LITMIR.BIZ

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and took stock. Okay. It wasn’t too bad.

      But she was definitely going to get rid of the smudge of hours-old eyeliner, and maybe swipe on some lip-gloss. What? she asked her reflection. It was important to keep your lips hydrated. Everyone knew that.

      Reaching out she plucked a face-wipe from the pack and let out the breath she’d been holding, hoping that along with it would come the release of at least some of the stress of the day.

      But all she felt was a grinding pain in her stomach.

      It wasn’t hunger that was producing the sensation.

      It was the certain knowledge that if she didn’t get some more money coming in soon, she and Daisy were going to have nothing left to live on. By her calculations they had enough for two months. Depending on orders for Seraphic, three months absolute tops.

      God, she must have been mad to think launching Seraphic would make all her money problems disappear, but it had been the only way she could think of bypassing asking her mum or Jared or Nora for help.

      Sephy stretched to try and ease the tension in her belly.

      If it came down to it, she would forsake pride and go to them. No way was Daisy going to go without.

      But she wasn’t quite there yet. First, she was going to try to fix things by herself.

      It would work, she tried to reassure herself. It had to.

      She wasn’t sure she could endure the look on the faces of her family if she had to go to them for funds. Not after spending month after month turning them all down so vociferously.

      Jeremy King had done what he’d done. Arguing about how archaic the terms of his will were, or how they didn’t understand how he could have hurt her this way, wasn’t going to change anything.

      Sephy needed her family to be able to love him, not spend more time resenting him. Leading by example was the only way they would all heal from the giant hole his passing had left.

      She knew why he’d done what he’d done.

      Putting Sephy’s inheritance into a trust fund for Daisy – making it so Daisy couldn’t access it until she turned twenty-one – wasn’t really as disrespectful to Sephy as the family thought.

      Looking at things longterm, she even agreed with what he had done.

      It was just this massive short-term problem it had created that she had to deal with.

      Sephy looked at her reflection and reached for her lip-gloss. Slicking the wand over her lips, she supposed she could take on a few more couture clients.

      But creating couture lingerie couldn’t be rushed and the only uninterrupted time she had was when Daisy was at school or asleep.

      She was already maxing out those hours as it was.

      Finding another seamstress who took as much care as she did over putting her designs together, again, took time and money she didn’t have.

      No, the completely outside-of-her-comfort-zone forecasts and charts she had made herself do all told her the same thing. She needed the Seraphic ready-to-wear line to sell in volume.

      Which brought her back to Luke.

      Sort of.

      She was a little mad at him still.

      Not for saying no to her, although, yes, that did smart! It was more that as well as the shock on his face, she had glimpsed how difficult he’d found it to say no and had seen in the darkening of his eyes the temptation to say yes.

      She was mad to be wondering what had made him say no. She didn’t have time to indulge an overactive imagination. Luke had said no and that was that. She only had time to move on and keep focusing on the launch.

      Casting one last look at what she saw in the mirror, she left her room and jogged down the stairs.

      Having set out the pizza box, plates and kitchen roll on her coffee table, Luke was on his knees picking up the wild flowers Daisy had pulled up from the garden. Next to him was a plastic beaker that he had filled up with water.

      Bugger.

      How could you stay mad at a man who put wilting wild flowers into water after your daughter had finished trampling her toys all over them?

      He looked up as she entered the room and she could feel his eyes on her as she snagged herself a slice of pizza and a plate to put it on.

      With her hands full she realised he had moved her bag, complete with all the underwear samples she carried around with her, to her favourite chair and the only place left to sit would be on the sofa next to him.

      ‘I see you’ve been checking out my underwear again,’ she said as she yanked off a piece of kitchen roll to use as a napkin.

      ‘Of course,’ Luke grinned, ‘but only as a way of getting into your purse. I had to take it all out to find your money for the pizza guy.’

      ‘Was there enough in there?’

      ‘Sure,’ Luke said, and the way he turned from her to put the bunch of flowers into the beaker and set them on the windowsill, Sephy knew that there hadn’t been.

      ‘How much do I owe you?’

      ‘Forget it,’ he said, walking over to open the pizza box.

      ‘No, I will not forget it. I said I’d pay. I’m paying. How much did you have to put in to make up the difference?’

      ‘Ten.’

      Sephy reached over, set down her pizza and rose to her feet at the same instant Luke tried to walk past her and take his seat on the sofa. Their eyes locked as they brushed up against each other and when she pushed her hand into the pocket of her skinny jeans, Luke seemed to press closer, bringing with him a sizzling heat that had all her thought processes scattering.

      Sephy’s insides felt as if they were tied to a bungee rope and were hurtling towards the ground before being yanked back up, and then Luke was springing backwards and she was finally remembering why her hand was in her pocket and withdrawing some notes.

      Silently she passed him a ten.

      Silently he took it from her and shoved it into his jeans pocket before snapping up the control to mute the volume on the TV.

      ‘I don’t mind if you wanted to watch that,’ Sephy said, glad her voice sounded normal, while everything else inside of her was screaming ‘how do I make it go back to the way it was before I asked him to model for me?’

      As if Luke was thinking the exact same thing, he grabbed up his plate and said calmly, ‘You don’t think we ought to try and get past this new weirdness between us?’

      ‘Weirdness?’ she stalled, her mouth going dry. ‘What weirdness?’

      ‘The, “you asking me to pose nude in photos to sex up your ad campaign, and me saying no” weirdness.’

      ‘Oh, that,’ Sephy forced a grin. ‘I’m over that. Although, for the record, I did not ask you to pose in the nude. At least, not entirely,’ she added.

      ‘So even though you don’t have a model booked and the launch is in less than two weeks, you’re completely okay with how things are?’

      Aiming for nonchalance, Sephy waved the hand holding the slice of pizza. ‘Everything will work out,’ she said.

      ‘You’re not even looking for a model, are you?’ Luke said on a huff of breath.

      She stared at the silent TV. ‘I told you – I can’t afford one.’

      ‘And I told you I’m perfectly happy to help you out with that.’

      ‘No thanks,’ she said, shoving in a huge mouthful of delicious hot pizza in a bid to keep from following up with a lecture on how she didn’t need anyone’s money.

      ‘Have

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