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His eyes gleamed. ‘Don’t knock the Love Shack.’
She screwed up her face. ‘I’m not. It’s great—and they’re great. And they love what they do, and they love each other, and that’s why it’s the Love Shack.’
She stopped abruptly. Her voice was too high and forced. But right now was not a good time to discuss her parents—particularly their perfect marriage. Not when she was sitting opposite her soon-to-be fake husband.
Desperate to change the subject, she glanced round the restaurant. ‘It’s not what I expected.’ She frowned. ‘It’s so small and...’
‘Ordinary?’ he suggested. His expression was unreadable but his eyes were watching her carefully.
She nodded. ‘
It feels like someone’s dining room.’ Her eyes flickered over the faces of the other diners, widening as they stopped on a dark-haired man wearing a polo shirt.
‘Isn’t that...?’
Rollo held his finger up to his lips. ‘It is. And that is his equally famous wife. They live in Tribeca. They come here twice a month.’
‘They do?’
Hearing her surprise, he shrugged. ‘The food here is the best in the city.’
She nodded, her pulse quickening. She believed him. But for the last few days, her life had been spent learning his life, and she knew that there was something more beneath his words. She could feel it in the way he rearranged his glass, hear it in the hair-fine tension in his voice.
‘So, do you come here regularly too?’
He nodded. ‘Probably a couple of times a week most weeks.’
As the waiter returned, bringing olives and water, Daisy stared down at her cutlery, his words scraping against her skin like fingernails on a blackboard. A couple of times a week! How many women was that a year?
She frowned, feeling some of her happiness oozing away.
But why was she counting? Rollo’s private life was none of her business. She didn’t have to care about his past. Or worry about being the latest in an ever-growing line of women that he brought to the same restaurant.
That was the upside to this whole crazy situation, and the beauty of their relationship. She could stay detached, unemotional, immune.
Or that was what was supposed to happen.
She caught her breath, shocked to discover that wasn’t how she was feeling at all. Instead a thin curl of misery was coiling around her brain.
‘You’re very quiet.’
Rollo’s voice bumped into her thoughts.
‘I was just thinking.’ She gave him a small, tight smile. ‘Trying to work something out. A sum.’
He stared at her in a way that made her heart skid forward.
‘A sum! You’re not going to suggest we go halves on the bill, are you?’
‘No! Although I don’t see why I shouldn’t. I’m not Orphan Annie, you know. I do have some money.’
He ignored her. ‘So, what are you trying to work out?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Her voice sounded more desperate than she’d intended and, picking up her glass, she took a sip of water. ‘Truly. It was nothing.’
There was a brief silence. His eyes were level with hers and she forced herself to keep looking at him as he gazed at her thoughtfully.
‘Okay,’ he said after a moment. ‘But promise me that if whatever it is becomes a problem, even if it’s not really your problem, you’ll tell me. So I can help.’
