It was only four-thirty now—good God, it had seemed a lot longer than twenty-five minutes when Zack was actually here!—so there was another hour before most of the dress shops in the area would close.
Stubbornness, at feeling forced into the position of needing to look her best tonight, and pride, because as she had no real choice about being in Zack's company she had to look her very best, for her own sake, both warred within her.
But not for long! Stubbornness had never got her very far where Zack was concerned, and her pride was one of the few things she had left.
‘I'll be back in time to lock up,’ she assured Sonia as she rushed through the shop on the way out to her car.
She was slightly above average height, slender, a standard size ten, so should have had no trouble finding something for a quiet family celebration.
And yet nothing she tried on in the first two shops looked right. As usual, she was convinced that when she saw the right dress she would know it was the one. Unfortunately, she never did, which was why she had held on to her reliable black for so long! And tonight, when she didn't have time to dither, was no exception; nothing transformed her into the regally confident beauty she would have liked to be.
It was ridiculous anyway, she scolded herself impatiently as she pulled a thin blue woollen dress over her head and smoothed its softness down over her hips. Who was she hoping to impress? Certainly not Zack; he had made his opinion of her more than obvious over the years. And she was tired, and hot, and totally fed up with the whole stupid—–
She knew without question that this dress was the one!
She had looked up uninterestedly to her reflection in the mirror on the changing-room wall, and was stunned by the transformation that the just-above-knee-length dress made. Oh, she didn't look regal, nor especially confident or beautiful; what she did look was—sexy!
On the hanger the thin cashmere dress had looked unimpressive, but Helen had been attracted to the royal blue colour, if nothing else, and the sales assistant, seeing at least a spark of interest, had encouraged her to try it on.
The short style showed off a long expanse of her slender, shapely legs, the soft wool moulding gently, if not exactly clinging, to the curves of her body. The sleeves reached down to her wrists, the neck softly encircled her throat, and yet there was an underlying sensuality about the way the dress moved with her, and it made her hair appear almost black, her eyes no longer grey but seeming to take on a reflective blue.
‘I'll take it,’ she decided before she had a chance to talk herself out of it.
The sales assistant looked relieved, and Helen couldn't exactly blame her; it was almost five-thirty on a Saturday night, after all.
She had bought the dress, even been persuaded into buying a pair of sheer Lycra tights to wear with it, and was driving back to lock up her own shop when reaction set in; she had never, ever bought anything that actually made her look sexy. Businesslike, smart, hopefully attractive, but never sexy.
Her shoulders slumped as she realised that it would have to be the reliable black after all; her father and Emily would wonder what on earth had come over her if she went out in the clinging blue dress. And God knew what Zack would make of it!
She ran a weary hand over her eyes; thank God that particular brainstorm had passed!
‘My God, Helen, I hardly recognised you; you look beautiful!'
She spun around self-consciously, the high colour that had been due to anger seconds ago, when she'd entered the restaurant, now changing to something quite different as she saw the look in Zack's eyes when he openly stared at her.
She was wearing the royal blue cashmere dress!
She hadn't intended to, had taken her old reliable black one from the wardrobe after showering and washing her hair, and taken it down to the kitchen to press when her father came into the room, already dressed and ready to go out in his best dark blue suit, iron-grey hair brushed severely back from his face.
Helen's conscience had pricked her into telling him that Zack and Greg would be at the dinner tonight. The last thing she needed was her father collapsing at the restaurant when the other two men arrived, and it was a possibility if he hadn't been warned.
His reaction to the news was to refuse to go to the dinner himself—‘if that man was going to be there'!
She should have expected it, of course. But even so, she had thought, for Emily's sake if nothing else, that her father would make the effort and go.
But no amount of cajoling on Helen's part could persuade him to change his mind. Reasoning either. Or sheer frustrated anger. Her father was adamant: if Zack was going to be there tonight, then he wasn't.
Helen didn't know which one to be angrier with, Zack for accepting the invitation and so creating the situation in the first place—he could have avoided going tonight without hurting Emily's feelings too much, if he had tried, and he had to know the dissension it would cause among the family!—or her father for adding to the problem by behaving so stubbornly.
In the end it didn't really matter which of them was to blame; she felt totally agitated, throwing aside the black dress when she realised how late it had become while she tried to persuade her father, defiantly putting on the blue cashmere. It was bad enough that she was going to have to make excuses for her father's absence that would satisfy Emily, but for her to be late on top of that would be unforgivable.
Sheer frustration with the whole situation had been enough to instil a certain amount of bravado into her actions; her hair was brushed back in a casually wind-swept style, her make-up was slightly heavier than usual, her lashes long and thick from the mascara she had liberally applied, her lids shaded with blue shadow, her lip-gloss a deeper red than she wore in the day, making her lips fuller.
As she faced Zack across the reception area of the restaurant she knew she looked gracefully tall and slender, the heels on her black shoes adding to her height, her dark colouring against the blue of the dress a startling contrast. It was obvious from the speculation in Zack's gaze as he slowly looked her up and down that he was very aware of the change in her appearance.
He looked as assuredly attractive as he usually did, in a dark suit and snowy white shirt, the latter making his skin look darkly tanned; he was standing across from her with an ease that was totally deceptive, Helen knew, leashed power in the wide shoulders and tapered thighs, exuding an air of masculinity that was completely unaffected.
Helen wondered how she had ever allowed herself to enter into the sort of marriage she had with this man. She must have been mad!
‘Not that you don't always look beautiful.’ His mouth twisted wryly as he realised what he had said to her in greeting.
‘Stop back-pedalling, Zack,’ she derided. ‘We both know how I usually look.’ And it was nothing like this!
As he moved to her side, the light overhead caught in the darkness of his hair, giving it an ebony sheen, dark hair that was still damp from having been recently washed. Helen knew that Zack would have showered before coming out tonight, had his second shave of the day. The fact that she knew his movements so intimately unsettled her even further.
‘Why do you always have to put yourself down in that way?’ he rasped now, standing so close that she could smell his aftershave, that elusively masculine smell that was so much a part of him. She could never recognise the smell of this aftershave on other men without thinking of Zack; it could be very disconcerting. ‘I've never denied you're a beautiful woman,’ he told her abruptly.
Helen had never been very impressed with the way she looked, had never actually had a lot of time, with a job to do and a small child to bring up,