‘Oh...just a glass of sparkling mineral water, please,’ she said, crossed one slender, shapely leg over the other, her fine, filmy skirt riding up a little so that she had to stroke it down over her knee. Casually glancing around the bar, she found herself looking into black eyes on the other side of the room, eyes that had been watching her smoothing down her skirt, had coldly assessed her legs, risen to give the same unimpressed speculation to her figure and face.
Martine gave him a glacial stare back. She never liked getting looks like that—as if she were an object, not a human being. Some men used it as a silent insult. She had the feeling this one did, especially remembering the way he had spoken to her while they were jammed in the revolving door.
He calmly detached his gaze, looked down, shot his cuff back to allow a glimpse of his gold wristwatch and frowned, then got to his feet. Martine stiffened, thinking for a few seconds that he was coming over here to her table.
Instead he walked out of the bar without giving her another look. Several women in the room watched him avidly.
OK, he had his points, especially when you saw him in a good light, thought Martine. She liked tall men, especially when they moved like that. The tan was striking, too. He probably stripped well; his body had interesting proportions: broad shoulders, slim hips, long, long legs.
Catching herself up, she grimaced. What was she thinking about? Men like him were nothing but a disaster. She hadn’t had a man in her life for almost a year, that was the trouble, and however hard she worked, however many hours she put into her job, she still felt pretty blue at times. Frustration and loneliness must be having a dire effect on her brains for her to look twice at that guy, though!
She crossly took a couple of salted almonds from the bowl in the middle of the table and popped them into her mouth while she, too, consulted her watch.
Where was Charles?
She had no sooner thought the question than she saw him hurrying towards her, a thin, slight, fair man in a well-cut dark suit.
‘Sorry,’ he apologised, sliding into the seat next to her. ‘Am I late, or were you early?’
‘I’ve only been here a moment,’ she lied, smiling at him, her eyes faintly anxious as she absorbed the air of weariness he habitually wore. She hadn’t seen him for a week and was struck by the way he was ageing. He was only forty-five, but he looked older; there were lines around his mouth and eyes, his skin had a grey tinge.
The waiter brought her drink, looked at Charles expectantly.
‘My usual, Jimmy,’ Charles told him with a smile.
‘Yes, Mr Redmond,’ said the waiter, beaming, pleased because Charles had remembered his name.
Charles ate here frequently. He lived in a luxurious penthouse flat a short walk away; this was his nearest local restaurant and he liked the place. He had a married couple who ran his home. Mr Wright was his chauffeur and handyman, and looked after his clothes; Mrs Wright cleaned and cooked in the flat. But Charles let them have three evenings a week free, and came here to eat.
The waiter walked away and Charles turned back to smile at Martine.
‘That’s my favourite dress, you always look lovely in it,’ he said, and a faint flush crept into her face. She had put on the black georgette because whenever she wore it Charles told her how much he liked it.
Working for him meant a constant succession of important social gatherings for which she required a large and very expensive wardrobe, so she had plenty of clothes to choose from. She got a special allowance for clothes and Charles encouraged her to buy from good designers because as his personal assistant she was always representing the bank and Charles felt she should look expensive and elegant at all times. It was the image he wished the bank to convey: moneyed, sophisticated, cool.
‘Thank you, Charles, you look very elegant yourself tonight,’ she murmured, and he gave her a rueful little quirk of the mouth.
‘Why, thank you.’ He didn’t sound convinced. No doubt he knew his suit no longer fitted perfectly, revealed how thin he was getting, emphasised the fact that he had lost even more weight since she last saw him.
Charles had never been heavily built, but after his wife’s death two years ago he had lost weight as if his flesh was melting away. That hadn’t been the only change in him. His hair had been a lovely pale gold; the shock of Elizabeth’s death had left him with a sprinkling of silver hairs and a haunted look in his blue eyes.
He had been driving and had emerged unscathed himself with a few minor bruises and cuts and a slight head injury. Elizabeth had been killed instantly; Charles had never quite got over it. He blamed himself and was guilty because he had not died too. If they had had children it might have been easier for him to recover from the shock, but he and Elizabeth hadn’t yet got around to a family.
‘Thanks, Jimmy,’ he told the waiter as the man appeared with a double whisky and soda on a silver tray. ‘I’m expecting another guest to join us—would you keep an eye open for him? His name’s Falcucci, Bruno Falcucci.’
‘An Italian gentleman, would he be, sir? There’s a gentleman making a telephone call in the foyer who’s talking in Italian. I’ll check if it’s Mr Falcucci, shall I?’
‘Thanks, Jimmy,’ Charles said, smiling at him again.
Ice clinked in the glass as Charles took a swallow of whisky.
‘Who’s joining us?’ Martine asked, faintly disappointed because she had been looking forward to dinner alone with him, but not taken entirely by surprise because Charles often used social occasions to smooth a business deal, and she was frequently included in the party, whether it was lunch or dinner or a cocktail party.
‘A cousin of mine,’ Charles said with a glint of mischief in his blue eyes.
As startled as he had obviously expected her to be, Martine said, ‘You’ve never mentioned having any close relatives.’
Charles had, from time to time, told her something about himself and his background, and other members of staff at the bank had dropped the odd crumb of gossip. She had gained the impression that Charles had no near family, and very few close friends. He had always been so wrapped up in his work, even while his wife was alive, and since her death he had cut his social life almost to nil.
His friends were largely colleagues or business acquaintances, most of them married, with family commitments, making Charles an odd man out on most social occasions. That was why he had fallen into the habit lately of taking Martine along with him to any private gathering to which he was invited.
They weren’t romantically involved, simply very good friends as well as close colleagues; it suited them both to have an escort for an evening now and then, and they were both deeply involved in their work.
Charles had told her that he had been an afterthought by his parents, both of whom, apparently, had been in their late forties when he was born, their first and only child, a much loved and indulged one. Perhaps having old parents had made him so serious, so tied to duty and work?
They had died long ago, when he was a young man, leaving Charles an enormous fortune and the major interest in the family merchant bank. Charles had once said that he had begun to work as soon as he left university, and hadn’t noticed much about the world outside banking until he was nearly forty himself. That year he had been in Paris at an international conference and met a beautiful French model half his age, Elizabeth, raven-haired, tiny, exquisite. Charles fell like a ton of bricks, married her just weeks later, only to lose her again within two years, a tragedy which made him, for Martine, a deeply romantic, star-crossed figure.
She felt highly protective towards Charles, as well as liking him.
‘Bruno is the only close relative I have,’ Charles said now, giving her a smiling, rueful shrug. ‘And I’ve only met him a couple