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He glanced back out the window.
Beneath them, the soft green of the forest was growing sparser. Roads were starting to crisscross the landscape. Soon he would be shaking hands with Dunmore, Daisy by his side. It was the moment he’d been working towards all his life—the moment when his goal switched from impossible dream to possible reality.
So why, then, did he want nothing more than to turn back time? To go back to the lodge and it be just be the two of them.
It was nerves, he told himself quickly, his gaze tugging towards where Daisy sat, wearing a navy pencil skirt, a gold chain belt accentuating the waistline of her fitted grey blouse. Nerves and a raging, unassailable lust for the tempting body that lay beneath that demure outfit.
Pushing aside his desire, he cleared his throat.
‘Dunmore’s been married to the same woman since he was nineteen. He’s a romantic.’
He smiled, but Daisy couldn’t bring herself to smile back. The dismissive tone in his voice, his barely masked incredulity that a man could truly love a woman, let alone choose to stay with her, for life tasted bitter in her mouth.
But it wasn’t her problem, she reminded herself quickly. Maybe if theirs was a real relationship, his emotional disconnect would matter. But thankfully she would never have to endure the pain of loving Rollo. What she felt for him was just simple and shallow: lust.
Perhaps he registered the effect of his words, for when he spoke again she saw that the mockery in his eyes had faded.
‘You’ll be fine. He’s a nice man who just wants to hear about you—about us. All you have to do is pretend you’re madly in love with me.’
He shifted closer, his hand tightening on hers, and suddenly her mouth was dry, her heart hammering, her entire body so aware of him and only him that for a moment the noise of the helicopter faded away and it was as though they were flying through the air alone together.
‘Is that all?’ Their eyes met and she managed to smile. ‘In that case, no problem. You can be Romeo and I’ll just channel my inner Juliet.’
He laughed softly and she felt a rush of pleasure. Not just because she had made him laugh, but at the way his body was sprawled against hers. There was a take-it-for-granted intimacy to it that would have been impossible only a few days before.
‘Both of us dying over lunch seems a little extreme.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ she said lightly, glancing out of the window at the skyscrapers below. ‘It can’t be true love unless someone dies or ends up alone and heartbroken.’
Turning back, she expected him still to be smiling. But instead his eyes were fixed on her face, his expression serious and oddly intense.
‘I thought you believed in happy-ever-after,’ he said quietly.
The stillness in the cabin seemed to press against her so that suddenly she was painfully aware of her own breathing.
‘I did. I do—’
A pulse of tension was beating beneath her skin. Staring at him in confusion, she rewound their conversation, searching for an explanation for this abrupt change of mood.
Then from somewhere behind her head the intercom crackled and the voice of the pilot split the silence.
‘Just to let you know we’ll be landing in about five minutes, sir. There’s a slight breeze, but other than that it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day.’
Moments later the helicopter touched down on the roof of one of Manhattan’s many skyscrapers, and then they were walking across the concrete, her heels tapping like castanets.
‘This way, Mr Fleming... Ms Maddox.’
A bodyguard in a dark suit stepped forward, gesturing towards the lift. Watching the numbers change as the lift descended, Daisy felt her stomach tighten. It was almost the moment of truth. The moment she found out if all that preparation had paid off and the audience believed her performance.
She breathed out silently.
Everything should be all right. She knew his back story the way she knew her own life, and her body still pulsed with the aftershock of his lovemaking.
And yet something was wrong.
Beside her, Rollo was silent, his face expressionless. But something in the way he was holding his body made her instantly forget her own nerves.
‘Rollo—’
