‘Here. Maybe this will help.’

She’d been working so hard at not looking at him that she hadn’t heard him cross the thick carpet. Now she looked up with a start to find him offering her a glass of water, presenting her with the added difficulty of taking it from his fingers without actually touching them.

A difficulty which something in his expression suggested he understood only too well. Maybe she should just ask him to do them both a favour and tip it over her…

‘Thank you,’ she said, reaching for it and to hell with the consequences. His were rock-steady-well, he was granite. Hers shook and she spilt a few drops on her skirt. She probably just imagined the steam as it soaked through the linen to her thighs as he folded himself down to her level and put his hand round hers to steady it.

Someone should warn him that it didn’t actually help. But then she suspected he knew that too and right now she was having enough trouble simply breathing.

‘I’ve got it,’ she managed finally. He didn’t appear to be convinced and she looked up, straight into his eyes, at which point the last thing she wanted was for him to let go. ‘Really,’ she assured him and instantly regretted it as he stood up and returned to his chair, lean and lithe as a panther.

And twice as dangerous, she thought as she gratefully took a sip of the water. Touched the glass to her heated forehead. Told herself to get a grip…

CHAPTER TWO

‘SHALL we get on?’ Tom McFarlane prompted as he returned to his desk.

Sylvie silently fumed.

Why on earth was he putting himself through this? Putting her through it?

It couldn’t be about the money. The amount involved, though admittedly large, had to be peanuts to a man of his wealth.

It was almost, she thought, as if with each tick approving payment he was underlining the lesson he’d just been handed-the one about never trusting the word of someone just because they said they loved you. Presumably Candy had told him that she loved him. Or maybe, like Candy, he thought of marriage as a business deal, a mutually satisfying partnership arrangement. That love was just a lot of sentimental nonsense.