A Vow of Obligation

Rich, handsome men didn’t attract her. Her mother and her sisters’ experiences had taught Tawny not to crave wealth and status for the sake of it, for neither brought lasting happiness. Her father, a noted hotelier, was rich and miserable and, according to her older half-sisters, Bee and Zara, he was always pleading dissatisfaction with his life or latest business deal. Nothing was ever enough for Monty Blake. Bee and Zara might also be married to wealthy men, but they were both very much in love with their husbands. At the end of the day love was all that really mattered, Tawny reflected thoughtfully, and substituting sex for love and hoping it would bridge the gap didn’t work.

That was why Tawny didn’t sleep around. She had grown up with her mother’s bitterness over a sexual affair that had never amounted to anything more. She had also seen too many friends hurt by their efforts to found a lasting relationship on a basis of casual sex. She wanted more commitment before she risked her heart; she had always wanted and demanded more. That was the main reason why she had avoided the advances of the wealthy men introduced to her by her matchmaking sisters, both of whom had married ‘well’ in her mother’s parlance. What could she possibly have in common with such men with their flash lives in which only materialistic success truly mattered? She had no wish to end up with a vain, shallow and selfish man like her father, who was solely interested in her for her looks.

‘Are you going to tell me what this proposition entails?’ Tawny prompted in the simmering silence.

‘I want you to pretend to be my fiancée,’ Navarre spelt out grimly.

Her eyes widened to their fullest, for that had to be almost the very last thing she might have expected. ‘But why?’ she exclaimed.

‘You have no need of that information,’ Navarre fielded drily.

‘But you must know loads of women who would—’

‘Perhaps I prefer to pay. Think of yourself as a professional escort. I’ll be buying you a new wardrobe to wear while you’re with me. When this is over you get to keep the clothes, but not the jewellery,’ he specified.

No expense spared, she thought in growing bewilderment. She had read about him in the newspapers, for he made regular appearances in the gossip columns. He had a penchant for incredibly beautiful supermodels and the reputation of being a legendary lover, but none of the ladies in his life seemed to last very long. ‘Nobody’s going to believe you’re engaged to someone as ordinary as me,’ she told him baldly.

‘Ce fut le coup de foudre …’ It was love at first sight French-style, he was telling her with sardonic cool. ‘And nobody will be surprised when the relationship quickly bites the dust again.’

Well, she could certainly agree with that final forecast, but she reckoned that he had to be desperate to be considering her for such a role. How on earth would she ever be able to compare to the glamorous model types he usually had on his arm? Jacques ushered a statuesque blonde in a dark trouser suit into the room. ‘Elise will escort you down to the locker room,’ he explained.

‘So you’re a bodyguard,’ Tawny remarked in French as the two women waited in the lift.

‘I’m usually the driver,’ Elise admitted.

‘What’s Mr Cazier like to work for?’

‘Tough but fair and I get to travel,’ Elise told her with satisfaction.

Elise hovered nearby while Tawny changed out of her uniform into her own clothes and cleared her locker. The Frenchwoman’s mobile phone rang and she dug it out, glancing awkwardly at Tawny, who was busily packing a carrier bag full of belongings before moving to the other side of the room to talk in a low-pitched voice. That it was a man Elise cared about at the other end of the line was obvious, and Tawny reckoned that at that instant she could have smuggled an elephant past the Frenchwoman without attracting her attention.

‘What’s going on?’ another voice enquired tautly of Tawny.

Tawny glanced up and focused on Julie, who stood only a couple of feet away from her. ‘I’m quitting my job.’

‘I heard that but why didn’t he report you?’

Tawny shrugged non-committally. ‘You didn’t spent the night with him, did you? What’s the real story?’

‘A journalist offered me a lot of money to dig out some personal information for him. Accessing Cazier’s laptop was worth a try. I’ve got credit cards to clear,’ Julie admitted calmly, shockingly unembarrassed at having her lies exposed.

‘Mademoiselle Baxter?’ Elise queried anxiously, her attention suddenly closely trained on the two women.

Tawny lifted her laden bags and walked away without another word or look. So much for friendship! She was furious but also very hurt by her former friend’s treachery. She had liked Julie, she had automatically trusted her, but she could now see her whole relationship with the other woman in quite a different light. It was likely that Julie had deliberately targeted her once she realised that Tawny would be the new maid in charge of Navarre Cazier’s usual suite. Having befriended Tawny and put her under obligation by helping her to move into her bedsit, Julie had then conned the younger woman into trying to take Navarre’s laptop. What a stupid, trusting fool Tawny now felt like! How could she have been dumb enough to swallow that improbable tale of sex and compromising photos? Julie had known exactly which buttons to press to engage Tawny’s sympathies and it would have worked a treat had Navarre Cazier not returned unexpectedly to catch her in the act.

‘You have an appointment with a stylist,’ Navarre informed Tawny when she reappeared in his suite and set down her bags.

‘Where?’

He named a famous department store. He scanned the jeans and checked shirt she wore with faded blue plimsolls and his wide sensual mouth twisted, for in such casual clothing she looked little older than a teenager. ‘What age are you?’

‘Twenty-three … you?’

‘Thirty.’

‘Speak French,’ he urged.

‘I’m a little rusty. I only get to see my grandmother about once a month now,’ Tawny told him.

‘Give me your mobile phone,’ he instructed.

‘My phone?’ Tawny exclaimed in dismay.

‘I can’t trust you with access to a phone when I need to ensure that you don’t pass information to anyone,’ he retorted levelly and extended a slim brown hand. ‘Your phone, please …’

The silence simmered. Tawny worried at her lower lip, reckoned that she could not fault his reasoning and reluctantly dug her phone out of her pocket. ‘You’re not allowed to go through it. There’s private stuff on there.’

‘Just like my laptop,’ Navarre quipped with a hard look, watching her redden and marvelling that she could still blush so easily.

He ushered her out of the suite and into the lift. She leant back against the wall.

‘Don’t slouch,’ he told her immediately.

With an exaggerated sigh, Tawny straightened. ‘We mix like oil and water.’

‘We only have to impress as a couple in company. Practise looking adoring,’ Navarre advised witheringly.

Tawny wrinkled her nose. ‘That’s not really my style—’

‘Try,’ he told her.

She preceded him out into the foyer, striving not to notice the heads craning at the reception desk to follow their progress out of the hotel. A limousine was waiting by the kerb and she climbed in, noting Elise’s neat blonde head behind the steering wheel.

‘Tell me about yourself … a potted history,’ Navarre instructed.

‘I’m an only child although I have two half-sisters through my father’s two marriages. He didn’t marry my mother, though, and he has never been involved in my life. I got my degree at art college and for a couple of years managed to make a living designing greeting cards. Unfortunately that wasn’t lucrative enough to pay the bills and I signed up as a maid so that I would have a regular wage coming in,’ she told him grudgingly. ‘I want to be a cartoonist but so far I haven’t managed to sell a single cartoon.’

‘A cartoonist,’ Navarre repeated, his interest caught by that unexpected ambition.

‘What about you? Were you born rich?’

‘No. I grew up in the back streets of Paris but I acquired a first-class degree at the Sorbonne. I was an investment banker until I became interested in telecommunications and set up my first business.’

‘Parents?’ she pressed.

His face tensed. ‘I was a foster child and lived in many homes. I have no relatives that I acknowledge.’

‘I know how we can tell people we met,’ Tawny said with a playful light in her eyes. ‘I was changing your bed when—’

Navarre was not amused by the suggestion but his attention lingered on her astonishingly vivid little face in which every expression was easily read. ‘I don’t think we need to admit that you were working as a hotel maid.’

‘Honesty is always the best policy.’

‘Says the woman whom I caught thieving.’

Her face froze as though he had slapped her, reality biting again. ‘I wasn’t thieving,’ she muttered tightly.

‘It really doesn’t matter as long as you keep your light fingers strictly to your own belongings while you’re with me,’ Navarre responded drily. ‘I hope the desire to steal is an impulse that you can resist as we will be mingling with some very wealthy people.’

Mortified by the comment, Tawny bent her bright head. ‘Yes, you don’t have to worry on that score.’

While Navarre took a comfortable seat in a private room in the store, Tawny was ushered off to try on evening gowns, and each one seemed more elaborate than the last. When the selection had been reduced to two she was propelled out to the waiting area, where Navarre was perusing the financial papers, for a second opinion.

‘That’s too old for her,’ he commented of the purple ball gown that she felt would not have looked out of place on Marie Antoinette.

When she walked out in the grey lace that fitted like a glove to below hip line before flaring out in a romantic arc of fullness round her knees, he actually set his newspaper down, the better to view her slender, shapely figure. ‘Sensationnel,’ he declared with crowd-pleasing enthusiasm while his shrewd green eyes scanned her with as much emotion as a wooden clothes horse might have inspired.

Yet for all that lack of feeling they were such unexpectedly beautiful eyes, she reflected helplessly, as cool and mysterious as the depths of the sea, set in that strong handsome face. Bemused by the unusually fanciful thought, Tawny was whisked back into the spacious changing room where two assistants were hanging up outfits for the stylist to choose from. There were trousers, skirts, dresses, tops and jackets as well as lingerie and a large selection of shoes and accessories. Every item was designer and classic and nothing was colourful enough or edgy enough to appeal to her personal taste. She would only be in the role of fake fiancée for a maximum of two weeks, she reminded herself with relief. Could such a vast number of garments really be necessary or was the stylist taking advantage of a buyer with famously deep pockets? She wondered what event the French industrialist was taking her to that required the over-the-top evening gown. She was not required to model any other clothing for his inspection. That was a relief for, stripped of her usual image and denied her streetwise fashion, she felt strangely naked and vulnerable clad in items that did not belong to her.

Navarre was on the phone talking in English when she returned to his side. As they walked back through the store he continued the conversation, his deep drawl a low-pitched sexy purr, and she guessed that he was chatting to a woman. They returned to the hotel in silence. She wanted to go home and collect some of her own things but was trying to pick the right moment in which to make that request. Navarre vanished into the bedroom, reappearing in a light grey suit ten minutes later and walking past her.

‘I’m going out. I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he told her silkily.

Her smooth brow furrowed. ‘Do I have to stay here?’

‘That’s the deal,’ he confirmed with a dismissive lack of interest that set her teeth on edge.

It was after midnight when Navarre came back to his suite with Jacques still at his heels. He had forgotten about Tawny so it was a surprise to walk in and see the lounge softly lit. Three heads turned from the table between them to glance at him, three of the individuals, members of his security team, instantly rising upright to greet him with an air of discomfiture beneath Jacques’s censorious appraisal. From the debris it was clear there had been takeout food eaten, and from the cards and small heaps of coins visible several games of poker. Tawny didn’t stand up. She stayed where she was curled up barefoot on the sofa.

Navarre shifted a hand in dismissal of his guards. Tawny had yet to break into her new wardrobe, for she wore faded skinny jeans with slits over the knee and a tee with a skeleton motif. Her hair fell in a torrent of spiralling curls halfway down her back, much longer than he had appreciated and providing a frame for her youthful piquant face that gave her an almost fey quality.

‘Where did you get those clothes from?’ he asked bluntly.

‘I gave Elise a list of things that I needed along with my keys and she was kind enough to go and pack a bag for me. I didn’t think that what I wore behind closed doors would matter.’ Tawny gazed back at him in silent challenge, striving not to react in any way to the fact that he was drop-dead gorgeous, particularly with that dark shadow of stubble roughening his masculine jawline and accentuating the sensual curve of his beautifully shaped mouth.

Navarre bent to lift the open sketch pad resting on the arm of the sofa. It was an amusing caricature of Elise and instantly recognisable as such. He flicked it back and found another, registering that she had drawn each of her companions. ‘You did these? They’re good.’

Tawny shifted a narrow shoulder in dismissal. ‘Not good enough to pay the bills,’ she said wryly, thinking of how often her mother had criticised her for choosing to study art rather than a subject that the older woman had deemed to be of more practical use.

‘A talent nonetheless.’

‘Where am I supposed to sleep tonight?’ Tawny asked flatly, in no mood to debate the topic.

‘You can sleep on the sofa,’ Navarre told her without hesitation, irritated that he had not thought of her requirements soon enough to ask for a suite with an extra bedroom. ‘It will only be for two nights and then we’ll be leaving London.’

‘To go where?’

‘Further north.’ With that guarded reply, he walked into the bedroom and a couple of minutes later he reappeared with a bedspread and a pillow in his arms. He deposited them on a chair nearby and then with a nod departed again. He moved with the fluid grace of a dancer and he emanated sex appeal like a force field, she acknowledged tautly, her eyes veiling as she struggled to suppress a tiny little twisting flicker of response to him.

‘You know … a real gentleman would offer a lady the bed,’ Tawny called in his wake.

Navarre shot her a sardonic glance, green eyes bright as jewels between the thick luxuriance of his black lashes as he drawled, ‘I’ve never been a gentleman and I very much doubt that you’re a lady in the original sense of the word.’

CHAPTER THREE

THE next morning, Navarre watched Tawny sleep, curls that melded from bright red to copper tipped with strawberry-blonde ends spilling out across the pale smooth skin of her narrow shoulders, dark lashes low over delicate cheekbones, her plump pink pouting mouth incredibly sexy. He brushed a colourful strand of hair away from her face. ‘Wake up,’ he urged.

Tawny woke with a start, eyes shooting wide as she half sat up. ‘What?’

Navarre had retreated several feet to give her space. ‘Time to rise. You have a busy day ahead of you.’

Tawny rubbed her eyes like a child and hugged her pyjama-clad knees before muttering, ‘Doing what?’

‘A beautician and a hairstylist will be here this afternoon to help you to prepare for this evening’s event. A jeweller will be here in an hour. The bathroom’s free,’ he informed her coolly. ‘What do you want for breakfast?’

‘The full works—I’m always starving first thing,’ she told him, scrambling off the sofa and folding the spread with efficient hands, a lithe figure clad in cotton pyjama pants and a camisole top. ‘Where are you taking me this evening?’

‘A movie awards ceremony.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Wow … fancy, so that’s what the boring grey dress is for—’

‘It isn’t boring—’

‘Take it from me, it was boring enough that my mother would have admired it,’ she declared unimpressed, heading off to the bathroom, pert buttocks swaying above long slim legs.

‘Wear one of your new outfits,’ he told her before she vanished from view.

‘But if we’re not going out until this evening—’

‘You need a practice run. Get into role for the jeweller’s benefit,’ Navarre advised.

Tawny rummaged through the huge pile of garment bags, carriers and boxes that had been delivered to the suite the night before. She had hung the bags on the door of the wardrobe but had felt uneasy about the prospect of stowing away the clothing in a room that he was using. She set out a narrow check skirt and a silk top. It was a dull conventional outfit but, for what he had promised to pay her for her services as a fake fiancée, she was willing to make an effort. She took the undies into the bathroom and went for a shower, using his shower gel but keeping her hair out of the water because she did not want the hassle of drying it.

Navarre watched her walk back across the carpet to join him at the breakfast table, her heart-shaped face composed, her bright curls bouncing like tongues of flame across her silk-clad shoulders. His masculine gaze took in the pouting curve of her breasts, her tiny waist and the long tight line of the skirt, below which her shapely legs were very much in evidence. ‘Tu es belle … you are beautiful, mignonne.’

Tawny rolled her eyes, unconvinced, recognising the sophisticated and highly experienced charm of a womaniser in his coolly measuring appraisal. ‘I clean up well.’

Navarre liked her deprecating manner and admired the more telling fact that she had walked right past a mirror without even pausing to admire her own reflection. The waiter arrived with a breakfast trolley. Although Tawny knew him the young man studiously avoided looking at her even while she was making her selections from the hot food on offer. Her cheeks burned as she realised that the staff would naturally have assumed that she was sleeping with Navarre.

Navarre had never seen a woman put away that much food at one sitting. Tawny ate daintily but she had a very healthy appetite. After her second cup of coffee and final slice of toast she pushed away her plate, relaxed back in her chair and smiled. ‘Now I can face the day.’

‘Do you think you’ve eaten enough to keep you going until lunchtime?’ Navarre could not resist that teasing comment.

Her eyes widened in suggestive dismay. ‘Are you saying that I can’t have a snack before then?’

The biter bit, Navarre laughed out loud, very much amused. In that instant, eyes glittering with brilliance between dense black lashes that reminded her very much of lace, he was so charismatic he just took her breath away and left her staring at his handsome face. It was impossible to look away and as his gaze narrowed in intensity her tummy flipped as if she had gone down in a lift too fast.

Navarre thrust back his chair and sprang upright to extend a hand down to her. Breathless and bemused, Tawny took his hand without thought and stood up as well. Long fingers framed her cheekbone and he lowered his arrogant dark head to allow the tip of his tongue to barely skim along the fullness of her lower lip. She opened her mouth instinctively, her entire body tingling with an electric awareness that raised every tiny hair on her skin. His tongue darted into the moist interior of her mouth in a light teasing flicker that skimmed the inner surface of her lip. It was so incredibly sexy it made her shiver as if she were standing in a force-ten gale. Desire rose in her in an uncontrollable wave, screaming through her, spreading heat and hunger into every erotic part of her body. Helplessly she leant forwards, longing to be closer to him, insanely conscious of the tight fullness of her breasts and the hot, damp sting of awareness pulsing between her thighs. With a masculine growl vibrating deep in his throat, he finally kissed her with sweet sensual force, giving her the exact level of strength and urgency that her entire being craved from him.

When in the midst of that passionate embrace Navarre suddenly stopped kissing her and angled his head back, Tawny was utterly bewildered.

‘C’est parfait! You’re really good at this.’ Navarre gazed down at her with eyes as ice-cold as running water. ‘Anyone seeing such a kiss would believe we were lovers. That pretence of intimacy is all that is required to make us convincing.’

Tawny turned white and then suddenly red as a tide of mortification gripped her but she contrived to veil her eyes and stand her ground. ‘Thank you,’ she replied as if she had known all along what he was doing and had responded accordingly.

She was mentally kicking herself hard for having responded to his advances as if she were his newest girlfriend. How could she have done that? How could she have lost all control and forgotten who he was and who she was and exactly why they were together? He was paying her, for goodness sake! There was nothing else between them, no intimate relationship of any kind, she reminded herself brutally. On his terms she was something between an employee and a paid escort and not at all the sort of woman he would normally spend time with. Yet she had found that kiss more exciting than any she had ever experienced and would probably have still been in his arms had he not chosen to end that embarrassing little experiment. He had given his fake fiancée a fake kiss and she had fallen for it as though it were real.

Why on earth did she find Navarre Cazier so attractive? He might be extraordinarily good-looking but surely it took more than cheap physical chemistry to break down her barriers? As a rule she was standoffish with men and a man had to work at engaging her interest. All Navarre had done was insult her, so how could she possibly be attracted to him? Infuriated by her weakness, she took a seat as far away from him as she could get.

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