‘Mia, look at me.’
She raised her stare to his slowly. Reluctantly.
‘I gave you my word that when we were alone things between us would be platonic and I meant it. Sex is a complication I don’t need. You are safe with me. Okay?’
Something glistened in her eyes but she blinked it away before he could read anything further in it.
‘If I haven’t already made it clear, you will sleep in the guest room. The only nights we will sleep together will be in Monte Cleure and if you choose to bring a chastity belt with you for it I will have no objection.’
Her lips quirked.
‘But if it makes you feel better for tonight, take a knife and put it under your pillow. Hell, you can take it now if you want. If I get within a foot of you, jab me with it.’
Her shoulders rose and she covered her mouth as if stifling a laugh.
‘I’m serious.’
She nodded but kept her mouth covered.
‘Are you hungry?’
Her eyes met his. She gave another nod.
‘Shall I order us something?’
‘That’s probably a good idea.’ A giggle escaped her mouth but there was none of the bitterness he’d heard in her other bursts of laughter. She swept an arm around the kitchen. ‘I’m pretty sure there’s nothing to eat in this showroom.’
‘There’s an Italian restaurant on the third floor that delivers good, freshly cooked food. How does that suit you?’
‘That’s fine by me.’
He opened the drawer he kept all the local takeaway and restaurant menus in. Mia was right, he was forced to concede. His apartment was kept like a showroom. But then, he hardly spent any time in it. On average he visited the UK every two months, rarely spending more than a working week there. He had neither the time nor the inclination to make this apartment into a home.
He passed the menu to her, making sure not to allow their fingers to touch, then stepped aside. ‘Name your poison.’
Her eyes lit up. ‘Gin and tonic.’
‘Large?’
She smiled. Like her laughter, it was the first genuine smile she’d given him. ‘Yes please.’
It was only while he fixed their drinks, leaving her to read through the menu, that he realised what an arrogant thing it was for him to assume her smile had been genuine. Or that her laughter had been. For all he knew, her display of edgy fear might have been an act too.
And yet something inside him told him none of that had been Mia acting.
All the same, there was no earthly reason her smile had made him feel that he could climb Mount Everest in a single bound.
Mia, her third gin and tonic of the night in hand, curled up on one of the white sofas. It was long past midnight, usually the time when the adrenaline from a performance had worked its way out of her system and she went to bed. Tonight, even with the lights in the apartment’s living room dimmed, energy still zapped through her veins and it had nothing to do with the performance. It was all to do with Damián.
Since their talk in the kitchen, things had been far more cordial between them. In truth, she felt like a naughty schoolgirl who’d been chastised by the headmistress. She had been deliberately antagonistic towards him. A very large part of her still wanted to be, and it disturbed her to remember the last time she’d behaved this way to a member of the opposite sex.
She’d had her first crush when she’d been nine. His name had been James. She’d daydreamed about him constantly. In her overactive imagination, she’d dreamed up adventurous scenarios where she put herself in danger in the pursuit of something marvellously worthy like rescuing a cat from a tree, and then needing James to come bounding in to rescue her. Sometimes it would be the other way round and she would rescue him. The ending of those daydreams was always the same: James would declare his love for her and kiss her cheek.
Alas, her daydreaming powers hadn’t extended to influencing James to reciprocate her feelings. Looking back, she thought the fact she’d been consistently horrible to him in the playground might have had something to do with his failure to fall in love with her. She remembered a day at school when it had snowed. She’d made the biggest, tightest snowball she could fit in her hands and lobbed it full power into his face. From only two feet away. Fully expecting him to throw snowballs back and for their snowball fight to end in declarations of love, she’d been baffled when he’d called her a witch and gone off crying.
The way she was acting towards Damián strongly reminded her of her long-ago playground behaviour towards James but she had no idea why she reacted like this around him. She certainly wasn’t trying to entice Damián into falling in love with her. The only thing she knew with any certainty was that when she’d told him she would be a fool not to be afraid she hadn’t actually meant that she was afraid of him as he’d assumed.
It was the non-physical power he had over her that frightened her. When she was with him all her nerves were set on edge, every emotion heightened. Even now, when she was making a concerted effort to drop the antagonism, her heartbeats couldn’t settle into a rhythm and all her senses were attuned to his every move. She hadn’t been this scared since she’d appeared in court for sentencing and that had been a very different kind of fear.
‘Tell me about your life,’ she said when he settled onto the sofa opposite her. They’d exchanged only basic pleasantries during their shared meal, which hadn’t helped her nerves in the slightest. She needed conversation to stop herself thinking. ‘What’s it like growing up a rich boy?’
What she really wanted to ask was why he thought his brother was watching him and accessing his electronic communications, and what those documents that were so important to him contained. She’d spent hours searching again on the internet and had her suspicions but, as Damián liked to remind her, he was paying her to do a job and not ask questions.
He had a large drink of the beer he’d poured for himself and wiped the froth on his lips away with his thumb. ‘Next time. Tonight I want you to tell me about yourself.’
‘You already know everything about me.’
He gave a faint smile. ‘Mi vida, I know very little about you. I know you’re twenty-four, that you’re an actress looking for her big break and that you have a sealed criminal record for possession of drugs with intent to supply. Nothing more.’
‘I thought you’d dug into my history?’
‘Only your recent history and only to satisfy myself that you are free of drugs.’
‘What criminal records did the other actresses on your shortlist have?’
‘I don’t remember.’