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He sighed. ‘If your little bodyguard friend can’t run the stall on her own you can find someone to help her. I’ll pay any wages due. My PA will sort out your travel plans.’ He looked pointedly at his watch again, as if to say, I don’t have time for this.
Daisy’s temper kicked up another notch. ‘You’re not listening to me, Brody. I’m not doing it. I don’t want to. You’ll have to find someone else.’ She did not want to spend two weeks alone with him in New York. She already knew how irresistible he was—what if she had another lapse in judgment brought on by extreme hormonal overload and jumped him again? Things could get very complicated indeed. ‘I don’t owe you that much,’ she finished, indignation seeping from every pore.
‘Oh, but you do, Daisy Dean.’ He leaned forward, those icy blue eyes chilling her to the bone. ‘You told half of London I was selfish, arrogant and not to be trusted. That’s known as slander.’
The blood seeped out of her face. How did he know about that?
‘There happen to be laws against that sort of thing. So unless you want me to be calling my solicitor, you’d best be on that plane.’
He got up from the booth. She drew back, but he caught her chin in his fingers and tilted her face to his. ‘And, Daisy,’ he murmured, the warmth of his breath making her heart go into palpitations. ‘Who said anything about a fake date?’ he finished, his lips so close she could all but feel them pressed against hers.
‘But I’m not your girlfriend,’ she managed to say as her heart pounded in her throat. ‘I certainly don’t love you. And right now I don’t even like you.’
His gaze swept over her, making her notice the length of his lashes again, before his eyes fixed on her face. If she’d hoped to wound him she could see by his expression she’d failed.
‘Make no mistake. This is only a two-week deal. I’m not in the market for anything more and neither are you.’
She thought she could hear a tinge of regret in his voice and cursed her overactive imagination. She doubted he had the emotional capacity for regret. The rat.
‘But we don’t have to love each other for what I have in mind.’
With that, his lips came down on hers in a hard, fast and sinfully sexy kiss. She tried to twist away but he held her firm until she felt the pulse of response, the throb of heat. And before she knew what was happening, she was kissing him back.
He pulled his mouth away first and straightened. ‘You like me right enough, Daisy Dean.’ He brushed his thumb across her bottom lip. ‘And we both know it.’
She jerked back, mute with anger and humiliated right down to her knickers—which were now soaked with need.
‘There will be lots we can see and do in Manhattan—and I’ve a mind to show it to you,’ he continued, that devil-may-care charm not the least bit fazed by her furious glare. ‘So, you can spend the two weeks in your bed alone, or make the most of the experience. The choice will be yours.’ He gave her a mock salute. ‘I’ll see you in New York, Angel Face.’
Daisy glared at his back as he strolled out of the café, heard him whistling some off-key Irish ditty as he disappeared down the street.
The overbearing, conceited, blackmailing jerk.
She flung her bag on the seat. How dared he steamroll her like that?
She glowered at the booth opposite, sure she could feel smoke pumping out of her ears. To think she’d actually felt sorry for what she’d said about him. He wasn’t just arrogant. He was a megalomaniac—with an ego the size of his precious Manhattan.
If he thought she was going to step into line, he could forget it. And whatever happened she was not going to sleep with him again. No way, no how.
But even as she made the promise she knew it was going to be next to impossible to keep.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BY THE time Daisy had packed up the stall with Juno that evening and trudged back to her bedsit, she’d decided the conversation with Brody in Gino’s café had been his crazy idea of a joke. Either that or she’d been dreaming.
He couldn’t be serious about blackmailing her into a trip to New York. This was the twenty-first century—people didn’t do that sort of thing. Well, not people with any semblance of decency.
She turned on the light and toed off her shoes, every cell in her body weeping with exhaustion after a virtually sleepless night and ten solid hours on her feet—not to mention the day’s emotional trauma. Thank you so very much, Connor Brody. Pulling off the bangles on her wrist, she dropped them into her jewellery box, then sat on the bed and unclipped her silver ankle bracelet. She’d just forget the whole ridiculous episode.
She hadn’t even told Juno about Brody’s threat. She’d forced herself to calm down before returning to the stall—her lips still red and puffy from Brody’s goodbye kiss—and had put a few things in perspective. Brody could not possibly have been serious. So why bother Juno with the details?
Edging her curtain back, Daisy peeked at the windows of Brody’s house. Pitch black. Thank goodness. He must be in Paris. She huffed. Good riddance.
She let the curtain drop, lay down on the bed and stared at the fairy-tale motif she’d painted on the ceiling last winter. A blue-eyed, black-haired cherub winked at her cheekily from behind a moonbeam.
She shifted onto her side and tucked her hands under her cheek—the damn cherub reminding her of someone she did not want to be reminded of.
Sunday and Monday flew by in a flurry of work and other related activities. Daisy manned the stall, ran a class on silk-screen printing at the local community centre, got stuck into her latest clothes designs and did her regular slot at the Notting Hill Arts Project—happily getting neck-deep in tissue paper, glitter and PVA glue as she helped her group of five- to ten-year-olds make their costumes for this year’s Notting Hill Carnival. Just as she’d suspected, there had been no word from Brody. By Tuesday night, the events of the weekend had been as good as forgotten—give or take a few luridly erotic dreams.
