ANNIE went home, had breakfast with Henry and her father, then took herself off to bed. Maggie’s door was shut but a note on her bed told her she had cried off the shopping expedition, the only explanation being, ‘Late night, need sleep.’
Which meant Annie could have got together with Alex after all!
But while her mind grumbled over this change of plans, her body told her it was a good idea. She needed sleep more than she needed a shopping trip or a ‘maybe’ date with Alex.
She woke to evening darkness—she’d slept all day?—and the smell of something delicious cooking downstairs, and lay for a few minutes, savouring the exotic and unfamiliar aromas. Spices certainly, and a sweet smell—honey?
Tantalised tastebuds drove her out of bed and into the shower. She pulled on sweatpants and an old T-shirt and headed downstairs to find out what was cooking—literally.
The noise level from the kitchen suggested more than one person was involved in producing the tempting meal, but if for one moment she’d imagined Alex was one of those present, she’d have shot back upstairs and changed. Dating or not, a girl had some pride!
But Alex’s voice didn’t reach her above the hubbub and she wandered in to find him and Phil sitting at the table with her father, Alex with his single glass of red wine in front of him, Phil and her father each with a light beer, while a flushed, and very pretty-looking, Maggie wove some magic spell around the stove.
‘This kitchen has never smelled so good,’ she said, trying to still the heart flutters finding Alex there had caused.
‘Ours never looks so good,’ Phil added, looking from her to Maggie. Was he flirting with both of them?
‘What smells so delicious?’ Annie asked, moving closer to where Maggie was stirring something in an earthenware pot that certainly wasn’t out of Annie’s kitchen.
‘It’s a tagine—a Moroccan dish. Actually the name of the pot is a tagine and that’s where the dish gets its name. It’s made with lamb and apricots and prunes and spices, and I serve it with couscous.’
‘It smells delicious and I can see it’s drawn some of the neighbours in. I just can’t imagine why the whole street isn’t here to enjoy it.’
‘I was invited,’ Phil said. ‘Saw your father earlier and he asked me over. Alex just came along.’
Annie was aware Alex was watching her, but the whole situation had got beyond her. She opened the fridge door, found a bottle of white wine and waved it in the air, asking Maggie to join her in a glass.
‘Not me,’ Maggie said. ‘I had my weekly quota of wine last night.’
Her voice sounded tense, but as Annie knew she’d be more than tense if she was trying to cook something complicated in front of an audience—particularly this audience—she thought nothing of it.
The meal was as delicious as it had smelt, the subtle blend of flavours perfectly complemented by the bland grain. But for Annie it was spoilt by the company—or, more truthfully, by the behaviour of the company.
Because, with the exception of her father, they were all colleagues, she asked Alex about his talk with the Carters, but he dodged the question, talking instead to Maggie about the recipe for the tagine.
Phil, also, had no intention of turning this into a work night, flirting with Annie right through the meal and making her feel uncomfortable and embarrassed. Making her also the target of strange looks from both Maggie and Alex.
Surely Alex must know Phil well enough to realise he was joking—that it was just Phil being Phil.
The looks from Maggie were even more puzzling for, as the evening went on, Maggie grew quieter and quieter in spite of the praise heaped on her for her meal. In the end she stood up.
‘I cooked so someone else washes up,’ she announced, and she walked out of the room.
Phil and Alex both turned to watch her go, while Annie tried to work out when the mood around the table had changed from light-hearted fun to uneasy silences and sideways glances.
‘Us men will stack the dishwasher. Alex and Phil can clear away and rinse and pass things to me—I’m at a better level for stacking.’ Rod made the suggestion and with a slight movement of his head suggested Annie should, unobtrusively, leave the room and follow Maggie. Find out what was wrong!
Annie waited for a few minutes then as Alex stood up to clear the table, she headed upstairs. She tapped on Maggie’s door, and when Maggie didn’t answer Annie opened it, just a crack, and asked if she could come in.
A huge sigh from inside, where Maggie was face down on the bed.
‘What’s up? That was a fantastic meal, so it can’t be that. What’s happened?’
Maggie sat up, sighed again and rubbed her hands across her cheeks. She hadn’t, as far as Annie could tell, been crying, but her expression—her whole attitude—told of despair.
‘Phil’s happened—that’s what!’ Maggie said bitterly. ‘Oh, Annie, why are we women such fools? Damn it, I’m thirty-two, old enough to know better, but, no, I’ve been attracted to Phil from the first day we met, and as far as he’s concerned I could be wallpaper.’
She sat up straighter and ran her fingers through her hair.
‘The bloody man flirts with every female he comes across and has done since I first met him, but me—no! Wallpaper, you see.’
She sighed again before continuing.
‘So what happens last night? We end up clubbing together. I knew he’d asked you out last night—that’s how come he was in the party in the first place—but, no, we go off together and, because he’s Phil, of course he puts the hard word on me at the end of the evening, and because I’ve been so attracted to him for so long—and probably because a couple of glasses of wine blurred what little common sense I’ve got where he’s concerned—what do I do? Say yes, of course. Not only say yes but invite him back here, and, of course, he wasn’t called out during the night. We both slept in, and the first person he sees as he wanders downstairs is your father.’
Maggie gave Annie a despairing look.
‘I’ve been here less than a week and I’m bringing men home, so how do you think I felt about facing Rod again? But somehow—mainly thanks to your father’s wonderful temperament and social skills—we muddled past all that, your father invites him back to dinner and I think maybe it’s going to be OK, and then what happens?’
‘He flirts with me all through the meal,’ Annie said glumly, not knowing how to make things right for Maggie. ‘He’s got to be amoral—is that the word? Sleeps with women but refuses to get emotionally involved. A no-strings playboy.’
Annie couldn’t think of anything more to say, so she put her arm around Maggie and gave her a hug.
‘What are you going to do?’
Another sigh came up from somewhere near Maggie’s toes.
‘Do?’ she said, the word squeaky and the laugh that accompanied it just slightly hysterical. ‘What can I do but go on as I did before? Pretend it never happened, that’s what I have to do. If Phil Park can do it, so can I!’
She straightened out of Annie’s embrace.
‘In fact, I should have been stronger downstairs. Shouldn’t have let him get to me. Come on, we’ll go back down and brazen it out. No, better still, let’s get dolled up and go out ourselves. Go clubbing.’
Never having enjoyed the dark atmosphere of nightclubs, Annie was underwhelmed by this idea, but this wasn’t about the outing, it was about sisterhood and solidarity. She understood that part.
‘I’m really tired,’ she said, knowing she sounded pathetically weak but not willing to take sisterhood too far. ‘Can we get dressed up and pretend to go out? Leave the house and drive across to the beach then come back in a little while when they’ve gone?’
Maggie looked a bit disappointed but in the end agreed that she was also tired. Another sigh, this one regretful.
‘He really was the most wonderful lover,’ she said softly, then she shook off this momentary weakness and headed for her bathroom, poking her head back out the door to add, ‘Wear something that will knock both their socks off.’
Annie trudged down the short corridor to her room. She wasn’t against knocking Alex’s socks off, just upset he was here, because doing this, in the name of solidarity and sisterhood, would make it look as if she preferred an evening out with Maggie to spending some time with him.
Maybe it was for the best. If he decided she was a frivolous, uncaring pleasure-seeker he might lose all interest in her and she could put a stop to all the futile arguments going on in her head.
She opened her wardrobe doors and looked inside.
‘Knock their socks off?’
She echoed Maggie’s words with despair. There was nothing in her wardrobe that could squeeze, even by the smallest margin, into that description. During her time with Dennis she’d worn nothing but high-necked, long-sleeved sweaters or shirts, and when she’d finally reached Sydney and gone shopping for new clothes, habit had had her doing the same thing.
One dress—bought to wear to work functions she couldn’t avoid—also had the requisite high neckline. But it was in the dark green colour she liked wearing, was well cut and the fine fabric clung to her figure like a second skin. She loved it and felt good in it—but it was hardly a sock-knocking-off creation.
It would have to do.
Maggie, in a bright red miniskirt, lacy top and shiny red boots, took one look at her and dragged her into her bedroom.
‘I don’t have any knock-their-socks off clothes,’ Annie explained, not liking the note of apology in her voice. Here she was doing Maggie a favour and apologising for how she looked!
Maggie slid open her wardrobe and looked from it to Annie.
‘You have black trousers or jeans?’
Maggie nodded.
‘OK, slip into them, and put on this top. Black boots?’
Maggie shook her head and Annie rummaged through a collection of shoes that would had done Imelda Marcos proud, and produced a pair of pointy-toed black boots with heels so high Annie was sure she’d fall over in them.
She was about to protest when she remembered solidarity again—and how upset Maggie had been over Phil’s behaviour!—so she took the top and boots and went glumly back to her room.
Maybe if she took long enough, their two visitors would have gone, but Maggie didn’t let her dither, following her with a serious-looking make-up case.
‘You can’t go out without eye shadow,’ she announced, waiting only until Annie had slipped off her dress and pulled on the top before sitting her down and applying various potions and powders to Annie’s face.
Ten minutes later Maggie pronounced herself satisfied, though she added rather bitterly, ‘Though why I’m making sure you look stunning when Phil already fancies you, I don’t know.’
‘He doesn’t fancy me at all,’ Annie assured her, wondering how any woman could wear a top cut so low without spending the entire evening blushing and tugging it upward. ‘He just flirts with any woman not yet certified dead.’
She made her way cautiously downstairs, heart leaping around in her chest when she heard voices in the kitchen and knew her prayer that the visitors might have departed hadn’t been answered.
The boots had to be two sizes too small, but all she had to do was get through the kitchen and out to the car, where she could kick them off.
‘I’ll go first,’ Maggie said, when they reached the bottom. ‘Now, the rule here is “never explain”! We’ll just sashay through, say “goodnight, boys” and keep going.’
That suited Annie just fine, although she usually gave her father more particular information about her whereabouts.
‘We’d better say where to,’ she whispered to Maggie, who looked surprised, and then quite pleased.
‘Good idea—that way they can follow us!’
‘We’re not really going there,’ Annie reminded her, and Maggie looked disappointed.
‘We’re all dressed up—we may as well,’ she said, and Maggie realised she should never had let thoughts of solidarity and sisterhood guide her path. If she was doing anything this evening, it should be with Alex.
No, it shouldn’t!
Well, maybe not, but if she couldn’t be with Alex she didn’t want to be with anyone else.
Alex heard footsteps tapping towards the kitchen. High-heeled footsteps from the sound of them. He’d watched Maggie depart from the dinner table, then Annie follow, and wondered just what was going on.
Apart from Phil flirting with Annie all through dinner! What was happening there? Annie certainly hadn’t encouraged him but, then, she hadn’t singled him, Alex, out for attention either. She’d eaten her meal with desperate concentration, as if wishing she could be teleported to some other place.
The good thing was, her single-minded attack on the delicious meal had allowed him to study her—unobtrusively, he hoped. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, and she did very little to make the most of her striking eyes and neat, straight features. Not wanting to attract attention?
Male attention?
So why had she attracted his?
Why did he feel—and had felt from the beginning—that there was something special about this woman? That she was—or should be—his?
The tapping footsteps drew closer, and he had to revise all his assumptions about Annie not wanting to attract attention. Next to Maggie in her bright red miniskirt and red boots, Annie, all in black, should have been invisible, yet Alex was stunned by her beauty.
‘We’re off out,’ Maggie said, grabbing Annie’s arm and all but dragging her across the room.
‘Not without an escort you’re not,’ Phil said, leaping to his feet so quickly his chair tipped over. ‘Come on, Alex. We’ve got our pagers. You can’t let these two beauties out on their own. Who knows who they’ll pick up?’
Alex looked at Annie for guidance but found she was looking at Phil.
‘Who knows?’ she repeated in a voice so dry it scratched.
Then she looked at Alex, and he thought he detected a plea in her eyes, but was it a ‘come along and save me’ plea, or a plea that he stay out of whatever was going on?
That something was going on, he had no doubt. And that it affected Maggie more than Annie, he was also certain. Annie might look stunningly beautiful, but the way she held herself was reminiscent of paintings he’d seen of aristocratic women being dragged off to the guillotine. Whatever was going on, Annie was a far from willing participant, and this fact alone had him rising to his feet.
‘I guess a little gallantry on a Saturday night wouldn’t hurt,’ he said. ‘But I need to change out of trainers and we should go in my car anyway. You’re not drinking, Phil, so you can drive.’
And all I have to do is manoeuvre Annie into the back seat and this might turn out OK after all!
He winked at Annie, but she didn’t seem as delighted—or even as relieved—as he’d expected.
And now he’d missed his opportunity to start the manoeuvring, as Phil had moved closer to her and was ushering her towards the door.
Any moment now the situation would be lost.
Then Annie turned towards him—just a despairing glance his way—and the Galahad within him finally awoke.
‘No way, Phil,’ he said, elbowing his colleague aside. ‘If we’re making a foursome, then Annie’s my date.’
He put his arm possessively around her waist—so small—and tried to draw her close, but he’d obviously misread the glance for she pushed away.
‘No one’s anyone’s date,’ she snapped. ‘Maggie and I decided we wanted to go out. If you guys want to come that’s fine, but you’re tagging along, nothing more. Maggie and I might both meet our soul mates tonight, so we don’t want our opportunities spoiled by you two behaving as if this is a date.’
If he’d been stunned before, he was doubly so this time, and though Annie now shot him a look that he could read as apologetic, he’d been wrong about reading the look she’d shot him just before, so he could easily be wrong again.
‘Come on,’ she was saying to Maggie, who looked as utterly miserable as someone dressed in red could possibly look, ‘let’s go.’
Annie hooked her arm through Maggie’s and practically dragged her through the front door.
‘You got us into this and now you’re going to have to go through with it. And stop looking sorry for yourself,’ she muttered fiercely. ‘My feet are killing me in these boots, and on top of that I’m going to stretch them and have to fork out huge amounts of money to replace them for you.’
Maggie relaxed enough to give a very small giggle, but Annie had to continue to force her to move—out the front door and up the road towards Alex’s house—the conversation of the two men following them.
‘It’s all backfired,’ Maggie whispered.
‘I know it has,’ Annie told her. ‘But who knows? Maybe something good will come out of it. Maybe you’ll meet some gorgeous guy who makes you forget all about Phil.’
Maggie didn’t seem to believe her but thinking about Maggie’s problems, Annie decided, was better than considering where she now stood with Alex. Maybe after this performance he’d forget about this obsession he had for dating her, which would be the best thing for both of them, even if her heart ached at the thought and her mind chided her for the way she’d spoken to him earlier.
Alex had been too good to her—considerate, understanding, great kisser…Forget the kisses.
Anyway, it had been a terrible way to treat him when all he’d done had been to come to her rescue so she wouldn’t have to keep avoiding Phil’s hands. But Maggie would have been miserable with a situation where Phil was forced into being her date. She wanted Phil to want her for herself, not as someone to make up the numbers.
Annie tried to sort through the problem in her head. As Phil was driving, maybe she could slip into the back seat with Alex and whisper that she’d explain about it later.
Only she couldn’t explain much—not without breaking Maggie’s confidence!
Damn!
They’d reached Alex’s house, and Minnie was yapping excitedly from behind the front door. She turned somersaults of delight at seeing Alex and Phil, then showed nearly as much excitement when she recognised Annie.
Annie bent and picked her up, and was letting the little dog nuzzle her chin when Maggie said, ‘I’m glad she’s black. That way people won’t notice the dog hairs on my best top.’
Alex and Phil were on their way up the stairs to change, and Annie heard Alex’s footsteps falter at the comment.
‘Don’t you like dogs?’ she asked Maggie, who sighed for about the fortieth time that evening.
‘I love them. I have one at home that I had to leave with my parents. I’m just feeling bitchy and you know why.’
Alex had disappeared but Annie sensed he’d heard at least part of the conversation. She hoped he’d heard enough to realise there were things going on here that were beyond her control.
Also beyond her control were the seating arrangements in the car, for Maggie took over, climbing into the back seat while Alex held the door, dragging Annie in behind her.
‘Great date, this,’ Phil said, glancing at a silent Alex in the seat beside him.
‘It’s not a date,’ Maggie snapped. ‘You two asked yourselves along on an outing, that’s all!’
Annie decided silence was the best option—that way she shouldn’t get herself into any more trouble. But she hadn’t figured Alex’s determination into the equation. They were no sooner inside the club, Maggie heading with some resolve towards the bar, than Alex caught Annie’s arm and nodded towards the small dance floor where a few couples shuffled to the music of a four-piece group.
And being in his arms, dancing with him again, she was in more trouble than she could ever have imagined, because this felt like bliss. It felt as if this was how things were meant to be.
It felt like heaven…
‘For all her finery, Maggie doesn’t look happy.’
Thoughts of heaven vanished. Alex had only asked her to dance to question her. She wasn’t surprised he wanted to know what was going on, so why had she thought this dance was something more?
Something special?
‘She’s not, but she’ll get over it,’ Annie said, then realised she sounded snappy. ‘I assume,’ she added, hoping that made her sound more sympathetic towards their colleague.
‘I certainly hope so. I hate bad feelings between members of the team.’
You might have to put up with it, Annie thought as she became increasingly cross with him for pursuing the conversation and not enjoying the dance as she was.
For five years she’d had memories of being held in this man’s arms—dancing with him—now here she was and he was grumbling about people not getting on at work.
Maybe if she edged a little closer…
‘I’ve always thought Maggie fancied Phil, though why any woman would be interested in a man who flirts with every female on the planet I don’t know.’
So much for moving closer!
‘I think it’s an inherited disposition in Phil’s case. Apparently his father was a noted philanderer.’
Realising they were on different planes as far as mood was concerned, Annie reluctantly joined the conversation.
‘Phil told you that? Boasted about his father’s proclivities?’
‘No, my mother told me.’
The evening, which had begun badly when Annie had come downstairs in her scruffy state, now deteriorated to the farcical stage.
‘Your mother knew Phil’s father?’
Alex laughed. ‘Biblically, you mean?’ he said, and laughed again. ‘No, she read his autobiography. No, maybe it wasn’t auto, maybe it was just a biography because if he’d written it, he might not have boasted about his sexual exploits—not an Englishman.’
‘Phil’s an Englishman and his behaviour doesn’t indicate any delicacy where relationships with women are concerned,’ Annie said, although she was more intrigued by Phil’s father having had a biography written about him. ‘Was he someone famous?’ she asked. ‘Phil’s father?’
‘More notorious, my mother said,’ Alex explained. ‘One of those upper-class Englishmen who had too much money and not enough to do with their time, so he played—all over the world, apparently. Drove fast cars and even faster boats and did daring, adventurous things, but in the end he must have got bored with playing and actually got interested in Antarctica and did a lot of the modern-day exploration down there.’
‘Which wouldn’t have brought him any closer to his children, one would think,’ Annie said.
‘No, it didn’t,’ Alex agreed, finally tightening his hold on Annie as if he’d realised they were dancing, not holding a conversation standing up. ‘That’s about the only thing Phil’s ever said about his father—that he rarely saw him and barely knew him. Phil and his brother and sister grew up in the family home in the country, in the north somewhere, cared for by nannies and servants, while his mother grieved—Phil’s word—for the husband who was gone but not dead.’
‘That’s so sad,’ Annie said, and nestled closer to Alex’s strong body.
His arms tightened a little more so he could hold her close, and finally she was reliving her dream, dancing with Alex, feeling as light as thistledown because of the magic of being in his arms.
‘If I kiss you, am I breaking the “it’s not a date” embargo?’ he whispered against her hair a little later.
‘Probably, but it doesn’t matter—it’s been lifted. I’ve done my duty to the sisterhood and from now on the night is mine.’
She knew Alex wouldn’t have a clue what she was talking about, but she didn’t care, allowing him to draw her into the darkest, most shadowed corner of the dance floor and bend his head to kiss her on the lips.
‘Ah!’
She heard her own murmur of pleasure and relief, and imagined she heard a similar sound escape him, then they were kissing as if they’d just discovered how to, exploring their senses through lips alone.
‘Not particularly good form, kissing on a dance floor,’ a cool voice said, and Annie jerked away from Alex to see Phil, his arms around a blonde, dancing very close to where they stood.
‘Where’s Maggie?’ she demanded, no doubt startling Alex with her vehemence. But if Maggie had seen Phil ask the blonde to dance, and had been left, deserted at the bar, who knew what she might do? Annie looked frantically around, but they were in a corner and she couldn’t see the bar.
‘Relax,’ Phil said easily, nuzzling his lips to the blonde’s neck and making Annie want to belt him. ‘She’s on the floor with some Neanderthal lifesaver type, dancing so close you couldn’t slip a tissue between them.’
‘Oh, dear,’ Annie muttered to herself, as Phil steered his partner away from them. ‘This isn’t working out at all as it should have!’
‘No?’ Alex said, slipping his arm around her shoulders. ‘I’d say it’s working perfectly. Phil and Maggie are both above the age of consent—they both have partners for this dance if not for the night—so let’s you and I slip out of here, get a cab home and kiss each other somewhere more private than this corner.’
Tempting though the offer was, Annie dithered. Kissing Alex somewhere private would be blissful, but deserting Maggie?
‘I can’t go,’ she told Alex. ‘At least, not until I’ve talked to Maggie. I can tell her the boots are killing me, which is true. I just didn’t notice it while we were kissing.’
But Alex had already drawn away.
‘What’s going on, Annie?’ he asked, and she knew he wanted a straight answer.
There was only one to give.
‘I can’t tell you,’ she said, then watched him walk away, not back to the bar but past it and out of the door.
‘It’s for the best,’ she told herself, making her own way back to the bar, where she found a stool, ordered a mineral water and rested her pinched and tortured feet, while fending off offers to dance, to drink, or to go home with various hopeful men.