His Temporary Mistress Read online

  Enthused by a positive response, Phillipa was off. Ibiza would be great! She was sick of the English weather anyway! The club scene was brilliant! She’d always wanted to work in one! Or in a bar! Or anywhere, it would seem, where computers were not much in evidence.

  She left early the following morning, with promises that she would be in touch and saying she would have to return anyway to pack some things, although she could just always buy out there because they wouldn’t need much more than some T-shirts and shorts and bikinis...

  Deprived of her sister’s ceaseless chatter, which had veered from the high of realising that she wasn’t going to be prosecuted to the bitterness of acknowledging that she’d been thoroughly used by someone she had thought to be really interested in her, Violet was reduced to worrying about her forthcoming meeting with Damien.

  He had informed her, via text, that he would meet her in the hospital foyer.

  ‘Visiting hours start at five,’ he had texted. ‘Meet me at ten to and don’t be a second late.’

  If the brevity of the text was designed to remind her of her indebtedness to him and to escalate the level of her already shredded nerves, then it worked. By the time she was ready to leave for the hospital, she was a wreck. She had spent far too long choosing what to wear. Damien’s offer of a complete new wardrobe from Harrods to replace the one he obviously thought was dull, boring and inadequate, had been rejected out of hand and she was left with only casual clothes, one of her three dresses having already been used up on her interview with him. Having sneakily checked him out on the Internet, she had had a chance to see first-hand the sort of women he went for. Tall, leggy beauties. The captions informed her that they were all models. She actually recognised a couple of them from magazines. Was it any real surprise that he had suggested funding a new wardrobe for her? His mother would have to seriously be into the concept of opposites attracting if there was any chance that they would be able to pull off the charade he had signed her up for. She was short, with anything but a stick-like figure, long, unruly hair that resisted all attempts to be tamed and, as she had quickly discovered after five seconds in his presence, was never destined to be the sort of subservient yes girl he favoured.

  She wore jeans. Jeans, a cream jumper and her furry boots, which were comfortable.

  He was waiting for her in the designated place at the hospital. Violet spotted him immediately. He had his back to her and was perusing the limited supply of magazines in the small gift shop near the entrance.

  For a few seconds, she had the oddest sensation of paralysis. She could barely take a step forward. Her heart began to beat faster and harder, her mouth went dry and she could feel the prickly tingle of perspiration break out over her body. She wondered how she could have forgotten just how tall he was, just how broad his shoulders were. He had removed his trench coat and held it hooked by a finger over one shoulder. His other hand was in his trouser pocket. Even in the environment of a hospital, where people were too ensconced in their own private worlds of anxiety and worry to notice anything or anyone around them, he was still managing to garner interested stares.

  He turned around and Violet was pinned to the spot as he narrowed his eyes on her hovering figure. She was still wearing the shapeless, voluminous coat she had worn when she had come to the office to see him on her begging mission, but now her fair hair was loose and it spilled over her shoulders in waves of gold and vanilla. Against the black coat, it was a dramatic contrast. He doubted she ever went to the hairdresser for anything more than a basic cut, and yet he knew that there were women who would have given an arm and a leg to achieve the vibrant, casually tousled effect she effortlessly had.

  ‘You’re on time,’ he said, striding towards her, and Violet instinctively fell back. ‘My mother is looking forward to meeting you. I see you didn’t take advantage of the offer of a shopping spree.’

  ‘I think that either someone will like me or not like me, but hopefully it won’t be because of what I happen to be wearing.’ She fell into step beside him. Although she tried her best to maintain a healthy distance, there was a magnetism about him that seemed to want to draw her closer, a powerful pull on her senses that defied reason. She had to resist the strangest urge to look across at him and to just keep looking.

  He was explaining that his mother had wanted to find out everything about her, that he had been sketchy on detail but had fabricated nothing at all. She had been intrigued to find out that he was dating a teacher, he said.

  ‘And did we meet in the canteen at school?’ Violet asked politely as she walked briskly to keep up with him.

  ‘I thought I’d leave it to you to come good with the romantic touches,’ Damien told her drily.

  ‘Doesn’t it upset you at all that you’re lying to your own mother?’

  ‘It would upset me more to think that her health might be compromised because she was worried about my stability.’ He glanced down at her fair head. She barely reached his shoulder. He could feel her reluctance pouring through every fibre of her being and he marvelled that she could be so morally outraged at a simple deception that was being done in the best possible faith and yet forgiving of her sister, who had committed a far greater fraud. He wondered whether that was the outcome of family dynamics. Just as quickly as his curiosity reared its head, he dismissed it. He wasn’t in the habit of delving too deeply into female motivations. He enjoyed women and was happy to move on before simple enjoyment could become too fraught with complications. And yet this wasn’t just another female to be enjoyed, was she? In fact, enjoyment didn’t actually feature on his list when it came to Violet Drew.

  They had taken the lift up to the floor on which Eleanor Carver had a private room. It was a large teaching hospital with a confusing number of lifts, all of which seemed to have different, exclusive destinations to specialised departments.

  ‘I don’t know anything about you,’ Violet said in a sudden rush of panic. She tugged him to a stop before they could enter the room where his mother was awaiting her arrival. ‘I mean, I know about your brother...but where did you grow up? Where did you go to school? What are your friends like? Do you even have any friends?’

  She had pulled him to the side, where they were huddled by the wall as the business of the hospital rushed around them.

  ‘Now that’s just the sort of thing that’s guaranteed to make my mother suspicious,’ Damien murmured, looking down at her into those remarkable violet eyes. ‘A girlfriend who thinks that her guy is such a loser that he can’t possibly have any friends. You’re supposed to be crazy about me...’ He reached out and trailed his finger along her cheek and for a few heart-stopping seconds Violet froze. She literally found that she couldn’t breathe. The noise and clatter around her faded into a dull background blur. She was held captive by deep blue eyes that bored into her and set up a series of involuntary reactions that terrified and thrilled her at the same time. She could still feel the blazing path his finger had forged against her skin and belatedly she pulled away and glared at him.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I know. Crazy, isn’t it? Actually touching the woman who is supposed to be head over heels in love with me. You didn’t think the charade would just involve you sitting across the bed from me and making small talk for half an hour, did you?’

  ‘I... I...’

  ‘The occasional gesture of affection might be necessary. It’ll certainly make up for the fact that we’re practically strangers.’ Damien pushed himself away from the wall against which he had been indolently leaning. He thought of Annalise, the wife who never was. He had fully deluded himself into thinking that he had known her. In fact, it turned out that he hadn’t known her at all. He had seen the perfect picture which had been presented to him and he had taken it at face value. He had committed himself to the highly intelligent, beautiful career woman and had failed to probe deeper to the s
hallow upwardly mobile social climber. So the fact that he and his so-called girlfriend were strangers hardly made the union less believable as far as he was concerned.

  Violet hadn’t banked on gestures of affection. In fact, she had naively assumed that she would just be sitting across a hospital bed from him and making small talk with his mother.

  ‘There’s no need to look so uncomfortable,’ he drawled lazily.

  ‘I’m not uncomfortable,’ Violet hurriedly asserted. ‘I just hadn’t thought about that side of things.’

  ‘There is no that side of things. There’s the pretence of affection.’

  ‘Oh yes. I forgot. You only like women who are decked out in designer gear and have the bodies of giraffes!’

  Damien threw back his head and laughed and a few heads turned to stare for a couple of seconds. ‘Are you offended because you’re not my type?’ He thought of Phillipa. How on earth could two sisters be so completely different? One brash and narcissistic, the other hesitant and self-conscious? Yet, curiously, so much more genuine? Intriguing.

  Violet blushed furiously. ‘I think we’ve already established that you’re not my type either!’ she bristled. ‘And shall we just go in now?’

  ‘Is your moment of panic over?’

  ‘I really dislike you, do you know that?’

  ‘You bristle like a furious little bull terrier...’

  ‘Thank you very much for that!’

  ‘And entering the room with that angry expression isn’t going to work...’

  Violet’s mouth was parted as she prepared to respond appropriately to that smug little smile on his face. His mouth covered hers with an erotic gentleness that took her breath away. He delicately prised a way past her startled speechlessness and his tongue against hers was an invasion that slammed into her with the force of a hurricane. It was the most sensational kiss she had ever experienced and all she wanted to do was pull him closer so that she could continue it. Her skin burned and she felt a pool of honeyed dampness spread between her legs. She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her treacherous body whole as he gently eased himself away to push open the door to his mother’s room.

  He was smiling broadly as he entered and she could not have looked more like a woman in love. He had kissed her at the right time and the right place and her flushed cheeks and uneven breathing and dilated pupils were telling a story that had no foundation in fact.

  He wanted his mother to believe that they were all loved up and Violet smarted from the realisation that one clever kiss had done the job. Eleanor Carver was smiling at them both, her arms outstretched in a warm gesture of welcome.

  She was smaller than Violet had imagined. Whilst her son was well over six feet tall, Eleanor Carver was diminutive in stature. She looked impossibly frail against the bed sheets but her eyes were razor sharp as she rushed into inquisitive chatter.

  ‘Don’t excite yourself, Mother. You know what the consultant said.’

  ‘He didn’t say anything about not exciting myself! Besides, how can I fail to be excited when you’ve brought me this delightful girl of yours to meet?’

  Violet stood back and watched as Damien fussed around his mother. He was so big and so powerful and yet there was a gentleness about him as he bent down to kiss her on the cheek and make sure that she was propped up just right against the pillows. It was as though he had slowed his pace to accommodate her and it brought an unwelcome lump to Violet’s throat.

  ‘He’s like a mother hen now that I’m cooped up here.’ Eleanor smiled and patted him on the hand.

  Violet smiled back and thought that he was more fox in the coop than innocent hen and, as if he could read her mind, Damien grinned at her with raised eyebrows.

  ‘Violet would be the first to agree that I’m the soul of sensitivity...’ He moved so that he was standing next to her and she tried not to stiffen in alarm as he slipped his arm around her.

  ‘I’m not entirely sure that’s the description that springs to mind...’ Violet unbuttoned her coat and slipped it off. In the process, she managed to edge skilfully past him to the chair next to the bed.

  Still grinning as he imagined some of the descriptions she might have had in mind for him, he wasn’t prepared for the hourglass figure that took his breath away for a few shocking seconds. This was not what he had expected. He had expected frumpy, slightly overweight...someone who could perhaps do with shedding a few pounds. Was it because his expectations had been so wildly at variance with the voluptuous curves on offer now that he felt the sudden thrust of painful response? Or had his diet of thin, leggy models left him vulnerable to the sort of curvy, full-breasted figure that had once haunted his testosterone-fuelled teenage dreams?

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught his mother watching him and he stopped staring to move and stand behind Violet so that he could rest both his hands on her shoulders.

  From this position, he felt no guilt in appreciating the bounty of her generous breasts. She was small in stature and a positive innocent compared to the hardened, worldly, sophisticated women he dated. She didn’t have a clue how to play the games that eventually led to the bedroom. He thought that if she did know them, then she would refuse to play them. So the lush sexiness of her body was all the more of a turn-on. Standing behind her, he could barely drag his eyes away from her gorgeous figure.

  It wasn’t going to do. This wasn’t about attraction or sex. This was an arrangement and he didn’t need it to be complicated because his testosterone levels had decided to act up.

  He pulled over the other spare chair and sat next to her because staring down at her was proving to be too much of an unwelcome distraction.

  His mother had launched into fond reminiscing about his childhood. Halting her in mid-stream would have been as impossible as trying to climb Everest in flip flops, so he allowed her to chatter away for as long as she wanted. He hadn’t seen her so animated since she had been diagnosed and, besides, as long as she was chatting, she wasn’t asking too many detailed questions. Eventually he looked at his watch and gave a little cough to indicate departure time. He would have to admit that Violet had done well. She had certainly shown keen interest in every anecdote his mother had told and had been suitably encouraging in her remarks, whilst managing to keep them brief. Watching her out of the corner of his eye, he could appreciate what he had failed to previously when he had been too busy putting his plan into action and laying down the rules and boundary lines. She was a naturally warm, empathetic person. It was what had driven her to come and see him in defence of her sister when she must have been scared witless. It was what made her smile with genuine warmth at his mother as she triumphantly reached the punchline of her story involving him, two friends and a bag of frogs.

  ‘We really should be going, Mother. You mustn’t over tire yourself.’

  ‘Life will be very limited for me if I can’t get excited and I can’t get too tired, darling. Besides, there are so many questions I want to ask you both...’

  Violet sneaked a surreptitious glance at Damien’s hard, chiselled profile and the memory of that kiss snaked through her, bringing vibrant colour to her cheeks. Of course he hadn’t been turned on. As he had made abundantly clear on more than one occasion, he dated supermodels. She had been chosen to play a part because she was at his mercy and because she wasn’t a supermodel. He had kissed her like that in order to achieve something and it had worked.

  It filled her with shame that she had been turned on. She cringed in horror at the realisation that she had wanted the kiss to go on...and on...and on... She wondered where her pride had gone when she could be held to ransom by a man she loathed to do something of which she heartily disapproved and yet, with a single touch, find her willpower reduced to rubble.

  ‘Damien’s barely told me anything about how you two met... He said that it was a couple of months
ago...but that he didn’t want to say anything for fear of jeopardising the relationship...’

  ‘Did he?’ Violet glanced across, eyebrows raised. ‘I didn’t realise that you felt so...vulnerable...’ Her voice was sugary-sweet.

  Damien rested his hand over hers and idly stroked her thumb, which sent her pulses racing all over again, but, with his mother’s eyes on them, what could she do but to carry on smiling?

  ‘It’s a lovable trait, isn’t it? Darling?’ he murmured, looking her straight in the eyes and reaching to cup the nape of her neck with his hand, where he proceeded to sift his fingers through her hair.

  ‘So how did you meet?’ Eleanor asked with avid curiosity.

  ‘Darling—’ Damien continued to caress her until every part of her body was tingling in hateful response ‘—why don’t you tell my mother all about our...romantic first meeting...?’

  ‘It really wasn’t that romantic.’ Violet tried to shift away from the attentions of his hand, which was something of a mistake as he promptly decided to switch focus from her hair to her thigh. ‘Actually, when I first met your son, I thought he was rude, arrogant and overbearing...’

  Damien responded by squeezing her thigh gently with his big hand in subtle warning.

  ‘He...er...came to the school for a...er...meeting with our head of Home Economics...’ The pressure on her thigh was ever more insistent but, instead of turning her off, it was having the opposite effect. How on earth could her body be so wilful? When had that ever happened? She felt faint with a dark, forbidden excitement that went against every grain of common sense and reason. She wanted to squeeze her thighs tightly shut to stifle her liquid response but was scared that if she did he would duly take note and know exactly what was going on with her rebellious body. He was, after all, nothing like the guys she knew. He was a man of the world and, even on short acquaintance, she suspected that he was as knowledgeable and intimate with the workings of the female mind as it was possible for any man to be. The thought of him second-guessing that she found him sexually attractive was mortifying.