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‘Just like that,’ he echoed softly.
‘Oh,’ she said quietly.
‘Oh!’ he teased, and picked up a chip with his fingers. ‘So that’s the ball out of the way. Now what shall we talk about?’
She sawed mechanically at a piece of chicken. ‘Pass.’
Sam leaned back in his chair and studied her, wondering what her hair would look like loose and falling all over her shoulders. ‘You know, you’re nothing like I imagined you would be,’ he said slowly.
The feeling was mutual. ‘And what were you expecting?’
‘I thought that a party-planner would be outrageously glamorous—’
‘Thanks very much!’
‘The kind of person who looked like she partied non-stop herself.’
‘And I don’t?’
He shook his head. ‘No, you don’t.’ She looked remote. Untouchable. The last type of woman you could imagine captured in the throes of passion on a very large bed. And consequently, the very person you wanted on that bed…. ‘You look like you go to bed all clean, in a starched nightdress, with your teeth all brushed and minty,’ he said huskily.
His voice stilled her, while his expression dealt a velvet blow to her heart. Something glowing crept inside her, touching a part of her she had thought Sholto had killed off forever. Oh, Lord—why hadn’t Rosie warned her that she would be in danger of falling for him herself? Actually, when she thought about it—Rosie had warned her. She had just thought she would be immune to it.
Sitting in this gorgeous restaurant it was all too easy to be beguiled by that lazy charm. To forget that he had used it ruthlessly and manipulatively. ‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’
‘If you like. Is it true?’
Fran gave a ghost of a laugh. ‘I have absolutely no intention of telling you what I wear to bed!’
Her unwillingness to open up intrigued him, too. Most women told you their life story at the drop of a hat. ‘Did you really use to work for a radio station?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Cormack.’ He smiled, as though he found it terribly amusing. ‘He said you’d been an agony aunt for a while.’
‘I’m afraid he’s right,’ she answered, wondering just when they had had this discussion about her. And why.
‘Unusual kind of job.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘How did you get into that?’
‘In a very roundabout way. I was living in London at the time and working in a big department store.’
‘Boring job?’
‘Very. I used to play netball with the girls every Thursday night, and afterwards we all used to go to the pub for a drink. One night we met a load of guys who were over on holiday from Ireland. One of them started telling me all his problems—’
‘Was that your ex-husband?’ he asked suddenly.
Fran nodded. Clever of him. ‘Yes. He was working part-time at the radio station in Dublin.’
‘So let me guess—you gave him all the right answers and sorted his whole life out for him and he fell in love with you?’
Fran shook her head. ‘Not quite. That’s what you don’t do. You direct, not dictate. People are supposed to choose their own solution to a problem.’
‘And did he choose the right one?’
Fran remembered back. ‘Yes, I guess he did,’ she said slowly. Sholto had been unable to decide whether to follow his father into the family banking business, or to follow his heart and become a full-time disc jockey instead. She had asked him which was more important to him—his parents’ approval, or his own sense of worth. Afterwards he had told her that in that one moment he had known that he wanted to marry her. And that had frightened her—to think that love could strike so randomly, so indiscriminately and so unsuitably…
‘It’s a nice story,’ he said unexpectedly.
