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‘One day. One date. It’s a start.’ For both of them.
‘And then?’
‘We’ll see. We’ll take one day at a time and see how we go.’ He had a feeling one day at a time was all they could handle. He didn’t know what he was asking, what he wanted. This was new territory for both of them.
‘One day,’ she repeated, as if she liked the sound of it. ‘One date.’ Luke nodded, felt his heart lift. ‘Okay,’ she said, and smiled.
* * *
Aurelie stood in the lobby of the hotel and tried not to fidget. Luke had told her he’d meet here at nine for their day out. Their date.
When had she last had a date?
She couldn’t remember, although it wasn’t for lack of men. There had, she knew, been far too many men in her life. But she hadn’t dated them. The whole concept of a date made her feel like a giddy girl, young, innocent, full of hope.
Ha.
She was none of those things. She might only be twenty-six, but she’d lived enough for three lifetimes. And as for innocent, hopeful...Luke Bryant might stir something inside her she’d long thought destroyed, but he couldn’t change her and she didn’t think she could change herself.
And when Luke discovered that... Swallowing, she forced the fluttery panic down. There was no point thinking about the future. Luke was giving her one date. One day. And by the end of it he’d probably have had enough.
‘Ready?’
She whirled around, saw Luke smiling at her. He wore a dark green polo shirt and khaki shorts, and she realised it was the first time she’d seen him in casual clothes. The shirt hugged the lean, sculpted muscles of his chest and shoulders, and the shorts rested low on his trim hips. Her gaze travelled down his tanned, muscular legs to the pair of worn trainers and then back up again to his face, where a surprising grin quirked his mouth.
‘Finished?’
She had, Aurelie realised with some mortification, been checking him out. And not in a deliberate, outrageous, Aurelie-
like way. No, this had been instinctive, helpless, yearning admiration. Somehow she managed to smile, nod.
‘Yeah, I’m done.’
‘And do I pass?’
‘You’ll do.’
He chuckled and placed one hand on the small of her back. She felt the warm, sure press of his palm against her skin and the answering shivers of sensation that rippled out through her body from that little touch.
‘So where are we going?’ she asked as they left the hotel. A luxury sedan with tinted windows and a driver at the wheel waited for them at the kerb. Luke opened the door and ushered her into the sumptuous leather interior.
‘Camiguin.’
‘Cami-what?’
He smiled and slid in next to her, his thigh brushing hers. Aurelie didn’t know why she was suddenly hyper-aware of his movements, his body. She’d already been naked with this man; he surely shouldn’t have this effect on her.
And yet, somehow, he did.
‘Camiguin,’ Luke repeated. ‘A small island province in the Bohol Sea.’
‘So we’re not taking this car there, I assume?’
‘No, we’re taking this to the airport, and then a private plane to Mambajao, the capital city. And then we’ll hire a Jeep.’
‘Planes, trains and automobiles.’
‘It shouldn’t take more than two hours, overall.’
‘A private jet is pretty classy.’
Luke gave her the glimmer of a smile. ‘I can be a pretty classy guy.’
She felt a ripple of something like pleasure at the light remark, the curve of his mouth. She’d spent so much of her time trying to push Luke away and protect herself. It felt amazingly liberating not to do it. To banter without the barbs, to relax into a—
A what? A relationship? She didn’t do relationships. Luke might go for them, but they didn’t work for her. She turned to stare out of the window, told herself this was one date. It was nothing. By this time tomorrow they’d probably have decided they’d both had enough.
The private jet was waiting for them on the tarmac at
Manila’s International Airport. Aurelie had taken private jets before, back in her heyday, but she hadn’t been on one in over four years and it felt strange. She stood in the main cabin, glancing around at the leather sofas, the champagne chilling on ice, and felt something cold steal inside her.
