by Penny Jordan
She had tried to defend herself, of course. ‘That was not—I was not—’she had begun, but typically Marcus had refused to allow her to continue. ‘Oh, come off it, Lucy,’ he’d said harshly, ‘we all know what happened. After all, the photographs were plastered all over the celebrity gossip rags. You, minus bikini top, draped all over Blayne, saying that you were up for a good time and looking for everything that went with that.’
‘Goodness,’ she had retaliated, in a brittle voice, ‘you’ve actually remembered the caption word for word. Did you have to practise repeating it for very long to do that, Marcus?’
Of course she had regretted the idiotic quote recorded in the magazine. But when you were jet lagged, and you’d packed in such a rush that you’d omitted to pack matching bikini tops and bottoms, and you got caught out and papped by some prowling paparazzi with nothing better to do and no one better to photograph, you naturally did your best to make a joke of your plight—especially when those same paparazzi could sometimes be so important to the success of your business.
Not all celebrities, no matter what they might choose to say in public, genuinely wanted to avoid those camera lenses. Many actively sought out the events and parties where they would be spotted and photographed. Thus, Lucy had felt she could not afford to offend the guy who had snapped her, no matter what her own personal feelings.
If he’d seen her twenty-four hours later, then the photograph he would have taken would have been a very different one. Then, after a decent night’s sleep and with the loan of a bikini from Jules, she would probably have been in control enough to tell him truthfully that she was simply taking a much-needed holiday from the mounting stress of running a successful business.
Unfortunately the photographer had taken it into his head that her life was far more interesting than it actually was, and from then on neither he nor his camera had been very far from her side.
Nick had revelled in the attention. At the time she had taken that as a sign that, unlike the other men she had dated, he would be able to cope with her work and its effect on their personal life. She hadn’t realised that for Nick everything had its price—including photographs of them together, if not actually having sex in a variety of exotic locations then as close to it as was possible, given that she was wearing bikini bottoms and he was wearing swimming shorts.
She had had no idea that she was being set up with a view to them being taken until it was too late and they had been published. And by then she and Nick were married—
Naturally in public she’d had to shrug off her real feelings and pretend that she welcomed her new image as a randy, anything-goes, up-for-it and eager for sex party girl, only too delighted to let the whole world see how much she wanted her new husband. Even if by then that same new husband had been privately calling her frigid and useless in bed, and spending more nights out of their marriage bed than he was spending in it with her.
She looked at her watch a little bit anxiously. She had spent rather longer with her solicitor than she had expected, and she was due to put in an appearance at her great-aunt Alice’s ninetieth birthday party this afternoon.
Great-Aunt Alice lived in Knightsbridge, in a huge old-fashioned apartment that was always freezing cold because, despite her wealth, she refused to have the central heating on.
No one in the family ever wanted to visit her in winter, and even in summer the wise visited equipped with extra layers in the form of cardigans, pashminas and the like, to ward off the icy blasts which Great-Aunt Alice insisted were necessary for good health and were the reason she was still hale and hearty at ninety.
‘Balls,’ Lucy’s younger cousin Johnny had always claimed. ‘The reason she’s still alive is because she’s too bloody mean to die. God knows, I could do with my share of her millions.’
‘What makes you think you’ll get a share?’ Lucy’s brother Piers had asked wryly.
‘I’m bound to,’ Johnny had replied smugly. ‘I’m her favourite.’
‘Yah? Well, you certainly work hard enough at it,’ Piers had mocked him.
Nineteen-year-old Johnny, with his slightly louche lifestyle, permanent lack of money and winning ways, had a reputation within the family of being someone who was constantly wheeling and dealing. Lucy suspected that Marcus probably disapproved of Johnny almost as much as he did her.
Marcus! But she didn’t disapprove of him, did she? And that was the cause of, if not all, then surely most of the problems in her life. It had, after all, been to escape from loving Marcus and the knowledge that that love would never be returned that she had thrown herself into Nick’s arms. And it was because she still loved Marcus now, despite all her attempts to stop doing so, that she treated him with hostility and resentment. That was her shield, her only protection against the potential humiliation of Marcus—or anyone else—ever discovering how she felt about him.
CHAPTER TWO
‘GOODNESS. It’s actually warm in here!’ Lucy removed the cashmere wrap she had pulled on over her delicate silk chiffon dress the moment she walked into Great-Aunt Alice’s hallway.
‘Yes, I bribed Johnson to put the heat on.’ Her brother Piers grinned.
‘You might have told me that before,’ Lucy grumbled affectionately, as she fanned herself with her hand to cool down her flushed face. ‘How warm did you tell him to make it? It’s like a sauna in here. The flowers I’ve bought Great-Aunt Alice will have wilted before she gets them.’
‘Never mind your flowers—what about my chocolates?’ Piers told her ruefully.
‘Piers thought Johnson was probably still working in Fahrenheit,’ Lucy’s father chipped in. ‘So he told him to set the temperature gauge at sixty-eight. None of us realised what had happened until Johnson came back and said that the gauge only went to forty.’
Lucy joined in the good-natured laughter at her brother’s expense, and then suddenly froze as the door opened and Marcus walked in.
Was it her imagination or was there really a small, sharp silence—as though not just she but everyone else was aware of just how formidable and commanding Marcus was?
It wasn’t only that he was tall—just nicely over six foot—or even that he was sexily broad-shouldered and taut-muscled. It wasn’t even that combination of thick dark hair and striking ice-grey eyes which could sometimes burn almost green.
So what was it about him that made not just her own sex but men as well turn and look towards him? Turn and look up to him, Lucy amended.
Could it have something to do with the fact that he ran the merchant bank which had been in his family for so many generations? Because of that he was in a position of great trust, responsible not just for the present and future of his clients, but in many cases for the secrets of their ancestors as well.
But even if one took away all of that—even if he had walked in as a stranger off the street—women would still have turned their heads to look at him and would have gone on looking, Lucy acknowledged. Because Marcus was sexy. In fact, Marcus was very sexy. Her heart attempted to do a high dive inside her chest, then realised it was attempting the impossible and ended up crashing sickeningly to its floor. She gulped at the glass of champagne Piers had handed to her as much for something to do—some reason not to have to look at Marcus—as for Dutch courage.
He was wearing one of his customary hand-made plain dark suits, a typical banker’s white shirt with a blue stripe, and a red tie.
She took another gulp of her champagne.
‘Want another?’ Piers asked her.
Lucy shook her head. She wasn’t much of a drinker anyway, and her work meant that it was essential she kept a clear head in social situations, so she had quickly learned to simply take a small sip from her glass and then abandon it discreetly somewhere. The up side of this was that she always had a clear head, but the down side was that her body was simply not up to dealing with anything more than one small glass of anything alcoholic. But right now the numbing effect of a couple of glasses of champagne w
as probably just what she needed to help her cope with Marcus’s presence, intimidatingly up close, if not exactly as personal as her foolish heart craved.
‘Oh, good. Marcus has made it after all,’ Lucy heard her mother exclaiming to Lucy’s great-uncle in a pleased voice. ‘Charles, do go over and ask him to join us.’
‘Goodness, it is hot,’ Lucy said wildly. ‘I think I’d better go and get these poor flowers into some water.’
Her heart was thumping its familiar message to her as she made her escape, champagne glass in hand, heading for the rambling patchwork of corridors and small rooms to the rear of the huge apartment which her great-aunt still referred to as the servants’ quarters.
How on earth did Johnson and Mrs Johnson, aided only by a daily, manage to cope with looking after somewhere this size? Lucy wondered sympathetically as she hurried down one of the corridors and into the ‘flower room’. A row of vases had already been assembled on the worktop, ready filled with water, and Lucy unwrapped her own offering and busied herself placing the flowers stem by stem into water.
Was she really so afraid of seeing Marcus? Her hands trembled. Did she really need to ask herself that question? How old was she? Twenty-nine. And how long had it been since she had come down from university and looked at Marcus across the width of his desk and known…?
Tears suddenly blurred her vision.
Oh, yes, she had known then, immediately, that she had fallen in love with him, but she had known with equal immediacy that he did not return her feelings—that in fact, so far as he was concerned, her presence in his life was an inconvenience and an irritation he would far rather have been without.
She had been young enough then to dream her foolish dreams regardless, to fantasise about things changing, about walking into Marcus’s office one day and having Marcus look at her as though he wanted to drag her clothes off and possess her right there and then. She had whiled away many an irascible lecture from Marcus by allowing herself the pleasure of imagining him standing up and coming towards her, taking hold of her and putting his desk, or sometimes his chair, more often than not both of them, to the kind of erotic use for which they had definitely not been designed.
But the reality was, of course, that she was the one who wanted to tear his clothes off. And then one day she had looked at him and seen the way he was looking at her. And she had known that her foolish erotic fantasies and her even more foolish romantic daydreams were just that. Marcus did not either want or love her, and he was never going to do so. That was when she had decided that she needed to find someone else—because if she didn’t one day her feelings were going to get too much for her and she was going to totally humiliate herself by declaring them to Marcus.
A husband and then hopefully a family of her own would stop her from doing that, surely? she’d thought. But she hadn’t even managed to get that right, had she? Her marriage had been a disaster—privately and publicly. Very publicly.
She wasn’t the kind of person who wanted to be alone. She loved children, and had known from a young age that she wanted her own. Although she loved them both dearly, sometimes she felt wretchedly envious of the love and happiness her two best friends had found with their husbands. And one day she knew Marcus would marry—and when he did…A shudder of vicious pain savaged her emotions.
When he did, she made herself continue, she hoped to be protected from what she knew she would feel by the contentment and love she had found with another man and her family. How foolishly and dangerously she had deluded herself.
She couldn’t stay here in the flower room for ever, Lucy realised, and with any luck Marcus might actually have already left by now. Giving her flowers a final tweak, she turned to leave.
As soon as she opened the door into the drawing room the first person she saw was her cousin Johnny, who grabbed her arm and announced eagerly, ‘Great—I’ve been looking for you. More champagne?’ Without waiting for her to respond, he took a glass from a passing waiter and handed it to her.
‘Must say the old girl isn’t stinting with the champers. It must be costing her a pretty penny to put this do on. Champers…waiters. Did you organise it?’
‘Yes,’ Lucy said ruefully, remembering the hard bargain her great-aunt had driven over costs, and how in the end she had given in and suggested she give Great-Aunt Alice the business cost as her birthday present, provided her great-aunt supplied the champagne, the hors d’oeuvres and the waiters’ wages. Which probably explained the lack of any food, Lucy decided.
She tried not to look at Marcus, who was standing the full width of the room away from her but facing towards her, and watching her, she could see, with a very grim look tightening his mouth. She took a quick, nervous, sustaining sip of her champagne, and then another. She couldn’t bear to think about what would happen if Marcus ever got to hear about that idiotic lie she had told Mr McVicar. In the absence of a miracle, she was going have to dispose of her supposed investor as speedily as she had invented him.
‘Actually, Luce, there’s something I need to discuss with you.’
‘What?’ Somehow or other Lucy managed to drag her attention away from Marcus.
‘I need to talk to you,’ Johnny repeated patiently.
‘You do?’ Immediately Lucy was alert to her own prospective danger. ‘Johnny, if it’s a loan you’re after,’ she began warningly, ‘I haven’t forgotten that you still owe me fifty pounds from last time. Even if you have.’
‘It isn’t anything like that,’ Johnny assured her earnestly. ‘Fact is, sweet cos, it just so happens that a business acquaintance of mine has asked me if I would introduce you to him.’
‘He has?’ Lucy said cautiously.
‘Mmm. Have another glass of champagne,’ he added encouragingly, removing Lucy’s half-empty glass before she could refuse or protest and summoning the still-circulating waiter so that he could hand her a fresh glass.
On the other side of the room Marcus’s unwavering focus on her had hardened into a grim-mouthed coldness that caused Lucy’s hand to tremble so much she almost spilt her champagne.
‘If he’s thinking of commissioning Prêt a Party to do an event for him…’ she began, trying to move round so that she couldn’t see Marcus, and failing as he moved too.
‘No, what he’s got in mind is making an investment in Prêt a Party.’
‘What?’ Now she did spill a few drops of her champagne, before managing to take a steadying gulp of it.
‘Oh, yes. He’s a bit of an entrepreneur. He’s made absolutely stacks of money from this turnkey business he owns. You know the kind of thing…’ Johnny enlarged. ‘He employs cleaners, cooks, someone to wait in for the gas man, someone to collect your cleaning—all that kind of stuff—for these rich City types who can’t afford the time to do it themselves. He saw the spread in A-List Life, and heard that you’re my cousin, and he said that Prêt a Party is exactly the kind of investment he’s looking for. So I said I was seeing you today and that I’d sound you out.’
‘Johnny…’ Her head was spinning, and it didn’t occur to her to connect that with her unfamiliar consumption of champagne.
‘Why don’t you let him talk to you and tell you what he’s got in mind himself? I could give him your office phone number…’
When she had reflected that she needed a miracle she’d never imagined she would get one—and certainly not one of this potential magnitude. She felt positively light-headed with relief, almost dizzy.
‘Well, yes—okay, Johnny,’ she agreed gratefully.
‘Great.’ Johnny looked at his watch, announcing, ‘Lord, is that the time? I’ve got to go. His name’s Andrew Walker, by the way.’
She hadn’t finished her champagne, but she put her glass on the tray as the waiter went past, absent-mindedly picking up a fresh glass and wincing slightly as she did so. She knew she shouldn’t have worn these high heels. Shoes were Julia’s thing, not hers, and she had only been persuaded into buying the strappy sandals with their far
too high thin heels because they were the perfect shade of cornflower-blue to wear with one of her favourite dresses.
Unfortunately, though, they were not parquet-floor-friendly—especially when that floor had been polished in the old-fashioned way and was as slippery as an ice rink.
She looked round the room, but she couldn’t see either her parents or her brother, and she was just wondering if she could make her own escape when suddenly Marcus was standing in front of her, announcing grimly, ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’
Enough of what? Lucy wanted to ask him. Enough of loving you? Enough of wanting you and aching for you? Enough of dreaming of you whilst the man I married because I couldn’t have you slept in bed beside me? Enough of knowing that you are never ever going to love me? Oh, yes, she’d had enough of that.
‘Actually, Marcus, no—I don’t.’ The familiar pain was back, and it was intensifying with every second she had to spend in his company. It seared her and drove her, maddening her with its agonising ache so that she barely knew what she was saying.
Marcus was looking at her with familiar contempt and irritation. Lucy gasped in dismay as someone standing behind her accidentally bumped into her. The combined vertiginous effects of stilettos and Marcus-induced heartache was definitely not good for one’s balance, Lucy thought miserably, as Marcus gripped her arm firmly to steady her.
‘Just how much champagne have you had?’ Marcus demanded grimly.
‘Not enough,’ Lucy answered, with a flippancy she didn’t feel.
Marcus was looking at her with a blend of irritation and impatience. ‘You can hardly stand,’ he told her critically.
‘So what?’ Lucy tossed her head. She was defying Marcus—baiting him, in fact! What on earth was happening to her? She was winding him up, and pushing her luck as she did so. She knew that, but somehow she couldn’t help herself. Somehow she needed to see that look of angry irritation mixed with contempt in his eyes just to remind herself of the futility of dreaming impossible dreams.
