Free How to Win a Guy in 10 Dates by Jane Linfoot Page A

the hollow at the base his neck, as he negotiated his way into his ginger tart.
    ‘Not eating?’
    ‘Sorry, I was just thinking.’ Swooning like a barmaid, more like.
    One divine sliver of crème brûlée slithered off her spoon and down her throat, as she began to eat.
    ‘I’ve been thinking too.’ He rested his spoon on his plate. ‘I have to go away for work.’
    ‘Oh?’
    One word. Desperately trying not to let her dismay crack into her voice.
    Why the hell did that make her feel so bad? Just because he’d pestered her all damned week, supposedly to get her used to being with people again, she shouldn’t mind him going away.
    ‘France. Provence. To do a firework display.’
    ‘You do fireworks?’
    Fighting the ridiculous hollow feeling in her gut, she rammed a massive spoonful of crème brûlée into her mouth.
    ‘I do explosives, I major in big bangs of any sort, fireworks included. If I can wrangle you an air ticket, on the company that is, I thought you might come too?’
    Millie’s gulp of surprise took her crème brûlée straight down her windpipe. She gasped and spluttered, rasping for breath as she choked. Loud and long and horribly hard.
    By the time Ed had banged her thoroughly on the back, and the swooning barmaid, now swooning even more drastically, had brought her an emergency glass of water, Millie knew she had to be scarlet.
    Panting. Dying of embarrassment. Puce to her earlobes.
    Not attractive.
    Excuse me. Had he just asked her to go to Provence with him?
    ‘No strings.’ He flashed her a grin which morphed into a grimace as he realised his gaff. Jumped in hurriedly to make it clear. ‘No strings, not as in no-strings sex, just as in come anyway? With or without benefits?’
    Provence, with Ed? That would be melting, mocking, heart-stopping Ed?
    No way. Out of the question.
    Absolutely, definitely, completely, undeniably, irreconcilably not.
    ‘I thought it might be good for your French box things? You could pick up more material?’
    Good point. From a box point of view, a trip to stock up on memorabilia to cut up and paste would save her bacon, but life wasn’t just about boxes. Ed was the last man in the world she should go to Provence with, boxes or no boxes, because Ed in Provence would be too tempting. And she did have her commitments – lessons to take, ponies to look after. Except the family were back now to look after Grandma and Cracker, and her private lesson calendar was practically empty due to the holiday season. But it was way too dangerous, tantamount to life-plan suicide.
    ‘Thanks.’ She heard her voice, far in the distance, but wasn’t aware she was speaking the words. ‘That would be amazing. I’d love to come.’
    Had she truly just said that?
    What had she let herself in for?

CHAPTER SIX
    ‘SO how was your Fifty Shades weekend?’
    One week later, fresh from picking Millie up from the airport, they were howling along the lanes of Provence in the economy rental car Cassie had sanctioned. Thanks to the fiercely negotiated pay-off for the luxury of the free flight, they were heading towards a tent. Ed wasn’t sure what Cassie expected him to pull out of the bag for a low-budget weekend away, but judging from her strict terms, it certainly hadn’t been this. He got the feeling she thought he was pushing his luck, that taking Millie this close to the family chateau was sure to blow his cover. But he was confident that Millie would have no reason to suspect the truth. He would be there, as he was every August for this event, working alongside the guys on the firework team, setting up the biggest pyrotechnic display of the summer in the region, and he planned to keep her at a distance from both his the team and the family. It was his one hands-on gig of the year these days, before he climbed back into his suit. Considering that the whole village would be heaving with visitors, and in the throes of the Summer Festival, he couldn’t see there would be a problem.