Responsible adult. Hot babe. Cool gal. The last virgin in the northern hemisphere.
‘What a mess,’ said Zoe wryly. She shivered, in spite of the hot drink between her hands.
Miss I Can Cope. That was what Suze had called her. She believed it, too. Zoe was not sure how. She knew that her family saw what they wanted to see. But how could her best friend be fooled?
Because you’re good at the performance.
Well, good enough. Up to a point. One day soon someone was going to find her out. She felt the chill touch her again. Maybe she had met him now.
She had so nearly given herself away tonight, with the way she had stared at the Mogul Prince. He had seen it, too. She knew he had. He had looked at her so hard that she’d thought he was going to be able to draw her. And his face had told her absolutely nothing.
Had he seen through her act? Had he?
No, she told herself. Of course he hadn’t. It had just been a trick of the disco ball lighting. And her own uneasy conscience, of course.
Heck, at one point it had even sounded as if he and Suze were play-acting. How was that for paranoia?
You’ve got to do something about that, she said to herself, as she had done so many times before. Stop performing. Tell someone.
But who? And how? And would they believe her, anyway?
The men in her life took their cue from her friends. And her friends knew that she was a sophisticated twenty-three-year- old with a cool life and a hot wardrobe. They even asked her advice about their love lives, for heaven’s sake. And Suze was forever asking her to look out for any social incompetents who turned up at her parties. Because Zoe knew all there was to know about men and the dating game. Didn’t she?
Not one of her friends would believe that twenty-year-old Artemis knew more about love than Zoe did. Heck, seventeen- year-old Harry probably knew more. And one day soon, if she did not tell them, she was going to trip up spectacularly over her half-lies and evasions.
Or she was going to get stuck in the performance. And she would be performing for the rest of her life. And not one soul would know her. Ever.
‘Aaaargh,’ she said aloud. And dashed the dragon mug on the weedy paved slabs.
It did not break.
CHAPTER THREE
JAY let himself out of the kitchen door, as he always did for his morning run. The old manor house felt asleep. He did some stretches, looking at the way the early-morning sun turned the Cotswold stone to the colour of warm butter. He smiled. His grandfather’s house smiled back at him.
He stopped stretching and started off on the familiar route, his trainers picking up damp from the dew-wet grass.
Across the kitchen garden. Through the iron gate in the wall and into the woods. Along the grassy track that followed the stream back up the hill. It was easy, this first part of the course, a gentle slope and an even surface to run on. He found his pace and let his thoughts wander.
It had been an easy journey last night. The roads had been nearly empty. He had been in bed just after two. That was not so different from the hours he kept in London. Lethal if he were in serious training, of course. Only he wasn’t. It was a long time since he had competed, except in the boardroom.
A long time since I have had to try at anything.
Except he had had to try last night. Suze had been right. He had been surprised to find that the girl with the voluptuous mouth was so hostile to working for him.
No, he corrected himself, she was hostile to working for Culp and Christopher. She did not know him. At least, he hoped it was Culp and Christopher.
Anyway, he had followed Suze’s advice. He had challenged her. And before she knew where she was, she was promising to turn up on Monday morning and make him eat his words. That had made him feel as if he had won a victory.
Careful, he told himself wryly. You don’t want a resurgence of the old male animal. Not at work. Not after last time.
But the thought of Zoe Brown making him eat his words set his feet pounding faster all the same.
He had to make a conscious effort to slow down. On a three-hour-run you did not start off by sprinting. And Jay was a patient man. He was good at biding his time. Even better at self-control.
He remembered the way her satin bra strap had slipped under that damned transparent shirt and he had to remind himself fiercely that self-control was his strongest point.