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blinked like someone waking up and choked out, ‘It was sex and it was one night.’ She shook her head and loosed a shocked, incredulous laugh. ‘What you’re suggesting...beyond being certifiably insane—’

      ‘Could work. I’m not asking for you to sign over your life.’

      ‘Isn’t that what marriage usually entails?’

      ‘Have you read the divorce statistics? The contract I am suggesting would only last for...’ he paused, the muscles around his jawline quivering before he voiced the grim reality ‘...my grandfather’s lifetime, which according to the doctors is around six months, that or...’ He stopped, cancelling the unnecessary codicil in his head: until we want it to.

      He didn’t like the vagueness of it, the sense that it was not within his control. No, there had to be a definite cut-off point.

      His problem was thinking past the hunger she had shaken loose in him, a hunger he’d not felt, well, ever. Right now he felt as if he’d never be able to get enough of her. But inevitably he would; six weeks, six days...even this consuming passion had a sell-by date. It would not last as long as his grandfather, but, while it did, finding the sort of escape he had last night held a lot of appeal.

      ‘He doesn’t expect to see his grandchild, but being able to think there will be one will make his last days... It will give his life a purpose. Do you understand?’

      Lara tried a change of tack, knowing that she was doomed to lose any argument that hinged on him not being the perfect lover and her not wanting more of what he’d shown her last night.

      ‘I understand you’re going to lie to your grandfather and you want me to help you.’

      ‘You’ve never lied?’

      She flung him a resentful glare. ‘You know what I mean.’

      ‘This is business. I’m not expecting six months of your life for free. You admit that you are going to be out of work...?’

      She chewed on her lower lip. ‘Probably,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘But that doesn’t change anything.’ Except my bank balance, she thought gloomily.

      ‘You’re right, there are always jobs for people with the right skill sets and qualifications,’ he agreed blandly.

      ‘I look on this as an opportunity to go back to school.’

      ‘I like your glass-half-full attitude, but of course university fees are not cheap and you have to live, pay the bills...or you could give me the next six months and walk away with enough money to put yourself through college without going into debt.’

      He mentioned a sum that would do a lot more than that.

      ‘It would be wrong.’ But it would really be a solution to the situation she found herself in...

      ‘Why? Who would be harmed?’

      ‘You’re paying me for sex. That makes me feel like—’

      ‘The sex is optional,’ he said, hoping he would not live to regret the gesture, but as risks went it was barely registered.

      Raoul knew about sexual chemistry but just breathing in the fragrance of her skin ignited a hunger in him that broke new ground. And he knew it was mutual. Lara Gray didn’t have the ability to hide her own responses. And, yes, it was a massive turn-on to know that he could make her quiver without even touching her.

      The idea that they could live as man and wife and keep sex out of the equation was the equivalent to throwing a lit match into a pile of dry leaves and expecting nothing to happen.

      ‘If you chose to sleep in another bedroom, so be it.’

      ‘And you’d be all right with that?’

      His grin flashed at the note of pique in her voice. ‘No, I wouldn’t, but it wouldn’t be a deal breaker.’

      ‘I couldn’t do it. I’d have to pretend that I’m...I’m...I’m—’

      ‘Madly in love with me,’ he inserted helpfully. ‘That’s precisely why it will work. You can’t hide your feelings.’

      ‘If you think that one night in your bed makes me in love with you you’re seriously deluded!’

      Her vehemence drew a dry smile from him. ‘If I thought you were in love with me that would be a deal breaker. I have no need of love.’ The contemptuous curl of distaste on his expressive lips backed up the claim. ‘But love and lust can look very much the same to an observer. The sensual side of your nature has just woken up. I woke it up...you look at me and you want me—it shows.’

      An embarrassed choking sound left her throat; he hadn’t even attempted to lower his voice. ‘You have a very high opinion of yourself,’ she retorted, failing to come even halfway to delivering the haughtily contemptuous tone she was aiming for.

      ‘So none of what I have just said is true?’

      Lara shook her head. ‘Look, I understand why you came up with this idea,’ she babbled. ‘I’m sympathetic, but if you just stop and think about it you’ll realise it would never work. Your grandfather sounds like an intelligent man...?’

      A smile quivered across his expressive lips. ‘His brain makes razor blades seem blunt.’

      She threw up her hands in an ‘argument won’ gesture.

      He looked at her; the gleam in his heavily lidded eyes was sensual and teasing. ‘He’ll like you.’

      ‘For my good child-bearing hips?’

      Her stomach lurched as she watched the smile fade from his eyes, leaving something much harder and more predatory.

      She knew that he was thinking of her naked...and she was thinking of him the same way.

      ‘Will you stop doing that?’ she pleaded. ‘People might—’

      Her agonised whisper made him grin, dissipating a little of the tension. ‘People might, what, know your knees are shaking under the table and your throat is dry; they might notice that your pupils are so dilated there is only a thin ring of green left?’

      The finger he placed to her lips silenced a fresh rush of denial, but not the voice in Raoul’s own head that without warning acknowledged the fact he had so far successfully dodged: he liked Lara Gray.

       CHAPTER SIX

      LIKE. IT SOUNDED BLAND, not a dangerous emotion, but even so the discovery threw Raoul. He had female friends—he had never bought into the popular belief that men and women could not be friends. There were women he admired, women whose opinion he valued in and out of the workplace, but none of those women were the ones in his bed, because liking was not a prerequisite for good sex. Was it something he subconsciously avoided in sexual partners...?

      With a slight shake of his head he dismissed the possibility and the significance of his discovery as he allowed his hand to fall away. She closed her eyes as his fingers trailed down her cheek.

      It had been the lightest of touches, but the chain reaction it set up was not! By the time he took his hand away she was shaking and struggling to catch her breath.

      She forced her eyelids apart and folded her fingers around her coffee cup to stop herself touching the side of her face where the skin still tingled.

      ‘That is what I mean—you can’t hide the way you feel, the way I make you feel. You’ve only just begun to discover your sensuality—’

      Mortified beyond belief by his comments, she had really thought that she was being discreet. She said the first thing that came into her head just to shut him up. Just to stop him saying those things, which she could have dealt with if they hadn’t been true.

      It was just sex, you couldn’t fall for someone you barely knew...just

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