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She loved him. Gazing down at Anthony, Caro knew it with an utter certainty that she had never felt about anything before.

She loved him and she had lied to him. She was going to have to tell him the truth, but what if that meant he never wanted to see her again? How would she bear it?

* * *

Caro was very quiet on the way home from their picnic. Anthony made no comment, but he asked her to supper that night. "There's something I have to tell you," he said. "Will Kate be able to baby-sit Jake again?"

She couldn't face explaining the truth about Jake right then. Tonight would be soon enough, she told herself.

"Let him kiss you first," advised Kate in an attempt to cheer her up. "At least that way you'll win the bet."

But Caro didn't care about the bet any more. She just cared about Anthony, and what he was going to say when he found out that she was just as dishonest as the other women who had disappointed him so much in his previous relationships.

"Worse, probably," she said gloomily to Kate. "I bet none of his other women invented entirely fictitious lives for themselves. I'm going to have to tell him."

"Wear your kitten heels. That'll make you feel better."

* * *

They didn't, but at least Anthony noticed them. "I'm glad to see that you're keeping up your standards on the shoe front," he said as he led Caro out onto a roof terrace awash with evening sunshine. "I'd be very disappointed now if you turned up in a pair of Hush Puppies."

Caro smiled wanly. "My mother's always telling me I'm going to ruin my feet."

"I like the way you wear frivolous shoes," he told her, and his voice was very deep with that subtle undercurrent of laughter and something else. "It was one of the first things I noticed about you. You see other mothers in the park, and they all look very practical, but you…you were different."

He could say that again.

"Your shoes said that you were stylish, a bit quirky," Anthony went on. "They said, here's someone who knows how to have fun, someone who'll make you feel better and brighter just by the way she walks into the room, someone…" He trailed off, searching for the right word. "…someone enchanting," he finished at last.

Caro swallowed. "Nobody's ever said anything like that to me before."

"What, not even that movie star who seduced you?"

This was it. "There was no movie star," she said, turning to face him. "I just made that up to try to impress you."

A twitch at the corner of Anthony's mouth told her that he wasn't exactly astounded. "I hoped you did," he said.

She took a deep breath. "I'm not a fashion editor, and I'm not a mother. Jake isn't my baby; he's my nephew," she gabbled. "Kate is just a friend, not a nanny. And I don't own that house; Phoebe does."

There, she had said it! Phew.

"Jake's not yours?" said Anthony, as if latching on to the only thing that mattered.

"No. I just said that he was so that I would have an excuse to talk to you. It was a bet," she explained when he looked staggered. "I saw you in the park with Tom. We were talking about how hard it is to meet men, and I said to the others that I was sure that if I just had a baby, I could get to know you. So I borrowed Jake for the afternoon to prove my point."

"So any man would have done really?" There was a tell-tale quiver around Anthony's mouth.

"No." A hint of color stained Caro's cheeks. "I thought you looked nice," she muttered.

Anthony assimilated that in silence for a moment. "So you won your bet?" he said at last.

"Not exactly." She might as well tell him everything. "I had to get you to ask me on a date and…and to kiss me," she finished in a rush.

"What happens if I don't?" he said, an undercurrent of laughter in his voice, and Caro swallowed.

"I'll have to clean the kitchen for a month."

Anthony smiled. "We can't have that," he said, and put his hands at her waist, pulling her toward him so that he could drop a gentle kiss on her lips. "Will that do?"

"Not really," said Caro huskily. "It had to be a proper kiss," she said, strumming from the touch of his hands and the feel of his mouth and the smile in his eyes.

"Then we'd better try again."

And this time it really was a proper kiss. It was the kind of kiss Caro had dreamed about, a kiss you could sink into, a long, sweet, blissful kiss that went on and on until you were boneless and breathless with happiness, and then you kissed some more.

Much, much later, she rested her face against his throat with a sigh of contentment. "Are you sure you don't mind about all those lies I told?"

Anthony's chest vibrated with silent laughter. "Well, I never believed that about Jake's father being a Hollywood celebrity, to tell you the truth, and you did seem a bit young to be a fashion editor, so I can't say I was that surprised to hear that you'd been telling porkies about that. But I did think that Jake was yours, I must admit. I really liked it that you were such a relaxed mother compared to Sue — she's much more tense with Tom."

"At least she really is a mother. I always thought she sounded perfect," Caro admitted. "I was a bit jealous. You always sound so fond of her."

"Ah, well, that might have a bit to do with the fact that Sue's my sister."

"What!" Caro sat bolt upright.

"She really is a single mother," he said, laughing. "The Ph.D. has been a struggle, especially now that she's trying to finish it off, so I try to give her a hand with Tom as often as I can. That's why I was in the park with him that day."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I thought you looked nice.'" Anthony quoted her words back at her. "You just assumed that I was Tom's father, and I thought it would make you feel more comfortable if you thought that I understood about children, so I played along."

"After all you had to say about honesty, too!" Caro pretended to sound aggrieved, and he held her face between his hands and looked deep into her eyes.

"I'm being honest now," he said with a smile that made her heart soar. "I love you, Caro. I always will. Do you think you could ever love me that way?"

Caro made a show of thinking. "Honestly?"

"Honestly."

"The honest truth is that I fell in love the moment I saw you," she said, and kissed him.

"At least you'll be able to tell your housemates that won your bet," he teased her a long time later.

"I certainly did!" She kissed the pulse below his ear. "Several times over in fact. I just needed one kiss to win."

"Just one?" Anthony tsk-tsked as he tipped her off his lap and led her inside. "Since we're being honest now, I've got to tell you, Caro, that one kiss is just not going to be enough.…"

The End



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