‘You mean you didn’t say anything to her?’
‘She wasn’t in the frame of mind to have her high hopes dashed.’ He had finished his drink and he now stood up, but, instead of refilling his glass, he poured himself some water and sat back down on the sofa. It gave her barely any time to consider her options. Or rather to face her one and only option, which would be to slink back down to Devon and confess all. She was pretty sure that whoever composed the motto about confession being good for the soul hadn’t been thinking of this particular scenario.
‘What frame of mind was that?’ Georgie asked weakly. Like a moth drawn to an open flame, she felt compelled to learn all the details that would make what she had to do all the more painful.
‘Happy? Optimistic? Girlishly excited? Are you getting the picture here?’
‘Loud and clear,’ she said gloomily. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll explain everything to her tomorrow. Didi will understand. In fact, she’ll probably be touched that I cared enough to think about embarking on such a crazy charade.’ Either that or she would be bitterly disappointed, but Georgie wasn’t going to contemplate that outcome.
Pierre cursed under his breath and sprang to his feet. ‘How the hell could you put me in this position?’ He began pacing the kitchen, pausing now and again to glower at some innocuous gadget before transferring his attention back to her.
‘I’m sorry. How many more times do you want me to say that? Maybe you want me to write it out a hundred times as punishment?’ Georgie stood up. ‘I should be getting off to bed now. Tomorrow looks like it’s going to be a marathon day.’
‘Sit back down!’
‘What for?’ She placed her hands squarely on her hips and glared at him. For once she wished that she were a strapping Amazon of a woman, someone who could look at him on eye level and impart some authority, instead of a slip of a girl, five feet four and boyishly built. He absolutely towered over her, both physically and mentally.
‘This conversation isn’t over!’
‘Well, I don’t see where else it can go, Pierre! I messed up. You’ve told me that I’ve messed up. I shall have to go and clean up the mess I made. How much more simple can it get?’
‘I went along with the pretence,’ he said darkly, and Georgie looked at him in startled disbelief. Her mouth fell open.
She sat back down and watched as he dragged a stool over and swung it round so that he could sit on it, resting his arms on the wooden, slatted back.
‘Why?’ she asked faintly. ‘You spent the past few hours listing all the reasons why you refused to have anything to do with my plan…why on earth would you change your mind at the last minute?’
‘For a start, I wasn’t allowed to draw breath. I haven’t heard my mother that animated since…my father was alive.’ He ran his fingers through his hair, a restless gesture of baffled frustration. ‘You must have done a damned convincing job on blurring over the edges of your little piece of fiction. Didi was thrillingly convinced that we truly had been conducting a secret affair, although I can’t understand how she could have been so easily taken in. When did she think we had been meeting up? Did it not occur to her that she would have seen considerably more of me over the past few months if I had been pursuing you?’
Georgie was still grappling with the fact that he was prepared to go along with her idea. Now, of course, she was beginning to have second thoughts.#p#分页标题#e##p#分页标题#e#
She hadn’t remembered him having such a powerful effect on her. How was she supposed to be conducting a relationship with a man who could knock what remained of her common sense from her in the space of five seconds? Would it be possible to mention his name to Didi with a dreamy look in her eyes when her teeth were grinding together in frustration at his overbearing, arrogant personality?
‘Did you put that to her?’ Georgie asked and Pierre shook his head dazedly.
‘I intended to,’ he admitted, ‘but it was a bit like being in the path of a bulldozer.’
‘So what happens from here?’ Georgie was entertaining the idea that they could conduct this mysterious yet impassioned affair without actually ever being seen in the same place at the same time. It would be a lot easier to look dreamy eyed about him if he weren’t physically around, getting under her skin.
‘I guess,’ she said, staring off into the distance and thinking aloud, ‘I could chat about you with Didi, giggle over a few girlish tales, disappear on the occasional weekend…I know it sounds deceitful…’