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Brand of Possession

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‘There’s a very good one. At the moment my expenses are being paid for me—I certainly couldn’t afford to stay here if they weren’t. Back in London I share a flat with three other girls, and I’ve had to keep paying that rent even though I’m not there.’

‘I could pay your expenses.’

She gave him a sharp look. ‘Just what are you suggesting?’

‘The filming will go on for a few weeks after you’ve left and I’ve already missed several weeks. I can’t leave after only being here a week.’

‘I realise that,’ she frowned.

‘I don’t want you to go back to London where I can’t see you.’

‘You—you want to see me?’

Jake gave her a taunting look. ‘What do you think?’ he mocked.

‘I have no idea.’

‘Not even after this morning?’ he probed softly.

Bright colour flamed in her cheeks. ‘This morning was—well, it was a result of an accumulation of circumstances.’

‘The main one being that I want you,’ he said dryly.

‘Yes,’ she acknowledged huskily.

‘It frightens you that I’m so honest, doesn’t it?’ he mused. ‘Would you rather I said something like, I fell in love with your screen test, that I was glad I was no longer a married man because I wanted to be free to marry you if you turned out to be as beautiful and enchanting as you looked on film? Would you prefer me to say something like that?’

Stacy smiled. ‘No. And stop teasing me.’

‘I’m not teasing you,’ he said abruptly. ‘You have to admit it could be true, all the facts fit.’

?

?You’re an expert when it comes to fitting fiction to fact.’

‘But you must admit it would make an interesting story, the hardened cynic falling for a girl half his age, falling so badly he couldn’t wait to find out if his feelings were returned. If I were a romantic I’d write the story myself.’

‘But you aren’t, and that’s why the story couldn’t be true about us. You see women not as people to love but as things to desire, to want. That’s the only word you’ve ever used to me, want.’

‘I just offered to tell you I’d fallen in love with your screen—’

‘Do you have to mock everything?’ she interrupted bitterly. ‘I happen to believe in love.’

‘And you don’t think I would be sincere about falling in love with you?’

She took a deep breath, wishing it could be true and knowing it wasn’t. ‘I believe that like all men, you would tell a woman what she wanted to hear in order to get what you want.’

Jake gave a short laugh. ‘You’re more cynical than you realise, Stacy.’

‘I’m practical,’ she corrected. ‘As the result of a situation very similar to this I don’t welcome the same fate for my child.’

‘Why didn’t your parents marry?’ he asked.

‘Because they didn’t love each other. What they had was a purely sexual attraction.’

‘How do you know that if you were abandoned so young?’

‘Because my mother told me,’ she said angrily. ‘My mother married a few years after I was born and apparently it was the appearance of the first child of that marriage that finally jogged her conscience into making her go in search of the week-old baby she’d abandoned. She found me still at the children’s home she left me at, let me know who she was, and then found out that her husband wouldn’t even have my name mentioned in the house.’



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