Highly Unsuitable: Mr and Mischief / The Darkest of Secrets / The Undoing of de Luca

‘Oh?’ Jason slid into the driver’s seat. ‘I didn’t know you had expectations about my mode of transport.’

‘Yes, but that’s it exactly, isn’t it?’ Emily said with a laugh. She shook her hair back over her shoulders in a golden waterfall. ‘Your “mode of transport". I’d expect something basic and, well, boring for you, just a car to get you from point A to point B. Of course,’ she teased, ‘the colour is a bit dull. Navy-blue doesn’t do it for me, I’m afraid.’

Jason stared at her for a second, utterly nonplussed by her rather brutal assessment of him. Boring? And he’d been thinking she still had a little crush on him. Well, that was him sorted. ‘Boring,’ he repeated musingly as he started the car. ‘And dull. I wonder if I should be offended.’

‘You can hardly be offended by that, Jason!’

Now he really was offended. Most women didn’t think he was boring at all. Most women were eager to spend an evening with him. Yet here Emily sat sprawled in the seat across from him, her skirt riding up on her slim thighs, looking at him as if he were her doddering old uncle whom she had to humour.

Yet she hadn’t looked at him like that last night. He still remembered the brief, enticing touch of her hand on his chest. She’d been startled by the electric current that had suddenly snapped between them; he knew she’d felt it. He certainly had. Now he slid her a sideways glance as he revved the engine, causing Emily to laugh a little as she instinctively grabbed the door handle. ‘Can’t I?’ he murmured.

‘Well, honestly,’ she said once he’d pulled out of the office’s underground car park and begun to drive down Euston Road at quite a sedate speed. ‘You’ve always been—’

‘Boring?’ He heard the slight edge to his voice and strove to temper it. This was not how he’d pictured this evening starting.

‘Well, not boring precisely,’ Emily allowed. ‘But. predictable. Cautious. Steady.’ Jason kept his face expressionless although he felt his brows start to draw together in an instinctive glower. She was actually patronising him. ‘You never took part in the games and scrapes we got into—’

‘By “we” I assume you mean you, Isobel and Jack,’ Jason returned dryly. At Emily’s nod, he continued, ‘You might do well to remember, Em, that you’re twelve years younger than I am. While you were getting into these so-called scrapes, I was in university.’ His hands tightened on the wheel as the difference in their ages struck its necessary blow. Emily might be twenty-five, but she was still young. And in many ways, naive. Innocent, if not utterly, not to mention scatty, silly and far too frivolous. She was entirely wrong for him. Wrong for what he wanted.

Wrong for a wife.

‘Well, of course I know that,’ she said. ‘But, even so … you’ve always been a bit disapproving, Jason. Even of Jack—’

‘You didn’t have to live with him,’ Jason returned, keeping his voice mild. Of course everyone loved Jack. Jack was fun, except when it was Jason fetching him from boarding school after he’d been expelled, or from a party where he’d passed out. Fortunately, Jack had settled down since he’d been married, but Jason still remembered his younger brother’s turbulent teen years. He’d helped him out because their father never would, and Jack had no memories of their mother. He had precious few himself … and the ones he did, he’d sometimes rather forget.

‘Still,’ Emily persisted in that same teasing tone, ‘I remember the lectures you gave me. When I picked a few flowers from your garden, you positively glowered. You terrified me—’

‘By a few flowers you mean all the daffodils.’ They had been his mother’s favourite, and he’d been furious with her for beheading them all, as he remembered.

‘Was it all of them?’ Her eyebrows arched in surprise. ‘Oh, dear. I was a bit of a brat, wasn’t I?’

‘I didn’t want to be the one to say it,’ Jason murmured, and was rewarded with a gurgle of throaty laughter that made him feel as if he’d just stuck his finger in an electric socket. His whole body felt wired, alive and pulsating with pure lust. This evening really had been a mistake. He was playing with fire, and while he could handle a few burns, Emily surely couldn’t. That was why he’d always stayed away, and why he should keep at it. Right now he could have been sitting down to dinner with Patience Felton-Smythe, a boring woman with a horsey face who liked to garden and knit and was on the board of three charities. In short, the kind of woman he intended to marry.

Emily gazed out of the window at the blur of traffic, the streets of London slick with rain. Although it was only the beginning of November, the Christmas lights had already been strung along Regent Street and their lights were streakily reflected on the pavement below.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked as Jason turned onto Brook Street.

‘Claridge’s,’ he said and Emily let out a little laugh.

‘I should have known. Somewhere upscale and respectable and just a little bit stodgy.’

‘Like me?’ Jason filled in as they pulled up to the landmark hotel.

Emily smiled sweetly. She had offended Jason with her offhand remark. ‘You said it, not me.’

‘You didn’t need to. But, in any case, Claridge’s has had a bit of a remake over the years. You might find it’s the same with me.’ He tossed the keys to the valet and came around to help Emily out of the car, his hand strong and firm as he guided her from the low-slung Porsche—not easy to manage in her stiletto heels and short skirt—and continued to hold her hand as he led her into the restaurant. Emily didn’t protest, although she surely should have. There was something comforting and really rather nice about the way his fingers threaded through hers, his grip sure and strong.

It reminded her of when she’d been younger, and no matter what she’d done or where she’d gone, she’d trusted implicitly that Jason would be there to save her. Scold her too, undoubtedly, but she’d always known with him she was safe.

Yet as Jason glanced back at her, his eyes glinting, turning them the colour of dark honey, she had to acknowledge that something about holding Jason’s hand didn’t feel like when she was younger at all. In fact it felt quite different—different enough for a strange new uneasiness to ripple through her, and she smiled and slipped her hand from his as the maître d’ led them to a secluded table in a corner of the iconic restaurant.

‘So what’s the occasion, exactly?’ Emily asked as she opened the menu and began to peruse its offerings.

‘Occasion?’

‘I can’t think the last time you took me out to dinner, if ever.’

Jason’s lips twitched. ‘There’s a first time for everything.’

‘I suppose, but.’ Emily paused, cocking her head as she gazed at Jason; his hair was a little damp and rumpled from the rain and he had an endearingly studious expression on his face as he perused the wine list. She could see the faint shadow of stubble on his jaw, and it made him look surprisingly attractive. Sexy, even, which was ridiculous because she’d never thought of Jason that way—

Except for that once, and that was not going to be repeated.

‘Are you checking up on me?’ she asked, and Jason glanced up from the wine list.

‘Checking up on you? You sound like you have a guilty conscience, Em. Too many parties?’

‘No, it’s just …’ She paused, uncertain how to articulate how odd it was to be here with Jason, almost as if they were on a date. Which was ridiculous, because she knew Jason didn’t think of her that way—hadn’t he proved it on the dance floor seven years ago? Emily was quite sure nothing had changed there.

Except she had changed, of course. She’d grown up and moved long past that silly moment of infatuation with staid, stuffy Jason. And while she was perfectly happy to have dinner with an old family friend, she wasn’t sure she wanted some kind of lecture. Had her father asked Jason to keep an eye on her, now he was back in London for a fair bit? It was quite possible.

‘Just no lectures,’ she said, wagging a finger at him, and Jason shook his head.

‘I think you’re a little too old for lectures, Em. Unless you misbehave, of course.’ There was something almost wicked about Jason’s smile, his eyes glinting in the candlelit dimness of the room, and Emily felt her stomach dip again. He turned back to the menu and she decided she must have imagined that suggestive undercurrent, that little glimpse of wickedness. There was nothing wicked about Jason Kingsley at all. He was the most law-abiding citizen she had ever known.

‘I promise not to,’ she replied, tossing her hair, and Jason beckoned the waiter over to the table to take their orders.

Emily ordered and then glanced around the room as Jason ordered for himself, a low murmur she didn’t really hear. Most of the diners were businessmen making deals, or well-heeled pensioners. This place really was a little stodgy.

‘The chicken? Adventurous, Em,’ Jason said, slanting her an amused look as the waiter left.

Emily gave him her own flippant look right back. She’d been a notoriously picky eater as a child, as Jason undoubtedly remembered. ‘The braised calf livers aren’t to my taste.’

‘Still picky?’

‘Discriminating is the word I’d use. And not as much as you might remember, Jason. I have changed, you know.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’ He paused, his long, supple fingers toying with the stem of his water glass. ‘I suppose,’ he said musingly, ‘there’s quite a bit I don’t know about you now. I’ve been gone, most of the time at least, for so long.’

‘But now you’re back to stay?’

He shrugged. ‘For as long as needed.’

Emily nodded in understanding. ‘On this personal business of yours?’

A frown creased his brow before his expression cleared and he flashed her a quick, knowing smile. ‘Yes.’

She couldn’t help but laugh; he wouldn’t give anything away. He never did, but then she’d never thought Jason had any secrets before. Or at least secrets worth knowing. ‘You’re a man of mystery now, aren’t you?’

‘Rather than boring?’ Jason filled in, one eyebrow arched.

‘I think I hurt your feelings when I said that.’

‘Only a little bit. As retribution, I told the waiter to bring you the calf livers rather than the chicken.’

Her eyes widened as she realised she actually hadn’t heard what he’d ordered. ‘You did not!’

‘No, I didn’t. But you believed me, didn’t you?’ His faint smile, for a second, formed into a fully fledged grin, and the effect of that smile had Emily unsettled yet again. She’d forgotten how white Jason’s teeth were, how the dimple in his cheek deepened… . He really was a handsome man, which was, of course, what had compelled her to flirt with him seven years ago. She would not make the same mistake again.

‘Only because you’ve always told me the truth, no matter how ungracious it is.’

He cocked his head, his gaze sweeping over her in considering assessment. ‘Would you rather I lied?’

Emily thought of times Jason had told her the unvarnished truth when no one else would: when she was fourteen, she’d had a terrible spot on the tip of her nose. She’d been horribly embarrassed, and in a moment of desperation she’d asked Jason if he’d noticed it.

Straight-faced, he’d said, Em, how could I not? But I still like you, spots and all.

And when she’d been fifteen and missing her mother, who’d died when she was only three, she’d asked him if one ever stopped missing one’s mum. She’d never met his mother; she’d died when he was eight years old.

No, he said, you never stop. But it does get easier. Sometimes.

His words had comforted her because she’d known them for truth rather than mere sentiment.

‘No,’ she said now, with her own surprised honesty, ‘I wouldn’t rather you lied. I suppose you need someone in your life who will tell you the truth.’

‘I’ll always do that.’ His gaze lingered on her for a moment longer than she expected, so a sudden warmth spread through her limbs, a new unsettling awareness that she could hardly credit. This was Jason. She felt a rush of relief when the sommelier came with the wine and Emily watched as Jason, with that same easy assurance, swilled it in his glass before taking a sip and then nodding his approval. When the man had left, he raised his glass, the deep ruby-red of the wine catching the candlelight, in a toast.

‘To old friends and new beginnings,’ he said, his gaze still lingering, Emily raised her own glass, as well.

‘Hear, hear.’

‘So,’ Jason said once they had each taken a sip of wine, ‘how is Helen getting on?’

‘Ah, I knew there was an ulterior motive to this dinner.’

‘Not at all,’ Jason replied blandly. ‘But, since you interviewed her this morning, I thought I might as well ask.’

‘Well, I hired her as you asked me to. I think she’ll do well enough. She hardly has the experience, though.’

‘I didn’t expect her to.’

Emily raised her eyebrows. ‘A charity case?’

‘Just a kindness,’ Jason replied mildly.

Emily reached for her wine again, suppressing a sharp stab—of something. Whatever uncomfortable emotion was assailing her was not one she wanted to name. ‘She’s quite beautiful, you know.’

‘Actually, I don’t. As you might recall, I told you yesterday that I’d never met her.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Emily pursed her lips. ‘I do recall now. You wanted to hire her as a favour to Richard Marsden.’

Jason cocked his head. ‘I don’t think I mentioned him by name, but yes.’

‘Because,’ Emily continued wryly, but with a little bite to her words, ‘Helen and Richard are going to make a go of it.’

Jason paused, his wine glass halfway to his lips. ‘You sound as if you don’t approve.’

‘Who am I to approve or disapprove?’ Emily replied, her eyebrows arching innocently.

‘It sounds eminently sensible to me,’ Jason said with a brisk reasonableness Emily didn’t like.

‘Oh, yes, very sensible,’ she agreed. ‘Hardly romantic, though.’

‘Romantic?’ Jason frowned. ‘Is it meant to be romantic?’

He sounded so nonplussed that Emily almost wanted to laugh, yet something in her—some deep, hidden well of emotion—kept her from amusement. Instead, she almost felt hurt, which made no sense at all and so she pushed the thought away. ‘Well, in general, Jason,’ she said, as if explaining basic arithmetic to a slightly backward child, ‘the kind of relationship Helen was talking about with Richard is meant to be romantic rather than sensible. You’re hardly choosing a … a pair of shoes when it comes to a girlfriend or even a wife—’

‘I’m a great believer in sensible shoes.’

Emily narrowed her eyes, unable to tell whether Jason was joking or not. She had a feeling he wasn’t. ‘A girl likes to be swept a little bit off her feet, you know.’

‘It sounds dangerous,’ Jason replied, straight-faced. ‘If you’re swept off your feet, you could lose your balance. You might even fall.’

‘Exactly,’ Emily replied. ‘You might fall in love, which is the whole point, isn’t it? Rather than making a go of it.’

He eyed her thoughtfully. ‘You seem to have taken exception to that expression.’

‘I have,’ Emily agreed with a bit more passion than she would have preferred to show. The glass of wine must be going to her head; she’d had hardly anything to eat since breakfast. ‘I’d much rather stay single my whole life than be with someone who asks me to make a go of it,’ she finished, her voice still sounding a little too loud.

‘Duly noted. And are you planning to stay single, then?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes,’ she said, glad to see surprise flash across his features. ‘I’ve no reason to get married.’

‘No reason?’

‘I’m not lonely or unhappy or dying to have children,’ Emily replied with a shrug and a bit more conviction than she actually felt. She didn’t want to admit to Jason that she had no reason to get married because she hadn’t met anyone worth marrying. Worth taking that risk for. ‘I’m not going to wait around for Prince Charming to come and rescue me,’ she declared, her tone starting to sound strident. Jason raised his eyebrows, a small smile playing about his mouth, clearly amused. ‘I want to have fun.’

‘Now that I can believe.’

She made a face at him. ‘What’s wrong with that? There’s plenty of time to settle down.’

‘For you, perhaps.’

‘Oh, yes, I forget how old you are. One foot in the grave already.’ She smiled at him, determined to stay light and teasing although for some reason she was feeling less and less so. ‘In any case,’ she said dismissively, ‘I have friends, a job I love, a niece and nephew to cuddle and a man who adores me.’

Jason stilled. ‘A man who adores you?’ he queried in a tone of polite interest.

Emily couldn’t help but laugh at Jason’s suspicious look. He looked as though he thought she had some sort of toyboy on retainer. ‘My father, of course.’ She eyed him mischievously. ‘Did you think I was talking about someone else?’

‘I wondered,’ he admitted blandly. ‘But since you’ve been wittering on about your determination to stay single, I had to assume we were not talking about a romantic interest.’

‘I wasn’t wittering,’ Emily said with some affront, and Jason raised his eyebrows.

‘I apologise. You were waxing poetically.’

She made a face. ‘That sounds worse.’ To her surprise, she found she was enjoying this little repartee. She leaned forward, a sudden, sharp curiosity making her ask, ‘And what about you, Jason? Any plans to be swept off your feet?’

His mouth quirked upwards, revealing that dimple. ‘I thought I was meant to do the sweeping.’

Emily laughed ruefully in acknowledgement. ‘It sounds as if we’re talking about cleaning a house. Do you intend to marry? Fall in love?’ She’d spoken lightly, yet the question suddenly felt invasive, intimate, and she half-regretted asking it even though she wanted to know the answer. Badly.

Jason rotated his wine glass between his strong brown fingers; the simple action was strangely mesmerising. ‘One does not necessarily require the other,’ he finally said, and Emily felt a bizarre flicker of disappointment.

‘And which would you prefer?’ she asked, keeping her tone light and teasing. ‘Love without marriage, or marriage without love?’

Jason took a sip of wine, his eyes meeting hers over the rim of the glass, his gaze now flat and forbidding. ‘Love, in my opinion, is overrated.’

‘A rather cynical point of view,’ Emily returned after a moment. She felt that flicker of disappointment again, and suppressed it. What did it matter what Jason thought of either love or marriage? ‘What made you decide that?’

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. ‘Experience, I suppose. Anyone can say they love someone. It’s just a bunch of words you can choose to believe or not. They don’t make much difference, in the end.’ He lapsed into a sudden silence, frowning, as if his own words had triggered an unpleasant thought—or memory. Then his expression cleared, as if by force of will, and he glanced up at her, smiling. ‘Much better, in my opinion, to marry and, yes, even make a go of it than witter on about love—or wax poetically, as the case may be.’ His eyes glinted with knowing humour, and Emily conceded the point with a little laugh although she wondered just what experience had made Jason so cynical … and what had made him frown quite like that.

‘Be that as it may,’ she said, ‘a little poetry surely can’t go amiss.’

‘Yet you’ve written off both marriage and love, it would seem?’

Written off seemed a bit strong, but Emily didn’t intend to debate the point. As far as Jason was concerned, written off would do very well indeed. ‘I told you, I’m happy as I am.’

‘Happy to have fun.’

‘Yes.’ She stared at him defiantly. He made fun sound like a naughty word. She knew he thought she was a bit scatty, perhaps even a little wild, and she took a perverse pleasure in confirming his opinion. Even if she still felt that bizarre flicker of hurt.

‘Yet you seem to be interested in finding love and marriage for others,’ Jason noted dryly. ‘Stephanie and Tim being a case in point.’

‘Just because I don’t want it for me doesn’t mean it isn’t right for other people,’ Emily replied breezily. ‘I’m a great believer in love. Just not for myself. Not now, anyway.’ She took a sip of wine, averting her eyes. She wasn’t quite telling Jason the truth, but she had no intention of admitting that she wasn’t looking for love because she didn’t want to be disappointed when it proved impossible to find, or didn’t live up to her expectations. She’d witnessed a love match first-hand—or almost. Even though her mother had died before she had any real memories of her, Emily had heard plenty of stories about Elizabeth Wood; she knew from her father—and his grief—that they had loved each other deeply and forever.

That kind of love didn’t come to everyone. She was afraid it would never come to her. And it was much easier to convince herself—and Jason—that she’d never wanted it in the first place. ‘In any case,’ she continued in an effort to steer the conversation away from such personal matters, ‘we were talking about Richard and Helen. And I think it’s safe to say that I know a bit more about these things than you do.’

‘These things?’

‘What women want when it comes to romance. Love, even. I may not be looking for it myself, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what most women want.’ She’d had enough late-night sessions with friends over a bottle of wine or even just the idle chatter by the coffee machine at work to be quite the expert.

‘Is that right?’ He sounded amused, which annoyed her. She did, in fact, know what she was talking about, much more than Jason ever would. She could just imagine Jason sitting some poor woman down and asking her to make a go of it just like Richard Marsden had. Knowing Jason, he wouldn’t ask; he’d insist. He’d probably propose marriage with a drawn-up business contract in his breast pocket. The thought sent an unreasonable flame of indignation burning through her.

‘Yes, I do,’ she told him firmly. ‘Women want a man who will romance them, Jason. Woo them with flowers and compliments and thoughtfulness and … and lots of other things,’ she finished a bit lamely. The wine was really going to her head; her brain felt rather fuzzy. ‘And what they don’t want is to have someone sit them down and tell them they might be suitable, but first they need a trial period.’

‘I doubt Marsden said it like that.’

‘Close enough. The meaning was clear.’

Jason cocked his head. ‘And you don’t think Helen Smith could tell Marsden just where to put it if she didn’t like his idea?’

Emily let out a reluctant laugh. ‘Perhaps—if she had more backbone. She’s young and impressionable. In any case, another man will surely come and sweep her off her feet while Richard is deciding whether they can make a go of it or not. She’s very beautiful.’

‘So you’ve told me.’ His mouth curved upwards once more. ‘But if you ask me, which I am quite aware you are not, Richard’s suggestion is very sensible. And, in the long run, far more romantic than a bunch of plastic-wrapped bouquets and meaningless compliments. I think he could be just the thing for her.’

‘You make it sound as if Helen has a head cold and Richard is a couple of paracetamol,’ Emily protested, her mind spinning in indignation over Jason’s dismissal of everything she’d just said. Plastic-wrapped bouquets and meaningless compliments! God help the poor woman he decided to approach with his own sensible plan. ‘That’s not what a woman wants out of love or marriage, Jason.’

Jason leaned forward, his eyes alight. They really turned the most amazing colour sometimes, Emily thought a bit dazedly. Almost amber. She swallowed, aware that she probably shouldn’t have had a second glass of wine. And where was their food?

‘But you said you weren’t interested in love or marriage,’ he reminded her softly.