Playing the Playboy's Sweetheart by Carol Marinelli Page B

stomach and undid her bikini top to avoid strap marks and settled in to read the morning away. Hugh had just texted to say that he expected to get there at about one and that he was bringing not just lunch but afternoon tea and dessert. The plan was to take loads of photos inside and out and change clothes and things and then Hugh would head off for the night and tomorrow Emily could get on with doing precisely nothing.
    She was looking forward to seeing him, though, but was just a little bit nervous too because their friendship had mainly been in the safe confines of theatre walls. It was outside Theatre that things tended to get a little out of hand.
    Still, she was nicely nervous at the thought of Hugh joining her and Emily put down her book and allowed herself to indulge in one tiny daydream, or rather one tiny memory, Emily corrected herself as she returned to their near kiss the other night.
    Ah, but the next night he’d got off with Gina, Emily reminded herself.
    They would be friends with
no
benefits, Emily told herself firmly, and then closed her eyes and got back to thinking about a problem that wasn’t named Hugh.
    Did she really want to leave her job?
    She should be dwelling on that, instead of remembering the feel of his lips on her face, but thinking about work was too complicated for eleven in the morning and she was here to relax after all, so she didn’t fight it when her mind slipped to a kiss that had taken place all those years ago...
    * * *
    For Hugh, it had been a long and difficult week. He’d had to take Ernest back to Theatre and was very worried about the elderly man, but he was also concerned about Gina. She had been off sick all week and it had not gone unnoticed by Hugh.
    The thought of spending a day with Emily, even if it involved a ten-hour round trip, had been a very pleasant distraction during a trying week. His rare quiet times had been taken up with the question that if he
were
going to join Emily for two nights of sizzling sex and two days of the same, what supplies would he bring?
    Instead of stopping at the supermarket for a quiche and a few tomatoes, as well as some champagne, which was Hugh’s best attempt at a picnic, he took Alex’s advice and rang Fortnum & Mason and ordered their best picnic hamper, filled with delicious treats. As well as that, while picking it up he bought a few extras in the food hall and so, with a gorgeous scent filling the car, by the time he arrived, just a little behind schedule, Hugh was starving.
    He had found the cottage easily but there was no smiling Emily opening the door.
    It would seem that there was no Emily home.
    Maybe she had gone for a walk, Hugh thought, calling out her name as he headed around the side of the cottage to the back garden, and then he saw an Emily he never had before.
    There she lay on her back, and her large breasts were, to his discredit, the first thing that Hugh noticed.
    They were very pink, as was her stomach.
    For a moment there he did consider waking her up by pouring the remains of her jug of water over her but he knew that Emily would loathe that she had been caught in an unguarded moment and she was doing him a huge favour after all. So Hugh resisted a more fun awakening for Emily and headed back to the front of the house and knocked more loudly on the door while calling out her name, and it was that that Emily woke up to.
    God!
    Emily pulled off that bikini top that had travelled up around her neck and quickly put on a loose T-shirt before opening the door. ‘Sorry!’ She gave Hugh a wide smile. ‘I was on the phone.’
    Liar, Hugh thought. ‘For a moment there I thought that I had the wrong place, or that maybe you’d decided it was all too much trouble.’
    ‘It’s no trouble, if that’s what I think it is!’ Emily said, her eyes widening when she saw the picnic hamper and then widening more as Hugh unloaded the rest of the car with some very nice treats. ‘How much food have you