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‘If I’d known, I would have dressed for dinner.’ She scanned the table with some appreciation. It might be a takeaway but not as she knew; the food on the table was served on white porcelain and slate.
‘I asked for a light supper.’
‘It looks so pretty!’ she exclaimed. ‘A work of art.’
He looked amused. ‘Let us hope it tastes as good.’
He went to fill her glass from the bottle in the cooler and she frowned. ‘I probably shouldn’t.’
‘You should do something you probably shouldn’t at least once a day.’
‘My mum would approve of that philosophy. This is delicious. I can’t figure out what is in this sauce...’
‘It’s pretty well disguised,’ Soren, whose own taste ran to simpler food, commented as he sat back watching her, enjoying her enthusiasm and her unselfconscious appreciation of the food. ‘But you don’t approve of doing something you shouldn’t?’
‘Oh, I’m boring. I have no spirit of adventure, Mum says. Poor Mum, she was expecting her daughter to be like her, or at least to be pretty. It came as a nasty shock when I told her I wanted to be a librarian. Her face... I honestly think she’d have been less shocked if I said I wanted to be a sex worker!’ She laughed, her gaze lifting a little self-consciously from her plate when he didn’t respond.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked when she discovered he looked unaccountably stern, angry even. ‘I babble when I drink,’ she said, putting down the glass she had just picked up.
‘I like your voice.’
It seemed an odd thing to say.
‘Do you not like the wine?’
‘It’s gorgeous. Everything is gorgeous,’ she said, looking across the table. There were acres of food left over, which seemed a criminal waste. Her grandfather’s housekeeper, who had been her female role model growing up, had instilled a frugality in her. ‘But I really couldn’t eat another scrap.’
‘There is pudding in the fridge.’
His teasing offer made her groan and press both hands to her stomach. ‘I couldn’t...’ she admitted regretfully. ‘Your driver—has he had any food?’
‘Considerate, but I sent Alberto home a while ago.’
‘Then how...? Oh, a taxi,’ she realised.
‘Actually, I’m staying here tonight.’
As his casual bombshell dropped and the ripples of comprehension spread, Anna’s glass hit the table with a bump. She barely registered it slopping all over the surface.
‘Why?’ she exclaimed, then flushed. ‘Not that it’s any of my business.’ This was his house, or his mother’s, which amounted to the same thing,shewas the guest and she was massively overreacting.
‘I do not sleepwalk, if that is what is concerning you.’
The taunt seemed unnecessarily cruel to Anna, who might have spent most of her time in the bathroomavoidinglooking at her reflection, but she had seen enough to know that this was sarcasm. Soren could have his pick, and she was sure that a man like him would be very picky—everything about him came with anonly supermodel-level females or above need applysticker.
And they, she decided—thinking long legs and inflatable breasts—were welcome to him.
‘It isn’t!’ she said, channelling cold towards his veiled eyelids. ‘Sorry if I’m boring you,’ she added when he didn’t react.
‘Also I am a light sleeper.’ Though he seriously doubted that the night would bring him any sleep at all. ‘So if you have any plans to slip away in the night...’
Anna had forgotten those plans somewhere around her second glass of wine.
‘I’ll go home tomorrow,’ she said in a flat little voice.
‘What are you doing?’
Anna stopped stacking plates. ‘Clearing the—’
