‘Something sophisticated rather than the startling things you usually wear. Something that does justice to your figure, of course, but without being blatant’
So, for his sake, she’d agreed to be ready at eight, when he would call for her at the flat in Earl’s Court she shared with her best friend Cathy, and now she was wishing she had never come. Or at least that Rupert would collect her now, right this minute, and take her home.
Nobody was talking to her and most of the guests looked decidedly stuffy, and some of the women were giving her disapproving looks. She wanted to sit down with Rupert and discuss their future in privacy.
Disorientated by her moments of introspection, she absent-mindedly took another glass of white wine from one of the circulating white-coated waiters. Rupert had abandoned her shortly after their arrival, obviously preferring to talk shop with his colleagues rather than circulate with her.
Or perhaps it had something to do with the dress she was wearing? The choice had been a small rebellion, but important to her. She’d already had her coat on when he’d picked her up, and he had probably been too flattered by her unusual punctuality, thinking she was being careful not to annoy him, to ask if she was wearing something he considered suitable.
Was her stubborn determination to wear what pleased her and not what he wanted her to wear responsible for the way he was ignoring her?
She enjoyed wearing the scarlet silk; it was her favourite. Usually it gave her bags of self-confidence. The halter top dipped low between her full breasts, without exposing too much naked flesh but giving the impression that at any moment it might, and the short, full skirt gave her a feeling of freedom that the svelte little black sheaths all the other women seemed to be wearing like a uniform never could.
And the deep shade of scarlet flattered her unusual colouring, the rich gold hair and her contrasting purply-coloured eyes framed by entirely natural dark lashes and brows.
Besides, to give herself her due, she had struggled for hours to tame her hair. Cut it she would not, not for Rupert or anyone else, and now it was intent on escaping the battery of pins she and—eventually—Cathy had fenced it in with.
Rare melancholy tugged her spirits down. She drank her fresh wine, partly for something to do and partly to console herself. It went straight to her head, reminding her that she’d had nothing to eat since a light salad lunch.
Where in the world had Rupert got to?
She scanned the crowd that filled the impressively large living room of the Hampstead home of the retiring head of department for Rupert’s tall, wideshouldered figure. Most of the men looked alike, in dark dinner jackets, some fatter, some shorter, but none taller.
It was difficult to see, anyway—the smoke-filled atmosphere, the tight knots of guests who broke away from each other, dispersing only to form another knot somewhere else with other people—and her eyes didn’t seem to be functioning too well. Everything seemed suddenly out of focus, which didn’t help locate her lost fiancé.
Either she needed to see an optician, or the lights were too dim, or the glasses of wine she had so heedlessly swallowed had been too strong. Whatever, she suddenly desperately wanted to find him, make it up—wanted to recapture that sense of joy in being really needed by someone which she’d experienced when he’d asked her to marry him.
And then she saw him. The back view of his tall, elegantly made figure slipping out through the French windows that someone must have opened for overdue ventilation.
She put her empty glass down on the small table she seemed to have spent the whole evening with and began to weave her way through the crowded room, accidentally bumping into a pin-thin woman wearing black silk crepe, pearls and a frosty expression.
Annie, smiling seraphically, apologised profusely and wove on her way, only one thing on her mind; to find Rupert and say sorry for the vile names she’d called him last night. He surely didn’t mean to try to change her, turn her into someone alien—hadn’t he said he loved her just as she was?
Perhaps if she could persuade him that his constant fault-finding was ruining their relationship they could get comfortably back on track again. Annie liked the feeling of being loved and wanted; she’d had precious little of it during her growing-up years.
It was past time, she thought as she slid through the French windows, that they tried to recapture what they seemed to have lost in their relationship just lately.
There was a paved terrace. He was standing at the far end; she could just make out his darker outline against the dark December night. It was cold, starless—too cold to stand around suddenly, unexpectedly assailed by second thoughts.
She drew in a deep breath and, scarlet skirts flying, ran across the terrace and flung herself into his arms.
Daniel Faber slipped through the open French windows, stuffed his hands into the pockets of his narrow-fitting trousers and walked to the far end of the terrace.
He needed out of that room. Elegant as it undoubtedly was, it was also stuffy and overcrowded. The sharp December night air was just what he needed.
He drew a litre or two into his grateful lungs and flexed his wide shoulders beneath the smooth silk and alpaca of his superbly tailored dinner jacket. He felt himself begin to relax.
Besides, with him out of the way the others might start to have fun. It couldn’t be easy to relax when their chief executive was around. Especially when opinions and betting odds couldn’t be openly bandied around in his presence. Everyone was eager to know who would be promoted to the vacant position of Head of Futures when Edward Ker finally retired early in the New Year.
The only two viable contenders were Rupert Glover and Andrew Makepeace. Glover, he felt, had the surer instinct, and an impeccable track record within the bank. Makepeace, though, was steadier, committed to his work and, just as importantly, committed to that pleasant, round-faced wife of his and their two small children. Committed family men made sound employees.
Glover was a horse of a different colour. Until fairly recently he’d been known as a womaniser—an endless procession of empty-headed bimbos going through his bedroom, apparently.
But a few months ago he’d announced his engagement, surprising everyone. Daniel’s PA had passed the information on—Daniel insisted on keeping abreast of internal gossip, keeping his finger on the collective pulse of his staff.
He’d taken his PA’s comments on board—the addendum that the token of an engagement ring was probably the only way the bank’s Lothario could get the woman in question between the sheets and that the engagement would be lucky to last the week out
But it had lasted three months. It looked as if Glover had finally decided he’d sown enough wild oats. And, seeing the fiancée in question tonight, Daniel could understand why.
Glover hadn’t introduced her, but Daniel had asked around and discovered that the startlingly gorgeous figure in red—standing out like a vibrant oriental poppy amidst the svelte and understated sober colours of the other women—was the fabled fiancée. He could understand why the younger man had kept her under wraps.
That glorious hair—a pity she’d tried, unsuccessfully as it happened, to squash it flat against her shapely head—those pouting scarlet lips and come-to-bed pansy-purple eyes, the voluptuous figure flaunted by that outrageously sexy dress. A combination tailor-made to make any red-blooded male think of steamy nights of passion and a nursery full of babies.
He grinned ruefully at his own lusting thoughts, strong, even teeth gleaming in the darkness. With such a woman for a wife Glover would keep to the straight and narrow, his nose rammed tight against the grindstone. So the odds on his promotion were growing shorter.
And maybe it was time Daniel followed his own rules, settled down to raise a family. He was thirty-six already—time,