‘Of course, I would have to visit the school. Inspect it. See where my money would be allocated.’
Lizzy couldn’t help it; she burst out laughing and Louis frowned at her.
‘Care to share the joke?’ he said icily, which made her laugh even harder until tears gathered in the corners of her eyes and her jaw ached.
‘No, I won’t,’ she said, still catching her breath. ‘Somehow I don’t think you would find it very funny.’ She grinned at him and he felt his lips twitch in response.
‘Try me.’
‘Okay. Well, I was just trying to picture you at our school, having a look around in your flash suit and hand- made shoes. You wouldn’t match the decor, put it that way.’
‘I’m capable of dressing down.’ He had to reluctantly admit that the image was pretty amusing, even though he wasn’t ever accustomed to having the finger of fun pointed in his direction.
‘Designer shirt and designer loafers?’ Lizzy hazarded a guess. It felt dangerous and exhilarating to tease him. She had moved on from champagne to wine and she now polished off the rest of her glass and felt a little giddy, although the giddiness might have had something to do with the way he was looking at her.
‘I could run to an old rugby shirt and trainers if you’d prefer.’
‘No. You still wouldn’t match the decor. You’re too …’
‘Too.?’ Louis prompted, enjoying himself. ‘Too what? Too tall? Too dark-haired? Too rich, even in the dressed-down gear?’
‘Too good-looking!’
Those three words were like a shot of adrenaline. Suddenly sexual hunger sunk its teeth into him, ripping through his polished composure and making a nonsense of it. He was gripping the stem of his glass too tightly, threatening to shatter it. He carefully rested it on the wide ledge of the bay window and folded his arms.
‘You find me attractive?’
‘That’s not what I said! ‘
‘No?’
‘I mean, of course you’re an attractive man. You must know that.’
‘Don’t look so uncomfortable. There’s nothing wrong in admitting that you’re attracted to me. It’s mutual, in case you’re interested.’
Lizzy’s mind was a whirl. How had this conversation come round? How had they gone from discussing donations to the school to the laws of sexual attraction? Had he just told her what she thought he had?
One look at his face confirmed that. His body language was relaxed and at ease but his eyes blazed with desire, and she painfully admitted to herself that what she saw there was only a reflection of what she felt herself.
A soft sound escaped her lips. She wanted to tell him that they should return to the party, that they would be missed—or at least he would. She doubted any member of her family would be busy hunting her down. Instead, what she said was, ‘Sorry, but what did you just say?’
Louis smiled. His smile knocked her for six, and her head was still spinning as he lazily reached out and gave her a gentle tug, pulling her towards him.
His mouth as it hit hers had the effect of an open flame striking dry tinder. Without thinking, Lizzy stretched up, curling her arms around his neck, and lost herself in his kiss, which was hot and hard and urgent—in fact everything she had always secretly imagined a kiss should be but for her never had been.
His hand caressed her neck, tracing the delicate outline of her shoulder blades and tantalisingly playing with the neckline of her dress, a repeated seductive motion that made her want to groan out loud.
He pulled her back towards the darker reaches of the room, out of sight of anyone who might be walking past—although the conservatory was not in the main stream of traffic, and frankly where the food and alcohol lay the guests would be found. Which, thanks to the size of the house, was a distance away.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he whispered hoarsely, slipping his finger underneath the stretchy neckline and skimming it along the top of her breast. The sequinned lycra was thick and she wasn’t wearing a bra. The thought of that wreaked further havoc on his self-control.
For once, Lizzy had no desire to squash that compliment with a sarcastic rejoinder, even if the compliment probably had only arisen in the heat of the moment. She wanted to savour it and then store it away somewhere so that she could pull it out at a later date and savour it all over again.
She felt his hand caress her breast and gave a little squeal of pleasure.
‘We shouldn’t be doing this!’ she managed to gasp.
‘Reason being …?’
‘Reason being that we. We don’t even like each other.’
‘But we want each other.’
Lizzy pulled away as his hand found the soft swell of her breast. She was shaking like a leaf. A moment of madness! The cool air barely made an impression on her heated skin and she had to step away, arms folded protectively around her.
Want and like: two small words with a telling world of difference between them. For Louis, he didn’t have to like her to fancy her, and he didn’t have to like her to make love to her. Emotionally and intellectually, she was so unimportant to him that he could compartmentalise her away into a one-night stand.
And she had encouraged him. One touch and she had thrown herself at him faster than a jack-in-the-box.
Where was her pride? Shame and mortification gripped her.
‘What’s wrong?’ Louis raked his fingers through his hair and stared at her with brooding intensity.
‘Nothing.’ Two steps back and self-control was gathering pace, or at least she didn’t feel as though she had been put through the washer. ‘Neither of us should have … done what we did.’
‘We didn’t do anything!’ Louis grated. ‘Not nearly as much as both of us wanted to, and there’s no point denying it.’
Lizzy preferred to skirt round that and just focus on getting away from his stifling, suffocating presence. ‘I’m going to get back to the party now,’ she said in an even voice. ‘It would be rude of both of us not to put in an appearance at Nicholas’s party. He’s gone to all this trouble and I can’t imagine … Well, let’s just say we made a horrible mistake.’
Louis could hardly believe what he was hearing. Was this some sort of ploy—the tried and tested play-hard-to-get routine? But she was backing towards the door with determination and an expression of such mortified horror on her face that he couldn’t equate her response with any kind of ploy.
But she had wanted him. He had felt her quiver in his arms and when she had reached up to kiss him her mouth had been as hungry and as eager as his.
He shrugged and continued watching her. ‘If you want to call it a mistake, then that’s fine by me, but it’s just a matter of vocabulary.’ He took a step towards her and she immediately took two steps back. ‘The mistake happened and we both know that we want the mistake to happen again.’
‘Never in a million years.’
‘Don’t you know that you should never lay down a gauntlet like that?’
He gave her a crooked smile and with a sick, swooning feeling Lizzy turned on her heels and fled—literally. Until she reached the safe haven of the vast drawing-room with its noise, crowds and laughter and, thank Heavens, the familiarity of her sisters. Never had she been more delighted to see Maisie and Leigh, who had managed to gather a coterie of men around them.
She was even more delighted to spot Freddy, having been served with food by one of the eight waitresses manning three long tables literally groaning with delicacies. After her shattering encounter with Louis, his unthreatening, smiling face as he made a spot on the table next to him for her to sit was like a soothing balm which she instantly wanted to apply in the hope that it might alleviate her shredded nerves.
Going anywhere near her parents or Rose would definitely be a bad move. They would spot her frazzled appearance, and certainly neither her mother nor her sister would rest until they had unearthed the cause of it.
But Freddy. She felt herself relaxing as she dug into her food and listened to hi
m gossip about the people he knew who were at the party. People were drifting in groups towards the tables with their plates of food. Some had vanished out to other rooms. There was more than enough seating to accommodate everyone. Lizzy made herself focus entirely on Freddy, just in case her eyes started scouring the room of their own accord, hunting out Louis. She didn’t want to give in to the craven temptation.
‘Of course, all these people are here because of Louis,’ Freddy said bitterly. ‘Nicholas might have a lot of friends, and he might come from money, but Louis puts him in the shade. He’s the real mover and shaker, and if he says jump people just nod and ask how high? He wanted to showcase his latest pet project, so he clicked his fingers and, hey presto! Here is his audience, ready to give him feedback if he asks.’
‘You don’t like him much, do you?’
‘Do you?’
‘Is it because you don’t like your job in his company?’
Freddy’s mouth curled with derision. ‘I pretend to sit and do computer work. It’s not a job; it’s Louis’s way of paying for a clear conscience.’ He leaned towards her and she felt his blond hair practically brush her forehead. They were huddled together in an imitation of intimacy, and although her mind was still tangled over thinking about Louis, it felt good to be doing something as harmless as gossiping; if he wanted to gossip about Louis, then that felt good, too.
She decided that she wanted to hear about Freddy’s father. It seemed he had slaved for Louis’s father as his right-hand man, taking care of the vast mansion in which Louis had grown up. He had been promised before he died that his only son would have the cottage in which he had lived, and sufficient money to get off the ground, but none of that, seemingly, had come to anything when the old man had died. Louis had immediately handed the cottage over to his chauffeur and by way of money to Freddy had instead chucked him a dead-end job in one of his companies: no chance of promotion, no chance of utilising the media studies degree he had taken; barely sufficient money to make rent on a one-room flat in Bethnal Green.
With Louis, it was all about the money. She hadn’t been wrong about him! After four glasses of wine, Lizzy felt the warm glow of vindication.
She sneaked a glance around the room, which had thinned out as people had taken their food to other parts of the house, probably to the music room so that they could listen to the band as they ate. Through the open doors, the soulful strain of the jazz music was melodious and evocative.
Half-listening to Freddy on his soap box complaining about the injustice of the lot that had been dealt to him, Lizzy saw him across the room. There he was: talking to a leggy blonde in a long black dress who was hanging on to his every word with an expression of rapture on her face.
Just the sort of reaction he would expect as his due from a woman, Lizzy thought acidly, stabbing a prawn with her fork. And she had very nearly conformed to the role of bowled-over female, falling into his kiss like a sex-starved teenager!
Across the room, his eyes met hers and took in the cosy huddle. Lizzy met his narrowed stare defiantly. In fact, she found herself inching a little towards Freddy, the very picture of rapt interest in what was being said to her. Which, when she tuned in, was the tail end of something to do with the girl he had broken off with three weeks before.
Louis continued to stare at them over the rim of his glass as he sipped his wine, and with a toss of her head Lizzy looked away. But her nerves once again were all over the place and her mind had taken a crazy detour.
Was he going to sleep with the blonde tonight? They certainly looked good together: both tall, both striking, both with that invisible aura of self-confidence that always seemed to come naturally to those born with looks, grace and money.
A well-matched pair, in other words.
She was barely aware of Freddy, who had moved on from talking about his last girlfriend to a speculative conversation about Leigh—who had returned to the drawing room with an even more impressive entourage in tow. She appeared to be regaling them with tales of university life.
Lizzy suddenly felt exhausted. She wanted to go home and then she wanted to return to London. She wanted to feel the familiarity of her friends around her. Louis had challenged every inch of her comfort zone and she needed to return to a place where everything made sense.
Abruptly, she stood up and carefully placed her empty glass on the table, along with her plate. She vaguely noticed that Freddy seemed not in the least disconcerted by the fact that she had cut him off in mid-sentence and was preparing to go. His bright-blue eyes were focused elsewhere.
She left the room quickly, sidestepping her sisters, because Maisie had now joined Leigh and was triumphantly waving a bottle of champagne in the air to great cheers and laughter.
She didn’t know where Louis had gone; he was no longer in the room. She wondered whether he was in another part of the house, getting close to the blonde—and thanking his lucky stars that he hadn’t been foolish enough to lower himself into sleeping with a member of the grasping Sharp family, for whom he had nothing but disdain.
Hot, bothered and wrapped up in a hornet’s nest of unpleasant, uninvited thoughts, she didn’t see Louis. She should have because this time he hadn’t stolen up on her from behind; he was right there in front of her. But her head was down and she was hurrying, and she crashed into him with such vigour that he had to reach out and steady her. His hands stayed in a vice-like grip on her arms until she was staring up at him, incapable of going anywhere.
CHAPTER SIX
HARD on the heels of Louis, appearing like a rabbit from a magician’s hat, her mother materialised next to him. Lizzy hadn’t spotted her mother all evening. From the looks of it, she had been having a grand time. Someone had stuck a hat on her head, which she was now sporting in a jaunty fashion, and she was beaming like a Cheshire cat—although the smile fell away when she spotted her daughter.
Lizzy firmly pushed Louis away and steadied herself.
‘Where’s Dad?’ she asked in an accusing voice.
‘He’s helping himself to seconds. Fantastic food!’ She turned her smile to Louis, who smiled back in polite acknowledgment of the compliment. ‘Have you been drinking, Lizzy? You look a little green round the gills.’
Which provided her with the perfect excuse. ‘I do feel a little under par, Mum …’ She threw her mother a wan smile and ignored Louis who was standing on the sidelines, his arms folded, his eyebrows raised. ‘And I don’t want to drag anyone away from a good time, so I thought I might just take the car and head home. I’m sure you’ll be able to cadge a lift back with the Robinsons, and Maisie and Leigh can fend for themselves; there are a hundred boys here who look like they would jump at the chance.’
‘You’re not leaving already, are you?’ Her mother sounded as horrified as if she had just jumped on a table and begun a striptease. ‘It’s not even midnight yet!’
‘There’s no need for you to worry, Mrs Sharp.’ Louis inserted himself smoothly into the conversation. ‘If Lizzy isn’t feeling well, then of course she must go home.’
Lizzy looked at him narrowly, torn between healthy suspicion and gratitude for getting her off the hook.
‘And I would be delighted to deliver her back to your house in one piece. Or, of course,’ he mused thoughtfully, turning to her, ‘you could always stay here overnight. You’re familiar with the layout of the house and I can make sure that you have the same room as you had last time. Naturally, it won’t be quite as peaceful. There are a considerable number of people staying over.’
‘I’m fine driving back.’
‘Are you? You’ve been drinking.’
‘So have you.’
‘I’ve spent a lot of time nursing two drinks, interspersed with gallons of water.’ He turned to Grace. ‘I’m more than capable of driving your daughter home, leaving you all here to enjoy yourselves.’
Lizzy plastered a stiff smile on her face while she made her excuses to Rose and Nicholas. She was the first guest to leav
e; she could feel Jessica’s eyes stonily watching her as she and Louis disappeared from the party.
‘There was no need.’ She turned to him as soon as they were outside. Even with her cape wrapped cosily around her, she could still feel the bitter, crisp cold.
She wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. Louis knew that he was acting wildly out of character, but for the first time in living memory something other than pure, cold reason had motivated his behaviour.
Lizzy Sharp made no sense on every count. He had descended on Crossfeld with the aim of firstly checking out his investment—even though the detailed reports sent to him already guaranteed a successful venture, even with the money that needed to be poured into it. Secondly, and more importantly, on checking out Rose Sharp.
He had checked out Rose Sharp. He had checked out her family background and their financial situation. He had watched, and his conclusions were right. Rose Sharp, as per the entire family, was primarily motivated by the considerable advancement to her status that marriage to Nicholas would entail. Even if there was something about the girl that was so genuine that it beggared belief.
Why would Lizzy Sharp be anything else? She was stubborn and mouthy—which he normally wouldn’t have associated with someone who wanted to worm her way towards anyone’s bank balance—but the fact remained that she was part of the Sharp family. He should have cornered her with his suspicions and then left it alone. But he hadn’t been able to. For reasons he couldn’t begin to deduce, she had got under his skin, even though it was a distraction he really didn’t need.
Lord, it wasn’t as though there weren’t enough women who would have been more than happy to fill his bed if he wanted.
But his mind, for once, was at odds with his body. He had done very little but watch her during the course of the evening, and when he had found himself alone with her in the conservatory he had been unable to control the impulse to kiss her. The fact that she had responded had fired up something in him that had not seen the light of day for a long time.
In Want of a Wife? Page 9
