HARRIET was beginning to think that she had been foolish to wear a backless gown on a date with a relentless womaniser.
She plucked Michael Fleet’s crawling hand out of the fabric draped around the base of her spine and replaced it on the relative safety of her hip for what seemed like the hundredth time since they had stepped onto the dance-floor.
‘Michael, do you have to hold me so tightly? I can’t breathe!’ Plastered against his chest, she received an unwelcome blast of alcohol fumes whenever he turned his face towards hers.
‘S’awlright, sweetie; if you pass out I can give you the kiss of life…’ He hugged her even more tightly and nuzzled a wet mouth suggestively against her neck.
Harriet sighed. The evening which had sparkled with such early promise had degenerated to the point where she was seriously considering ducking out on her partner.
It was ages since Harriet had been to see a play, and the glittering first-night comedy that Michael had taken her to had perfectly suited her frivolous mood. She had equally enjoyed being plied with elegant food, wine and flattery over their late supper. It had only been when they had moved on to the nightclub that her spirits had flagged. She had expected frenetic rock and uninhibited freestyle dancing, but Lizzie’s turned out to cater to the city’s more sophisticated night-owls and the live band was slow, bluesy and very much an encouragement to old-fashioned smooching on the dance-floor.
The trouble was that she didn’t want to smooch…at least, not with Michael. He had been such an entertaining companion that Harriet had taken it for granted that there must be a physical attraction between them, but when he had taken her into his arms she had been disconcerted to feel not a single spark of excitement. Instead of being aroused by his slyly wandering touch, Harriet had discovered an unexpected ticklishness, her fits of nervous giggles effectively destroying the mood he was trying to set.
At first Michael had been appealingly good-natured about her lack of response, but as the night had worn on and he’d realised that she wasn’t going to fake a desire she didn’t feel in order to pander to his ego he had begun to laugh less and drink more. He glared aggressively at other men who came to ask her to dance and sulked if she accepted. It had got to the stage where Harriet was feeling distinctly threatened by his surliness, but at least when they were out on the dance-floor he wasn’t drinking. Perhaps if she kept him dancing long enough he would sober up and accept her rejection with good grace.
His hand drifted down again and this time he wouldn’t let her pull it away. They were in the midst of a discreetly nasty tussle when an imperious finger tapped Michael on the shoulder.
‘Mind if I cut in?’
‘Yes, I do. Buzz off and find your own woman,’ growled Michael without looking round.
‘Why don’t we ask the lady for her preference?’
‘Look, mate—’ Michael swung Harriet clumsily around so that he could insult the interloper to his face. The rest of his sentence was abruptly choked off. ‘Uh? Oh—’
‘You don’t mind, do you, Fleet?’
‘Uh—sure…I mean, no, no—go right ahead…’ Michael cannoned into another couple as he hastily stepped back from Harriet, his normal fluency deserting him in his anxiety not to offend a powerful superior. ‘I’ll just…er…I guess I’ll go and sit at the bar…’
Harriet stood stock-still, her face flushed with mingled relief and dismay, as her erstwhile partner melted into the surrounding crowd. Marcus Fox looked down at her revealing expression with a wry smile. ‘It certainly pays to have influence,’ he murmured.
‘M-Mr Fox—fancy seeing you here,’ she said feebly.
‘Fancy,’ he mocked. He held out his hand, palm up. ‘Shall we dance, Miss Smith?’
Unfortunately Harriet was still too stunned by his appearance to think of refusing. Of all the ghastly coincidences! she thought as she moved stiffly into the circle of his arms.
Marcus Fox was the last person she’d expected to see kicking up his heels in a trendy nightclub. He was also the last person she wanted to see, the memory of the uncomfortable scene she had precipitated in his office that morning still appallingly vivid…
Being painted a scarlet woman by his mother-in-law had been embarrassing enough, but it was the elegant-to-her-eyeballs Lynne Foster who had truly made Harriet bristle. His ‘dear, sweet Lynne’, who hadn’t turned an exquisitely coiffured hair at the sight of him inspecting the underwear of a daring blonde.
‘I’m a criminal lawyer,’ she had told Harriet in a crisply amused voice as Harriet had scrambled off the desk in a flurry of awkwardness, brushing away the masculine hands that became inexplicably tangled in her efforts to drag down her skirt. ‘I would never dream of allowing circumstantial evidence to convict a client…or a friend.’ From the warm look she’d cast Marcus Fox it had been obvious that he was very much included in the latter category.
‘You can make a full and frank confession over dinner tonight, Marcus,’ she had teased him complacently, her tone implying that she knew he would never do anything so unbelievably tacky, while at the same time subtly establishing her territorial rights. To Harriet, her amused condescension had been far more humiliating than Susan Jerome’s scathing contempt. She had blushed to the roots of her pale hair.
As for the man in question, to Harriet’s chagrin he had remained infuriatingly detached from her embarrassment. Ignoring his mother-in-law’s quivering outrage, he had calmly introduced Harriet in glowing terms and then suggested that she go away and tidy herself up…for all the world as if they had been messily engaged in the very activity that Susan Jerome suspected.
To compound his sin, as she moved past him he lowered his voice to murmur, for Harriet’s ears only, ‘Caught in a compromising situation twice within an hour with two different men? That must surely be some kind of office record, Miss Smith…’
Since it was physically impossible for her to blush any harder than she was already doing, Harriet took petty revenge by pausing to ask in a loud voice loaded with coy innuendo, ‘And do you want me to come back and finish our…discussion when your visitors have gone, Mr Fox?’
He punished her by replying with ineffable blandness, ‘Why, no, I think you’ve satisfied me quite sufficiently for today, Miss Smith. Miss Broadbent will let you know when I want you again.’
‘Miss Smith?’ Susan Jerome’s sceptical glare bored into Harriet as she beat a chastened retreat, clearly insinuating that the ubiquitous surname must be a blatant attempt at deception. ‘One of your most experienced secretaries, you say, Marcus?’ she rapped out. ‘Experienced at what? one is entitled to wonder.’
Harriet was wondering too. From his brief description she had created a vague mental picture of Marcus Fox’s mother-in-law as a delicate flower of womanhoodgenteel, kind and devotedly maternal. This tall, square woman with her sharp grey eyes and even sharper voice wouldn’t have looked out of place as a warder in a woman’s prison. Her powder-blue suit was as severely cut as a uniform, for all it dripped with class, and her regimented, blue-rinsed curls failed to soften the formidable front. A prison pallor, the only hint of ill health in her upright bearing, completed the unfortunate impression.
Lynne Foster was the exact opposite—a voluptuous, dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty who made the most of her femininity while still managing to look impressively businesslike.
Standing next to her, Harriet’s proposed new protégée was completely eclipsed, but that didn’t seem to bother Nicola Fox. She was as quiet as a mouse, hanging back as she watched the interaction between the adults with unblinking green eyes. Her long fair hair hung in a plait down her back and she wore round wire spectacles that emphasised the smallness of her pale face. She wore a neat cotton dress and lace-up shoes with white ankle socks. She didn’t smile when she was introduced to Harriet, but at least she politely shook hands, which was more than the two older women had offered to do.
As she slipped out the door Harriet heard Susan Jerome say dismissively, ‘Really, Marcus, a man, in your position can’t be too careful of his reputation…especially with that sort—a pert little miss and no mistake! But listen, the reason we came is to tell you that Lynne and I have come up with a splendid idea for Nicola’s holiday—’
‘A pert little miss’. I suppose that’s an improvement on ‘that wretched woman’! thought Harriet ruefully as she was waylaid by Miss Broadbent and handed a set of neatly typed instructions.
Thankfully, following them had kept her well away from the chairman’s office for the rest of the day. She’d spent the morning tying up loose ends with Brian Jessop and Barbara, and the afternoon setting up her new desk and computer-link in the file room. Apart from a few lowly clerks, her only visitor had been Miss Broadbent, who’d descended from on high to deliver a box of disks containing the confidential research data that Harriet would need, and a personal memo in a thick, monogrammed envelope…
Harriet’s hands had actually been shaking as she had ripped it open, half expecting to find a polite message informing her that her services would now no longer be required. But it appeared that Mrs Jerome’s ‘splendid idea’ had not held sway, for in a beautifully precise, almost calligraphic hand Marcus Fox had written that his daughter would be starting work the next day, and could Harriet please present herself at eight-thirty a.m. sharp in the executive foyer to take her on the standard familiarisation tour for new employees.
‘Having fun?’ Marcus asked as they moved in among the dancers, and it took a moment for Harriet to realise that he was referring to their conversation in the lift that morning.
She tossed her head. ‘I was.’ Her blue eyes glittered defiantly under gold-dusted lids.
‘I’m glad,’ he murmured, his insincerity as bold as her lie. That settled, he placed his large hand lightly between her shoulderblades and gently urged her into motion. Although he was scarcely touching her, Harriet felt the delicate friction of his palm against her bare skin as if it were a brand. She shivered.
‘Are you cold?’ His warm breath stirred the blonde curls over her temple, and as she stared fixedly at his upper chest she wished that she were still wearing heels instead of low, strappy sandals. She didn’t like having to tilt her head to see his face; it made it impossible to conceal her own expression and he was far too shrewd at reading people.
‘No, I’m quite warm.’
Too warm, in fact. And she had that squirmy sensation again—the one that had haunted her in his presence ever since that New Year interview, when he had shattered her perception of him as a remote demigod, exposing instead a real man who was capable of suffering the same confusion and uncertainty as everyone else. She hadn’t wanted her perceptions altered. At that time she had looked on her workplace as her havensafe, unemotional, the one controllable aspect of her life. It would have been more than she could have coped with to acknowledge that it, too, might change…
‘You surprise me…considering how little there is to your dress—and the fact that it appears to be entirely made of metal,’ he commented drily.
She looked down at the fine gold mesh that poured like viscous liquid over the curves of her body from the deeply slashed neckline to the asymmetrical hem that revealed most of one leg. The weight of the flared skirt swung with her movements, the flat metal links turning to molten fire as they caught the fragmented lights above the dance-floor.
Harriet had chosen the most wickedly exotic new dress she owned to celebrate her official launch as a giddy socialite. All right, so perhaps it had been rather too exotic for a woman who hadn’t quite decided on the level of her sophistication, she conceded. Perhaps Michael wasn’t entirely to blame for coming to the conclusion that the woman inside the look-how-sexy-I-am dress would be a push-over…
‘But very precious metal,’ she said lightly, refusing to dwell on her mistakes. ‘I think it must have been priced by the gram,’ she added, and named a price that had given her palpitations when she had agreed to pay it. It was as much as she had previously spent on clothes in a year! ‘Do you think I got my money’s worth?’ she probed.
To her disappointment he looked unmoved by her daring. He looked down at the glamorous mask that she had carefully applied to match the dress. Her lipstick had been worn off by the constant worrying of her teeth and tongue in the last uncomfortable hour with Michael. Her naked lips were a lush pale pink, soft and vulnerable in contrast to the sultry slash of her painted eyes.
‘Undoubtedly it’ll prove a very wise investment if you continue to keep company with aggressive playboys like Fleet,’ he commented drily. ‘You may need the protection of high-fashion chain mail. Men who won’t take no for an answer can be hard to fend off, even for the most experienced coquette.’
He was lecturing again! ‘Coquette,’ she mocked. ‘What an old-fashioned word!’
‘I’m an old-fashioned man. I happen to believe that men should respect women—’
‘Even blonde bimbos?’
His stern mouth took on a definite slant. He waited a few turns before murmuring, ‘You do seem to be fixated with my attitude to blondes.’
Harriet shied away from any suggestion of personal interest. ‘Only because I suppose that in the last twelve hours I’ve confirmed all your ridiculous prejudices!’ she said carelessly.
‘Actually, you’ve exploded a few of them.’ His smile showed teeth as he invited, ‘Would you like to know which ones?’
Panic curled around her throat and the hand resting on his left shoulder clenched unconsciously into a fist. ‘No!’
A slight turn of his head, and his incisive jaw brushed against her white knuckles. ‘Afraid?’
She shrugged haughtily in a shimmer of gold, composing her face into a look of intense boredom. ‘No, merely uninterested.’
He chuckled admiringly. ‘Oh, you do that very well.’
‘Do what?’
‘That look of magnificent disdain. As if I’d crawled out from under a slimy stone. Very crushing. Very blonde. Why didn’t you look at Fleet like that, instead of letting him paw you all over the floor?’
‘Maybe because I liked what he was doing,’ she shot back.
‘It certainly didn’t look that way. He wouldn’t have used such crude tactics if he knew you were willing. You were so busy keeping track of his hands, you didn’t seem to notice that he was bulldozing you towards a dark corner.’
He must have been watching her for some time without her realising it. Even though they were in public it seemed like a disturbing violation of her privacy. ‘I was handling it—’
‘You were putting up with it. Quite a different thing. You were being far too polite, Harriet. You should have screamed, or slapped his face.’
Her name on his tongue almost distracted her from her annoyance. The aspiration was soft, the stress on the first syllable a deep purr, trailing off to a tiny click on the final consonant that caressed her with its haunting familiarity. ‘Thank you, but I don’t need your advice—’
‘You need it; you just don’t want it—’
‘Don’t presume to tell me what I want!’ she flared. ‘You don’t know anything about it. I’m not under your jurisdiction here, you know. Outside working hours, Mr Fox, I’m just as much a free citizen as you are.’
‘I think you’d better call me Marcus, don’t you? Over the next couple of weeks you’re going to be almost one of the family. Referring to me as Mr Fox in front of my daughter would be awkward for both of you—and Nicola might see it as an indication of your lack of authority. Far better for you to wield the subtle advantage of being on first-name terms with me.’
Her recoil was automatic. ‘One of the family’? She looked up at him, shaking her head vehemently. ‘Oh, I couldn’t…’
‘Why not?’
She floundered. ‘Well, I—It wouldn’t be—’
‘Proper?’ he supplied helpfully, steering her around the couple passionately kissing in the centre of the dance-floor. ‘Of course; I understand completely. Very sensible of you to avoid any suggestion of impropriety. You have your own personal standards to uphold, and very worthy they are too. I don’t blame you for worrying about what other people might think of your relaxation of your unwritten rules. A lady must protect her reputation, after all—’
‘Not if she’s building herself a brand-new one—Marcus,’ she blazed, goaded to the limit by his kind understanding of her boring old self. ‘What other people think is their own problem!’
‘Precisely my view—Harriet,’ he agreed, so smoothly that she arched her back to glare up at him and realised from his smug expression that she had just been skilfully manipulated. ‘Now that we’ve got rid of that formality, perhaps we might be able to get to know each other a little better.’
At his innocuous comment a bloom of perspiration inexplicably mantled her skin and her hand suddenly felt slippery in his. Brief, unformed images danced before her eyes and she fought back a wave of smothering anxiety.
She looked away, unable to sustain her intent blue gaze, and laughed nervously. ‘Perhaps, but I doubt it. We move in different circles. Yours is very much more formal…’
‘Only sometimes. I’m dressed the way I am because we’ve just come from a first-night performance of the NZSO at the Aotea Centre.’
‘We?’ She tensed. Of course, he wouldn’t be here alone…
‘I had dinner and went to the concert with several friends. We have a table over there.’ He gestured with an inclination of his head. Harriet followed the line of his sight and made a clumsy misstep as she recognised one of the figures seated at the edge of the dance-floor. The woman was frowning in their direction.
‘You’re here with Miss Foster,’ she realised hollowly.
Marcus cushioned her slight stumble and a swirl of gold mesh wrapped itself briefly around the black fabric at his calf. He paused to allow its momentum to carry it free again, the hand on her back moving down to support her centre of gravity with a firmer pressure as he resumed his rhythm.
‘Not as such, no. As I said, a group of friends had arranged to go to a charity dinner and then to the concert,’ he said. ‘Lynne happened to be one of them.’
‘I’ll bet she did,’ muttered Harriet under her breath, remembering the way she had had her nose discreetly rubbed in the fact that they were dining together. A surge of rebellion coursed through her and she looked across and waggled her fingers over his shoulder at the haughty beauty watching them.
‘That was uncalled for,’ he murmured without looking down.
‘I was just saying hello,’ said Harriet innocently, smiling secretly to herself.
‘You were taunting her.’
‘I caught her eye. It would have been rude to ignore her,’ she protested. ‘All I did was wave.’
‘It was the way you waved.’
‘Oh, and how did I wave?’
‘Provocatively.’
She laughed huskily, making her dress shimmer. She suddenly felt wicked, wild and abandoned…all the things that Michael had failed to make her feel. ‘But I’m a provocative sort of woman,’ she said headily. ‘I like stirring things up. I’m irresponsible. I told you that this morning. Maybe now you’ll believe me.’ She peeped up at him through her sweeping false lashes and saw that he was looking satisfyingly stern.
‘I believe you’ve had a little more to drink than you’re used to. Fleet was probably topping up your glass when you weren’t looking.’
‘Of course he was! I’m not stupid, you know. And I’m not drunk, either!’ At first she had let Michael get away with it because she’d thought that alcohol might help shake off her stubbornly persistent inhibitions. When she had realised that it wasn’t working she had stopped going along with the game, and for the past couple of hours had merely toyed with her drinks.
‘I didn’t say you were,’ he said diplomatically. ‘Just that in your elevated mood you may be more vulnerable than you might think.’
Harriet’s glossy new image was supposed to make her invulnerable. Shallow, happy-go-lucky pleasure-seekers never got hurt…Look at Michael—he was annoyed with her but he wasn’t emotionally wounded by her rejection. Harriet repressed a flutter of panic by scintillating even more brilliantly.
‘If you mean I’m open to temptation, I hope so,’ she said with a hectic little laugh. ‘I like to make myself available to new experiences. It’s so boring to just do the same things over and over again, don’t you think?’
‘It depends what those things are,’ he murmured uncooperatively, the long, sensitive fingers that controlled her movements registering the rise in febrile tension in her slender body. ‘After your experience at New Year I would have thought you’d be well aware of the insidious effects of alcohol.’
She might have known he’d bring that wretched topic up. He seemed obsessed by it.
‘It’s only insidious if you don’t know it’s happening. You should stop worrying about what happened at New Year. Everyone knows it wasn’t the company’s fault. And nobody really got hurt, except for their dignity, did they?’
‘The fact that you need to ask makes the question debatable. There were a number of people in the same position as you that night. If you can’t even remember what happened to you, how can you judge the extent of your hurt?’
‘I meant lasting damage,’ she said dismissively. Several of her workmates had mentioned how maudlin she had been in her intoxicated state, but that seemed to have been the extent of her foolishness. Thank goodness she hadn’t broken down completely…not in public, anyway.
She remembered staggering into a dark, empty office, feeling wretched, there to wallow in self-pity, weeping herself into a fitful sleep that was menaced by jumbled hallucinations which, from her vague remembrance, seemed to involve an angel and a devil fighting for possession of her body and soul. Fortunately the angel must have won, because the darkness had rolled back in a burst of glory that had warmed the rest of her dreamless slumber. Somehow in the wee small hours she must have tottered out and got a taxi home and, since January the first was a holiday, she had gratefully spent the rest of the day in bed, recovering from what she had naively thought was a bout of food poisoning.
‘Damage doesn’t have to be physical to be lasting. Who knows what wounds may be hidden in the psyche?’
Harriet shrugged. The discussion was getting uncomfortably close to intense. Why did he persist in talking about an incident that everyone else was very happy to forget? ‘As long as they stay hidden, who cares? What people don’t know can’t hurt them.’
There was a grim set to his jaw. ‘That sort of philosophy has a nasty habit of backfiring.’
‘Oh, well, if you want to talk on deep, meaningful topics like philosophy, then I’ve definitely had too much to drink,’ she said, searching desperately for a diversion. ‘Why don’t you ask your “dear, sweet Lynne” to dance? She looks willing to be deep and meaningful, and she’s obviously as sober as a judge.’ Dressed in basic black, she looked like one too, thought Harriet nastily, although the beautiful legal eagle would no doubt take that as a compliment!
‘Because I’m dancing with you.’
She mistrusted the gallantry. ‘What kind of answer is that?’
‘What kind of question was it? If you want to know what kind of relationship Lynne and I have, why don’t you just ask?’
Her eyes jerked to his, sparkling defiantly. ‘And be accused of impertinence again?’ she charged.
‘I got the impression this morning that being impertinent was one of your new aims in life,’ he said shrewdly. ‘However, if you’re too shy to ask, I’ll tell you: a useful one. Lynne and I have been dating casually for the last few months…mostly a matter of attending public events together when our schedules permit. Neither of us has any claim on the other.’
Brilliant natural colour flared under the smooth application of her glamorous make-up as Harriet realised what he meant. ‘Why should I care?’
‘Curiosity, perhaps?’
‘Curiosity killed the cat.’ And as soon as the stupid cliché was out of her mouth Harriet went white and closed her eyes, a horrified expression on her face.
‘What’s the matter?’ he murmured deeply, bowing his head so that it almost touched hers.
Harriet shook her head, her hair flaring around her slender neck, releasing a cloud of heavily sensual perfume that made his nostrils flare. The fingers of his right hand shifted, interweaving through hers and folding down over her knuckles in a strong, reassuring grip. ‘What is it, Harriet?’
‘Nothing.’ It came out as an anguished whisper.
‘I don’t believe that. Why are you looking like that? Tell me what’s wrong,’ he said in a voice so gentle that she wanted to lean on it and be softly enfolded in its promise of peace.
‘Nothing!’ She said it again, more strongly, opening eyes that were suddenly burning with rage. She tossed her head, almost hitting him on the jaw. ‘Nothing. Nothing is wrong except that I’m dancing with a man whose girlfriend is glaring daggers at me! If you want to make her jealous, why don’t you go and foist your company on someone else?’
He deftly spun her around, so that she could no longer see Lynne Foster craning at them from her chair. ‘It’s more likely to be me she’s glaring at,’ he said quietly, absorbing her anger with his calm. ‘I’ve upset her by not being my usual agreeable self, but I don’t intend to raise expectations I can’t fulfil. And I’m afraid that she thinks I’m stubborn and uncooperative because I was so rude to Susan this morning—’
‘You were rude to your mother-in-law?’ Harriet blurted out.
‘I agree—hardly the actions of a gentleman,’ he said with a wry humour that further blunted the jagged edge of her pain. ‘Perhaps I’ll be blackballed from my club.’
Harriet’s taut mouth almost trembled into a reluctant smile, and he relaxed some of his watchfulness to continue lightly, ‘I’m afraid Susan is too used to getting her own way where I’m concerned. It’s my fault—I’ve found life is much easier if I let her think she can organise me to her own satisfaction. This morning, for example, she wanted me to agree to Nicola working for Lynne at her law office during the holidays.’
Harriet caught her breath. ‘But hadn’t you told her that you were arranging for Nicola to have a job at Trident?’
He raised rueful eyebrows. ‘When dealing with Susan it usually saves a lot of time and argument if I present her with a fait accompli. I had intended to do that tonight when I’d confirmed the arrangements, but unfortunately she saw fit to launch a pre-emptive strike—’
It seemed a very good description of Susan Jerome’s approach. ‘But—it’s a terrific idea, isn’t it?’ Harriet interrupted feverishly. ‘And it means that you won’t need me after all…’
‘It means I need you all the more. I’m afraid Susan’s plan has the potential to create a bigger problem than it solves,’ he said, firmly squashing any hopes she might have had of evading her responsibilities.
‘What problem?’ she asked, for the second time that night failing to realise that she was being danced into a corner, this time figuratively.
His jaw tightened. ‘It’s rather embarrassing…’
‘Is it?’ She wouldn’t have thought, from the way he had handled himself this morning, that Marcus was capable of being embarrassed about anything. She wondered whether it was something a reckless woman might be able to use to her advantage. ‘In what way?’ she asked eagerly, then flushed when he gave her an ironic look, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.
‘Susan and her infernal matchmaking. She thinks that it’s time I was respectably remarried and she’s decided that Lynne fits the bill. I suspect that she cooked up this law-office deal on the spur of the moment as a way of throwing us together as a cosy family unit, to impress me with Lynne’s supportiveness—making time in her busy, successful career for Nicola’s and my sake et cetera, et cetera. Susan obviously expects propinquity to succeed where natural inclination has failed.’
His eyes narrowed as he looked over her shoulder and Harriet was glad that his glacial look wasn’t directed at her. ‘Lynne is far too intelligent a woman not to have realised by now what Susan is up to, so I have to assume that she’s operating on her own agenda. If I hadn’t nipped the idea in the bud I feel I would have been tacitly acknowledging a level of commitment between us that doesn’t exist. Fortunately, since I had a logical and far more convenient alternative already arranged, every-one’s pride has remained more or less intact…’
‘What about Nicola? She’s the most important one in all this. What did she have to say?’ Harriet asked tartly, to conceal the kick of petty satisfaction she felt at his cool dismissal of the lovely Lynne.
There was something deliciously amusing, too, in the idea of the powerful Marcus Fox being harassed by a matchmaking mama-in-law and trying to evade the acquisitive instincts of pursuing females. It made him seem less…threatening. Maybe she would be able to squeeze some fun out of the situation after all!
‘Nothing, to Susan’s annoyance,’ he remarked drily. ‘Nicola didn’t seem to have an opinion either way, so naturally she accepted what I had arranged.’
Harriet didn’t think that that sounded very rebellious. ‘And did you tell Mrs Jerome that I was the one who was going to be in charge of Nicola?’
He looked her straight in the eye, blue on blue. ‘I told her that it would be someone I trusted implicitly. She was content to accept my assurance.’
‘You didn’t tell her!’ she breathed, realising suddenly that she could read that poker-face.
He quickened his steps to the beat of the music as it built smoothly in a crescendo. ‘I said that she could go away happy in the knowledge that Nicola was going to be close under my direction.’
‘You didn’t tell her,’ she reiterated gleefully as she was whisked into a series of dazzling turns that blurred everything but her partner’s boldly delineated face into oblivion. ‘You were too afraid to!’
‘I obeyed the doctor’s orders and removed a source of tension and worry that would have impeded her recovery,’ he corrected her.
‘Coward!’ she laughed as she followed him through another whirlwind of steps, exhilarated by her ability to sense his every move. Her dance skills were very rusty and with Michael she’d had to concentrate on which foot went where. Marcus kept her too preoccupied to worry about such mundane issues and in his arms she rediscovered a soaring sense of freedom. Her erratic spirits shot skywards again, showering her with sparks of ridiculous joy.
‘I freely admit to being henpecked,’ he said, bringing her to a flourishing stop beside a rounded pillar as the band finished their set.
‘And here was I thinking you were cock of the walk,’ she said impulsively, and blushed when his answering smile imbued her words with a slightly indecent connotation she hadn’t intended. Now he had made her aware of his body again…his whole body this time, not just its polite outer sheath of expensive black and white silk.
Like a flash photograph it etched itself momentarily on her retina, searing her with its vividly imagined detail—the column of his throat flowing down to a chest of tanned satin, smooth and hairless, a ripple of muscle beneath the arch of his ribcage dropping away to the breathtaking splendour of his masculine pride, and the flat hips and long, hard thighs, the slender, elegant feet…
‘Pompous and strutting?’ His thick black brows rose imperiously above the mocking smile. ‘Is that what you think of me, Harriet?’
‘If the cap fits,’ she replied weakly, not moving as his hands dropped away, shocked by her own prurience. She had never stripped a man with her eyes before and it had happened almost without her volition. With such an unlikely subject, too…or should she say object? The colour burned in her cheeks. Maybe she was a little drunk. Or maybe it was just that her secret, sensual self was finally breaking through the taboos created by her gentle upbringing. She laughed breathlessly. It really was happening! The rebirth of Harriet Smith. All she had to do was look and act differently and soon she would be different.
‘Harriet? I asked if you were ready to go home now.’
‘What?’ What was he talking about? Home was a dark, lonely house, aching with memories. Why would she want to go back there? Harriet turned fever-bright eyes up to his, her smile one of desperate gaiety. ‘No! No, of course not. What makes you say that? I’m having too much fun to leave!’
‘The band is packing up soon, anyway,’ he said, stilling the restless flutter of her hand by catching it in his own. ‘This place only has a licence until one-thirty a.m. on week nights. And your sparkle is starting to tarnish. Come on; I’ll give you a lift home.’
His gentle tone made her dig her heels in. He was being condescending and she didn’t like it. ‘No, Michael’s doing that,’ she insisted.
‘I don’t think your escort is in any condition to drive right now, do you?’ He nodded to where Michael was leaning aggressively over the bar, arguing with the barman about the way he had made his drink.
‘Then I’ll drive—’
‘If you could get his keys off him, and if he would let a mere woman drive that precious macho machine he calls a car, and if you hadn’t had a few drinks yourself…’
Battered by his impeccable logic, she said the first stupid thing that came into her head. ‘I came with him, I have to go home with him.’
‘Don’t be foolish—’
‘It’s not foolish; it’s a simple matter of politeness.’
He gave a crack of grim laughter. ‘And how polite do you think he’s going to be when he gets you alone in his car? Or when you hit your doorstep? Polite enough to take no for an answer? A happy drunk is one thing, an angry drunk another. He certainly didn’t seem very happy about the way you were holding him off. Michael is not a gracious loser.’
It was exactly what she had been worried about earlier, why she had several times refused Michael’s suggestion that they leave. ‘I can—’
‘Handle it,’ he finished tightly. ‘So you keep saying. Tell me, do you want to go to bed with him tonight, Harriet?’
She flushed at his bluntness. He stood over her, tall, dark and grim. If she said yes he would go away and stop trying to ruin her enjoyment of life.
‘I was going to say I can get a taxi,’ she said haughtily. ‘I can look after myself, you know; you don’t have to feel responsible.’ Her haughtiness deserted her as she looked over at her sullen escort and nibbled her lower lip. ‘But I’ll have to go over and say goodnight; I can’t just desert him without a word…and he really should get a taxi himself…’
Marcus gave her an exasperated look. ‘Old habits die hard, don’t they, Harriet? The idea is not to give him the chance to object. Allow me to offer polite apologies on your behalf…’