Read Online His Temporary Mistress by Cathy Williams - Free Book Online Page A

could find them and trying hard to ignore what his hand was doing to her. Out of sight of his mother’s eyes because of the positioning of the chairs, his roaming hand came to rest on her thigh just below the apex where her legs met. When she thought of how that hand would feel just there, were it against bare skin, were he able to brush the downy hair with his fingers, her brain went into instant meltdown.
    ‘We all got the impression that you were terribly important—too important to be time wasting at a school because the CEO couldn’t make it... I’ll admit, Mrs Carver, that my first impressions of your son were that he was a tad on the arrogant, conceited, bossy side...thoroughly unbearable, if you want the truth...’
    ‘And yet you couldn’t tear your eyes away from me,’ Damien murmured in quick retaliation. He smiled and leaned across to feather a kiss on the corner of her mouth, making sure to keep his hand just where it was. ‘Don’t think I didn’t notice when you thought I wasn’t looking...’
    ‘Ditto,’ Violet muttered in feeble response because what else could she do, short of launching into a scathing attack on everything she had decided was awful about him?
    ‘So true.’ Damien allowed himself the luxury of looking at her with lazy, speculative eyes. ‘And how could I ever have guessed that underneath your shapeless clothes was the figure of a sex goddess...?’
    Violet went bright red. Was he joking? Continuing with their subtle duel of words which carried an undertone that his mother would not have clocked? Was he laughing at her ? What else? she wondered, hot and flustered under the scrutiny of his deep blue eyes. She kept her gaze pointedly averted, looking at his mother with a smile that was beginning to make her jaws ache, but every inch of her was tuned in to Damien’s attention, which was focused all on her. One hundred per cent of it. She could feel it as powerfully as if a branding iron had been held to her bare skin.
    ‘Hardly a sex goddess... There’s no need to tell lies...’ she mumbled with an embarrassed laugh, while trying to play half of the loving couple by awkwardly leaning towards him and at the same time taking the opportunity to snap her legs firmly shut on a hand that was getting a little too inquisitive for her liking.
    ‘You’re just what my son needs, Violet,’ Eleanor confided with satisfaction. ‘All those girls he’s spent years going out with... I expect you have a potted history of Damien’s past...?’
    ‘Mother, please. There’s no need to go down that road. Violet is very much in the loop when it comes to knowing exactly the sort of women I’ve dated in the past...aren’t you, darling...?’
    ‘And I find it as strange as you do, Mrs Carver, that someone as intelligent as your son could have been attracted to girls with nothing between their ears. Because that’s what you’ve said, haven’t you, dearest? I’m sure they were very pretty but I’ve never understood how you could ever have found it a challenge to go out with a mannequin...?’
    Damien smiled slowly and appreciatively at her. Touché, he thought. She had been gauche and awkward when she had come to him with her begging bowl on her desperate mission to save her sister’s skin but he was realising that this was not the woman she was at all. Warm and empathetic, yes—that much was evident from the way she interacted with his mother. She had also been prepared for him to walk all over her if she thought it would help her sister’s cause. However, freed from the constraints of having to yield to him in the presence of his mother, her true colours were emerging. She was quick-tongued, intelligent and not above taking pot shots at him under cover of a smiling façade and the occasional glance that tried to pass itself off as loving.
    He found that he liked that. It made a change from vacuous supermodels. Certainly, a charade he had been quietly dreading now at least offered the