‘Just because I was let down—’
‘Dumped by a guy who absconded with your best friend.’
Milly flushed hotly. ‘There’s no need to ram that down my throat.’
‘A little reality goes a long way, Milly.’
‘If by that you mean that it goes a long way to turning me into someone who doesn’t believe in love and marriage, then I’d rather not face it.’
‘Well, considering I have no time for any of that, it should be a cinch demonstrating to my mother just how incompatible we are.’
‘If we’re that incompatible, then I’m wondering how we ever got involved with one another in the first place,’ Milly said tartly. ‘I’m broken-hearted and vulnerable after a broken engagement, and you swoop into my life and decide that I’m the one for you even though I’m the last person on the planet you would get involved with? How does that make sense, Lucas?’
‘Like I said, my mother is a devotee of fairy stories like that.’
‘Then she doesn’t know you at all, does she?’
‘Do you ever accept anything without questioning it out of existence?’ He shook his head and sighed with a mixture of resignation and exasperation. ‘People believe what they want to believe even if evidence to the contrary is staring them in the face. My mother believes in true love without any encouragement from me, I assure you. So she won’t find it odd at all that you’ve swept me off my feet.’
Milly blushed and looked away. ‘Does she know about your experience with that girl when you were still a kid? An excusable mistake when you were too young to know better.’
‘Is that your way of introducing your analysis of the experience?’ He shot her a glance of brooding impatience, which she returned with unblinking disingenuousness. ‘Which I’m seriously regretting telling you abou. To answer your question, no, she doesn’t.’ His gaze became thoughtful. ‘Which brings me to one or two ground rules that should be put in place.’
‘Yes?’ What would it take to sweep a man like Lucas off his feet? she wondered. Someone amazing. And that person existed, even if he didn’t think so. His parents had been happily married, as had hers. Her grandmother had told her numerous tales of how much in love her parents had been. Inseparable, she had said. Growing up, Milly had never tired of looking at snapshots of them together; had never tired of hearing all the small details of the childhood sweethearts who had grown up together and had never wavered in their love for one another. Maybe those tales had formed the person she was now: idealistic and eternally hopeful that she would one day find the right guy for her.
If it was inconceivable that someone like Lucas, jaded and cynical, could ever be attracted to someone like her, then it was equally inconceivable that someone like her, optimistic and romantic, could ever be attracted to someone like him.
‘Ground rules...’ he repeated gently, snapping her out of her reverie.
‘Oh, yes, you were about to tell me.’
‘Ground rule number one,’ he said, frowning, because never had he ever had to work so hard at getting a woman’s attention, ‘is the importance of remembering that this is just a temporary charade.’
Milly looked at him, eyes wide with puzzlement. ‘I know that.’
‘By which,’ Lucas continued, taking advantage of her full, concentrated attention before she could drift off into one of those doubtless cotton-candy fantasies of hers, ‘I mean that you don’t get ideas.’