by Kate Hardy
‘If you knew Susanna, the very last word you would use to describe her would be poor.’
‘Still…’ Rose allowed that one little word to drop into the silence.
Looking at her, Nick momentarily forgot Lily’s presence. ‘Still…what?’
‘Must be awful to break up with someone you care about in front of other people. I always think that when I open the newspapers and they’re full of some poor celebrity couple who end up being forced to wash all their dirty linen in public. And in a way, that’s not even as bad as the dirty linen being washed in front of friends…she must have been feeling pretty desperate…’
Lily was watching this interchange with a certain amount of bewilderment.
‘And on that note…’ Nick stood up. Surprisingly, exchanging barbs with Rose had so completely absorbed his attention that nothing else had occupied his mind. Not Susanna, not work, and he had completely forgotten Lily’s presence even though she had been standing in his direct line of vision.
‘Oh, dear…leaving so soon? Well, shall I call a cab for you? You won’t find one here, you know. It’s not central enough. Lily…’ Rose looked at her sister ‘…you look done in. Why don’t you hit the sack and I’ll wait up until Nick leaves?’
‘Don’t be silly, Rose.’ She yawned widely. ‘How can I invite Nick here for a nightcap and then disappear off to bed?’
‘I have already given him a nightcap. It was called a cup of coffee.’
‘Rose doesn’t do an awful lot of drinking…’ Lily smiled at Nick ‘…do you, Rosie?’
‘I’m sure Mr Papaeliou isn’t interested in my alcohol consumption.’ Lord, but she sounded prim and proper.
‘The name’s Nick,’ Nick said irritably.
Rose ignored him. ‘There. You’re falling asleep on your feet, Lily. Go to bed. I’ll see Mr Pa…Nick…out.’
‘Well…’
‘I can lie in in the morning,’ Rose insisted. ‘You know you always go to the gym first thing.’
‘S’pose…’
Rose guided her sister in the direction of the staircase so that the temptation of bed was just a little more irresistible. ‘Well nothing. You’ve been on your feet for the better part of the day while I’ve been here, just lolling around and taking it easy.’
‘If you’re sure…’
Oh, boy, Rose was absolutely sure. She gave Nick a gimlet-eyed stare, but as soon as Lily had vanished up the stairs he removed his jacket and lounged against the wall, looking at her.
Rose, all at once and unbidden, became acutely conscious of her inappropriate garb. Something about the subdued lighting in the hall, the knowledge that Lily was upstairs, probably about to crawl into bed, the way he was looking at her in that perfectly still way…She tightened her dressing gown around her and clung onto her virtuous sense of authority. Revealing even a glimpse of her nightwear, namely pyjamas patterned with prancing reindeer, which had been given to her as a Christmas present by a friend who specialised in silly gifts, would undermine everything she now wanted to convey.
‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, moving towards her, which, for some reason, she found horribly disconcerting, ‘you’re about to resume your attack, having frogmarched Lily to bed.’
‘I did not frogmarch her.’
‘As good as. So come on, then, let’s call a taxi and get it over and done with.’ He followed her into the kitchen, watched as she sat down and scrolled through the address book on her mobile phone, then made the call. While she did, she looked at Nick and tried not to let his presence overwhelm her, because even after such a brief spell in his company she knew, could just sense, that he was the sort of man who could inspire abject fear should he want to. Not exactly a people person, she thought nastily. The sort of man who picked up women and dropped them without a backward glance or a twinge of guilt. Like the poor Susanna who had been fired up enough to make a fool of herself in front of her friends.
They had fifteen minutes to talk and Rose wasn’t going to waste a single one of those minutes, but before she could utter a word Nick strolled towards her, cornering her in her chair so that she could feel the full, undiluted power of his personality.
‘But before you say anything, I think it’s my turn, don’t you?’ He smiled.
Rose refused to be intimidated. Just who did he think he was anyway? She made herself breathe evenly. Up close like this, his eyes were the deepest of greens, the colour of the fathomless sea. Right now the fathomless sea was revealing some very icy depths.
‘I think you should get a life,’ Nick said grimly, ‘and let your sister lead her own. Is it natural for you to wait up for her like a mother hen? Making sure she gets home safe and sound? You may think it natural. I, on the other hand, consider it sad, as would most people.’ He couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. Did he care what this woman thought of him? Did he care what anyone thought of him? True freedom, he had always thought, was the freedom from caring about other people’s opinions. So why the hell was a pair of defiant blue eyes making him want to justify himself?
Rose blushed and for a few seconds was lost for words. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she knew that he was making sense, but looking out for Lily was a habit born of time and one that she couldn’t seem to let go. Their parents, her mother and stepfather, had died when they were still very young and they had gone to live with their aunt and uncle who were, as they were fond of saying, travellers in search of the meaning of life. Rose had discovered that this basically meant that they moved from pillar to post at a whim, with the practical concerns of two young people being only a minor technical hitch.
Nearly seven years older than her stepsister, Rose had been the sensible one who had made sure that Lily had someone grounded to whom she could turn and so, from the age of ten, she had become accustomed to looking out for her sister. But now Lily was twenty-two. Did she really still need the sensible older sister to wait up for her?
‘I don’t care what you think.’
‘What do you think your sister would say if she knew that you were warning me away?’
‘I think she would see it for the loving gesture that it is.’
‘Or maybe she might see it as an infringement of her right to lead her life the way she sees fit.’
‘Who are you,’ Rose spluttered, ‘to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do?’
‘Well, not a male model nor an actor, nor, for that matter, a seedy film director with an empty casting couch.’ He moved away from her chair and sat down, but pulling the kitchen chair close to hers so that there was no escaping his stifling presence. Where was he going with this particular piece of justification? he wondered.
‘I don’t care what job you do, Mr Papaeliou…’
‘I’m in finance, as a matter of fact. And believe me, when it comes to women, I don’t need to entice them with an empty casting couch.’
‘Whatever you do doesn’t change the fact that you’re a man who can break up traumatically with a woman, look around you, and within minutes be on the trail of another notch for your bedpost.’
Nick was enraged. Never had he been the object of such an unprecedented attack by someone who didn’t know him. Without vanity or pride, he could say that people tiptoed around him, the only exceptions being women at the end of a relationship who could, like Susanna, become hysterical and accusatory, but that was something he had always easily dealt with because, and his conscience was utterly clear on this point, he never made the mistake of making promises he would later fail to keep. He never spoke of love or allowed ideas of permanence and commitment to blur the edges of a relationship. He was speechless now at her sweeping assumptions, but absolutely through with defending himself and he stood up and began walking out of the kitchen while Rose gathered herself and followed him.
She had exhausted her argument and now there was nothing left to be said. Nick obviously thought the same thing because he stuck on his coat in silence, only looking at her when he was about to
leave, with his hand on the door knob, in fact.
Rose pulled her dressing gown even tighter around her. In the half light, the man was frighteningly sexy and she felt an unwelcome shiver race down her spine, like the light, trailing touch of a finger. No, he certainly wouldn’t need an empty casting couch to attract women, she thought. He just had to look at them. She harnessed her thoughts back to her sister and primly congratulated herself on spotting a heartbreaker and trying to do something about it.
‘Thanks for the coffee,’ he said coldly, ‘and the warning. Take a tip from me—get a life, spend your Saturdays doing something and then maybe you wouldn’t work yourself up into a lather over your sister and what she’s getting up to. I’ll wait outside for the cab.’
With that he opened the door and, with perfect timing, the taxi pulled up.
Infuriated and insulted he might be, but Nick was hardly aware of the drive back to his house. There was a message on his answering machine. He played it back to discover that it was from Susanna, apologising in a trembling voice. He erased it without bothering to hear it fully out.
Damned Rose! Lurching out of nowhere like a furious little avenging angel, and now he couldn’t erase her from his mind. Experienced as Nick was in compartmentalising his personal life, he was sourly aware that the abrasive woman had rubbed him the wrong way to such an extent that he spent the better part of what remained of the night brooding and not even thoughts of work were sufficiently tantalising a distraction.
The furious avenging angel, less furious now as she lay in bed some twenty minutes after she had slammed the front door behind him, stared up at the ceiling and glumly admitted to herself that the man had got under her skin. Get a life. The taunt rankled because it had hit its target with the unswerving accuracy of a guided missile. Twenty-nine years old, as good as, and here she was, wearing ridiculous pyjamas and still playing caretaker to a sister who no longer needed caretaking.
Where had all the party times gone? Had there been any? Tony and Flora, as her aunt and uncle had insisted they be called, had done everything to encourage a wild and carefree lifestyle. Life, she had been told so often that she knew the script off by heart, was a wonderful and exciting place to be approached with curiosity and zest. Education was fine within reason, but the greater education was the Education of Life,which could loosely be translated into The Lifestyle of a Nomad. It had suited Tony and Flora but to Rose it spelt sickening upheavals and she had fought a rearguard action through her quiet rebellions. She had developed an aversion to pulses and soya and had insisted on burgers and fries, had immersed herself in her books, studying until her aunt and uncle had finally stopped telling her to go out and have some fun, had refused to wear the gypsy skirts and patchwork coats garnered from Oxfam shops, more through a healthy sense of self-preservation than personal dislike, and had made sure that Lily was as grounded as it was possible for her to be considering their weird lifestyle.
And in between all that, the parties had never happened and by the time Tony and Flora had zoomed off in their camper van, headed for the Cornish coast, where they still now lived, the ability to abandon herself to the freedom of youth had slipped past her. She had gone to university, worked hard and set her sights on achieving everything that she felt she had lacked in her formative years. Security.
Very important. For her. And for Lily. Even if Lily gave no thought to it. With the sort of lifestyle that she led, doing jobs off and on, trying out for parts in plays or commercials, most of which she never got, she needed at least one area in her life upon which she could rely and, having seen her sister on her roller-coaster rides with unsuitable men, Rose was determined to make sure that she at least provided Lily with a core of emotional stability in her chaotic world.
Of course, rushing in with dire words of warning the day after wasn’t going to work, so Rose prudently decided to leave the matter alone for a while and then, on one of the rare nights when they were both in and sharing a bowl of pasta without Lily having to rush off or Rose having to work late, she said, tentatively, ‘Seen anything more of that guy…can’t quite remember his name…the one who brought you back after that party a couple of weeks ago…?’
Lily, twirling some spaghetti round her fork, looked at Rose and grinned. ‘You mean Nick, Nick Papaeliou…how on earth could you have forgotten his name, Rosie? I don’t think anyone’s ever forgotten his name before. I’ve seen him twice, actually.’
Rose spluttered on a mouthful of pasta and cleared her throat with some water. ‘Twice! That’s twice more than I thought you had, considering you never mentioned a word to me.’
‘I meant to tell you, Rosie, but…’
‘But what?’ she asked casually, thinking of that dark, cynical face and stabbing an errant mushroom with her fork. She was reading guilt in the way her sister’s eyes shifted away from her.
‘I just thought you might give me a hard time. Nick got the impression that you didn’t much care for him.’
‘Me?’ Rose laughed carelessly. ‘Rubbish—the man’s obviously paranoid.’
‘Oh, Nick wouldn’t be paranoid about anything, Rosie. I mean…he’s got everything anyone could ever want or need. Apparently you thought that he was a two-bit actor.’ Lily giggled. ‘Wish I could have been a fly on the wall to have seen his expression when you said that. He looked outraged even when he repeated it to me.’
‘I admit I may have mistaken him for someone in the acting profession,’ Rose said carefully. ‘I don’t mean to sound the alarm bells unnecessarily, Lily, but he didn’t strike me as the most reliable man in town.’
‘What do you mean—“reliable”?’
‘Oh, the steady-as-a-rock kind. I just think that it’s so easy to be impressed by someone for all the wrong reasons. They may be good looking or rich…and in fact they could just be bad news.’
‘And I do have a history of going with the wrong guys,’ Lily admitted ruefully, which was Rose’s cue to breathe a sigh of relief and nod her head in vigorous agreement. ‘But you’re quite mistaken about Nick, Rosie. Honestly, I’m not impressed by how he looks or what he has…he’s just a very nice guy.’
Nice? Nice? Were they talking about the same human being?
Then it occurred to her that he probably was a very nice man to Lily. A stunning face and a sexy body probably turned him into a very nice man indeed. On the other hand, he had had no reason to be nice to her and so had shown his true colours. He could give lessons on arrogance if her sister only but knew.
‘If you got to know him a little bit better, then you would agree with me, you really would. In fact…’
‘Um?’
‘Well, I was going to actually mention this to you later…but…and this is the sort of guy he is, really cool…he’s invited both of us to a bit of a bash next Saturday. Even though you called him a two bit actor…’ another mini fit of giggles giving Rose a breather in which to digest this bolt from the blue ‘…he still stressed that he wanted us both to go along. Isn’t that sweet? We’ll have to go shopping. Apparently he’s having something small at a very exclusive club he owns…anybody who’s anybody’s going to be there. And us! How exciting is that?’
‘Not very,’ Rose said, panicked. ‘I mean…I’m not sure at all…I don’t think…’ Just the thought of something small at a very exclusive club owned by Nick Papaeliou was enough to bring her out in a cold sweat.
‘I won’t let you just write him off without a second chance, Rosie.’ Then Lily pulled out the most ancient emotional trump card in the deck. ‘If you really cared about me the way you say you do, then you’ll come…’
CHAPTER TWO
NICK HELPED HIMSELF to another drink. He felt restless. The party that had been arranged specifically for the benefit of Lily, though that was something she would never know, was in full swing. He had asked all the movers and shakers in the world of theatre, teased their palates by throwing in a few big names in business, the sort of men and women who were interested in promo
ting the Arts and were willing to put their money where their mouth was, and the supermodels were really the icing on the cake.
Not a single person had declined the invitation, even though it was very much a last-minute affair. Parties thrown by him were few and far between and had enough cachet to attract even the most sought-after celebrities.
Unfortunately, the belle of the ball, so to speak, had still not arrived. Nor had her sister.
Nick’s gaze strayed once more to the door and he looked at his watch. It didn’t take a genius to work out why they were late. Rose had either decided not to come or else had employed delaying tactics. It would have been a hell of a lot easier if he had not asked her along, but his memory of their last encounter had preyed on his mind and eventually he had worked out that inviting her, letting her see for herself how little he needed to pursue a woman because of her looks, would even out the score. She had dismissed him and Nick Papaeliou didn’t like being dismissed. He particularly didn’t like being dismissed for the wrong reasons.
He was still staring at the door when it opened. He saw Lily first, exquisite in a pale blue dress that was very simple, just a short silky shift with a very respectable round collar, saw her look round the room, searching him out, and he found himself trying to stare behind her to see whether Rose had come or not.
He finished his drink and headed towards them and as he neared them he saw her, half ducking behind the door.
‘You’re here.’ A warm smile for Lily and then he stepped around her to where Rose was nervously hovering just out of sight of the crowd. ‘And so are you. I’m surprised. I thought you might decide that this wasn’t the sort of thing you were interested in attending.’
How right he was. Over four days, Rose had made several futile attempts to wriggle out of her sister’s rash promise that they would both be overjoyed to attend whatever posh party Nick had arranged. She had valiantly plugged the Nothing To Wear excuse, which had been overruled before it had even had time to gain the necessary momentum, then had come a pious, self-sacrificing But I Wouldn’t Want To Get In Your Way, and when that had fallen on deaf ears she had resorted to the truth, which was that she was totally uninterested in those sorts of things, big parties full of people talking at one another and peering around to see if somebody more interesting happened to be lurking on the horizon.