About Last Night (17 page)

But what Cath wanted and what Cath needed were rarely the same thing.

He’d become quite the expert on her. She’d told him very few of her secrets, but what he did know he’d used—piecing it together with thousands of observations to create an ever-evolving portrait of her character. He knew she was far more upset than she’d let on, even to herself. The catalog meant the world to her.

“How much did the sponsor take with them?”

“Fifty thousand pounds.”

Not a lot. More than he had in the bank, but only because he’d used his savings to purchase the building in Greenwich last year, thinking it made more sense to own the property and rent out the other flat than to become a tenant himself. He couldn’t give her fifty thousand pounds, but he could get it for her. His father would write a fifty-thousand-pound check to the V&A if Nev asked him to. Or, rather, he would if Mother didn’t stop him.

Unfortunately, Evita wasn’t in the mood to do her second-born any favors just now. Not until he brought home an appropriate fiancée for her to coo over.

He sipped his whiskey, thinking. When Judith had said,
You should hit him up for a donation
, he’d thought she was joking. She hadn’t been joking.

Cath would never do it, though. She didn’t want his money. She needed it, but she didn’t want it.

The question was, how could he get her to take it? If he simply handed her a check for fifty thousand pounds, she’d tear it up. She insisted on paying her share of everything, leaving neat stacks of pound coins on his kitchen table whenever they split a take-away meal. She’d only accept small gifts from him. It was important to her that their relationship be reciprocal. If she were to take fifty thousand pounds from him, it would only be because she thought she’d given him something of equal value.

Cath needed money. He needed a fiancée.

Actually, no. He needed a wife.

“What are you smiling about?” she asked, slightly grumpy.

He studied her from across the table. The blue light of the bar turned her top purple and cast an otherworldly glow over her pale skin. She was a faerie woman, small and lovely and full of terrible power beyond his ken. He’d been wanting to buy her dinner for weeks, needing to declare to the world at large that this woman belonged to him. He was crazy about her. And he wanted, of all things, to take her home and introduce her to his parents.

It was mad. Mother would dislike her on sight. Worse, she’d make the weekend difficult for Cath, who would in turn hate everything about Leyton. Nor would Cath appreciate the
deception, though Mother and Winston absolutely deserved it.

Utterly mad. But there was brilliance to the idea, as well. Because if he pulled it off, he’d manage to help Cath while sending a long-overdue message to his mother that he no longer intended to play along with her schemes.

Whether or not he could pull it off remained an open question. He looked Cath over, head to toe. Her short black skirt. Shiny heels. Her blouse, red as a phone box and sexy as hell. She wouldn’t do at all. But he could fix that.

“Do you trust me, love?”

She hesitated a great deal longer than he’d have liked, but she gave him the answer he’d hoped for. “Yes.”

“Excellent. Because I need a favor.”

Chapter Thirteen

“Tell me again why I’m doing this.”

Nev was driving them along the A25 toward Hertfordshire. She hadn’t even known he had a car. Though of course he did, and of course it was elegant and understated, and he drove it with cool self-assurance. That was Nev—confident, competent, and crisp as a fall apple.

She, on the other hand, was freaking out.

“It’s going to be fine, Cath. Relax.” He dropped his hand to her thigh and squeezed it through the fabric of her dress. Her very expensive brown raw-silk sheath dress that would be terribly wrinkled by the time they arrived, because she hadn’t realized it wasn’t the right thing to wear in the car. She’d never had a dress like this before. Everything she owned contained at least a small amount of polyester.

She was in way over her head here.

Screwing her eyes shut, she concentrated on Nev’s hand on her leg. It was warm, heavy, and alive, and her body responded with the heat his touch always aroused. If he could keep one hand on her at all times, she might make it through the weekend.

No such luck. He returned his hand to the wheel to change lanes, and she tried in vain to smooth out her wrinkled lap. The rings on her left hand caught her eye, and just like that she broke out in a sweat. It was what theater people called “flop sweat.” The sweat of the doomed.

Nev had given her the rings after work a few nights earlier. He didn’t make a ceremony of it, just tossed the jewelry boxes into her lap before leaving the room to pour her a whiskey, but the instant she lifted the lid on the engagement ring, she wanted it. Wanted this whole thing to be real with an intensity that horrified her.

The ring was a beautiful art deco cabochon sapphire set in platinum and surrounded by tiny diamonds. Exactly the sort of thing she might’ve chosen for herself if she’d been a girl who
got sappy over engagement rings. Which she wasn’t. It was just that this particular one was very pretty. And he must have gone to some trouble to pick it out for her—and spent more money on it than she wanted to think about. It felt special in a way that frightened her so much, she’d put it back in its box without comment and refused to look at it again until he reminded her to wear it this morning.

She didn’t want to be married to Nev. She didn’t want to be married ever again, to anyone.

Except one tiny part of her did.

She definitely didn’t want to
pretend
to be married to Nev, but she was on her way to spend a long weekend with a household of strangers doing exactly that.

She had a bad feeling the whole episode was going to end in another tattoo.

When had she invited such stupidity into her life? She’d been trying to figure it out ever since she’d agreed to go along with his bizarre plan. Lying awake in his bed in the middle of the night, turning the situation over in her mind, she’d only been able to boil it down to the bare bones. He’d asked if she trusted him, and she did. He’d asked her for a favor, and she’d agreed to do it.

Beyond that, she remained clueless. She didn’t understand why he needed a fake bride. He hadn’t refused to tell her, but he hadn’t exactly been forthcoming on the subject, either. The only explanation he’d really given was that he needed her help to prove a point to his mother. When she pressed him, he evaded. Told jokes. Distracted her with sex. Said he wasn’t prepared to talk about it. She’d finally given up after making him promise she wouldn’t be committing any felonies, which had made him laugh until his cheeks turned pink.

He could laugh. He didn’t know about the arson thing.

She’d thought about digging around online to see what she could learn about the Chamberlains, but it felt wrong. Nev had been so patient with her secretive ways. If there was something he didn’t want her to know, no doubt he had his reasons.

And then there was the whole money issue. He’d promised that by the end of the
weekend, he’d be handing her a check for fifty thousand pounds made out to the V&A. A totally aboveboard donation to the museum in his parents’ name to celebrate their son’s marriage. To
her
—a woman he’d met when she was three sheets to the wind.

It was the most completely bonkers, insane, outlandish, absurd, ridiculous plan she’d ever heard. She could never take the money. It would be morally bankrupt for her to accept a donation from a noted art patron to support a fascinating and important exhibit at one of the world’s premier museums. Or maybe not morally bankrupt. Maybe morally questionable. Morally suspect. It was a moral gray area, anyway. This whole trip was a moral gray area.

Fitting, considering that the way she felt about Nev had become an emotional gray area.

She could really use a candy bar. Better yet, a stiff drink.

“I’m never going to be able to pull this off,” she said, giving the ring a nervous twist it had done nothing to deserve. “I don’t know enough about you. I don’t know how to act rich. Tell me again why we have to be married, not just engaged? I’d be better at engaged. If we were engaged, it wouldn’t be such a big deal that I don’t know your birthday.”

“It’s March the seventh. And I already told you, we can’t simply be engaged, because if Mother doesn’t like you, she’ll spend the entire weekend trying to find ways to force me to break it off. Whereas if we’re married, her horror of divorce will make her be civil to you long enough for us to coax a check out of my father.”

He flashed her his shark smile. “Also, if we’re married, we get to share a bed.”

“Oh, no. No way am I sleeping with you at your parents’ house.”

“Of course you are. You can’t possibly expect me to keep my hands off you for three nights running. I’d never survive it. I’ve spent half the morning trying to work out what you’re wearing under that dress.”

He’d come back from his shopping excursion with more clothing than she knew what to do with and a drawerful of new lingerie that she suspected was strictly for his own benefit. It wasn’t as if she’d be doing a striptease on his parents’ dining room table. To fortify herself for this morning’s adventure, she’d put on a beautiful shell-pink bra trimmed with coffee-colored
lace, as well as a matching thong and sheer stockings held up by a lacy garter belt. Not that she was about to tell him that. She didn’t need him getting ideas.

“Don’t worry, love,” he added. “It’s a big house, and you’re capable of being quiet, so long as you have something to bite.” He pursed his lips. “I rather like it when you bite.”

Cath fidgeted against the leather seat. One more sin to chalk up against her—she was going to arrive at the in-laws’ both wrinkled and aroused.

“You’re not helping. I already know you have a thing for sexy underwear. What I need to know is married-people stuff, so I can talk to your mother without giving everything away.”

“I should hope sexy underwear
is
married-people stuff. If not, I feel sorry for them.” Cath snorted but refused to comment. “All right, then. What shall I tell you about myself?”

“How old you are, for starters.”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Seriously?”

“Did you think I was older or younger?”

“Older, definitely. Or, I don’t know, maybe not. I guess I never really thought about it. Maybe twenty-eight is about right.”

“And how old are you?”

“Twenty-six. How rich is your family?”

He chuckled. “I can’t possibly answer that question. Well-off, certainly.”

“Where does the money come from?”

“Banking and finance now. Originally, manufacturing. My great-great-grandsire made his fortune with a piano felt factory.”

“What on earth is piano felt?”

“Have you ever looked inside a piano? Hundreds of little bits and pieces of felt are in there. Someone has to make it.”

She smiled. “So you’re new money. That’s good. I don’t think I could handle being married to an aristocrat.”

“Hmm. Perhaps this is the time to admit my father is a lord.”

Her stomach clenched. “Please tell me that was a very bad joke.”

“He’s only a baron, darling. There are loads of them.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Does this mean I should be calling you ‘Lord Chamberlain’?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s my father’s title, and even he only uses it on ceremonial occasions. At any event, Winston is the one who will inherit it. I’ll remain a nobody.”

The thought of Nev passing as a nobody amused her. There was about as much chance of that happening as of her passing as the sort of well-bred girl he was destined to marry.

Yikes
.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about the title sooner. What else aren’t you telling me? Do you live in a castle?”

“No,” he said, his dimple showing.

“Do you have a tight-lipped butler?”

“No.”

“How about a domineering housekeeper? A frowsy cook who tipples in the sherry?”

“No. You watch too much television.” When she frowned, he brushed the back of his hand across her cheek. “Quit worrying, sweetheart. You’ll be perfect.”

At least his mother opened the door herself, Cath thought a few minutes later. The house was huge, an English manor straight off the pages of a novel. Cath had given Nev a look with daggers in it when they pulled into the half-moon at the end of the driveway, but he’d remained unfazed, simply smiling and saying, “Welcome to Leyton, darling.”

Evita Chamberlain didn’t look a bit like her son. She was all sharp angles and flat planes: tall, thin, and fashionable, she reminded Cath of Cruella de Vil. His father, on the other hand,
was an older, softer version of Nev.

While Cruella fussed over Nev’s arrival in shrill tones of delight, the baron was quiet, taking it all in. But his eyes were kinder, more welcoming than the quick, flat glance she’d gotten from Mum.
If I have to choose, I pick Dad
.

“But Neville, we’re being unforgivably rude,” his mother said eventually, turning to Cath. “Won’t you introduce us to your guest?”