III.

Was it his imagination or had Sephy’s voice sounded all breathy?

He shoved his hand through his hair before heading for the imposing double doors in the entrance hall.

About to open them, he hesitated. It would probably look weird if he was standing at the front door waiting for her to drive up, wouldn’t it?

Like he couldn’t wait to see her in her underwear, or something?

You know what, mate? This might not be the brightest idea you’ve ever had.

In fact, Luke thought, as he hovered uncertainly in his own hallway, he could hardly believe he had thought the idea genius in the first place.

In his head, he had glossed over the finer points in order to get to the part where he could help her and help himself at the same time. At heart, he had never really expected her to agree.

But then she had and when she had his first reaction hadn’t been relief he was going to get to allay his foster parents’ fears for him. No, his first reaction had been to feel as if he was falling off the top of a very tall building, and hurtling, eyes wide open, towards the ultimate face-plant.

He heard the crunch of gravel and made himself return his mug to the kitchen before he wandered back out to throw the door open wide.

‘Hey you,’ Sephy greeted, with her usual, full-on, no-artifice smile.

Luke was still trying to form actual words of welcome when he saw Sephy’s smile falter a little and a frown form over her brow-line.

She jerked her thumbs in the direction of her car and said, ‘I’ll, um, bring a couple of bags I brought with me in from the car.’

‘’Course,’ Luke said belatedly. ‘I’ll give you a hand.’ Christ. Was that even his voice coming out of his mouth? She had done something to her hair that caused it to fall in thick, touchable waves. He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets to keep from reaching out.

‘I’ve got it,’ Sephy declared. Pivoting, she walked back to the car, throwing over her shoulder, ‘there’s only two bags.’

Luke wasn’t completely sure he could have got his feet to move anyway. They seemed rooted to the spot as he stared in fascination at that waterfall of black just-tumbled-out-of-bed hair, bouncing a little as she walked, making the waves ripple up and down.

She opened up the driver’s door, knelt one knee on the driver’s seat and reached in to bring out the bags she had stored in the passenger-seat foot-well and the air squeezed out of his lungs as his gaze dragged over the soft white denim of her skinny-jeaned derriere.

He didn’t get it.

She had always worn her hair long and he knew he’d seen her in those exact-same jeans before and not felt this wall of lust rise up to block his every attempt to find his way back to platonic.

Was this to be his punishment, then?

One white lie and his friend was his friend no more. Instead she was an accessory to the crime. One who got his pulse racing and his blood thickening so that it pounded in his ears, while his body hardened to the point where surely she would notice?

All this and she hadn’t even taken her clothes off yet.

Maybe he wouldn’t let her take them off after all, because it now seemed as if situation- helpful was turning into situation-most-dangerous-ever.

‘So, I brought a few different sets with me,’ Sephy was saying, as she walked towards him with the Seraphic bags swinging from one hand and her car keys clutched in her other, along with her travel mug. ‘I’m nearly sure which ones I want photos of. I guess it depends which suit me better. I’m not exactly model material.’

He begged to differ and immediately made an exerted effort to stop his thoughts straying down the path clearly marked ‘trouble’. Neither of them needed this backfiring on them.

‘I guess if we try lots of different things,’ she hurried on, walking past him into his house, ‘then we can run it all past Frazer when he does the shoot proper. If it goes well today, I’ll get Nora to ring him and set things up for Monday. Would that work for you? Wow,’ she came to an abrupt stop and turned in a slow circle. ‘I can’t believe I haven’t been here before. It’s really big.’ She turned to face him as she said the last words, her eyes looking him up and down and snagging on his jeans zipper before she flushed scarlet.

Luke shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and prayed to God he wasn’t doing the same.

Sephy turned away to take in the carved wooden staircase and started rambling like she was on the ultimate caffeine high again. ‘I was thinking on the drive over how strange it was that I’d never actually been here before. I think that’s strange. Don’t you think that’s strange? I guess it’s always been easier to meet at mine because of D –’

‘You want to take a breath?’ Luke interrupted, deliberately making his voice as moderate as he thought he could get away with.

He knew that Sephy hated feeling like she was being manoeuvred, but he figured she was about two steps away from hyperventilating and although he was kind of pleased to see her so unsure of her footing, he knew she would bolt if panic hit full on, and then blame herself for ruining her opportunity to fix her ad campaign.

‘What are you talking about?’ Sephy said, turning back to face him. ‘I’m breathing. I’m totally breathing. I’m –’

‘How many of those have you had?’ Luke asked, dragging his hand out of his pocket to point at her giant travel mug.

‘Oh. This is my first one. I didn’t want to be too, you know.’ She flapped a hand about between them, rolled her eyes and shrugged, and as easy as that they were both smiling at each other.

‘Okay. Well, given that I never ask guests to bring their own coffee, shall we go into the kitchen and I’ll make us a fresh batch. We can talk.’

‘Talk?’ Sephy asked.

‘Catch ourselves up.’ Tell her about his family situation, he thought, deliberately ignoring the flash flood of trepidation he felt.

‘Oh. Okay. Good idea. We could do the house stuff first and the other stuff…after.’

‘Drop the bags here, then, and we’ll take them up to my bedroom later.’

‘Bedroom?’ Suspicion hit her huge brown eyes.

‘You can get changed up there and I’ve got full-length mirrors. I thought you’d want to see –’

‘Of course. That’s fine. So are you going to show me this kitchen of yours, then?’

Luke stepped to the side and gestured for her to precede him into the room off to the right.

They were friends who were helping each other out.

That was all.

So they’d talk, have a little lunch and then by the time it came to ‘practice’ they would both feel more like what they were doing really wasn’t such a big deal.

Which it wasn’t, he counselled.

He couldn’t help wishing he had never thought practicing first would be a good idea, though. In his mind he had associated non-professional models with awkwardness and that, coupled with the very real worry he was going to feel as if the photographer was exposing his soul for others to gawk at, or something, had him suggesting rehearsing. But now he wished for the sterile white lights of the photographer’s studio. The flash and noise of photographer and camera. Keeping it all professional would have had the distancing effect that it turned out he really needed.





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