The Mistress Assignment

by Jordan, Penny

  ‘Kelly, you’re on our table! What a coincidence!’ Julian was exclaiming with very evident pleasure as he walked up.

  Demurely Kelly said nothing, instead simply smiling at him from beneath down-swept lashes.

  Half an hour later, when they had all been served with their main courses, Kelly acknowledged that Julian was even less likeable than she had previously guessed. Ignoring his girlfriend to flirt with her, he had progressed from blatantly sexually motivated compliments to the kind of sensual innuendo which Kelly found teeth-grittingly unwelcome.

  Her conscience overcoming her sense of duty, she leaned across the table to ask Eve gently how long she had been living in the town and if she liked it.

  ‘It’s very pretty,’ was her slightly hesitant response, and Kelly didn’t miss the way she looked first at her brother before replying to her, as though seeking either his support or his approval.

  Kelly felt distinctly sorry for her. She was no match for a man of Julian’s unwholesome calibre, that much was more than evident to her, and Kelly hadn’t missed the way she had bitten her lip once or twice when Julian’s compliments to herself had pointedly underlined just how sexually attractive he found her.

  ‘What do you do?’ Kelly asked her, trying to draw her out a little, but it seemed she had asked the wrong question because immediately the younger woman flushed and looked helplessly at her brother before replying.

  ‘Oh, nothing... I’m afraid my art degree isn’t... doesn’t...’

  Her voice trailed away and Julian cut in boastfully, ‘Eve doesn’t need to work, do you, my sweet? She has her own income...a trust fund...’

  As he spoke he reached for her hand and squeezed it, lifting it to his lips to kiss her fingers in what Kelly considered to be an excessively exaggerated and insincere manner, but to judge from the pretty pink blush that coloured Eve’s pale skin she didn’t seem to find anything wrong with his manner towards her.

  What would she say, Kelly wondered grimly, if she knew that whilst he was kissing her fingers his other hand was resting meaningfully on Kelly’s chiffon-clad knee, and she had in fact just had to edge determinedly away from him to stop him from rubbing his leg potentially even more intimately against hers?

  He really was totally repulsive, Kelly acknowledged with repugnance as she started to rum towards Harry, stopping when unexpectedly Brough Frobisher entered the conversation, telling her coolly, ‘As a matter of fact, Eve works for me. What about you? What do you do?’

  Before Kelly could answer him, the Master of Ceremonies called on them for silence whilst their host made a speech.

  Gratefully Kelly got to her feet, glad to have the opportunity to shake off Julian’s wandering hand. Her dislike of him was growing by the minute—and not just on her own behalf. The minute Julian had mentioned Eve’s trust fund Kelly had immediately been aware from his avaricious expression just where the other girl’s attraction for him lay. Poor thing, like Beth before her she was obviously too unworldly and naive to see through him, but surely her brother must be able to recognise just what Julian was like.

  Although he had listened in silence to Julian’s conversation throughout the meal, more of an observer than a participator, Kelly had been keenly aware of the intensity of his silent scrutiny of them all. Was she being over-sensitive in thinking that he had been particularly watchful where she was concerned? At one point, just before the Master of Ceremonies had provided his welcome diversion, Kelly had actually felt as though Brough Frobisher’s gaze was somehow burning a laser-like beam right through the table to where Julian’s hand was resting on her leg. Not that she had wanted it to be there. She gave a small shudder. He repulsed her now even more than he had done before.

  ‘I can’t encourage him. I don’t like him. He’s loathsome,’ she had protested despairingly to Dee last night.

  ‘All you have to do is let him think that you’re interested in him,’ Dee had soothed her. ‘All we need is for him to show himself in his true colours so that we can...’

  ‘So that we can what?’ Kelly had pounced, but Dee had simply given her a mysterious smile.

  The speeches were almost over; the Master of Ceremonies had announced that there would be dancing in the ballroom. Hopefully then she would be able to escape Julian’s unwelcome attentions, since he would be duty-bound to dance with Eve.

  ‘Your lipstick’s all gone and your hair needs brushing,’ she heard Julian saying critically to Eve as the speaker sat down.

  ‘I’m afraid Eve doesn’t really have much idea about how to dress properly. She isn’t into designer clothes. I dare say you didn’t have much change out of a thousand pounds when you bought yours?’ he questioned, and Kelly knew from the look in his eyes that the news of her supposed inheritance had already reached him via that mysterious ‘grapevine’ Dee seemed to know so much about. As he spoke Julian’s glance slid from Kelly’s eyes to her mouth, and he murmured in a much lower voice, ‘Mind you, one has to admit the poor darling doesn’t exactly have the right kind of raw material... unlike you... Has anyone ever told you that you have the most amazingly sexy eyes...and mouth...?’

  Kelly had to fight to suppress the dark tide of colour threatening to betray her feelings. It wasn’t embarrassment that was driving the hot blood up under her skin, but anger. How dared he behave so insultingly towards his girlfriend? No wonder she was looking so unhappy. But that was no reason for her brother to give her, Kelly, such a contemptuously angry look. She wasn’t the one who was responsible for Eve’s humiliation.

  ‘I was just going to go to the Ladies to tidy up myself,’ she fibbed, smiling warmly at Eve. ‘Do you want to come with me?’

  ‘Oh, yes...’

  Smiling with relief, Eve got up to accompany her.

  ‘Have you known Julian long?’ she asked Kelly shyly as they stood side by side in the elegantly decorated cloakroom, studying their reflections in the mirrors in front of them.

  ‘Mmm...quite a while,’ Kelly responded.

  ‘He’s a very special person, isn’t he?’ Eve enthused, her eyes shining with emotion, her expression betraying just how deeply involved with him she was.

  Kelly’s tender heart ached for her, and she only just managed to resist the impulse to tell her exactly what she thought of Julian Cox and why. Instead she asked, ‘What about you? Have you known him long?’

  ‘Er, no...not really... That is...’ She paused and then said in a breathless rush, ‘He’s asked me to marry him. Everything’s happened so quickly between us that I still can’t quite... It’s quite a frightening feeling when you fall in love, isn’t it?’ she asked Kelly with a small, poignant smile. ‘This is the first time that I... Brough thinks it’s too soon... Julian gets quite cross with me sometimes because he thinks I rely too much on Brough, but he’s taken care of me ever since our parents died and...

  ‘I haven’t met many of Julian’s friends yet,’ she confided, changing the subject slightly. ‘Julian says that he wants to keep me...us...to himself for a little while...’ She smiled and blushed. ‘He’s so very romantic and loving.’

  Oh, yes, Kelly wanted to agree sarcastically. So very romantic and loving that he broke my best friend’s heart, just the same way he is probably going to break yours. But caution made her hold her tongue.

  How much did Eve know about Julian’s relationship with Beth?

  Along with the revulsion and dislike Julian had aroused within her was a growing sense of anger and an unexpected surge of desire to protect Eve from suffering the same fate as Beth. Perhaps she herself was a rather stronger and more determined character than she had previously realised, Kelly acknowledged. With every word that Eve spoke she could feel an increasing awareness of how right Dee was to want to have Julian exposed in his true colours, and an increasing desire to help achieve that goal, even if it meant putting herself in an unpleasant, but thankfully temporary, position. Much as it went against the grain with her to subtly encourage Julian’s amorous advances, much as she d
isliked the role she was being called upon to play, there was a real purpose to it.

  Checking her own freshly applied lipstick, she gave Eve a warm smile.

  ‘Don’t let Julian bully you,’ she advised her.

  The younger girl’s face went scarlet.

  ‘Oh, he doesn’t. He isn’t... It’s just that he’s used to women who are so very much more glamorous than me and of course he wants...expects...’

  ‘If he loves you then he must love you just the way you are,’ Kelly pointed out, but she could see from Eve’s expression that she did not want to hear what Kelly was trying to say.

  Perhaps when she saw exactly what kind of man Julian really was she’d realise just how unworthy of her love he was. Kelly certainly hoped so.

  Brough frowned thoughtfully as he watched his sister and Kelly weaving their way back through the crowd to their table. Kelly puzzled him and, yes, if he was honest, intrigued him as well.

  Having watched the way she behaved towards Julian, subtly encouraging his advances, it would be easy to assume that she was an extremely sophisticated and worldly young woman who was used to using her undeniable feminine sensuality and attractiveness to get whatever she wanted from life—whoever she wanted from life, regardless of whether or not the man in question was attached to someone else. But Brough had also observed the way she behaved towards her escort, Harry, and to his own sister, and there was no denying that with them she displayed a warmth, a consideration, an awareness and respect for their feelings that couldn’t possibly be anything other than genuine.

  One woman, two diametrically opposite types of behaviour. Which of them revealed the real Kelly, and why should it be so important to him to find out? Not, surely, just because the man she was making a play for was the same man her sister claimed to be in love with? After all, there was nothing he wanted more than for something, someone, to make his sister see just how unworthy of her Julian Cox actually was.

  Discreetly he studied Kelly. Her dress was expensive, and fitted her as though it had been made for her, but something, some experienced male instinct, told him that she was not quite so comfortable and at home in it as she wanted others to believe. Every now and again she gave a betraying glance down at herself, rather in the manner of a little girl uncertain of the wisdom of wearing her mother’s borrowed clothes. As Julian had so admiringly pointed out, she was immaculately groomed, but personally Brough would have rather liked to see her dressed casually in jeans, her skin free of make-up, her wonderful hair soft and tousled and her even more wonderful eyes and mouth...

  His eyebrows snapped grimly together as he recognised the direction his thoughts were taking. It was a long time since a woman had attracted him as powerfully or as immediately as Kelly—or as dangerously. On two counts. If she was the type of woman she was portraying to attract Julian Cox’s attention, then she was most decidedly not his type. And if she wasn’t...if that unexpected and alluringly enticing chink of vulnerability and uncertainty he had so briefly glimpsed beneath the sophisticated image she was trying to portray was the real Kelly...then that would make it even more imperative that he didn’t involve himself in any way with her. His life was already complicated enough as it was, with Eve. One day he would marry, settle down, with a nice, calm, sensible girl—a woman who did not pretend to be something she wasn’t.

  Of course, there was one way he could probably find out just what sort of woman Kelly really was. The way a woman responded, reacted, to a man’s first kiss could say an awful lot about just what kind of person she was, Brough mused.

  His frown deepened. What on earth was he thinking? There was no way he could justify that kind of behaviour—or those kinds of thoughts.

  His last serious relationship had been when he was in his very early twenties. He had thought himself in love—had thought that she loved him. They had met at university and then she had taken a year out to travel while Brough had stayed at home to be near Eve. When they had met up again both of them had been forced to acknowledge that whatever they’d had had gone.

  Since then he had dated...there had been women...but by the time he had reached thirty he had decided that he must be the kind of man in whom logic and responsibility always won out over passion and impetuosity. And so he was...wasn’t he?

  ‘I want to dance with you.’ Kelly’s heart sank as she saw from the loaded, explicitly sexual way that Julian was regarding her as he spoke to her just how successful Dee’s plan had been. There was no doubt just what was on Julian’s mind, even without the heavy, lingering glance he gave her breasts.

  He was being too obvious, too potentially hurtful to Eve and insulting towards her, Kelly decided as she shook her head and reminded him, ‘You haven’t danced with Eve yet...’

  ‘I don’t want to dance with her, I want to dance with you,’ Julian insisted as he reached out to raise her from her seat.

  Unhappily Kelly fought her conscience. This was too much, and inexcusable. Just how much wine had Julian had to drink? she wondered uneasily, wishing that Harry hadn’t chosen just that moment to disappear.

  ‘Kelly has already promised this dance to me.’

  The interruption from Brough Frobisher was just as unexpected as his coolly uttered, authoritative fib.

  Without allowing Julian the opportunity either to protest or argue, Brough came over to her, holding out his hand. Shakily Kelly stood up. She didn’t particularly want to dance with him, but dancing with him was infinitely preferable to having to dance with Julian.

  Good manners suggested that she ought to thank Brough Frobisher for rescuing her, but to do so would surely be to step out of the role Dee had cast for her and, perhaps even worse, to give him the opportunity to point out that she herself had been actively encouraging Julian to believe that she was interested in him.

  ‘Your sister is very sweet,’ she commented awkwardly as Brough led her onto the floor.

  ‘Sweet?’ His dark eyebrows lifted as he gave her an appraising look. ‘An excess of sweetness can be unpleasantly cloying. I don’t consider her to be sweet, rather a little too naive and vulnerable. How long have you known Cox?’

  His abrupt question caught her off guard.

  ‘Er...a while... He...we’re old friends,’ she stammered, boldly remembering her role.

  ‘Old friends,’ he repeated, stressing the word as he looked hard at her. ‘I see.’

  Kelly hoped devoutly that he did no such thing.

  As they reached the dance floor he touched her lightly on the arm, turning her expertly towards him. The band was playing a slow, intimate dance number, and immediately she felt his arm go round her Kelly tensed.

  It wasn’t that she wasn’t used to dancing in close proximity to a man, it was just that somehow it was unnerving with this man—

  ‘Enlighten me,’ he was saying to her. ‘What exactly is it about Cox that quite patently makes him so attractive to your sex?’

  Kelly glanced warily up at him. He was immaculately dressed and she could just catch the scent of the very masculine cologne he was wearing, she noted approvingly. Julian’s apparent addiction to very strong and no doubt trendy aftershave was not to her personal taste at all. But despite Brough’s elegant grooming she suspected that without the shave he must have had before coming out this evening his very thick and very dark hair must mean that most evenings his jaw must be shadowed and slightly rough to the touch, adding a delicious extra frisson of sensuality to being kissed by him, especially if you were a woman who, like her, possessed slightly sensitive skin.

  Appalled by the direction of her own unruly thoughts, Kelly realised that she had still not answered his question.

  ‘Er...Julian likes women,’ she told him lamely.

  Immediately his eyebrows rose.

  ‘He certainly does,’ he agreed silkily. ‘Doesn’t that bother you? In my experience, most women prize loyalty and exclusivity in a relationship...’

  ‘Julian is simply a friend,’ Kelly reminded him sharply.r />
  ‘A very intimate friend?’ Brough pressed.

  He was digging too deep, questioning her too closely, Kelly recognised, and in order to answer him she was either going to have to commit herself to more lies or risk betraying the fiction she was creating.

  ‘It’s hot in here,’ she complained, pulling free of him. ‘I need some fresh air.’

  It wasn’t entirely untrue; she was hot and the terrace she could see beyond the ballroom’s open French windows did offer a much needed escape from the cause of that heat—which was not so much the air in the ballroom as the presence of the man beside her and her own feelings of trepidation and guilt.

  As she headed for the terrace, it didn’t occur to Kelly that he would follow her. She could guess from the way he had been questioning her just what he thought of her, and she knew that in refusing to answer him she had equally plainly confirmed those suspicions.

  It was a relief to reach the cool shadows of the terrace, and, avoiding the other couples strolling its length, Kelly turned instead to descend the flight of stone steps that led into the garden.

  She was almost at the bottom when a sharp stone underfoot caused her to stumble, but instead of experiencing the ignominy of falling to her knees on the gravel pathway she was scooped up in a pair of hard male arms and she heard Brough’s voice against her ear telling her calmly, ‘It’s all right, I’ve got you...’

  He certainly had, and it seemed he had no intention of letting her go, either. Against her body she could feel the heavy thud of his heartbeat as he helped her to her feet but still continued to hold onto her. Disconcertingly her own heart suddenly started to race, and she discovered that she was finding it hard to breathe.

  ‘Did you twist your ankle? Can you put your weight on it?’

  ‘My ankle...’ Dizzily Kelly looked up into his eyes, and then at his mouth, and then foolishly she did exactly the same thing again. The effect on her nervous system was like a shock wave of mega-force, a subterranean uprising of such intensity that it blew every fuse on her internal alarm system—and then some.