Under the Boss’s Mistletoe

still reduce him to a state of seething resentment. Rupert in return would never forgive him for humiliating him in that stupid fight, or for being the one his uncle had entrusted with his not-inconsiderable fortune.

‘Rupert wants me to be devastated,’ he told Cassie. ‘He wants me to feel humiliated and heartbroken. He wants me to have to tell everyone that my beautiful girlfriend has dumped me for him. I’ve got no intention of giving him that satisfaction.’

Jake set down his glass and looked directly at Cassie. ‘You asked if I’d find it difficult to pretend to be in love with you instead of Natasha-the answer is that it wouldn’t be half as hard as losing face with Rupert. I’d do anything rather than do that. I’m sorry about Natasha, but this isn’t about her. It’s between Rupert and me.’

‘Getting engaged to me would make it look as if Rupert had done you a favour by taking Natasha off your hands,’ said Cassie slowly. She knew that Jake and Rupert had never got on, but she hadn’t realised the rivalry between them was still so bitter.

‘Exactly,’ said Jake. ‘You’d be helping me to save face, and that would mean a lot to me. I’m not proud. I’ll beg if you want me to.’

‘I don’t know.’ Cassie fingered the wax dribbling down the candle uncertainly. ‘If we’re pretending to be engaged in Portrevick, word’s bound to get back to my parents. What are they going to think if they find out I’m apparently marrying you and haven’t told them?’

Jake shrugged. ‘Tell them the truth, then. What does it matter if they know? They’re not going to rush off to Wedding Belles to tell the editor their daughter is telling a big fib, are they?’

‘No, but they might rush to tell Liz and my brothers that I’ve got myself in a stupid mess again,’ said Cassie, who could imagine the conversation all too clearly: why can Cassie never do anything properly? When is she going to grow up and get a proper job that doesn’t involve silly pretences?

‘I’m sick of being the family failure,’ she told Jake. ‘I wanted to show them that I could be successful too. That was why I so pleased when you gave us the contract to turn the Hall into a wedding venue. I rang my parents and told them I had a real career at last.’

She squeezed a piece of wax between her fingers, remembering the warm glow of her parents’ approval. ‘I don’t want to tell them my great new job involves pretending to be in love with you.’

‘Do you want to tell them you’ve lost your great new job because you weren’t prepared to do whatever it took to make it work?’

Cassie dropped the wax and sat back in her chair. ‘Isn’t that blackmail?’ she said dubiously, and Jake sighed impatiently.

‘It’s telling you to hurry up and make a decision,’ he said. ‘Look, if it’s such a problem, say we really are engaged, then when we’ve finished with all the photos you can tell them you’ve changed your mind and dumped me. If they remember me at all, I’m sure they’ll be delighted to hear it,’ he finished in an arid voice.

Cassie turned it over in her mind. It might work. Of course, the best scenario would be that her family never got to hear about her supposed engagement at all, but if they did get a whiff of it she could always pretend that Jake had swept her off her feet. It was only three months to Christmas. She could easily find excuses not to take him home in that time.

Tina might be a little harder to fool, especially as she was on the spot in Portrevick, but there was no reason why she shouldn’t tell her old friend the truth. Tina could be trusted to keep it to herself-and besides they might need her to pretend to be the bridesmaid.

Anyway, it didn’t sound as if she had a choice. Cassie wasn’t entirely sure whether Jake was serious about making the engagement a condition of the contract, but she wasn’t prepared to push him on it. He had been hurt by Natasha, humiliated by Rupert, and was clearly in no mood to compromise.

And really, would it be so bad? Cassie asked herself. The article had been her idea to start with, and she still believed it would be just what they needed to kick-start promotion for the Hall. Of course, she hadn’t reckoned on taking such a prominent role herself, but Jake was right. She would be able to decorate the Hall exactly as she wanted without having to take Natasha’s wishes into account. She could recreate her dream wedding for the article.

Cassie felt a flicker of excitement at the prospect.

It might be fun.

It wasn’t as if they were planning on doing anything illegal or immoral, after all. A mock engagement would save Jake’s face, ensure a lucrative contract and her job at Avalon, if not a whole new career. Why was she even hesitating?

‘All right,’ she said abruptly. ‘I’ll do it. But, if we’re going to pretend to be engaged, we’re going to have to do it properly,’ she warned him. ‘That means that when the photographer is around you’ll have to be there and be prepared to look suitably besotted.’

‘Don’t you think I can do that?’

Jake reached across the table for her hands, taking Cassie by surprise. ‘I’m sure you can,’ she said, flustered, trying to tug them free, but he tightened his grip.

‘I can do whatever you need me to,’ he said, turning her hands over and lifting first one palm and then the other to his mouth to kiss.

Cassie felt the touch of his lips like a shock reverberating down to her toes, and she sucked in a shuddering breath.

‘See?’ Jake said softly, without letting go of her hands. ‘I can do it. More to the point,’ he said, ‘can you?’

The challenge hung between them, flickering in the candlelight.

Cassie swallowed hard. It was hard to think straight with his warm, strong fingers clasping hers, and the feel of his lips scorched onto her palms, but she retained enough sanity to know that the last thing she needed was to let him know how his touch affected her.

He had recoiled at the very idea of marrying her. Of course I don’t, he had said. Cassie suspected that Jake had been more hurt by Natasha’s betrayal than he was letting on. This was partly to be his revenge on her, partly a game, a pretence, a strategy to save his face and solve the problem of his unwanted responsibility for the Hall. That was all.

Which was fine. All she had to do was treat it like a game too, and remember that her strategy was to turn the Hall into the most sought-after wedding venue in the South West. She would prove to her family that she was not just a dreamer, but could be just as successful in her chosen field as they were in theirs.

So she drew her hands from Jake’s and laid them instead on either side of his face. ‘Of course I can, darling,’ she said, shivering at the prickle of the rough male skin beneath her fingers, and she leant forward across the table to brush a kiss against his mouth.

She felt Jake stiffen in surprise, and, although a panic-stricken part of her was screaming at her to sit back and laugh it off as a joke, another more persuasive part was noting that his lips were warm and firm and that they fitted her own perfectly, as if their mouths had been made for each other.

It felt so good to kiss him, to touch him, that Cassie pushed the panicky thoughts aside and let her lips linger on his. But that was a mistake, of course. Beneath hers, his mouth curved into a smile, and the next moment she felt his hand slide beneath her hair to hold her head still, and he began kissing her back.

And then they were kissing each other, their lips parting, their tongues twining, teasing, and Cassie murmured deep in her throat, smiling too even as she kissed him again, lost in the dizzying rush of heat and the terrifying sense of rightness.

Afterwards, she never had any idea how long that kiss had lasted. But when they broke apart at last she was thudding from the tips of her hair to her toenails, and Giovanni was standing by the table wearing a broad smile.

‘Client, huh?’ he said to her with a wink, but it was Jake who answered.

‘Not any more,’ he said. ‘We just got engaged.’

Cassie tossed and turned half the night, reliving that kiss. She had gone too far, just like her mother always said she did. A brief peck on the lips would have been enough to make her point, and she could have gone back to being businesslike-but, oh no! She had had to push it. She had had to kiss him.

She mustn’t let herself get carried away like that again, Cassie told herself sternly. This was just a pretence, and she mustn’t forget it. On the other hand, her job might have depended on pretending to be engaged to a man