The Perfect Lover Read Online Free

think.
    Even their parents seemed to have been deceived by Louise's outward assumption of sturdy bravado, and consequently she was the one .who was always treated that little bit more gently, the one for whom extra allowances were always made, Katie acknowledged. A fact which made her oddly protective of her sister.
    'Oh, by the way, did you know that Professor Simmonds has been seconded to Brussels? Apparently he's been asked to head some committee on fishing rights in the North Sea,' Katie told her vaguely.
    'What? No, I didn't know,' Louise responded, her face paling.
    'No? I thought that perhaps you may have bumped into him,' Katie told her innocently.
    'No, I haven't!' But if what Katie had just told her was true, Louise suspected that she was certainly going to do so. The committee Katie was talking about had to be the same one that Louise's boss had just been co-opted onto. Of all the unwanted coincidences!
    Louise's thoughts rioted frantically, her stomach churning, but she dared not let Katie see how shocked and disturbed she was.
    'I know you don't like him,' Katie was saying quietly.
    'No. I don't,' Louise agreed curtly. 'After all, he cost me my first, and—'
    'Louise, that's not fair,' Katie objected gently.
    Louise looked away from her. There was so much that Katie didn't know, that she couldn't tell her.
    Gareth Simmonds had been her tutor at Oxford at a particularly traumatic time in her life, and he had been a witness not just to that trauma, and the way she had made a complete and utter fool of herself, but he had also...
    Louise bit her lip. The feeling of panic churning her stomach was increasing instead of easing.
    'That's the final call for my flight,' she told Katie thankfully, giving her twin a swift hug before grabbing hold of her flight bag and heading for her gateway.
    Gareth Simmonds in Brussels!
    That was all she needed!
     

CHAPTER TWO
    G ARETH S IMMONDS in Brussels! Louise gave a small groan and closed her eyes, shaking her head in refusal of the stewardess's offer of a drink.
    Trust Katie to wait to drop that bombshell on her until the last minute. Still, at least she had warned her, and forewarned was, as they say, forearmed.
    Gareth Simmonds. She ground her teeth in impotent fury. She had been halfway through her first year when he had stepped into the shoes of her previous tutor, who'd had to retire unexpectedly on the grounds of ill health, and he and Louise had clashed right from the start.
    She had resented the far more pro-active role he had made it plain he intended to play as her tutor. She had been used to his elderly and ailing predecessor, who had, in the main, been content to leave her to her own devices—something which had suited Louise down to the ground, giving her, as it had, ample opportunity to give the minimum amount of attention to her studies whilst she concentrated on what had become the far more important matter of making Saul fall in love with her.
    The situation would have been bad enough if Gareth Simmonds had merely concerned himself with his official role as her tutor, but, no, that hadn't been enough for him. He had had the gall... the cheek...the...the effrontery to take it upon himself to interfere in her personal life as well.
    Louise's tense shoulders twitched angrily. The last thing she needed right now—just when she was beginning to feel she was getting her life back on an even keel again, just when the events of the weekend had made her feel that at last, finally, she had begun to reclaim her sense of self-respect—was to have the whole ugly mess of her past dragged up again in the person of Gareth Simmonds.
    He was going to Brussels to head a committee, Katie had said, when repeating to her the information she had garnered at an informal reunion of her old university classmates, and not just any committee either. Louise could feel her body starting to tense defensively. The thought that she might have to have any kind of contact with Gareth Simmonds