Playing the Dutiful Wife

‘Oh, it’s nothing …’ Meg shrugged. ‘Just me feeling sorry for myself.’

‘Which must be a hard thing to do with a mouthful of wild Iranian caviar …’

He made her laugh—he really did. Niklas really wasn’t at all chatty, but when he spoke, when he teased, when she met his eyes, there was a little flip in her stomach that she liked the feeling of. It was a thrill that was new to her, and there was more than just something about him …

It was everything about the man.

‘Here’s to slumming it,’ Niklas said. They chinked their glasses and he looked into her eyes, and as he did so somehow—not that she would be aware of it—Niklas let her in.

He was a closed person, an extremely guarded man. He had grown up having to be that way—it had meant survival at the time—yet for the first time in far too long he chose to relax, to take some time, to forget about work, to stop for a moment and just be with her.

As they chatted he let the flight steward put his laptop away. They were at the back of business class, tucked away and enjoying their own little world.

The food orders were taken and later served, and Meg thought how nice Niklas was to share a meal with. Food was a passion in waiting for Meg. She rarely had time to cook, and though she ate out often it was pretty much always at the same Italian restaurant where they took clients. They’d chosen different mains, and he smiled to himself at the droop of her face when they were served and she found out that steak tartare was in fact raw.

‘It’s delicious,’ he assured her. ‘Or you can have my steak?’

At the back of her mind she had known it was raw, if she’d stopped to think about it, but the menu had been incredibly hard to concentrate on with Niklas sitting beside her, and she had made a rather random selection when the flight steward had approached.

‘No, it’s fine,’ Meg said, looking at the strange little piles of food on her plate. There was a big hill of raw minced steak in the middle, with a raw egg yolk in its shell on the top, surrounded by little hills of onions and capers and things. ‘I’ve always wanted to try it. I just tend to stick to safe. It’s good to try different things …’

‘It is,’ Niklas said. ‘I like it like this.’

Something caught in her throat, because he’d made it sound like sex. He picked up her knife and fork, and she watched him pour in the egg, pile on the onions and capers, and then chop and chop again before sliding the mixture through Worcestershire sauce. For a fleeting moment she honestly thought that he might load the fork and feed her, but he put the utensils down and returned to his meal, and Meg found herself breathless and blushing at where her mind had just drifted.

‘Good?’ Niklas asked when she took her first taste.

‘Fantastic,’ Meg said. It was nice, not amazing, but made by his hands fantastic it was. ‘How’s your steak?’

He sliced a piece off and lifted the loaded fork and held it to her. This from a man who had reluctantly given her a drink, who had on many occasions turned his back. He was now giving her a taste of food from his plate. He was just being friendly, Meg told herself. She was reading far, far too much into this simple gesture. But as she went to take the fork he lifted it slightly. His black eyes met hers and he moved the fork to her mouth and watched as she opened it. Suddenly she began to wonder if she’d been right the first time.

Maybe he was talking about sex.

But if he had been flirting, by the time dessert was cleared it had ended. He read for a bit, and Meg gazed out of the window for a while, until the flight attendant came around and closed the shutters. The lights were lowered and the cabin was dimmed and Meg fiddled with her remote to turn the seat into a bed.

Niklas stood and she glanced up at him. ‘Are you off to get your gold pyjamas?’

‘And a massage,’ Niklas teased back.

She was half asleep when he returned, and watched idly as he took off his tie. Of course the flight attendant rushed to hold it, while another readied his bed, and then he took off his shoes and climbed into the flight bed beside her.

His beautiful face was gone now from her vision, but it was there—right there—in her mind’s eye. She was terribly aware of his movements and listened to him turn restlessly a few times. She conceded that maybe he did have a point—the flight bed was more than big enough for Meg to stretch out in, but Niklas was easily a foot taller than her and, as he had stated, he really needed this time to sleep, which must be proving difficult. For Niklas the bed was simply too small, and it was almost a sin that he sleep in those immaculate suit trousers.

She lay there trying not to think about him and made herself concentrate instead on work—on the Evans contract she had just completed—which was surely enough to send her to sleep. But just as she was closing her eyes, just as she was starting to think that she might be about to drift off even with Niklas beside her, she heard him move again. Her eyes opened and she blinked as his face appeared over hers. She met those black eyes, heard again his rich accent, and how could a woman not smile?

‘You never did tell me …’ Niklas said, smiling as he invited her to join him in after hours conversation. ‘Why is your world too small?’

CHAPTER THREE

THEY PULLED BACK the divider that separated them and lay on their sides, facing each other. Meg knew that this was probably the only time in her life that she’d ever have a man so divine lying on the pillow next to hers, so she was more than happy to forgo sleep for such a glorious cause.

‘I work in the family business,’ Meg explained.

‘Which is?’

‘My parents are into real-estate investments. I’m a lawyer …’

He gave a suitably impressed nod, but then frowned, because she didn’t seem like a lawyer to him.

‘Though I hardly use my training. I do all the paperwork and contracts.’

He saw her roll her eyes.

‘I cannot tell you how boring it is.’

‘Then why do you do it?’

‘Good question. I think it was decided at conception that I would be a lawyer.’

‘You don’t want to be one?’

It was actually rather hard to admit it. ‘I don’t think I do …’

He said nothing, just carried on watching her face, waiting for her to share more, and she did.

‘I don’t think I’m supposed to be one—I mean, I scraped to get the grades I needed at school, held on by my fingernails at university …’ She paused as he interrupted.

‘You are never to say this at an interview.’

‘Of course not.’ She smiled. ‘We’re just talking.’

‘Good. I’m guessing you were not a little girl who dreamed of being a lawyer?’ he checked. ‘You did not play with wigs on?’ His lips twitched as she smiled. ‘You did not line up your dollies and cross-examine them?’

‘No.’

‘So how did you end up being one?’

‘I really don’t know where to start.’

He looked at his watch, realised then that perhaps the report simply wasn’t going to get done. ‘I’ve got nine hours.’

Niklas made the decision then—they would be entirely devoted to her.

‘Okay …’ Meg thought how best to explain her family to him and chose to start near the beginning. ‘In my family you don’t get much time to think—even as a little girl there were piano lessons, violin lessons, ballet lessons, tutors. My parents were constantly checking my homework—basically, everything was geared towards me getting into the best school, so that I could get the best grades and go to the best university. Which I did. Except when I got there it was more push, push, push. I just put my head down and carried on working, but now suddenly I’m twenty-four years old and I’m not really sure that I’m where I want to be …’ It was very hard to explain it, because from the outside she had a very nice life.

‘They demand too much.’

‘You don’t know that.’