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His one indulgence before he came clean was seeing her in a setting he had imagined her in, no longer looking the poor twin. She deserved to have the luxury that her sister enjoyed, and tomorrow she would.
Then he would do the big reveal. He could not predict her reaction, but he was pretty sure it would involve her leaving—which he told himself was a good thing. Perhaps she’d take this new and very uncomfortable conscience he had developed away with her. What would he miss, a few extra days, even weeks of incredible sex? He knew himself well enough to know that this attraction he felt would fade, hard to justify depriving her of a future with a family.
‘There is a dinner and I’d like you to be the hostess.’
She stopped digging grooves in the sand and looked up, startled.
‘I’m sure Arthur is much more capable than me at the list ticking and meet-and-greet stuff. I’m quite likely to send people home with the wrong coats.’
‘I think you have the wrong idea. I don’t want you totake coats! You will be there as my hostess for the evening, and with that in mind I have had Arthur send some appropriate clothing items to our room. Hopefully there will be something you like.’
‘Ourroom?’
‘All right, your room.’ He held up a hand and cut off further protest before she articulated it. ‘Let me save you the effort: I will not take clothes from you, I have everything I need...blah...blah...’ he drawled, sounding bored.
‘Don’t put words in my mouth.’
Zac struggled to string the words together as he stared at the lips under discussion and he wasn’t thinking words!
‘Tell me I am wrong, then,’ he suggested. ‘And in response to that I will say, no, you do not have anything suitable for a black-tie event and, secondly, it is nothing more than a uniform.’
‘Meaning this is nothing more than a job?’ She wished the words unsaid even before they left her lips but they seemed to have acquired a resentful will of their own.
‘Now who is putting words in someone else’s mouth?’ he taunted, arching a satiric brow. ‘I really don’t get why you are being so pedantic, but for the record I am not asking Declan’s nanny to be my hostess, I am asking a beautiful woman who shares my bed to be my partner for this dinner. So will you oblige me by doing this? It is a small event, twenty couples or so. I was intending to hold the reception in London, but circumstances intervened...’
So he’d had a date lined up and she was a last-minute stand-in. The possibility was not exactly ego-enhancing.
‘What would I have to do?’
‘Eat food, drink wine, make conversation and be agreeable. It should not be too taxing.’
Unless you were a social liability... Her dad’s description of her floated into her head. She had never questioned his statement, let alone challenged it. She was ashamed that she had lacked the strength and just accepted it. It suddenly occurred to her that this was an opportunity to do just that, prove her dad wrong. He would never know but she would. Suddenly that was very important to Rose as she acknowledged a deep-buried truth, ahurtthat she had carried.
Zac watched the emotions flicker across her face, saw the change in the tilt of her chin and the defiant resolution that put a sparkle in her eyes, and wondered about what had put it there.
His jaw tightened. It was not his business to wonder what belonged to the family she was about to gain. Before long she would be part of a royal household, protected and loved, and they were about to gain Rose, which made them the winner by any measurement he could think of in this equation.
‘Fine, I’ll do it, but anything I wear I’ll...’ Pay? Considering the sad state of her finances, that might prove difficult. ‘You can take the cost out of my first pay cheque.’
‘I will invoice you,’ he responded seamlessly, seeing no reason to share the information that it would take more than one pay cheque to cover the cost of any of the items that he had signed off on.
‘Good.’
‘Excellent,’ he returned, realising he had never had to work so hard to have any woman fall in with his plans. Rose was damned hard work.
His heavy-lidded glance slid to her mouth—maybe she was worth some hard work. He pushed the thought away as with it came the temptation to ignore his conscience and keep her with him, keep Marco in the dark for a little longer.
‘What exactly do I have to do at this dinner?’
‘Make people feel at ease.’
What about me? Who puts me at my ease?
‘How am I meant to do that?’
‘People like to talk about themselves. Be interested, and...’ He hesitated, the underlying amusement draining from his voice as he finished on advice he would offer few people. But then few people possessed Rose’s natural warmth or her smile, and the fact she seemed utterly unaware of her power made it all the more effective. ‘Be yourself, Rose.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
