Celine—sans mari—was dressed to kill in a tailored silk suit in crème-de-menthe, five-inch heels, and a handbag that Tara knew, from her modelling expertise, had a waiting list of over a year and wouldn’t give you change from twenty thousand pounds...
‘Marc, cherie!’ Celine cooed as she came up to her host, who was still standing frozen, and lavished air kisses upon him. ‘How wonderful to be here!’
‘Where is Hans?’ Tara heard him ask bluntly, at which Celine gave an airy wave.
‘Oh, I told him we had no need of him! We’ll do perfectly well on our own!’ She patted Marc’s cheek insouciantly with her bare hand, lingering over the contact with her varnished fingernails.
Tara wanted to laugh. Celine was in high fettle, despite the thunderous expression on her quarry’s face. Well, time to disabuse her of her hopes.
She started forward, heels tapping on the marble stairs. A wide, welcoming smile parted her lips. ‘Celine, how lovely to meet you again!’ she exclaimed. ‘We’re so glad you were able to come!’
She reached the hallway, marshalling herself alongside Marc Derenz. Her pulse was not entirely steady—and that was nothing to do with Celine Neuberger and everything to do with the way Marc Derenz had looked at her as she’d walked down towards them. The way his hard dark eyes had focussed totally on her, as if pinning her with his gaze. A gaze that this time was not like a laser, but more... Appreciative. Liking what it saw. More than liking...
She felt a flush of heat go through her limbs, and then, collecting herself, reminded herself that of course Marc Derenz had looked at her like that—he was in role-play just as much as she was! She bestowed an air kiss upon Celine, whose face had contorted in fury at Tara’s appearance.
‘I just adore house-hunting! We’ll have such fun together! I can’t wait!’ she gushed, ignoring the other woman’s obvious anger at her presence there. ‘Why not describe what you’re after by way of a villa over drinks?’ she invited Celine cordially, hoping that Marc Derenz would lead them to wherever it was that cocktails were going to be served. She hadn’t a clue—and if Celine realised that it might give the game away.
Thankfully, he did just that, ushering them both into a sumptuous Art Deco salon, where wide French windows opened onto a terrace bathed in late sunshine. Celine, all but snatching her glass, immediately started to talk animatedly in German to Marc, clearly intent on cutting out Tara as much as she could.
Marc’s expression was still radiating the same thunderous displeasure it had been since he had seen Celine arrive without her husband. For her part, Tara cast a jaundiced eye at the woman.
Honey, you’d be welcome to him! He’s arrogant and bad-tempered and totally charmless! Help yourself, do!
But of course that was out of the question. So, knowing she had to act—quite literally—she stepped forward, a determined smile on her face, placing a quite clearly possessive, hand on Marc Derenz’s arm.
‘I’m hopeless at German!’ she announced insouciantly. ‘And my French is only schoolgirl, alas.
Are you telling Marc what you’re looking for in a house here?’
As she spoke she was aware that the arm beneath her fingertips had steeled, and his whole body had tensed at her moving so closely into his body space. She pressed her hand on his sleeve warningly. Celine was never going to be fooled if she stayed a mile distant from him.
And he needn’t think she wanted to be in his body space! His utterly unnecessary warning from the afternoon echoed in her head, informing her that she was to remember she was only here to act a part. Not to believe it was real.
I wouldn’t want it to be real anyway, sunshine, she said tartly but silently to him.
In her head—treacherously—a single word hovered. Liar.
You might not like him, the voice went on, but for some damn reason he has the ability to turn your knees to jelly, so you just be careful, my girl!
She pushed it out. It had no place in her thoughts. None at all. She was not looking for Marc Derenz to pay her what he so clearly imagined would be the immense compliment of desiring her for real. So there was no need at all for him to have warned her off.
And all this—all she was going to have to act out for the duration—was just that. An act. Nothing more.
An act it might be, but it was hard going for all that.
All through dinner she made a relentless effort to be Marc Derenz’s charming hostess—attentive to his guest, endlessly gushing and smiling about the delights of searching for zillion-dollar homes on the French Riviera to this woman who clearly wished her at the bottom of the ocean.
Tara was doggedly undeterred by Celine’s barely civil treatment. Far more exasperating to her was Marc Derenz’s stony attitude.
OK, so maybe he was still blazingly furious that Celine had turned up on her own, but that didn’t mean he could get away with monosyllabic responses and a total lack of interest in the conversation Tara was so determinedly keeping going.
As they finally returned to the salon for coffee and liqueurs, she hissed at him, ‘I can’t do this all on my own! For heaven’s sake, play your part as well!’
She slipped her hand into his arm and sat herself down with him on an elegant sofa, deliberately placing a hand on his muscled thigh. She felt him flinch, as if she’d burnt him, and a spurt of renewed irritation went through her. If she could do this, damn it, so could he!
She turned to him, liqueur glass in her hand. ‘Marc, darling, you’re being such a grouch! Do lighten up!’ she cooed cajolingly.
Her reward was a dark, forbidding flash of his eyes, and an obvious increase in the reading on his displeasure meter as his expression hardened. Her mood changed abruptly. Actually, she realised, there was something very satisfying in winding up Marc Derenz! He was so easy to annoy.