One Night On The Virgin's Terms - Melanie Milburne Page 0,6
these days. He’d insisted Deirdre Kennedy keep quiet about his offer to help her out of yet another financial hole because he genuinely hadn’t wanted Ronan or Ivy to suffer any more stress than they already had. He’d been particularly worried about Ronan. Finally coming out to your divorced parents and then being rejected by your father was enough to set off an existential crisis in the most stable of people. It had taken the best part of two years for him to feel comfortable Ronan was out of danger.
Louis sat in his chair and absently straightened some papers on his desk. ‘She told you about that?’
Ivy nodded, her look grim. ‘I forced it out of her. Ronan doesn’t know, does he?’
He leaned back in his chair, picked up his fountain pen and rocked it back and forth between his thumb and index finger. ‘It wasn’t a big deal to me. It’s just money. And I didn’t want to worry you or Ronan. You had enough going on with your father’s reaction to Ronan’s situation.’
She gave a tight-lipped smile, but it was at odds with the shadow that passed through her gaze. ‘All the same, it was nice of you to step in like that. Mum would have lost the house if it hadn’t been for you.’
Louis let the pen drop back on the desk with a little clatter. ‘Have you told Ronan about this hare-brained scheme of yours?’
Ivy brought her gaze back to his. ‘No. But he’s hardly likely to find out now he’s in Australia with Ricky. Anyway, he’d worry too much. He’s been warning me for years about not getting fanciful ideas about you.’
‘What fanciful ideas?’ Louis knew he shouldn’t ask.
‘He said you weren’t the marriage-and-babies type. But I told him not to worry about me because I would never be interested in a man who didn’t want marriage and babies.’
If she mentioned ‘marriage and babies’ one more time he was going to blow a fuse. Not his most favourite words in the English language. His parents had married and had one baby and look how that had turned out. Thirty-five-plus years of misery for all concerned. ‘I’m not sure falling in love works quite that way,’ Louis pointed out. ‘People fall in love with the wrong people all the time.’ His parents being a case in point. Totally unsuited to each other but they soldiered on regardless. ‘Soldiered’ being a pertinent word, since every day was a battleground of injured egos, resentments, grievances and bitterness.
Ivy tilted her head and studied him for a moment. ‘Have you ever been in love?’
‘No.’
Her eyebrows rose. ‘Not even once? Like when you were a teenager or...?’
‘Nope.’
‘But surely you must have felt a flicker of something for someone along the line?’ She looked at him quizzically. ‘You’ve had heaps of lovers. Have you just been using them all for sex?’
‘Ahem, you’re the one who wants to use me for sex, so don’t go jumping up on your high horse just yet,’ Louis said, holding her gaze.
She shifted her nose from side to side like a cute little bunny. ‘It’s not the same thing at all. I have an established relationship with you. You’re like an older brother to me.’ Her forehead creased in a tiny frown and she added, ‘Well, maybe not so much a brother figure—because that would be kind of creepy and weird, having sex with you—but a good mate. Someone I can always rely on.’
A good mate would have stopped this conversation before it had got started. Drawn a thick black line through it. Frogmarched her out of his office and told her to go and get some therapy. Talking about this scheme of hers was like allowing a dangerous mind-altering vapour to infiltrate the air-conditioning. It was fuelling his forbidden fantasies, making it harder and harder to find a reason to say no. ‘Have you told anyone about this plan of yours?’
‘No. I wanted to ask you first.’
Louis leaned forward again and straightened the same papers next to his computer. ‘I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation.’ He glanced back at her with a stern frown. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’
Ivy picked up her bag from his desk and smiled so brightly she could have been advertising toothpaste. ‘But that’s the whole point—I don’t know what I’m doing, but you’re going to teach me.’
The scary thing was...Louis was seriously, dangerously, tempted to do exactly that.
CHAPTER TWO
IVY PUT THE last touches to her make-up