But why didn’t he say something—anything? As the silence drew out, even longer than before, she was finally forced to wonder whether in fact Lucas was still there. But she knew she hadn’t heard the receiver being replaced, and it was silence she could hear, not the disconnected buzz of the dialling tone.

Just when she thought that her nerves had been reduced to tangled shreds, that she might scream if something didn’t happen soon, she heard his drily drawling tones once more.

That’s a pretty tall order, lady. This party must mean a hell of a lot to you.’

‘You could say that.’

Georgia’s laugh was weak and shaky, and obviously her voice had had no more strength either.

‘What did you say? I didn’t catch that.’

‘I said, yes, damn you, it does! But that’s my problem. All I need to know from you is whether you’re going to help me. Will you do it? Will you abide by our bargain and be my escort, with all that that implies, for just twenty-four hours?’

Unconsciously she crossed her fingers, twisting them tightly in the telephone cord as she held her breath, waiting for his answer.

‘I’ll have to think about it,’ Lucas said at last after another interminable wait. ‘Give me ten minutes.’

And this time he did put the phone down on her, cutting her off abruptly and leaving Georgia staring in shock and confusion at the silent receiver in her hand.

CHAPTER THREE

‘LUCAS?’

It took a couple of seconds for Georgia to register just what had happened.

‘Lucas!’

She shook the receiver angrily, almost as if wishing it was the man himself, but of course it remained stubbornly uncommunicative, the only sound that issued from it the monotonous buzz of the dialling tone.

‘Oh, damn you! You arrogant pig!’

How dared he? How dared he just cut her off like that?

Then again, he had said to give him ten minutes, so perhaps.

She waited, scrupulous to the very last second, before she dialled the number again, her fingers tapping restlessly on the chair-arm.

‘Pick up the phone, you pig! Answer me!’

But the repetitive sound of the phone ringing on and on at the other end of the line continued unbroken until, in a fury, she slammed the receiver back into its rest, cursing Lucas Mallory savagely as she did so.

So now what? Lucas might be perfect for her plan; she had even admitted as much to him just now, blurting it out without considering the possible consequences. But if he was going to use her declaration of how much she needed him as a weapon against her, a way of manipulating the situation from the position of power that she had inadvertently put him in, then was even perfection worth all the hassle that would inevitably result?

But he was perfect. And what were her chances of finding someone even remotely like him to act as a replacement at such short notice? After all, she had already told her mother, or at least hinted that she was bringing ‘someone special’ to the party, and the thought of facing her father alone after all was a prospect she viewed without any pleasure at all.

‘Oh, damn you, Mallory!’

Her fingers clenched around Lucas’s card, twisting it as viciously as she wished she could Mr Cool’s elegant neck. But even as she did so another thought struck home, one that had her smoothing out the piece of pasteboard and reading the numbers from it once more as she pressed the buttons on her phone with urgent haste.

Of course! He’d needed the ten minutes to get home! No matter how much she might want to keep things on a strictly business footing, Lucas Mallory, the man whose nickname ‘the fastest man on the track’ didn’t simply refer to his racing career, would never consider any negotiation with a presentable female on those terms. And if she had any doubts, she had only to recall that he had described her as—what was it?

‘Oh, damn!’

Just the thought of that provocatively seductive voice murmuring the words ‘my beautiful mistress’ had distracted her so that she had pressed the wrong sequence of numbers. Drawing a deep, calming breath, she started again, concentrating fiercely this time.

‘Be there!’ she muttered as the phone began to ring. ‘Please be there!’

Tensed up as she was, it took her several unfocused seconds to realise that the sound she could hear in her left ear was not the same as the one that rang unremittingly in the right. When she finally registered that the loudest, most persistent sound was in fact her front doorbell, she got to her feet in a rush.

‘I’m coming!’ she called, hurrying down the hallway. ‘I’m sorry! I—Oh, hell!’

As always, the tight-fitting door stuck awkwardly, and she had to struggle hard to open it.

‘I’m sorry! I was on the phone, and I—Oh!’

Flustered, out of breath from her battle with the door, decidedly mentally off balance and with her hair falling in tumbled disarray around her flushed cheeks, she was ill-prepared for the sight that met her eyes.

‘What are you doing here?’

The smile that Lucas Mallory turned on her was wide and bright, perfectly composed and totally disarming.

‘Good evening, Georgia. I’m sorry I’m a bit late, but it took rather longer than I’d calculated to get across town.’

‘Longer than.?’

‘Give me ten minutes’! All the time that she had been trying to get through to him on the phone he had been on his way here!

‘Well, can I come in?’

Lucas sounded mildly amused, almost as if he knew just what she had been through in the interval between the moment he had put the phone down and his unexpected appearance. His smile broadened and Georgia had a sudden, unpleasant mental image of just how she must look—red-faced and with her hair all over the place, dressed unflatteringly in an elderly beige sloppy Joe sweater with brown cord leggings. It must be obvious that she had been very much caught on the hop.

‘Or do you want me to wait in the car until you’re ready?’

‘Ready?’ This time she didn’t care if her confusion showed. ‘Ready for what?’

The tiny quirking of one corner of his beautifully shaped mouth betrayed an impulse to respond with some provocative suggestion, but he resisted the temptation admirably, saying instead, ‘For dinner. I take it you weren’t planning on going to the restaurant dressed like that.’

The look he turned on her clothes was distinctly uncomplimentary.

‘I wasn’t planning on anything!’

With an effort, Georgia restrained herself from banging her hand against the side of her head to clear the confusion. She felt as if she was appearing in some play where the script was constantly being changed without warning.

‘And I don’t recall you asking me out!’

‘I didn’t’ The gleam in those dark eyes was totally unrepentant. ‘But it seems the obvious answer.’

‘Answer to what? Nothing seems in the least bit obvious to me. Oh, look, you’d better come in.’

Perhaps once inside, back in the security of her own familiar surroundings, she might be able to think clearly again. But, unfortunately for her hard-won composure, the first thing that caught Georgia’s eye as she led the way into the sitting room was the telephone receiver, still dangling from the edge of the table where she had dropped it in her haste to answer the summons from the doorbell.

The thought of Lucas realising that she had still been trying to get in touch with him, the possible interpretation that he was capable of putting on that fact, sharpened her voice more than she had planned when she turned to him to ask, ‘Now, why are you really here?’

‘I told you. I want to take you out to dinner.’

‘Why?’