Page 68 of The Price of Love
‘Can you blame me? You’ve made me feel likethisdoesn’t matter any more.’ He twitched the covers aside and slapped at his weak leg. ‘Like I could conquer mountains, swim the Atlantic. Anyway. Enough about you, now let’s talk about me. I’m thirty-four, Sagittarius, I like cooking, photography, reading . . .’
‘Shut up.’ I laughed. ‘I don’t want to know.’
‘You don’t want to knowall aboutme? Good God, woman, what kind of girlfriend are you? Next you’ll be saying that you don’t want to know how much I earn.’
‘Listen, I kneweverythingabout Luke Fry. Back in the old days, I could probably have given you a chart showing how often he crapped! Didn’t help me, did it? So, yes, I do want to know about you, but let it come in its own good time, Cal.’ I climbed out of the bed and began searching for my erotically discarded clothes. ‘And I’m really not bothered about the size of your salary.’
‘That’s not what you said last night.’
‘That wasn’t your salary.’
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘Cal, you are absolutelyinsufferable.’ I giggled, hauling my knickers off the trendy bent-poled lamp in the corner. He looked at me with suddenly hooded eyes.
‘I’ve done with suffering,’ he said quietly. For a breathless moment we stared at each other. I could see his chest twitch with his heartbeat. He was so thin that each pulse trembled his skin. He moved slightly in the bed and the covers slid lower, revealing the dark hairs ringing his navel and running down in a pencil line. His body was perfectly shaded, the hollows deep and his flesh pale, his face highlighted with stubble and the twitch of his untidy hair. ‘Willow.’ It was a whisper, a plea, gently, unbearably sexy.
‘Oh, bugger.’ I pulled off what clothes I’d managed to put on and fell back into him again.
Chapter Twenty-Six
‘Oh, and here’s your laptop. Cal’s fixed it, done it for nothing in fact, as a favour. He said he’d got all the bits in his workshop.’
‘Willow, what’s the matter? You’re talking fit to bust here. Is something upsetting you?’
I paused, fork halfway to my lips. Was it my paranoid imagination or did he think I’d been checking up on him? What kind of person did he think Iwas? Apart from blindingly stupid and gullible, obviously. ‘No, everything’s fine.’ I swallowed a mouthful of venison. ‘Just a bit jittery. I can’t make my mind up about getting married. I mean it’ssoexpensive. I looked at dresses yesterday with Katie, some of them were over a thousand pounds.’
Luke clicked his tongue. ‘That does seem a bit steep.’
‘And I thought, what’s the point in wasting Ganda’s inheritance on stuff I’ll only wear once. I’d rather save it for, you know, investing.’
I watched his face carefully, but he was good. Bloody good — he never so much as twitched a muscle. ‘At least investing it will get you a return.’
Not if I invest in you, sunshine, I thought, suddenly vicious.I forced down another venison sausage, but couldn’t resist a quick stab. ‘And if we get married I wouldn’t put up with any bad behaviour from you, you know.’
Luke gave me a cheeky grin. ‘You quite like my bad behaviour.’
I pretended to laugh. ‘Notthatsort.’And anyway, Cal’s ‘bad behaviour’ knocks yours out of the window. Nowthere’sa man who knows how to be BAD. ‘I meant, if you were unfaithful or anything.’
Luke poured more wine, clinked glasses with me. All without a flicker of guilt. ‘Willow, married to you, whywouldI stray?’
‘Excuse me a second, Luke, I need to . . . powder my nose.’ I almost ran from the restaurant, clutching my napkin to my mouth and only just making the Ladies before dinner returned in an unsightly rush, but this wasn’t caused by ‘attractive man syndrome’, this was outrage. How dare he? Howcouldhe? How was it possible for anyone to lie so convincingly? It had strained every facial muscle I had to tell him that I’d got a ‘slight infectiondown there’ and the doctor had recommended no sex until it cleared up. His disappointment had been obvious, but then I supposed it must be a perk of the job, having rampant sex to convince me of his honest intentions.
‘So. How’s the business?’ was my bright opener when I returned.
‘Not too bad. Showroom’s getting there, I sold the Morgan yesterday, hence.’ He indicated, with a wave of his knife, the undoubtedly expensive restaurant we were eating at. Equally undoubtedly paid for with part of the thirty-one grand he’d had out of me so far. ‘I’ve had a few other leads on cars that might be up my street. One in Michigan, if I can scrape up the money to fly out for a look.’ No movement, not even his eyelashes stirred my way.
‘Oh? Well, if it’s a sure thing, maybe I could give you the cash to get out there?’
‘I’m not committing until I know it’s a really good deal. But thanks, I’ll let you know.’
I bet you will. ‘Um, Luke.’ My hands started to sweat under the table and I surreptitiously wiped them on the linen tablecloth. ‘I’m going tomorrow to see Ganda’s invention?’ Why did I phrase it as a question? Duh. Comeon, Willow. ‘So I’m hoping that they’ll give me at least part of the money soon.’
‘Oh.’ Affecting total nonchalance.
‘Only, I was thinking.’ I hoped he didn’t hear the sudden intake of air. ‘I’d really like to invest some of it in your business.And, I was thinking, what about if the following weekend we go away somewhere? I thought, kind of, a hotel somewhere really special. I’d book it and everything, as a celebration.’ Tinkly little laugh. Was I going too far?
‘I think that sounds very nice.’ Maybe there was no too far where Luke was concerned. ‘Next weekend, you said?’ A dip into his pocket and he drew out his phone. This one was even newer than the one he’d been carrying, a version that had only just hit the shops a week or so before. I stared at it and bit my lip. At least I now knew where seven hundred quid of my money had gone. ‘Yeah, that all looks pretty free. Um, just so I can let the bank manager know, how much were you thinking of investing? Sort of? I mean, you don’t have to be precise, obviously. It won’t matter one way or another, but, ballpark figure?’
