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how long had it been since a woman had run the other way when they’d seen him without his clothes on? Even room service the world over weren’t that precious, and yet she’d taken off like the devil himself had been after her. What was her problem? It wasn’t like he was a complete stranger to her after all. Then again, she’d made plain her disapproval of his long line of companions. Maybe she was scared she might end up on it.
    Now, there was a thought…
    He discounted the idea as quickly as it had come. She was his PA after all, even if a virtual one, and a rule was a rule. Maybe a shame, on reflection, that he’d made that rule, but he’d made it knowing he might be tempted from time to time and he’d made it for good reason. But at least he knew he wouldn’t have to spend the night forcing himself to smile at a woman he wasn’t interested in. He found it easy to smile at her now, as she returned from the powder room, coyly avoiding his eyes. She was uncannily, serendipitously perfect, from the top of her honey-caramel hair to the tips of the lacquered toenails peeping out of her shoes. And he had to smile. To think he’d imagined her middle-aged and taking nanna naps! How wrong could a man be? Hewould have no trouble at all feigning interest in this woman, no trouble at all.
    He rose, heading her off before she could sit down, her eyes widening as he approached and blocked off the route to her armchair so she was forced to stop, even in heels forced to tilt her head up to look at him. Even now her colour was unnaturally high, her bright eyes alert as if she was poised on the brink of escape.
    There was no chance of escape.
    Oh no. His clever, classy little virtual PA wasn’t going anywhere yet. Not before he’d convinced Culshaw that he had nothing to fear from dealing with him, and that he was a rock-solid family man. Which meant he just had to convince Evelyn that she had nothing to fear from him.
    ‘Are we late?’ she asked, sounding breathless and edgy. ‘Is it time to go?’
    He could be annoyed at her clear display of nerves. He should be if her nervousness put his plans at risk. But somehow the entire package was so enticing. He liked it that he so obviously affected her. And so what that she wasn’t plain? She wasn’t exactly classically pretty either—her green eyes were perhaps too wide, her nose too narrow, but they were balanced by a wide mouth that lent itself to both the artist’s paintbrush and to thoughts of long afternoons of lazy sex.
    Not necessarily in that order.
    For just one moment he thought he’d noted those precise details in a face before, but the snatch of memory was fleeting, if in fact it was memory at all, and flittered away before he could pin it down to a place or time. No matter. Nothing mattered right now but that she was there and that he had a good feeling about tonight. His lips curved into a smile. A very good feeling.
    ‘Not yet. Dinner is set for eight in the presidential suite.’
    She glanced at the sparkly evening watch on her wrist and then over her shoulder, edging ever so slightly towards the door, and as much as he found her agitation gratifying, he knew he had to sort this out. ‘Maybe I should check with the staff that everything’s good with the dinner,’ she suggested. ‘Just remind them that it’s for a party of six now…’
    He shook his head benevolently, imagining this was how gamekeepers felt when they soothed nervous animals. ‘Evelyn, it’s all under control. Besides, there’s something more important you should be doing right now.’ He touched the pad of his middle finger, just one finger, to her shoulder and she jumped and shrank back.
    ‘And what might that be?’ she asked, breathless and trembling and trying to mask it by feigning interest in the closest photographic print on the wall. A picture of the riverbank, he noticed with a glance, of trees and park benches and some old man sitting in the middle of the bench, gazing