Suze grinned. ‘Well, she’s thinking about it. I need you to help me convince her.’
Jay sighed. ‘And how do I do that?’
‘Do I need to tell the great PR guru?’ mocked Suze. ‘Charm her. Challenge her.’ She added kindly, ‘You can do it!’
There was a pregnant silence. ‘The bigger agencies are so much easier,’ said Jay plaintively.
She laughed aloud. ‘But not nearly so much fun. Now, listen, we’ll need to do a double act…’
Zoe had been going upstairs when she heard the altercation at the front door. She had turned, intending to go and see if she needed to intervene. Harry and his friends could sometimes take their bouncer duties a bit too seriously, she knew.
So she had been halfway down the stairs when she saw him.
He was wearing dark trousers of some sort, and a wonderful shirt in sunset colours. Silk, she was sure. You would not have got that purity of colour in any other material. Zoe could not afford silk, but that did not stop her dreaming over it in the shops. She knew the way the material moved on the body, catching the light in a thousand different ways. As the man had stood there, arguing with Harry and his suspicious mates, she’d been almost dazzled by that sheen, thathint of gold, those little wasp stings of tangerine and apricot and purple among the principal colour.
What sort of man came to a suburban party in flame-coloured silk?
And then she’d looked at his face.
And stopped dead. Her heart had seemed to contract in her breast.
He hadn’t been looking at her. He had not even seen her. If he had, he wouldn’t have known her. But somehow—she knew him. She always had. Though she did not know his name.
She knew the face, though. The proud carriage of the head, like a Mogul Prince. The deep, deep eyes. The sculpted ascetic mouth, with its eloquent self-discipline and its alluring hint of passion suppressed. The energy. The fire. Banked now, certainly, but fire nonetheless. Oh, yes, she knew that face all right.
Zoe had retreated a step, backing round the corner into the shadows. She’d felt cold and very serious, as if she had just come face to face with her future.
Oh, wow! That’s all I need.
It was ridiculous, of course. Nobody believed in love at first sight. It was an adolescent fantasy. A myth.
A myth like the twenty-three-year-old virgin? said a voice in her head ironically.
Well, all right, maybe it wasn’t exactly a myth. Maybe it was pheromones. Maybe it was the party. They had a habit of lowering your inhibitions, parties! It was not important, anyway. It was not a feeling you could rely on.
It still gave you a hell of shock, thought Zoe ruefully. She felt as if she had walked into a wall.
Who on earth was he?
You don’t want to know, said that voice in her head. There was a distinct warning note in it.
And it was right. Of course it was right. If she had to come face to face with the man she’d probably be as tongue- tied as a new teen with a pop idol whose poster she had had on her wall for years. That was about the level of substance to her feelings.
She did not want to have to deal with fantasies she should have outgrown ten years ago, Zoe told herself. She wanted to have a good time. That was what tonight was all about. Forget her money worries! Forget her non-existent career and her life on hold! Dance and have fun!
She would dance and have fun if it killed her, she resolved grimly.
So she had resumed her journey to her bathroom. And before she’d come downstairs again, she’d splashed water on her face so vigorously that she’d had to rebuild her makeup from scratch.
Suze took Jay back to the drawing room. Now that he’d had time to adjust, he saw it ran the depth of the house, from the street to the garden. At the far end the French windows were open to the night air. He moved towards them gratefully, picking up the rhythm of the dance as he went. Beside him Suze gyrated, a lot less rhythmically.
‘She’ll be here somewhere. When last seen she was listening to a man in a checked shirt talk about megabytes.’
Jay bent his head to her. ‘Why?’ he said simply.
‘Zoe takes being a hostess seriously. She does ten minutes per no-hoper.’
Suze was twining herself round him sinuously as they walked. It would have been sexy if she hadn’t been scanning the room all the time and talking nineteen to the dozen. Jay smiled at her with affection. God bless Susan, who didn’t fancy the pants off him and wasn’t going to break her heart over him.
‘You’re a star,’ he said, taking her hand and dancing her powerfully through a little knot of wild arms and bouncing shoulders.
‘Love it when you butter me up,’ said Suze, unmoved by his touch.
They got to the windows.
‘Maybe she’s in the garden,’ said Jay, with a longing look at the tall shadows of trees and laurel hedges.
‘Maybe.’ But Suze was not looking outside. He felt her jump under his hand. ‘Ah, there she is.’ She raised her arm above her head and waved vigorously. ‘Zo! Over here!’
He looked into the shot darkness, with its shifting shadows of dancing bodies, and at first he saw nothing. Then the woman started to come towards them through the bopping crowd and he held his breath.
She was tall and graceful as a willow. As she got closer he saw she had a cloud of wild hair. He had no idea what colour. He could not tear his eyes away from her mouth. Her lips would have been voluptuous anyway, but she had painted them what looked like a dark purple. It was an aggressive colour, anyway. The whole image was aggressive. But he looked and looked, and saw vulnerability behind the image. More, there was a quivering sensitivity that their owner was trying hard to deny.
He found that he was not surprised she spent ten minutes with every no-hoper under her roof.
‘Gorgeous,’ he said, almost to himself.
Suze certainly didn’t hear.
The woman’s skin was milk-pale beneath an outrageously revealing black chiffon shirt. Under it, he could see a black bra in some shiny material. One thin strap was falling off her shoulder under the transparent sleeve. It was somehow more seductive than nakedness would have been. He felt as if he had been doused in ice water.
That graceful walk, that skin, that mouth…
Hell. Sixteen again, with a vengeance. Sixteen again, and hungry as a male animal for his conquest.
‘Down boy,’ said Jay grimly.
Suze had heard that, all right. ‘What?’ she said, startled.
‘That is your candidate for my research assistant?’ said Jay in disbelief.
‘My friend Zoe. Yes. So?’
‘Your friend?’ This got worse and worse.
‘Yes.’ Suze faced him. ‘And she really needs this job, too, though she may not want to admit it. So go carefully, right? You could be the answer to the maiden’s prayer.’
Jay groaned. ‘Have you even heard of political correctness?’ he said. He was racked by his baser instincts. The only possible solution was to laugh. ‘Maiden’s prayer, for heaven’s sake!’
‘I’m a traditionalist,’ said Suze, unmoved. She reached out an arm and hauled her friend between them. ‘Zoe, this is the man you’ve just got to meet.’
So what’s wrong with this one?
Zoe suppressed a sigh and smiled resolutely at the tall man standing next to her friend. As far as she could tell in the disco lighting he looked all right. Heck, he looked as tall as her prince from the hallway. But he had to have some mega problem or Suze would never have called her over. The party had got to the stage where you didn’t make introductions.
‘Hi,’ she yelled, trying to make herself hear above the dance beat and only half succeeding. She fluttered her fingers at him. ‘Zoe Brown.’
He did not seem to realise that that meant she had not caught his name. He looked bored. Dark as the devil, sleek as a seal just out of the water, and bored.
No-hopers didn’t usually look bored. They looked sulky or wary or too eager to please. And they couldn’
t believe their luck when a babe like Zoe stopped by.
The tall dark man did not seem to notice that she was a babe. In fact he did not take his eyes off Suze. He looked as if he’d been sandbagged.
‘Hi.’ It sounded strangled.
Suze smiled and turned her shoulder on him. ‘Zoe, meet your fate.’
He looked startled.
Not nearly as startled as Zoe, though. As he bent his head she realised who he was. The deep, deep eyes. If they went somewhere where the light was normal that shirt would be flame-coloured. And silk. Definitely not a no-hoper.
And Suze said he was her fate?
‘What?’ she said, temporarily forgetting that they would not hear her. After all, she could not hear herself. She took hold of Suze’s arm and shook it hard to get her attention. ‘What—did—you—say?’ she mouthed with great care. Her eyes burned with indignation.
Suze’s naughty smile widened.
‘Nine to five for the next four weeks,’ she mouthed back.
‘What?’
Suze sighed visibly. She looked up at the ceiling. The rotating light balls, hired for the party, were making a great success of turning the Edwardian mouldings into a starship re-entry burst. She shrugged and waved them both to the French windows, with great traffic policeman gestures.
There were no speakers in the garden, at least. Between the incessant beat and the noise of the party it was not exactly silent, but at least you could hear what people were saying. Not that most people came out here to talk. There were several couples, dancing or lying on the grass, heads close, not talking.
Out in the dark, where no one could see, Zoe flinched. Performance Zoe took her to task. So what else is new? No point in minding. That’s what people do at parties.
She even did it herself sometimes. Only she just did it for the look of the thing. Then sidled out later, when she could. Not that anyone noticed her sidling out. If anyone were to suggest that popular Zoe Brown had never gone beyond a kiss in the dark, her friends would split their sides.
She did not want them splitting their sides tonight. Not in front of the Mogul Prince. Performance Zoe took control.
‘’Scuse me,’ said Zoe, shimmying past a couple gazing fixedly into each other’s eyes and shifting from foot to foot in a rhythm that was at least three tracks ago.
She made for the orchard terrace, pounding up the uneven York stone steps with the sure-footedness of long practice. The others followed.
Zoe turned, hands on her hips, ready for confrontation.
The smooth-as-a-seal man was already on to it, though. He had obviously decided to stop being bored. Suze was beginning to look alarmed.
Suze’s father was a judge. Nobody ever alarmed Suze.
The man said with dangerous quietness, ‘Want to explain, Susan?’
Well, it sounded dangerous to Zoe. In fact the hair came up on the back of her neck at the deep drawl.
‘Er…’ said Suze, floundering.
She never floundered, either. She was as quick on her feet as Zoe. In fact Zoe had learned her ‘Evasive Manoeuvres For When the Conversation Gets out of Hand’ from Suze in the first place. And Zoe was the best.
‘I’ve been conned, haven’t I?’ said the tall dark man in a level voice. ‘I want a professional job. And you think you can unload one of your ditzy friends.’ His eyes skimmed Zoe briefly. ‘No offence.’
‘Ditzy friend?’ she gasped.
Suze sent her an exasperated look before returning to her main opponent. ‘Chill out, Jay. I’m doing my best—’
‘I need someone to work,’ he said intensely. ‘Not a filing clerk in a micro skirt.’
‘Zoe can hack it.’ Suze waved a hand. ‘Zoe can do anything.’
The man swung round on Zoe and she swallowed hard. In the flickering light of the summer candles he looked about ten feet tall.
Ten feet tall and mad as a hornet was not the ideal prospective employer. Thank you, Suze.
She said furiously, ‘I never agreed—’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Nor did I. A research assistant able to work on her own initiative?’ he asked pleasantly, not taking his eyes off Zoe. ‘I don’t think so.’
Zoe stiffened. ‘I beg—your—pardon?’
‘I know what she can do,’ snapped Suze. ‘Zoe and I used to go to school together.’
His eyes were unreadable in the dark, but his whole stance said he didn’t believe a word of it.
‘Oh, yes? And when did St Bluestocking’s start turning out unskilled filing clerks?’
Zoe flinched all over again.
Plenty of people thought she was wasting her university education by doing temporary jobs in a variety of offices. Only last week her father had taken her out to lunch and tried to probe, delicately, when she was going to get a real job. But no one had actually told her to her face that she was unskilled. Or implied that she was a thing of no worth because of it.
She forgot the passionate mouth and the mogul silk. She decided he was all ten feet tall hornet man. And she hated him.
She said clearly, ‘I’m temping while I consider my options.’
It was true, too. Only—she had been considering her options for two years now and was no nearer finding a solution. She was not going to admit that to hornet man, though.
He looked her up and down. She could not see his face but she could feel the hard, swift appraisal. He took a couple of step towards her, lithe as a panther padding around its prey, assessing whether it was worth the effort of the chase or not.
Not that he could see much in the candlelit dark. Maybe her long, soft hair as it waved loosely about her shoulders in the night breeze. Or the glittery black see-through stuff of the shirt that left her shoulders visible and her slim midriff exposed. Enough to realise that she looked as cool as Suze, anyway.
And that, of course, was the trouble. She looked as cool and confident as any other girl here. More confident than most, maybe, especially when she was wearing these soft glove-leather trousers that hugged her slim hips and turned Suze green with envy.
She looked just fine. It was only inside that she knew she wasn’t. Wasn’t confident. Wasn’t fine. Wasn’t normal.
And wasn’t going to admit to any of it. Well, not in front of hornet man. She stuck her chin in the air and glared at him. And took a decision.
‘You can stop looking me up and down as if I’m livestock. You get my time nine to five, starting Monday morning,’ she told him crisply. ‘And that’s all your money buys you. Friday nights aren’t in the package.’
Suze drew in an audible breath.
He was taken aback. His head went back as if she had driven a foil straight at his chest.
Then he said dryly, ‘That sounds like St Bluestocking’s, all right.’
Zoe was still angry. ‘So apologise.’
Suze gave a soft whistle. But the man said slowly, ‘For what?’
‘For looking at me like that.’
‘Aren’t you being a bit over-sensitive?’ He was amused.
Amused! Zoe decided she wanted blood.
‘If I am, then you won’t want me to work for you, will you?’ she said with shining amiability.
‘I never said—’
She shook her head. ‘You know what over-sensitive people are like,’ she told him earnestly. ‘A real strain. Especially if management isn’t geared up to cope. So disruptive in a small office. Much better if we just call it quits now.’
And just see if Suze can get you someone else by Monday morning, you jerk.
She thought he would backtrack fast. But he didn’t. He looked at her for a long moment. In quite a different way this time.
Then he said, ‘What makes you think that the office is small?’
Zoe gave a rather good start of surprise. ‘Isn’t it?’ she asked, all artless confusion. ‘I just thought if they let someone like you hire the staff they wouldn’t be big enough to afford a proper human resources manager.’
Suze sucked
on her teeth audibly.
But the man did not say anything for a moment. Then, ‘I—see. Yes, I can follow your reasoning there.’ His voice was tinged with unholy amusement.
For some reason Zoe suspected he had scored a point there, though she could not quite see what it was.
She said, ‘I really don’t think I should take the job if you’re not sure about my temperament…’
He laughed aloud. ‘I think you’ll cope.’
‘Oh, but I wouldn’t want you to be uncomfortable—’
‘Yes, you would,’ he interrupted. ‘And I don’t blame you, either.’
That disconcerted her. ‘Is that an apology?’ she said suspiciously.
‘I suppose it is.’ He sounded surprised at himself. He swung round on Suze, a silent spectator for once. ‘I apologise to both of you. I shouldn’t leap to conclusions. Sorry, Susan.’ He made her an odd, formal little bow, then looked at Zoe. ‘And sorry Ms Bluestocking, too. I’ll see you on Monday morning. No more snide remarks, Scout’s honour.’
‘Thank you,’ said Zoe. She meant to sound dignified, but even to her own ears it came out just plain sulky.
Suze sent her a quick, worried look. Hornet man did not notice.
‘That’s settled, then,’ he said cheerfully. ‘So now I’ll be on my way.’
Suze didn’t like that. ‘Going on to another party, Jay?’
He laughed. ‘Weekend in the country. And I’m not going to get there until after three in the morning at this rate. I’m not going to be popular.’
‘She’ll wait up for you,’ said Suze dryly.
But she did not say it very loudly, and Jay Whoever-he-was, running lightly down the steps and back among the partygoers, did not seem to hear.
Zoe let out a long, shaky breath and leaned against the trunk of the apple tree. Her legs felt as if they were made of cotton wool. Gently vibrating cotton wool.
‘Tell me it’s not true,’ she begged. ‘Tell me I haven’t just signed up with Captain Blood!’
Suze was watching the slim dark figure find his surefooted way down the terraces and disappear into the house. ‘Captain Blood?’ she echoed absently.
The Millionaire's Virgin (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 35