LITMIR.BIZ

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but at least it was honest. ‘Then who are you?’

      ‘I’m Leon,’ he replied, stepping forward and extending his hand.

      ‘And?’

      ‘I’m here in connection with my university.’

      So, he was a uni lecturer? Her first and utterly shameful thought was that she should have done her degree in France. The art professors she’d known had all been pushing sixty, and had looked like they hadn’t seen a razor, and smelled like they hadn’t used a can of deodorant, for just as long. Her second was pure astonishment; he seemed to exude too much wealth and sophistication. But then all Frenchmen were known for being stylish, weren’t they? And it did explain why he’d simply been observing, not buying. She castigated herself for being too quick to judge.

      ‘Cally,’ she said, extending her hand in return, then wondered what the hell she’d been thinking when the touch of his fingers made her inhale so sharply that speech deserted her.

      ‘And are you a disappointed punter?’ He raised one eyebrow doubtfully.

      ‘You think I’m not the type?’ she rebounded defensively, finding her voice again, though she didn’t know why she was arguing with him when as a lecturer he was no more likely to have the spare cash to buy a priceless painting than she was.

      ‘I think you didn’t make a single bid.’

      ‘So, you noticed me right back?’ Cally replied with more pleasure than she ought to have felt. He hadn’t given her a second glance two days ago, when she’d been wearing her usual work clothes instead of dolled up as tonight’s occasion demanded. Besides, why should it matter if he had noticed her? It would only be a matter of time before he noticed someone else.

      He nodded. ‘Indeed. And, since you haven’t answered my question about whether or not you are a disappointed punter, it seems we’re even.’

      She stared at the wall where the paintings had been only moments before and was hit by a renewed sense of failure. ‘It’s complicated. Let’s just say tonight should have changed my life for the better. It didn’t.’

      ‘The night is young,’ he drawled with a supremely confident grin.

      Cally dragged her eyes away from his lips and made a show of looking at her watch, horrified to find that she was almost tempted to find out what he meant. Ten-fifteen. ‘Like I said, I have to get back to my hotel.’

      She turned to walk towards the door.

      ‘Do you have a better offer waiting at your final destination, or are you just the kind of woman who is scared of saying yes?’

      Cally froze, not turning round.

      ‘No. I’m the kind of woman who is well aware that asking someone you’ve only just met out for a drink is really asking for something else entirely, and I’m not interested.’

      Leon whistled through his teeth. ‘So you prefer a man to cut to the chase? Detail exactly what he has in mind before you agree?’

      She blushed. ‘I would prefer it if a drink only meant a drink.‘

      ‘So you are thirsty, chérie?‘

      Cally swallowed, her mouth going inconveniently dry. Was she the kind of woman who was scared of saying yes? she wondered, suddenly both horrified and aggrieved that he might actually be right. No, she justified, she wasn’t afraid—she’d just learned from experience that that kind of yes inevitably led to disappointment. Which was why—unlike other girls she knew, who invariably spent their evenings making out with random guys in clubs—she’d spent the last seven years sitting at her desk into the early hours of every morning memorising the chemical make-up of conservation treatments, practising each and every technique for the sake of her precious career. But look where it had got her now! Precisely nowhere.

      Cally took a deep breath. ‘Yes’ might very well lead to disappointment, but right now it didn’t get much more disappointing than the thought of returning to her hotel with nothing but her misery and the overpriced minibar for company. At least accepting the offer of one drink with a perfectly normal man for once in her life would take her mind off what had just happened.

      ‘On one condition, then…’ she began confidently, but the instant she raised her eyes she caught sight of his devastating smile, and remembered too late that there was absolutely nothing remotely normal about the way he made her feel. If anything, that was what she should be afraid of. ‘The topic of work is off the agenda.’

      ‘Done,’ he answered decisively.

      ‘Right.’ Cally’s head began to spin. ‘Then…where did you have in mind?’

      Chapter Two

      LEON didn’t have anywhere in mind. He hadn’t had anything on his mind for two full days—except her. He’d come to Crawford’s to view the pre-auction exhibition of the paintings the world wanted to get their hands on, and had found himself wanting to get his hands on something else entirely: the narrow waist and shapely hips of the woman with lustrous red-bronze hair, who’d been transfixed by the paintings he’d suddenly forgotten he’d come here to see. The wave of desire had come out of nowhere, for it was certainly unprovoked. Though the luscious curves of her figure were obvious, she couldn’t have been dressed any less provocatively, in a drab, crinkled blouse and olive-green skirt that reached her ankles. He’d wanted to dispose of them both there and then.

      And he would have done, if he’d known who she was and that she could be trusted to be discreet. But he hadn’t. Standing there, all misty-eyed before the paintings, she’d looked—most inconveniently—like exactly the kind of woman who would cloud everything with emotion and make discretion an impossibility. But the knot of heat in his groin had demanded he find out for certain. How fortuitous, then, that when he’d asked a few discreet questions of hisown it turned out that she was the London City Gallery’s choice to restore the Rénards. For once in his life, a twist of fate had amused him. She would have to be fully vetted anyway. Suddenly it made perfect sense for him to stay on for the auction and undertake the investigation personally.

      Leon watched her as she walked beside him, oblivious to the sound of taxicabs and buses that filled the tepid June evening. To his pleasure, she looked a world away from the olive-green drabness of just over forty-eight hours before; she was luminescent in black silk, the halter neck revealing an ample cleavage, and her striking hair, which had previously been tied back, now fell over her shoulders in waves. Tonight she looked exactly like the sort of woman capable of the kind of short and mutually satisfying affair he had in mind.

      ‘Lady’s choice,’ he said, realising they had reached the end of the street, and he still hadn’t answered her question as to where they were headed.

      Cally, whose nerve was evaporating by the second, looked around the street and decided that the sooner this was over the better. ‘The next bar we come to will be fine, I’m sure. After all, its only requirement is that it serve drinks, is it not?’

      Leon nodded. ‘D’accord.’

      As they turned the corner of the street, Cally heard a low, insistent drumbeat and saw a neon sign illuminating darkness: the Road to Nowhere.

      ‘Perfect,’ Cally proclaimed defiantly. It might look a little insalubrious, but at least it was too brash and too noisy for there to be any danger of lingering conversation over an intimate table for two.

      Leon looked up, to see a young couple tumble out of the door and begin devouring each other up against the window, and he stifled a grin.

      ‘It looks good to me.’

      Cally did a double take, doubting he was serious. Then she wished she hadn’t, because the sight of his impossibly handsome face beneath the soft glow of the street lights made her whole body start with that ridiculous tingling again.

      ‘Fabulous. And my hotel is only two streets away,’ she said,

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