by Penny Jordan
Now it was not the potential loss of Amberley that hurt, but rather the potential loss of her grandfather. Her mother was the child of his second marriage, and he was in his seventies now, his heart weakened by the serious heart attack he had suffered eighteen months ago.
He was so precious to her, and so loved. He had provided her with the male influence in her life after her parents’ divorce, and at the same time he had given her and her mother a home.
Her mother had remarried three years ago, and, though Jules liked her stepfather, he could never take the place of her grandfather.
What exactly had Silas meant when he had said that it would suit him to be in a relationship? One day he would have to marry, if he wanted to provide an heir for Amberley—and Jules felt sure that he would want to do so. He was in his thirties now, and he was not the kind of man who would flinch from telling a woman that his relationship with her was over.
Like her, Silas had grown up without his father. Not because his parents had been divorced, as her own had been, but because his father had been killed in a freak sailing accident when Silas had only been a few months old.
She looked down at the floor, not wanting to think of Silas as a vulnerable fatherless baby, and then frowned as she studied her shoes. Shopping was her Achilles’ heel and shoes were her downfall, and had been all her life. She still had, in their original shoe boxes, the pretty dancing shoes she had persuaded her mother to buy for her as a child, and tomorrow morning she was hoping to be able to slip away to visit a local shop, where she had heard it was possible to pick up exclusive samples of shoes from one of fashion’s hottest new young designers.
The sun was beginning to set. The celebrity couple emerged on to the steps of the impressive portico to the villa, she with her head thrown back and her throat arched, to reveal the glitter of the Tiffany necklace as she leaned into her husband, and he gazing adoringly down at her. They were presenting a very different image from the one Jules had seen earlier in the day, when she had been screaming at him, accusing him of cheating on her, whilst he had snarled back that she was so self-obsessed he was surprised she had even noticed.
‘It would have been hard not to, darling. Not when the little slut in question was supposed to be my manicurist. Except it wasn’t a nail job she was giving you when I walked into the bedroom and found you with her, was it?’
Now the slender, supple female figure—kept that way, so rumour had it, by a rigorous regime of drugs reinforced by cosmetic surgery—was angled towards her husband’s, whilst his hand rested possessively on her hip.
Jules heard Lucy, who was standing next to her, give a small sad sigh. Poor Lucy, married to a man who had no respect either for her or the vows he had made to her. And where was Nick anyway?
Automatically Julia turned her head to look for him, almost jumping out of her skin when she heard Silas demanding, ‘Looking for someone?’
‘Yes—you, of course, darling,’ she responded with sugary sweetness.
‘Girls, this is great,’ Dorland enthused as he lumbered towards them, mopping the perspiration from his face with a large handkerchief.
The sun was setting, the photographers were busily snapping away as the celebs reaffirmed their vows, and in their tens, twenties and hundreds the lights of the candles glowed against the warm Mediterranean darkness.
Silas looked on, and murmured, ‘What a total farce.’
‘It’s supposed to be very romantic and symbolic,’ Julia pointed out crossly.
‘I’m astonished that you managed to get insurance for something like this.’ Silas grimaced.
‘Nick dealt with the insurance,’ Julia told him absently, before demanding, ‘You didn’t really mean what you said to Dorland and Lucy, did you?’
‘Which bit?’
All of it, Julia was tempted to say, but instead she answered, ‘The bit that went “Where Jules goes, I go”. I mean, it’s bad enough that you said anything to Dorland at all—’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ She stared at him in disbelief. ‘Silas, Dorland owns A-List Life. He gets off on going public on personal stuff that people want to keep private.’
‘Like Nick Blayne and you, you mean?’
Julia hissed in angry disbelief. ‘There is no Nick Blayne and me.’
‘Blayne doesn’t seem to think that. Which would you rather have, Julia? Dorland publishing a coy announcement that you and I are an item, or Dorland hinting that you and Blayne are having an affair behind his wife’s back?’
‘Neither,’ Julia told him shortly. ‘Silas, you’re going to have to say something to Dorland and…and tell him that you don’t want anyone else to know about us yet.’
‘With the ego-driven photo fodder Dorland’s assembled here, the last thing he’s going to be interested in is us,’ Silas told her derisively.
‘Shush!’ Julia hushed him warningly, looking round quickly to check that no one was standing close enough to him to have overheard him. ‘Lucy’s business is dependent on people like these, and, since I work for her, so is my job.’
She caught his derisive look and felt compelled to demand, ‘What’s your real motive for this, Silas? I refuse to believe that you really intend to spend virtually the whole of the next six months policing me just because you don’t want to see Lucy hurt or because you disapprove of extra-marital affairs.’
‘So you have been having an affair with Blayne, then?’
Julia exhaled noisily and fixed him with a furious amber glare.
‘Oh, that’s just so typical of you—trying to play catch-out by deliberately twisting what I’m saying to suit your own purposes. No, I’m not having an affair with Nick.’
‘Okay, maybe describing it as an affair is going too far. You’ve had sex with him and you want to have sex with him again—is that better?’
‘No, it is not. Just in case you’ve forgotten, Silas, I’m twenty-six—not sixteen.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that I’m plenty old enough to have lost my illusions about what sex is really like. A sixteen-year-old might—just might—be starry-eyed and hormone-driven enough to believe that wonderful, mind-blowing, transports-you-to-another-dimension sex actually exists, and to lust after it and the partner she thinks will supply it for her, but a twenty-six-year-old woman knows the truth.’
‘Which is?’
Julia gave a small dismissive shrug.
‘That the kind of sex we fantasise about as teenagers is just that—a fantasy. Sexual satisfaction isn’t a life-changing experience that transports you to some kind of unique physical heaven, and it certainly isn’t worth betraying a friendship like mine and Lucy’s for. But of course no one wants to admit it. I’m not saying that sex isn’t enjoyable. I’m just saying that after the fantasy sex girls build up inside their heads, the reality can be a bit of a let-down.’
‘It’s an interesting theory, but not one, I suspect, that is shared by the majority of your peers.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Julia told him darkly. ‘More and more women in their thirties who are in relationships are saying that sex just doesn’t interest them any more.’
‘Mmm, well, to judge by the antics being indulged in by the majority of the guests here this evening, they are not in agreement with you.’
‘Most of them are out of their heads on drink or drugs—or both.’
‘Habits you don’t share?’
‘I’ve seen too much of what they can do. I like a glass of wine with a meal and the occasional glass of champagne, but that’s all. Besides, I couldn’t do my job if I was out of my head on drink and drugs.’
The first of the fireworks exploded above their heads in a shimmer of brilliant falling stars, quickly followed by several others.
‘I understand from Dorland that you’ll be leaving for Italy tomorrow?’
‘Yes, I’m flying to Naples and going from there to Positano for my next job. Silas, there’s no need for you to come with me. Lucy is bound
to tell Nick about us, and seeing us together has certainly reassured her. I hate to think of her being hurt.’
‘But ultimately I suspect that she will be, unfortunately,’ Silas warned her. ‘Her marriage to Blayne makes that inevitable.’
Another firework went off in an explosive crackle of noise that caught Julia off guard, and instinctively she took a step closer to Silas. Immediately he put his arm around her, causing her to turn her head to look up at him.
Silas was looking back at her, his head bent towards her own. A frisson of something unfamiliar and yet oddly instantly recognised by her senses gripped her emotions, causing her eyes to widen. She could feel the warmth of Silas’s arm round her and smell the scent of his skin, warm, male, and luring her to move closer to him to breathe it into herself more deeply. A small, sharp spasm of physical shock shook through her. She could feel the rocky, unsteady thud of her own heartbeat. Why had she never noticed before how sexy Silas’s mouth was? His lower lip was sensually full, whilst his top lip was so cleanly cut that she had to subdue a crazy impulse to reach out and trace it with her fingertip.
‘Blayne’s watching us.’
‘What?’
It took several seconds for Silas’s comment to penetrate the disconcerting confusion of her wandering thoughts, and then several more for her to translate it into an explanation of why Silas was continuing to hold her.
And a reason for the downward movement of his head now, at the same time as he drew her against his body and held her there, one hand in the hollow of her back, pressing her into him, the other splayed against the back of her head, supporting it as the lips she had been admiring brushed coolly against her own.
The temptation was too much for her to resist. Silas’s mouth was now hers to explore more intimately. Slowly and carefully she traced their outline with the tip of her tongue. His lips felt cool, and smooth, and firm. A cascade of small quivering shots of delight tumbled down her spine, coupled with a desire for something more. Automatically she moved even closer, and then made a small sound of complaint when Silas stepped back from her.
‘If you were doing that for Blayne’s benefit,’ he began in an almost harsh voice, ‘then—’
‘Nick’s benefit?’ Julia realised that she had completely forgotten about Lucy’s husband. No way did she want Silas to know that, though.
‘I don’t know why you sound so disapproving,’ she told him airily. ‘This whole thing was your idea, after all—although why you should want to protect Lucy…’ A sudden thought struck her. ‘You aren’t doing this for Lucy’s sake at all, are you? So why…? Oh, I get it. You’re using me to—What’s she like, Silas, and why are you going to such lengths to get rid of her?’
‘What?’ He was frowning impatiently now.
‘You heard me,’ Julia persisted. ‘What’s she like, this woman you want to shake off by pretending to be involved with me?’
‘What makes you think there is any such woman?’
‘What other reason could there be?’ Julia answered him practically. ‘Although I must admit you’ve never struck me as the kind of man who’d have any trouble leaving behind anything or anyone he didn’t want any more.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Even Gramps admits that you can be single-minded,’ Julia pointed out. ‘And he dotes on you. Mind you, I would have thought that you’d be looking for commitment instead of trying to avoid it—or wasn’t she the right type to become a countess and the mother of the next Amberley heir?’
‘You’re jealousy’s showing,’ Silas warned her.
‘What?’ Julia gave him an indignant look. ‘No way am I jealous of your women.’
Through the darkness Julia could almost feel his quick, almost bruisingly hard visual inspection of her shadowed face in a silence that suddenly seemed to be packed tight with explosive tension.
‘I meant your jealousy of the fact that ultimately I will inherit Amberley and not you.’
Julia felt her face start to burn. If she kept on like this Silas would probably start thinking that she was secretly in love with him. And she most certainly was not.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ she defended herself. ‘I’ve always known that you will inherit Amberley.’
‘And you’ve always resented me because of it.’
He made it a fact rather than a question.
‘No, I haven’t,’ Julia objected immediately.
‘Liar. Even as a child you went to extraordinary lengths to make it clear to me that I was an outsider.’
Julia frowned. ‘That wasn’t because you’ll inherit Amberley.’
‘No?’
‘No!’ Reluctantly she admitted, ‘Ma told me, when I was about six that if Gramps died then she and I would have to find somewhere else to live because Amberley would be yours. I suppose she just wanted to warn me what the situation was, but for a long time I was afraid that I would come back from school one day and Gramps would be dead. Ma always did her best, but sometimes not having a father hurts.’
‘Tell me about it.’
Julia glanced at him and then said bleakly, ‘Neither of us has had much luck in that department, have we? Your father died when you were only a few months old and landed you with those ancient trustees you inherited from him, and mine took one look at me and left Ma for someone else. Which do you think is worse? Your father being dead or your father being alive but not wanting you?’
To her own irritation, her voice had thickened with the tears blurring her eyes. She had thought she’d talked herself out of this kind of self-pity at junior school.
And even worse than self-pity was the thought of someone else’s pity—especially if that someone else was Silas. To forestall any offer of it she pulled away from him, and was startled to discover how much her body resented its removal from the warmth of his.
‘I’d better go and check that the candles are all put out properly.’ The look he gave her made her point out defensively, ‘I am supposed to be working.’
‘Working?’
‘My job might seem shallow and pointless to you, Silas, and I know that other people envy me because they think I spend all my time mixing with celebrities and partying, but the reality is that neither you nor they appreciate what a tough job this actually is. Lucy’s worked very hard to build up this business, and I owe it to her to do my job as professionally as I can.’
‘By schmoozing rich old men and their plastic-fantastic Stepford Wife women?’ Silas taunted her.
‘That’s unfair. Corporate and event entertainment is big business—and don’t tell me that you haven’t hired event organisers yourself, because I won’t believe you.’
Some of the billions of dollars Silas’s grandmother’s family had earned from oil had been used in his grandfather’s time to set up a charitable arts foundation, which Silas now headed.
Silas gave a small dismissive gesture, his accent suddenly very American as he drawled, ‘Sure. We’ve done stuff—fundraisers at the Met, and in conjunction with the Getty. My mother generally organises them, since she’s the head of our fund-raising committee.’
She saw the gleam in his eyes as he looked at her. ‘She would have been happy to give you a job—you know that.’
Julia made no comment. Like everyone, apart from Silas himself, Julia was slightly in awe of Silas’s charming but formidably organised and successful mother.
‘Lucy asked me first, and I couldn’t let her down.’
‘But you could allow her husband to proposition you?’
Julia’s mouth compressed.
‘Nick and Lucy are going through a bad patch.’
‘And having sex with you was going to be a Band-Aid to hold their marriage together?’
Julia didn’t bother to make any response, simply walking away from him instead, but his words were very much in her thoughts as she checked that all the candles were being doused properly.
She had felt so envious of Lucy when she and Nick had married, and so determined to
make sure that no one guessed how she felt, but just lately she had begun to see Nick in a different light, and to feel sorry for Lucy instead of envying her.
In fact, refusing Nick’s blandishments and often openly sexual hints that he wasn’t happy in his marriage had proved to be surprisingly easy. Nick made no secret of the fact that he considered himself to be an accomplished lover, openly boasting to her of the pleasure he could give her, but some instinct told her that in bed he would not be in the same class as Silas.
Her face burned hotly with guilt as she recognised the path along which her thoughts were trespassing. Silas’s sexual expertise or lack of it was not something she should be thinking about or interested in. After all, he had never shown any kind of sexual interest in her.
Until tonight.
Tonight? That passionless brush of his mouth against her own?
Passionless for him, maybe, but she had certainly felt a distinct kick of sexual curiosity galvanising her body.
Don’t even think about going there, Julia muttered warningly to herself, and then jumped as Nick materialised at her side and demanded huskily, ‘Missed me?’
‘Have you been somewhere?’ Julia riposted sweetly. ‘I’ve been too busy to notice—although I expect Lucy will be wondering where you are.’
‘Well, in the morning you can tell her that I spent the night in your bed, if you want to.’
He was standing in front of her, blocking her in, having placed one hand on the column behind her.
‘I’ve already told you, Nick, I’m not interested.’
‘Of course you are. You’ve been acting like a bitch on heat ever since I dropped you for Lucy.’ He was smiling at her as though the words had been a compliment and not an insult, Julia saw, and a surge of angry contempt for him mixed with compassionate pity for Lucy gathered force inside her.
‘Really?’ She kept her voice deliberately light. ‘I must tell Silas that. He’ll be delighted to learn that other men are aware of how much I want him.’
Immediately Nick removed his hand from the column behind her.
