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“Then it’s agreed. I’ll pay, you stay. Eat.”

She ignored the bread this time. “But what about Ellie,” she said, sipping her cocktail instead. “You’ve pointed out that we can’t ignore this,” she gestured from her chest then pointed at him. “But the last thing you want is for her to find out.”

“True. We’ll just have to be careful when she’s around.”

“When anyone’s around,” she corrected, frowning, thinking of the staff. “Whatever happens between us needs to be strictly between us. Completely our secret. No one in my office, none of the workers I hire, none of your staff—no one can know.”

“Fine.”

It should have been a relief but instead, she felt like she’d taken three huge steps down a gangplank, with swirling, shark-infested waters right below.

“What else?” he said, moving to stand and coming to take the seat beside her, rather than opposite. And to her surprise, he reached for the triangle of bread on her plate and lifted it, eyes on hers. “Eat.”

Her heart thundered; she parted her lips as he pressed the bread there, deep enough that she could bite off a piece. He moved his hand slightly, so he could draw his thumb over her lower lip as she chewed.

“Good girl.”

His approval made her insides loop. She wasn’t sure she’d ever forget the way that praise had sounded in his gruff, throaty voice.

“What else?” he asked again, eyes holding hers.

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. Think.”

She forced her brain into action, connecting dots, concerns, worries. “This doesn’t mean anything,” she said, carefully. “I don’t want anything remotely like emotion to enter the equation. I’m done with that. I can’t…I can’t let myself get hurt again.”

“No feelings,” he said, and then, moving forward slowly, so he could lightly brush his lips over hers, he said, “No hurting. Understood.”

And her heart turned over in her chest, because the way he said that did almost seem like a promise. An inviolable, unquestionable promise from the kind of man not capable of breaking them. She expelled a soft breath, relaxing into this, and she smiled. “One more thing,” she said, putting her hand on his knee and relishing the simplicity of that contact. “Days are off limits. I need to work, and so do you, I presume.”

“Fine. But at night? You’re mine.”

The intensity of his statement made her soul catch alight. She was capable only of nodding.

CHAPTER 4

FOUR DAYS OF INTENSE physical work seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. Not because the work was easy; it wasn’t. It was demanding and exacting—and everything Chloe had been missing since her business became such a runaway success.

But the days were simply a precursor to the nights.

Nights that were steaming hot, in contrast to the ice-cold winter that wrapped around the house from all sides. For the first two nights, they’d used her bedroom, making love into the small hours, when at some point, she’d fallen asleep and then he’d left, to return to his own room. But on the third night, somehow, they’d ended up there—in his space—and it hadn’t occurred to either of them to mind. On the fourth night, they didn’t discuss changing it.

But when the morning broke, late and slow, with a grey sky doing its best to stymie the sun’s wattage and warmth, a shift was palpable between them. They’d stuck to their deal, keeping things light and easy. No serious conversations, no ‘deep and meaningfuls’ in which one would get to know more than the superficial about the other. He asked about her clients, her preferred décor, her university degree, and she asked about his work, his projects, how he found running a massive multi-national from the solitude of this manor in the Cotswolds. The answer? That he didn’t. Through the week, I generally travel. I’m always within reach, if she needs me, but there are times when I have to be in Athens or Rome, Seoul, California or Tokyo. I try to limit it, but it’s a necessity of my life. On weekends, though, I’m always here. Routine is important to children.

He said things like that quite often. Little quotes that she suspected he’d had to learn, almost from a book, or the psychologist he’d mentioned seeing, when Laura died and Ellie came to live with him. As though he didn’t have his own guidebook on how to raise children, because he didn’t want to follow his parents’ example? She hadn’t asked that question though, because it moved close to the territory of blurring the exact lines they’d agreed they wouldn’t cross.

“About the weekend,” he said, pulling her back to that moment, that morning, with the leaden sky and a sense of change in the air.

She pushed up onto one elbow, uncaring that the sheet dropped low to reveal the top of one breast. “Yeah?”

“As much as I hate to say it, this has to go on hold.”

She frowned, ignoring the tightening in her belly. “Haven’t we already agreed that?”

He frowned. “Did we?”

“We said no one would find out about it.”