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sugar, please.’
She walked into the casual living space, with lots of luxurious-looking sofas and sleek coffee tables, strewn with big photography and art books. A media centre was set up on shelves that formed a dividing wall, with well-thumbed books and DVDs.
The stark minimalism of a quintessential bachelor pad was evident, but it was softened.
‘Coffee?’
Rose jumped at his voice where she’d been standing, looking at his DVDs, and took the cup he held out, noticing that he’d taken off his jacket and waistcoat, so now he was just wearing the open-necked white shirt and trousers.
He gestured with his head towards the shelves. ‘Don’t tell anyone about my predilection for vintage Kung-Fu movies, will you?’
Rose forced a smile and tried to ignore the sensation of her heart turning over. ‘I won’t.’
The lights of the vast city around them lit up the huge space and it was impossibly seductive. She moved towards a window, cupping her hands around the mug in a bid to put some space between them.
Drink the coffee and get out—before you get lost again.
She marvelled at the life of privilege Zac enjoyed. Although he didn’t give off the air of complacency and entitlement that she’d experienced from others. People like his parents...his mother. Her insides cramped.
‘So...when you say you’re a maid...?’
Zac’s words scattered her guilt and Rose looked at him. She had to bite back a smile at his curious expression. She said dryly, ‘It means that I’m one of those invisible workers who tidies up your world so that when you turn around nothing is out of place.’
He winced. ‘Ouch.’
Rose shrugged. ‘It’s the way it is.’
‘You don’t sound bitter,’ he observed.
She glanced at him again. She wasn’t bitter at all. It had never bothered her that she came from a solidly working-class background. She’d had the love of two parents and knew that that was the most important thing in the world. Which was why she had to save her father...
Rose quickly averted her gaze from that incisive blue one. She felt sick and guilty again. She couldn’t do this.
She put down her cup on a nearby table and straightened and looked at him, steeling herself. But her words dried in her mouth. Zac was looking at her with such searing explicitness that a shiver of anticipation raced through her.
She instructed herself with silent desperation. Say, Thank you for the coffee, but I really should be going. Because I never would have met you in a million years if it hadn’t been for—
And then Zac said, ‘Why do I think that you’re about to bolt, and that if you do I’ll never see you again?’
CHAPTER THREE
ZAC’S WORDS IMPACTED on Rose like a punch in the gut. Because I am, and you won’t. She knew that if she walked out of there right now she wouldn’t see him again, because this had been an exercise in madness.
She’d never in a million years expected to find herself in this situation, and maybe that was why she’d agreed to this extreme plan—because it had never entered her head that it could possibly become a reality.
Yet despite that she was there, and what had sprung to life between them was...unprecedented. It called to all of Rose’s unawakened desires. And she knew that if she wanted—against all the odds—she might quite possibly be able to fulfil the demands of his mother.
But she couldn’t do it.
Not now that she’d met him.
She couldn’t deceive this man and use him in whatever power play was going on with his mother. She had no right. And she should never have been tempted. Jocelyn Lyndon-Holt had appealed to her fear and vulnerability. Her lack of resources. And she’d shamelessly taken advantage of Rose’s father’s ill health to do so.
For a moment Rose had been terrified enough to agree. But now, facing the stark reality of putting the plan into action, she knew she couldn’t live with herself if she did. She would have to find another way to try and save her father. Which was what she would have had to do anyway. If she walked out of here right now they would be no worse off than if she hadn’t done this. She’d do anything but play with someone else’s life.
She reiterated more firmly, ‘I have to go.’
Bright blue eyes bored into hers and a hand closed around her upper arm. ‘Why? Give me one good reason.’
