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‘Go ahead,’ she replied easily. ‘There can’t be any more embarrassing conversations left for us to have, surely?’
‘Ah.’ He rubbed a hand across his chin and prayed the right words would come to him. ‘I mentioned yesterday that it would help if Dan could contact your previous, err, boyfriends, to give a character witness. It would be good if we could give him those names this evening, so he can move things along.’
Her fingers tightened on her wineglass. ‘Well, lucky me. It looks like I do get a further chance to humiliate myself. You know what, why don’t I tell you my favourite sexual positions as well, and be done with it.’
Briefly he shut his eyes and tried for calm. ‘I know this is embarrassing. It won’t surprise you to know I’m squirming over here, too, and all I’m doing is listening. Would it be easier to tell Dan directly? You know, someone who doesn’t know you personally?’
‘I’m a public figure, Nick. Telling anyone, whether it’s Dan or you, the names of previous boyfriends feels like kissing and telling. It’s sordid and cheap.’ Bleakly she looked at him. ‘Do you need to know everyone?’
Nick wanted the ground to open up and swallow him. He didn’t bloody want to know any of them, let alone all of them. And it wasn’t just because his toes were curling with embarrassment at it all. He didn’t think he could bear to be reminded of all the men who’d touched the body he wanted to touch. Who’d kissed the lips he longed to kiss. ‘No.’ His vocal chords sounded like they were being pulled out of his throat. ‘Only those you think would be happy to testify on your behalf.’
She fixed her eyes on a point over his left shoulder and took a deep breath. ‘Okay, in the last few years there was . . .’
She proceeded to reel off the names of one baseball player, and three leading actors. All of them A-list stars. All of them with big, flashy appearances and bad boy reputations. He wrote the names down grimly, his pen nearly scorching the paper with the ferocity of his scrawl. At least now he had a real feel for her taste. And it sure as hell wasn’t quiet, ordinary looking accountants.
When she’d finished, he scrambled to his feet, desperate to put some space between them. ‘I’ll give Dan a call with these names right away and let you know how it progresses.’
‘Thanks.’ Her eyes refused to look at him. They stared, unseeing, through the large barn windows and into the dark night. She looked so vulnerable, a reed thin figure on his huge, sprawling sofa. He wanted to comfort her, but right now he didn’t think he was strong enough. Not with the names of her past lovers burning a trail across his damn notebook.
‘Goodnight,’ he called out gruffly.
She didn’t reply.
Chapter Twelve
Lizzie woke up drenched in sweat and with a man’s arms clasped firmly round her shoulders. She experienced a moment of blinding terror, before she realised whose arms they were.
‘It’s okay, Lizzie. You’re having a bad dream.’
As her eyes fell on Nick’s anxious face she quit the struggle she’d been having with the man in her head and lay back weakly against the pillow. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered when she finally found her voice. ‘Did I wake you?’
Nick smoothed back the hair that stuck to her damp forehead. ‘Generally speaking I do wake up when I hear a woman scream.’
‘Oh God, I wasn’t, was I?’
‘Well, maybe not so much screaming, more shouting.’
‘Crap.’ She ran a hand over her face, horrified to find it clammy. ‘What did I say?’
‘Get your fucking hands off me, you bastard.’ He smiled gently down on her. ‘I heard that one clearly enough.’
Embarrassed, she shrank further back into the pillow. ‘Not very ladylike.’
His smile disappeared. ‘I expect, at the time, you weren’t being treated like a lady.’
Images from the nightmare flashed through her mind. Her lying prostrate on a bed. Two men on either side of her, fighting her, slapping her round the face. Telling her she was a whore.
‘Hey, come back to me.’
‘Sorry.’ Her voice sounded small and fragile. ‘I was just remembering what woke me.’
Nick shifted her along the bed, making room so he could sit down next to her. ‘Come here.’ Putting an arm around her shoulders, he pulled her towards him. ‘You’re safe now. Go back to sleep.’
‘I’m not sure I can. Every time I close my eyes, the same images keep running through my mind.’
His arms stiffened. ‘I take it those images have something to do with those bloody photographs.’
‘Yes.’
