She held her purse in front of her stomach with both hands, suddenly feeling terribly gauche…well, even more so than usual. ‘About last night…’ she began.
‘Don’t mention it. I won’t.’ Another glinting look. ‘It can be our little secret.’
She gnawed her lip as she thought of all the thousands of followers he would have on Twitter or other social media. He could make an absolute fool of her with a couple of hash tags. What if he’d taken pictures of her without her knowing? Her stomach dropped. The stripper routine. Oh, God. What if he’d recorded it? Uploaded it? Sent it out to cyberspace. What if he blackmailed her? What if—?
He reached into his trouser pocket and handed her his phone. ‘You can check it if you like.’
Daisy stared at his phone as if it were a grenade with the pin pulled out. ‘I really don’t think that’s—’
‘Here, I’ll show you.’ He came and stood shoulder to shoulder with her, accessing the camera roll on his phone. ‘See?’
She peered at the images he was scrolling through, conscious of the way his light lemony and citrus cologne sharpened the air. She could feel the slightest brush of his hair-roughened arm against her smoother one. Her traitorous mind began assembling images of them in bed together, limbs entangled, lips locked, tongues mating. ‘Good gracious, is that a dress that girl is almost wearing?’
He gave one of his deep rumbly chuckles that sent her senses spinning all over again. ‘For a simple scrap of fabric it was damn hard to get off.’
Daisy gave him a wry glance. ‘What? She didn’t offer to help you?’
‘Can’t remember.’ He carried on thumbing through another few photos.
‘How long ago was it—erm, she?’
‘Ages ago.’ He flashed her a sudden grin. ‘A couple of weeks at least.’
Daisy rolled her eyes and then pointed to a picture on the photo stream of a slightly older woman standing next to Luiz at what looked like a cocktail party. ‘Who’s that?’
‘My mother, Eloise.’
Something about the way he said his mother’s name alerted her to an undercurrent of tension. ‘She looks very beautiful. Very glamorous. Like a movie star.’
His lips moved in the semblance of a smile. ‘Yes, she likes the spotlight, that’s for sure.’
‘You’re not close?’
He looked at her briefly, his eyes meshing with hers in a moment of silence. There was a vacancy in the back of his gaze, as if he was looking in the past for something but was having trouble finding it. ‘We were once, or so I thought.’
‘When was that?’
He clicked off the screen of his phone and slipped it back into his pocket in a subject closed manner. ‘What do you normally eat for breakfast?’
‘Well…ideally, I would eat an egg white omelette and drink a herbal tea.’
His brow lifted. ‘Ideally?’
She gave him a self-deprecating look. ‘I’m rubbish at sticking to diets. I last about three days and then I cave in and eat everything that isn’t nailed down.’