British Bachelors: Gorgeous and Impossible: My Greek Island Fling / Back in the Lion's Den / We'll Always Have Paris. Jessica HartЧитать онлайн книгу.
next message. But the damage was done: her eyes and brain refused to connect and she put down the phone in disgust.
The last time they had spoken face to face had been in the hall of Adam’s apartment. Both of them had said things which could not be unsaid. And then she had embarrassed herself by slapping him harder than she’d ever hit anything in her life.
Girls did that when they found out their boyfriends had been cheating on them.
What a fool she’d been to pin all her hopes of happiness on the one man she’d thought was a friend. She should have learned from her mother’s experience not to let personal feelings interfere with her judgement. And that was exactly what she’d done. Stupid girl.
She wasn’t going to live in Gullible Girl City again. Oh, no. At least not until her home office was ready and her children’s books were in the shops.
Then she might think about dating again. If …
She held the thought as she caught a blur of movement in the corner of her eye and turned her head just as Mark strolled into the room. He was wearing loose navy trousers and a very expensive-looking navy polo shirt. His hair was dark and slick, as though he had just stepped out of the shower.
Mark Belmont looked like heaven on legs.
And with one single glance she was instantly hit with a sudden attack of the killer tingles.
The kind of tingles that left a girl feeling hot, bothered, brainless and desperate enough to do something really stupid. Like forgetting that Mark was her client. Like wanting to find out what it felt like to run her fingers through his hair and feel his breath on her neck.
Bad tingles. Very bad tingles.
Not ideal qualities for a professional writer.
This was the man who’d accused her of being her father’s accomplice and almost thrown her out yesterday. As far as Mark Belmont was concerned she was here to work. And that was all. She had to keep her head together!
It was time to turn on a cheery nonsense gossipy voice and the fixed smile that had become her standard mask to the world. Busy, busy, busy. Chatter, chatter, chatter. That was the role she played. He wouldn’t be able to get a word in edgeways, and she could keep her distance.
Deep breath. Cue, Lexi. Action!
‘Good morning, Mr Belmont.’ She smiled, nervously rearranging the cutlery to hide her complete mental disarray. ‘I hope you’re ready for breakfast, since I’ve been on a mission of mercy and made the village baker and shopkeeper very happy. But please don’t be worried about your reputation as a ladies’ man. I told them I was only here for a few days to help with a business project and I’d be heading back to the office ASAP.’
Oh, and now she was babbling about his love life. Great. Could she be more pathetic?
‘My reputation?’ Mark repeated, staring at her through those incredibly cute spectacles as he leant against the worktop, his hands in his trouser pockets. Casual, handsome, devastating. ‘How very thoughtful of you. But why did you think it necessary to go on a mission of mercy?’
‘I was brave enough to rummage around inside your freezer looking for breakfast. Behind the bags of ice cubes were a few ancient, dry bread rolls, which crumbled to pieces in my hands and were only fit for the birds, and an assortment of unlabelled mystery items which, judging by their greyish-green colour, were originally of biological origin. But they did have one thing in common. They were all inedible.’
She stopped cutting bread and looked up into Mark’s face. ‘It’s amazing what they have in small village shops on this island.’
‘Food shopping,’ he replied, running the fingers of one hand through his damp hair. ‘Ah. Yes. My housekeeper stocked up the refrigerator last week, but of course I wasn’t expecting visitors.’
‘No need to apologise,’ she said as brightly as she could. ‘But it has been my experience that we can get a lot more work done if we have food available in the house and don’t have to run out and stock up at the last minute. And, since the room service around here seems to be a little deficient, some creative thinking was required.’
He peered over her shoulder and the smell of citrus shower gel and coconut shampoo wafted past. She inhaled the delicious combination, which was far more enticing than the food and did absolutely nothing to cure her attack of the tingles.
But as he stepped forward Lexi heard his stomach growl noisily and raised her eyebrows at him.
‘It seems that I could use some breakfast. Um … What did you manage to scavenge?’
‘Since I don’t know if you prefer a sweet chocolatey cereal breakfast or a savoury eggs, bacon and tomatoes type breakfast, I bought both. I’ve already had scrambled eggs and toast, washed down with a gallon of tea.’
‘Tea is disgusting. But eggs and toast sound perfect if I can persuade you to go back to the frying pan. I’ll take care of my coffee. It’s one of my few weaknesses. I’m very particular about what coffee I drink, where it came from and how it was made.’
‘Of course, Mr Belmont,’ Lexi replied, with no hint of sarcasm in her voice, and turned back towards the cooker.
‘It’s Mark.’
‘Oh,’ she replied, whizzing round towards him and making a point of taking out her earphones. ‘Did you say something?’
Mark crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes, well aware that she had heard what he said but was making a play of it since she had just scored a point. ‘I said, since we will be working together, I would prefer it if you called me Mark.’
‘If that is your instruction, Mr Belmont.’ She smiled and relaxed a little. ‘I’d be very happy to call you Mark. But only if you call me Lexi in return. Not Alexis, or Ali, or Lex, but Lexi.’
Then she turned back to the hob and added a knob of butter to the hot pan before breaking more eggs into a bowl.
‘Breakfast will be with you in about five minutes, Mark. I do hope you like orange juice. That was the only—’
The sound of a rock band belted out from her cell phone, and Lexi quickly wiped her hands on a kitchen towel before pressing a few buttons.
‘Anything interesting?’ Mark asked casually as he reached for the coffee.
‘I always receive interesting messages.’ Lexi twisted to one side and peered at the display. ‘But in this case they were two new messages from my ex-boyfriend, which are now deleted. Unread, of course. Which I find deeply satisfying.’
‘I see. I thought you might be a heartbreaking sort of girl.’
‘It cannot be denied. But in this particular situation it transpired he was cheating on me with a girl who took great satisfaction in enticing him away from me.’
Mark’s eyebrows went skywards and his lips did a strange quivery dance as his hands stilled on the cafetière. ‘He cheated on you?’ he repeated in an incredulous voice, then shook his head once before going back to his coffee. ‘Do you always share details of your fascinating-but-tragic love life with people you’ve only just met?’ he asked with a quick glance in her direction.
Lexi shrugged, and was about to make some dismissive quip when it struck her that he was actually trying to have a conversation this morning.
That was different.
He’d barely said a word over their light dinner of crackers, cheese and sweet tomatoes apart from commenting on the local red wine. The meal had been so awkward that she’d felt she was walking on eggshells every time she tried to break the silence.
She wasn’t complaining, and it helped that she now wasn’t the only one talking, but she wasn’t used to having one-to-one, intelligent, hangover-free conversations with her clients at this time in the morning. Perhaps Mark Belmont had a few more surprises for her?