by Jill Mansell
It was like dancing with a cyberman. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Sam in her ear. ‘I can’t do this. I just don’t dance with my customers.’
‘I can see why,’ Izzy replied, disappointed by the temporary setback. She was doing her best, the slow, sensual music was - God knows - doing its best, but Sam remained as unrelaxed as it was possible for a cyberman to be. ‘And I’m not even a real customer,’ she chided, ‘so I shouldn’t count.’
‘I know, I know. But people are watching.’ Sam wondered if Izzy had any idea how uncomfortable she was making him feel. Furthermore, how was it possible that she was able to dance with such apparent decorum - their bodies were barely touching, for heaven’s sake - while at the same time managing to give him the distinct impression that this was more of a seduction than a dance?
‘Your reputation will be in tatters,’ she murmured, moving fractionally closer so that he could breathe in her scent. ‘You know what women assume about men who can’t dance.’
‘I can dance,’ replied Sam through gritted teeth. ‘I just can’t do it here.’
‘Oh.’ Izzy smiled. ‘So, where exactly can you do it?’
‘What?’
‘Go on, prove it.’
Something was definitely going on. There was a deceptive innocence about her eyes, yet at the same time she looked as if she was bursting with the most marvellous secret. As the music ended, Sam reached for her hand and led her off the dance floor, resolutely ignoring the looks of intrigue he was receiving from regular customers.
When they reached his office on the first floor he steered Izzy inside and closed the door firmly behind him.
‘Right.What’s this all about?’
‘Alfieee,’ sang Izzy under her breath. But, encouraged by the fact that he still hadn’t let go of her arm, she said, ‘I just want to know if you really can dance.’
‘Very funny.’
‘Gosh, Sam.’ She fluttered long eyelashes. ‘You’re awfully attractive when you’re angry.’
‘Izzy, the club is packed, Ewan McGregor will be arriving shortly and the Press are milling around outside like meerkats on heat. I have better things to do than stand here and—’
‘Why don’t you shut up,’ said Izzy fondly, ‘and give me a kiss?’
Chapter 16
Two minutes later she took an unsteady step backwards and slowly exhaled.
‘Gosh, Izzy. You’re awfully attractive when you’re ruffled,’ mimicked Sam.
She shook her head, putting up a hand to smooth her hair. ‘I didn’t expect you to . . . well, do that.’
‘You asked.’ He shrugged, a faint smile tugging at his lips. ‘You got.’
‘Oh I got, all right.’ Izzy wondered whether a repeat performance might be on the cards. ‘I’m just surprised.’
‘Because you wanted to shock me and you didn’t? Really, Izzy, I’m not that naïve . . . and you aren’t that subtle, if you don’t mind me saying so, although I still don’t understand why you should have changed your mind about me. A couple of weeks ago,’ he reminded her pointedly, ‘you didn’t think I was such a great idea.’
Having planned on being the seducer, Izzy was now caught on the hop. She certainly hadn’t expected Sam to be this masterful, so totally in control. ‘A couple of weeks ago,’ she murmured, colouring slightly at the lie she was about to tell, ‘you were still living in Gina’s house. I didn’t think it would be kind to her, if anything should . . . happen . . . between us. She’s feeling lonely enough as it is.’
‘Really,’ drawled Sam. ‘How incredibly thoughtful of you.’
Izzy shrugged and maintained a modest silence.
‘And there I was,’ he continued softly, ‘thinking it might have had something to do with the fact that Gina had actually asked you not to get involved with me while we were both living under her roof.’
She burst out laughing. ‘You cheat! What have you been doing, crossing off the days on the calendar and laying bets with yourself on how long it would be before I hurled myself shamelessly into your arms like the brazen hussy I am?’
‘Laying bets with my entire staff, actually.’ He managed to keep a straight face, but Izzy’s ability to laugh at herself was one of the things he found most irresistible about her. Far too many women, desperate to make a good impression, lost their sense of humour completely whenever they themselves were the butt of the joke.
Izzy, however, was still smiling, quite unabashed. ‘And did you win?’
As he drew her towards him once more, breathing in the scent of Diorella and feeling her body quiver helplessly beneath his touch, Sam recognised that her state of arousal was equal to his own. ‘I think,’ he murmured in her ear, ‘I’m just about to find out.’
The shrill of the phone on his desk moments later provided a rude interruption. Izzy, who was practically sitting on it at the time, jumped a mile.
‘That’ll be Wendy, ringing from the front desk to let me know that Ewan McGregor’s arrived,’ said Sam with some reluctance.
Izzy pulled a face. ‘Tell him he’s just lost himself a fan.’ But when Sam picked up the receiver and began to listen, she knew at once that something was wrong. ‘Tell her I’m not here,’ he said tersely, and Izzy’s heart sank. Then, eventually, he snapped, ‘OK, OK, I’m coming down,’ and slammed down the phone.
‘Shit,’ said Sam with feeling.
‘Seconded,’ she murmured, bracing herself for the worst. ‘Who is it?’
Glancing at his watch, then back at Izzy’s disappointed face, he heaved a sigh and said, ‘Her name’s Vivienne Bresnick; I met her just over a year ago in New York and we had one of those on-off relationships . . . it was doomed to failure from the start, but Vivienne is one of those women who are hard to shake off. She wouldn’t give up. She wasn’t the reason I left New York,’ he said evenly, ‘but she was certainly an added incentive.’
‘So, you aren’t madly in love with her?’ Izzy brightened at the thought that all was not lost.
‘I am not,’ he replied, his tone firm and a glimmer of amusement lifting the corners of his mouth. ‘But she’s turned up here in the middle of the night and she isn’t likely to leave quietly on the next flight back to the States.’ Running an affectionate finger along the curve of her cheek, he added with a regretful smile, ‘I’m sorry about this.’
Talk about coitus interruptus, thought Izzy. Apart from anything else, she had shaved her legs for nothing. ‘Not half as sorry,’ she said ruefully, ‘as I am.’
Having laid a private bet with herself that Vivienne Bresnick would be tall, tanned and dangerously blonde, Izzy would have recognised her immediately, even if she hadn’t been surrounded by suitcases - matching Louis Vuitton suitcases at that.
‘Sam!’ exclaimed Vivienne, tossing back her practically waist-length hair and flying into his arms the moment he reached the bottom of the staircase. ‘I know I should have phoned, but I wanted to be a surprise!’
‘There but for the grace of Vivienne go I,’ muttered Izzy under her breath as she slipped, unnoticed, along the dimly lit oak-panelled hallway and out of the club. Maybe she’d stop off at the Chinese on the way home and pick up pork su mai and prawns with pineapple as a treat for Katerina.
But when she let herself into the house forty minutes later, her daughter wasn’t there.
How was it possible to be this happy? wondered Katerina, still unable to believe that such a state - and such an all-engulfing state of rightness - could truly exist. As they turned into the road which would lead them back to Kingsley Grove, however, some of the pleasure began to dissipate. She leaned closer into the curve of Andrew’s arm around her waist, praying that the evening could stretch on into infinity . . .
‘I wish there could be more,’ said Andrew, seemingly able to read her thoughts.
In reply, Katerina squeezed his arm. ‘I don’t care, this is enough. At least we have each other.’
‘But I want more.’ Gazing moodily at the rooftops of the opulent Georgian terra
ce silhouetted against an orange-tinted sky, he considered the irony of so many houses and nowhere to go - nowhere to spend an entire night with Kat.
Now, drawing her slowly into the shadows and leaning back against a high stone wall, he kissed her and said, ‘It’s not fair on you.’ Then, as she opened her mouth to protest, he covered it with his fingers. ‘It isn’t fair on either of us, but particularly you. This isn’t how a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl should be spending her evenings.’
‘You don’t know what my evenings used to be like. All I ever did was study.You wouldn’t believe how important I thought it was! I just didn’t realise there were other things in life that could be more important . . .’
‘And you don’t realise how important you are to me,’ murmured Andrew, ‘but this still isn’t what you deserve. I’m too old for you, I’m going through a divorce and I’m trapped in a hopeless relationship with a woman who—’
‘But that isn’t your fault,’ Katerina interrupted, before he could mention the baby. She hated to even think of it; in her fantasies Marcy broke down in tears, confessed that Andrew was not, after all, the father, and promptly emigrated to New Zealand.
‘What difference does it make?’ Andrew frowned into the darkness. ‘I’m screwed, financially. All I want to do is whisk you away to an hotel and at the moment I can’t even afford to do that.’
Katerina was privately relieved. Despite everything she felt for Andrew, her conscience still troubled her; as long as they weren’t sleeping together, she was able to tell herself that she wasn’t doing anything too terribly wrong.
And although she knew she was being silly, she was also afraid of taking that final step. Being with Andrew . . . kissing him, spending hours in his arms and acknowledging their mutual desire . . . was one thing, but actually doing it was quite another, and an altogether more alarming prospect. She wouldn’t know what to do. She could get it all embarrassingly wrong and Andrew might lose interest in her. The idea was too terrifying even to contemplate.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she repeated, smoothing Andrew’s hair away from his forehead and watching his frown lines magically disappear. If only she could solve their other problems as easily.
‘I love you,’ said Andrew, and she shivered. How could those small words make her shiver like this?
‘I know,’ she said simply, moving back into his arms and resolutely refusing to think of Gina, Marcy . . . the unborn child . . . ‘I love you, too.’
‘But I love you,’ repeated Vivienne, frustrated beyond belief by Sam’s uncompromising attitude. Flinging herself down on to the sofa and tossing back her hair, she deliberately didn’t bother to adjust the rising hem of her skirt. She was wearing a pale grey jersey top which emphasised the unEnglishness of her tan; only faint shadows beneath her spectacular eyes betrayed the fact that she had gone far too long without sleep. ‘And there’s no need to look at your watch, either,’ she said in despairing tones. ‘Jeez, Sam, you sure know how to make a girl feel welcome.’
It was five o’clock in the morning and he had been wondering whether Izzy was asleep. If Vivienne hadn’t turned up with her usual miraculous sense of timing . . .
‘You should have let me know you were coming over.’ Not wanting to sit down, he was pacing the sitting room, drinking black coffee and watching the sun rise over the park.
‘You would only have gotten crazy.’ Vivienne pouted, wriggling still further down in her seat, and Sam realised how quickly he had readjusted to the English accent; her lazily elongated vowels sounded incredibly put-on. In addition, she had always adored a bit of drama.
‘I would have told you that it was a wasted journey.’ A full-scale row wasn’t what he needed right now; he had a business meeting at nine o’clock and a couple of hours’ sleep beforehand would have helped.
‘Oh, Sam!’ Kicking off her shoes, she drew her feet up beneath her. ‘So, what are you going to do, kick me out on to the streets?’
That was really likely. The reason Vivienne found it so hard to believe he was no longer interested in her wasn’t a million miles removed from her bank balance. The only daughter of Gerald Bresnick, a genuine Texan oil baron, she could in all probability - if she really wanted to - rent every suite in the Savoy and have change left over for the doorman.
‘I’m going to bed,’ said Sam quietly. He didn’t have time for arguments. ‘You can sleep in the spare room, if you’re staying.’
‘That takes me back,’ mused Vivienne, her tone playful. ‘You’re beginning to sound like my ex-husband.’
Sam, moving towards the door, didn’t reply.
‘And there I was,’ she continued softly, ‘thinking that you might be my next husband.’
He turned back to face her. ‘Vivienne, it’s over. You really shouldn’t have come here.’
‘Maybe I shouldn’t.’ She shrugged, apparently unperturbed, then gave him a slow, languorous smile. ‘But, on the other hand, maybe I should. My mom always taught me that if a man was worth chasing, he was worth chasing all around the world, so flying over from the States wasn’t even that far to come. Besides,’ she added with a careless gesture, ‘what the hell did I have to lose?’
For the second time, Sam kept his mouth very firmly shut. A mental image of Izzy flashed through his mind . . . notoriously impatient, unreliable, why-stop-at-one-man-when-you-can-have-two Izzy Van Asch, with whom he would so much rather have spent the night. Vivienne might not have had anything to lose, he thought drily, but if her intention had been to come over here and put paid to any romantic attachments he might be in danger of forming, she had certainly won the first round, hands down.
Chapter 17
It was so hard, struggling to appear cheerful when all you wanted to do was crawl into bed and let the rest of the world carry on without you. And it was harder still, Gina decided sourly, when she had to put up with Izzy indulging in one of her favourite pastimes - getting ready to go out.
Now, as Izzy burst into the sitting room for the third time in fifteen minutes and did an extravagant twirl to show off her red velvet dress - with the red shoes, this time - Gina gave up trying.
‘Well?’ said Izzy, glossy-mouthed and seeking approval. ‘Which looks better, red or black? And are the stockings too much . . .?’
The stockings had red hearts stencilled up the back of them. Izzy, who was booked to sing at a charity ball in Henley, looked like a saloon girl. She also looked, thought Gina, exactly like . . . Izzy.
Irritation, which had been welling up, now spilled over ‘Since you ask,’ she retorted, ‘they’re perfectly hideous. But I’m sure you’ll wear them anyway.’
Izzy halted in mid-twirl. ‘What?’
‘You wanted my opinion, I gave it to you.’ It was surprisingly satisfying, watching the expression on Izzy’s face change and the wide smile fall away. Why did she always have to be so bloody cheerful anyway? ‘Although I don’t know why you bother, because you never take a blind bit of notice of anything I say,’ Gina continued, inwardly amazed at her own daring but at the same time almost exhilarated by it. ‘You simply carry on regardless, thinking everything’s great and not even stopping to wonder what other people might think of you.’
Accustomed as she was to dealing with the occasional heckler when she was working, Izzy was so stunned by this full-frontal attack on her personality that for a moment she couldn’t even speak.
‘I see,’ she said finally, wondering whether Gina might be in the throes of some kind of nervous breakdown. Apart from hogging the bathroom for an hour earlier she couldn’t imagine what might have annoyed her enough to trigger such an outburst. ‘And what exactly do other people think of me?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Gina, her expression truculent. The adrenalin-rush was ebbing away; she had wanted to hurt Izzy and she’d succeeded. Now she felt slightly ashamed of herself.
‘No, go on. Tell me.’ Izzy’s eyes were beginning to glitter. ‘I’m interested.’
‘You’re nearly
forty,’ Gina said defensively. ‘You shouldn’t be wearing stuff like that.’
‘And?’
Gina shifted uncomfortably in her chair. ‘OK. If you must know, I find it embarrassing when my friends ask me what you do for a living and I have to tell them you’re a barmaid.’
There, she’d said it. And it was true; apart from anything else, Izzy was too old to be a barmaid.
‘I see,’ said Izzy again. Shock was giving way to anger now; how dare Gina look down her nose at the way she earned enough to pay their rent? Tilting her head to one side, she enquired softly, ‘And are you embarrassed when they ask you what you do for a living?’
Bitch, thought Gina, turning red. Pushing back her hair with shaking fingers and beginning to feel outmanoeuvred, she said, ‘At least I’m not reduced to working in a bar.’