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The last thing he expected to find was both his women in the kitchen, Millie and Sophie wearing matching pinnies and engrossed in cooking up a storm. Millie noticed him first.
‘Mr Caruana, I didn’t hear you come in.’
He wasn’t surprised, there were so many pans and woks simmering on the hotplates the extractor could hardly keep up. But it was Sophie’s reaction he was more taken by. She looked up from whatever she was chopping, her eyes shadowed by her long lashes, and he could swear she was doing that blushing thing again.
Millie pressed a cold beer into his hands. ‘Sophie’s giving me a lesson on how to cook Thai. I hope you’re hungry. We’ve got a veritable feast in store for you.’
He levered the cap off his beer and pulled out one of the bar stools along the wide kitchen bench, uncharacteristically plonking himself down; usually he’d head straight to his office. ‘You didn’t tell me you could cook, Sophie.’
She looked sideways at him, the knife in her hands suddenly stilled. ‘I can do lots of things.’
Oh, now that he did know. Already he was looking forward to finding out more. He raised the open bottle to her. ‘Here’s to discovering your other hidden talents.’ And he smiled when her blush deepened. How could she be so shy on the one hand, when she was so explosive in bed? But then he remembered the woman last night standing half-hidden by the doors, as if embarrassed by her nakedness, and he wondered again at how inexperienced she seemed. She hadn’t been a virgin, but she couldn’t have had too many men, that was for certain. One of them would surely have whisked her off the market by now.
He was pondering the significance of that thought when the phone in his pocket beeped, souring both the taste of his beer and his lighter mood-change since walking in the door.
Sophie, on the other hand, seemed suddenly brighter. ‘Oh, but you’ll never guess what—Millie used to make wedding cakes. She’s agreed to make Monica and Jake’s. Isn’t that great?’
Suddenly his beer wasn’t just sour; now it tasted like crap.
He pushed himself from the chair, leaving the half-empty bottle on the bench. ‘I have a call to make.’
‘Don’t take too long,’ Millie called behind him. ‘Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes.’
He slammed his office door with unnecessary force, making the windows rattle. How could Sophie do that? How could she pretend the wedding was going ahead when she knew damned well it wasn’t? He paced the wall of his office, end to end and back again, finding no answers, no reason.
And how could she drag Millie into it, getting her hopes up about making some bloody wedding cake for a wedding that was destined to be a non-event from the start?
Why did she persist with this whole wedding-planner fantasy, anyway? Was she so desperate to convince him that it was real that she needed to involve his personal staff? Did she really believe Millie’s involvement would sway him? Now she was only going to let Millie down when it all came unstuck.
None of it made sense, least of all whatever it was gnawing at the recesses of his mind. She was a good actress. She had to be, to pretend the wedding was real and to suck everyone into her plan.
Yet what kind of actress could blush on demand? What kind of actress could turn shyness into an art?
Was Jo wrong about her motives? Did Sophie actually believe the wedding was real? Nothing he’d witnessed so far gave any hint that her efforts to get this wedding underway were half-hearted.
And nothing she’d done gave any hint that she’d got wind of his million-dollar offer to her brother. Sure, it would pay her to keep quiet until the deal was done if she was getting the cut Jo suggested, but wouldn’t he have noticed just a glimmer of interest once the game was on?
Was she cleverer than that, too clever and too interested in a hefty-dollar payout to give herself away?
Or was her brother playing her for a fool, using her as his blind while he sucked the bride’s brother dry?
The idea appealed, made a sick kind of sense. Fletcher had no loyalty to his sister; they’d only known each other a few short years, after all. She and her wedding-planner business was just a cover, her business’s need for capital a mere coincidence. He refused to believe she was part of Fletcher’s plan.
He sat down on the edge of his desk, the pieces reassembling themselves in his mind. Sophie’s brother was playing her for a fool. She and her wedding-planning business validated his story, that was all.
And, once Fletcher had the money, he’d run, leaving both Monica and Sophie high and dry, and leaving Daniel to pick up the pieces.
Someone like Fletcher would do that.
The phone in his pocket beeped again, reminding him he had messages waiting—reminding him that whatever he thought or hoped probably wasn’t the issue. He had to deal in facts.
