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Simple words.
Doing very unsimple things to her.
He was still looking at her, with that same disarming expression. ‘Would it be so very hard to have dinner with me?’ he said. There was a quizzical, amused cast to his eye.
Her eyes were uncertain, confused.
She shouldn’t do this. She should make him stop the car, get out, go home. Back to her real world. She shouldn’t let herself be taken away like this, by a man who did things to her insides that made it impossible to think straight, to think logically, rationally, coolly, sensibly, sanely.
The litany trotted through her head, every word a compelling, urgent argument to tell him to stop the car and let her out. Then into the litany another thought arose, inserting itself into her mind.
If she didn’t get out it would mean she’d keep her job at the casino. They wouldn’t know she’d just gone for dinner.
But did he really mean just dinner? Was she an idiot to believe him?
‘Dinner? That’s all?’ Her voice was sharp.
‘Exactement. In the public dining room of my hotel. It will be very comme il faut, je vous assure.’ There were undertones to his voice, but she could not identify them. She was focussing on the words.
He had used ‘vous’ to her. The formal mode of address, implying not familiarity or superiority—but courtesy.
A knot inside her that she hadn’t even been aware of untied itself.
But another one still remained. One that was much harder to untie. Impossible.
She should go home. She should not do this. If she wasn’t working, she should be at home.
Because there was no point, no point at all, in having dinner with this man.
But it would be worth it if only for the memory.
She took a breath—and made her decision. Looking straight at him.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Il me fait un grand plaisir de vous accepter, m’sieu,’ she enunciated carefully. Then she looked at him uncertainly. ‘Was that correct?’ she asked.
His mouth quirked. Tension seemed to have gone out of his face.
‘It will do perfectly,’ he said.
He relaxed back into his seat, his shoulders easing.
‘Where did you learn French?’
‘At school,’ she volunteered. She, too, sat back into the contours of the seat. ‘Same as everyone else, really. I can just about get my way around France, but that’s all. I can’t really have a proper conversation, or read novels or watch TV or anything demanding. It always seems a bit bad, really, that the British—and the Americans, too, I suppose—can get away without knowing another language fluently. English is de rigueur, presumably, in business circles outside France?’
She was babbling, she knew, but it seemed important to her somehow to have an innocuous conversation—one that had nothing to do with where she worked, or what she’d thought he’d hired her for. A conversation she could have had with anyone.
‘English now is very much the lingua franca, it’s true, but I also speak Italian, Spanish, and some German, as well.’
Her reply was another burble.
‘Well, I can say café con leche, por favor in Spanish, and dov’e il cattedrale in Italian, and I think that’s about it. As for German, it’s just Bitte and Danke. Oh, and I can say epharisto in Greek. But that’s really my lot.’ She gave a self-deprecating smile.
The long eyelashes swept down over his dark eyes. There were no more raindrops on them, but his hair was still clearly wet. So was hers. She could feel water trickling down her back. Another thought struck her. She could hardly dine in a hotel restaurant looking like a drowned rat. But maybe there would be powerful hand dryers in the Ladies, and she could at least get her hair dry. She could try and style it a bit, too, though it was probably best left in a tight pleat. But she could put a bit of makeup on, though—she had enough in her handbag after all. It was the clothes that were the main problem, however. She was just wearing jeans and a jumper—would that really do? Well, it would have to. Anyway, her thoughts raced on, it obviously didn’t bother him, or he wouldn’t have asked her out in the way he had.
Why had he?
The question stung through her thoughts, scattering them instantly. Then into her head his words sounded. Don’t you ever look in the mirror?
