Page 8 of Marry Me…Maybe?
‘Agreed.’
He gestured for her to follow him back out into the hallway.
‘How about we met in London?’ she said, walking to the bottom of the staircase and propping her elbow on the highly polished oak banister. ‘Through a friend from university, perhaps?’
‘That would work. I used to have a job in the City, so she’d buy that.’
‘And we’ve been seeing each other on and off for a year?’
‘Yes. The on and off thing is good. It adds credence to me not mentioning you already. We could have been “off” when I’ve seen or spoken to her in the past.’
‘Okay. Good.’
He nodded towards the sweeping staircase. ‘Come on upstairs with me while I change, and then I’ll show you the bedrooms and bathrooms up there.’
‘Lead on,’ she said, and he felt her following close behind him as he mounted the stairs.
He stopped at the first door off the landing. ‘This is me. I’ll only be a minute.’
‘Okay,’ she said, surprising him by following him inside.
He turned and gave her a questioning frown.
‘I should probably know what your room looks like,’ she said with a pseudo-innocent smile. ‘Just in case.’
He raised his eyebrows but decided not to kick her out.
She had a point.
Emily stopped in the middle of the enormous wood-panelled bedroom and watched Theo disappear through a door on the far side, which she guessed must lead to his ensuite bathroom and dressing room.
‘Take a look around if you want. I removed all the dead bodies yesterday, so I don’t have anything to hide.’
His voice sounded muffled, as if he had his head in a wardrobe. Then she heard the sound of the shower being turned on.
She smiled and did as he suggested, walking around the room and peeking into a couple of his drawers, finding only some paperbacks and a handful of pens in them.
His bed was enormous and comfortable-looking and made up with what looked like Egyptian cotton sheets and a large duck down duvet. She walked over and picked up one of his pillows, holding it to her nose and breathing in the manly scent of him. It had some kind of exotic undertone, like lemongrass or lime – something fresh and clean like that.
Something delicious.
Her whole body flooded with hot longing as she thought about getting close enough to him to smell it on his body.
The shower was turned off.
Tossing the pillow back onto the bed, she crept over to the door of the ensuite bathroom to see whether she could catch an illicit peek at him as he dried and changed, her nerves humming with anticipation.
‘Find anything of interest?’ he asked loudly, and she took a couple of quick steps away in case he came out and caught her spying on him.
‘Not a thing – you’ve been very thorough,’ she called from the safety of the middle of the room.
There was a pause, then a bang like a door closing, and then he spoke again. ‘You know, I think our biggest obstacle in making this thing work is that my mother’s a snob, and that means any girlfriend I have needs to come from a family good enough to meet with her approval.’
His voice was clearer now, as if he was standing right on the other side of the door.
She’d just opened her mouth to reply when he strode back in, wearing a pair of antique wash jeans and a slim-fitting black shirt, left open at the neck, exposing the deep hollow of his throat.
‘Er… we… er… don’t need to lie about that,’ she managed to utter through a mouth that appeared to have stopped working properly.
