The Bedroom Assignment

Zoe moistened her lips. She was deeply, darkly ashamed of her secret thoughts.

‘So much fuss for a little burn,’ she said with constraint. ‘I’ll be fine. Just give me a minute. Though tea would be nice.’

Tea would get him away from her, over to the other side of the kitchen to make it. And maybe she would start to think clearly again.

Maybe she would have, if it had not been for that jacket. She rubbed her cheek against its comforting warmth. And smelled soap and the sea and some woody aromatic, not pine or sandalwood, but something like both, only more elusive. And a lot more exotic. Whatever it was, it was a clean, clear smell; sharp as a knife and utterly like Jay. Her senses swam.

I want him.

She jumped as if she had just impaled herself on a blackberry thorn.

I’ve wanted him since I first saw him. Since I told him everything there was to know about me. Since he kissed me.

‘Do you take sugar?’ said Jay, oblivious.

Zoe tried to speak. It was not easy. ‘No,’ she croaked on her third attempt.

‘Well, I’m putting some in. It’s supposed to be good for shock.’

How come it’s taken me this long to realise? What sort of freak am I?

And her thoughts began to spiral faster and faster, out of control.

Jay came back with the tea. He had put it in the horrible dragon mug. ‘Here. This will make you feel better.’

Zoe looked up at him dumbly. Her mind was still in free fall.

He smiled down at her, his face so gentle that she almost did not recognise him. He took both her hands and clasped them round the mug. Her fingers twitched but she took the mug. In fact she clutched it like a lifeline.

‘Are you alone in the house?’ he asked.

Zoe shook her head. ‘My mother’s in her room. She— er—can’t have heard.’

He looked at the devastated ironing board. It had lost half its mechanism and brought down the clothes horse in its collapse. It was self-evident that it must have sounded like a falling tree in the confined space. Jay raised his eyebrows. But he refrained from comment.

‘Just as well I arrived when I did, then.’

Even in the face of his courteous disbelief she still wanted him. Her hands were clammy with it.

Zoe swallowed. ‘Yes.’

She had never felt like this before. Never felt a need to touch a man so fierce it seemed a physical impossibility not to give in to it. She clutched the mug so hard that her knuckles went white. She tried to collect her thoughts.

‘What was it that you came for?’ she said distractedly.

‘Ah.’

Something in his voice—or not in his voice, in his eyes, in the way he was looking at her, though she had her head bent and could not even see him out of the corner of her eye, but she knew he was looking at her—something told her that this was not easy for him. Important, yes. Very important. But not easy. In fact, hard as hell.

She looked up, surprised. ‘Yes?’

He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve been thinking about your— er—solution. To the problem you think you have.’

She frowned, bewildered.

The wonderful golden skin did not flush, but his eyes slid away from hers.

‘You were right. I was being glib. You have got more than a practical problem.’

‘Oh!’ Zoe’s skin, however, flushed instantly and unmistakably.

‘And you were right about something else. I’m not into trophies. But I do have all the relevant qualifications.’ His voice was level.

‘What?’

‘I have it on the best authority,’ said Jay in a hard voice, ‘that I am a fun date and a terrific lay.’

It was somehow terrible. He looked as if someone had cut his heart out, thought Zoe. Whoever she was, the woman who’d told him that had devastated him. Suddenly Zoe wanted to take him in her arms and tell him it was a lie.

But she had no right. And besides—maybe it wasn’t a lie. She huddled his embracing jacket round her and couldn’t think of one single thing to say.

It did not matter. Jay was laying out his argument like a presentation to a client, all common sense and shining reason.

‘You don’t want to lie. You don’t want to be a trophy. You need a man to help you through the transition. I can do that.’