‘There was no need for you to feel guilty about leaving me here on my own,’ she pressed, and Pierre let out a roar of laughter.
‘Guilty? Me? For leaving you here on your own? Why should I feel guilty for leaving you here? For a start, you shouldn’t have been here in the first place and, secondly, you could probably bludgeon an intruder to death with your line of small talk.’
‘That’s not very nice,’ Georgie said, stung.
‘No, it’s not and I apologise. Unreservedly.’
‘And I can tell you really mean that,’ she told him coldly. ‘So you want our stories to tally.’
‘If we find ourselves in this fictional world of yours, then we might as well make it as plausible as possible. When exactly did our so called relationship start?’
‘Some time ago. I may have mentioned six to eight months.’
‘And tell me how it all happened. I’m keen to hear where your inventive mind took you.’
‘To a fish restaurant in London the last time I was up.’
‘You were up in London.’
‘No, but I might have been and, if I had been, I might possibly have phoned you to see whether you wanted to go out for a drink.’
‘Even though every time we have met in the past, we have ended up arguing over something or other?’#p#分页标题#e##p#分页标题#e#
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! Do you have to object to everything I say? Yes, we met for dinner! I had the…the cod and you had the tuna!’
‘And after our suitably healthy meal…we repaired back to my place for some satisfying and frantic sex?’
Georgie went bright red. She actually thought that she could hear the blood slowly pumping through her veins and her skin went hot and tingly.
He sat there and his presence seemed to fill the kitchen, overwhelming her ability to think clearly.
Away from the familiar social situations in which they had met over the years, and stripped of the usual chaperons of mutual friends and family, she felt suddenly and agonisingly aware of herself as a woman, one he found at best amusing but not in a very funny way and, at worst, downright disagreeable.
And wasn’t she living down to his every low expectation with her bizarre mode of clothing? Would any of his super-efficient girlfriends have undertaken a journey without packing a just-in-case change of clothing? Thereby finding herself at the mercy of a wardrobe several sizes too big for her? Guaranteed to make her look utterly ridiculous? No, no and no in answer to all three.
‘I really haven’t thought about the nuts and bolts in too much detail,’ she said loftily. ‘And I don’t expect Didi will be asking prying questions about…about…anyway, we can just gloss over the exact times and dates we supposedly met up afterwards.’
‘Why did I never come to see you in Devon?’
‘Because you’re incredibly selfish,’ Georgie said waspishly, ‘and that, I think, she would believe!’
Pierre leaned towards her and said softly, ‘Stop right there, Georgie. I am doing you a favour, helping you out of the mess you’ve got yourself into. Yes, maybe it will do Didi some good, maybe it will give her something to look forward to, but I didn’t have to do this. My life was going in a perfectly well-ordered direction without your meddling. So I advise you very strongly to keep that temper of yours in check!’
‘Oh, very well,’ Georgie mumbled, relieved when he drew back and gave her the chance to breathe a little easier.
‘And as soon as Didi is back to her normal self, we tell her that things haven’t worked out between us, got it? I’m not in this for the long haul.’
‘Nor am I!’ Her green eyes flashed, then she remembered the ‘keeping the temper in check’ warning and subsided a little. ‘Will you tell your girlfriend?’ she asked curiously and Pierre shrugged.
‘No need.’
‘No need?’
‘Ignorance is bliss. Have you never heard that saying?’
‘Not when it pertains to something like this.’
‘At any rate, she is not a vital part of my life. We see each other now and again. Enjoy each other. We both of us lead extremely busy lives, too busy to include a time consuming relationship.’
‘Oh.’
For some reason her dumbfounded acceptance of this explanation was more annoying than if she had launched into one of her famous ‘speak without thinking’ monologues.
‘You have a problem with that?’ he asked irritably and Georgie, abiding by rules of detachment, hastened to assure him that she didn’t, not at all.
‘And I take it that there’s no boyfriend lurking in the wings to clutter your little game plan?’ His eyes sharpened on her because, to the best of his knowledge, she had never had a boyfriend, although, thinking about it, who was he to say? Recently he had seen very little of her on his trips to Devon, which, he reluctantly acknowledged, were few and far between.#p#分页标题#e##p#分页标题#e#