Shelley’s eyes gleamed. ‘Then why not opt for some good, unclean fun with Mr Wrong?’
For a brief moment Cory remembered a raised glass, and a slanting smile, and felt her heart thump all over again.
She said lightly, ‘Not really my scene. The single life is safer.’
Shelley sighed. ‘If not positively dull. Well, go home, if you must. I’ll ring you tomorrow and we’ll fix up supper and a movie. The new Nicolas Cage looks good.’
‘I had no real objection to the old Nicholas Cage,’ said Cory. She gave Shelley a brief kiss on the cheek, and went.
The cab driver was the uncommunicative sort, which suited Cory perfectly.
She sat in the corner of the seat, feeling the tensions of the evening slowly seeping away.
She needed to be much firmer with Gramps, she told herself. Stop him arranging these dates from hell for her. Because she’d laughed off Philip’s bad manners, and ducked the situation, that didn’t mean she hadn’t found the whole thing hurtful.
He’d left her standing around looking stupid, and vulnerable to patronage by some stranger who thought he was Mr Charm.
A hanging offence in more enlightened times, she told herself, as she paid off the cab and went into her building.
One disadvantage of living alone was having no one to discuss the evening with, she thought wryly, as she hung her coat in the wardrobe.
She could always telephone her mother, currently pursuing merry widowhood in Miami, but she’d probably find Sonia absorbed in her daily bridge game. And Gramps would only want to hear that she’d had a good time, so she’d have to fabricate something before she saw him next.
Maybe I’ll get a cat, she thought. The final affirmation of spinsterhood. Which at twenty-three was ridiculous.
Perhaps I should change my name to Tina, she thought. There Is No Alternative.
She carefully removed the silver dress, and placed it over a chair. She’d have it cleaned, she decided, and send it to tonight’s charity’s second-hand shop. It would do more good there than it had while she’d been wearing it. Or had it really been wearing her?
Moot point, she thought, reaching for her moss-green velvet robe. And paused…
She rarely looked at herself in the mirror, except when she washed her face or brushed her hair, but now she found she was subjecting herself to a prolonged and critical scrutiny.
The silver-grey silk and lace undies she wore concealed very little from her searching gaze, so no false comfort there.
Her breasts were high and firm, but too small, she thought disparagingly. Everywhere else she was as flat as a board. At least her legs were long, but there were deep hollows at the base of her neck, and her shoulderblades could slice bread.
No wonder her blonde, glamorous mother, whose finely honed figure was unashamedly female, had tended to view her as if she’d given birth to a giraffe.
I’m just like Dad and Gramps, she acknowledged with a sigh. And if I’d only been a boy I’d have been glad of it.
She put on her robe and zipped it up, welcoming its warm embrace.
She dabbed cleanser on to her face, and tissued away the small amount of make-up which was all she ever wore. A touch of shadow on her lids, a glow of pink or coral on her soft mouth, and a coat of brown mascara to emphasise the curling length of the lashes that shaded her hazel eyes. Her cheekbones required no accenting.
From the neck up she wasn’t too bad, she thought judiciously. It was a shame she couldn’t float round as a disembodied head.
But she couldn’t understand why she was going in for this kind of personal assessment anyway. Unless it was Shelley’s reference to Rob, and all the unhappy memories his name still had the power to evoke.
Which is really stupid, she thought quickly. I should put it behind me. Move on. Isn’t that what we’re always being told?
But some things weren’t so easy to leave behind.
She went across her living room into her small galley-kitchen and poured milk into a pan, setting it on the hob to heat. Hot chocolate was what she needed. Comfort in a mug. Not a stony trip down memory lane.
When her drink was ready, she lit the gas fire and curled up in her big armchair, her hands cupped round the beaker, her gaze fixed on the small blue flames leaping above the mock coals.
One day, she thought, she’d have a huge log fire in a hearth big enough to roast an ox.
In fact, if she wanted, she could have one next week. One word to Gramps, and mansions with suitable fireplaces would be laid open for her inspection.
Only, she didn’t want.
She’d found out quite early in life that as the sole heiress to the Grant building empire the word was hers for the asking. That her grandfather was ready to gratify any whim she expressed. Which was why she’d learned to guard every word, and ask for as little as possible.
And this flat, with its one bedroom and tiny bathroom, was quite adequate for her present needs, she thought, looking round her with quiet satisfaction.
The property company who owned it had raised no objection to her getting rid of the elderly fitted carpets and having the floorboards sanded and polished to a gleaming honey shine.
She’d painted the walls a deep rich cream, and bought a big, comfortable sofa and matching chair covered in a corded olive-green fabric.
She’d made a dining area, with a round, glass-topped table supported by a cream pedestal and a pair of slender high-backed chairs, and created an office space with a neat corner desk which she’d assembled herself from a pack during one long, fraught evening, and which held her laptop, her phone and a fax machine.
Not that she worked at home a great deal. She’d been determined from the first that the flat would be her sanctuary, and that she would leave Grant Industries behind each time she closed her door.
Although she could never really be free of it for long, she acknowledged with a smothered sigh.
But she used her home computer mainly to follow share dealings on the Internet—an interest she’d acquired during her time with Rob, and the only one to survive their traumatic break-up. A hobby, she thought, that she could pursue alone.
It had never been her parents’ intention for her to be an only child. Cory had been born two years after their marriage, and it had been expected that other babies would follow in due course.
But there had seemed no real hurry. Ian and Sonia Grant had liked to live in the fast lane, and their partying had been legendary. Sonia had been a professional tennis player in her single days, and Ian’s passion, apart from his wife and baby, had been rally driving.
Sonia had been playing in an invitation tournament in California when a burst tyre had caused Ian’s car to spin off a forest road and crash, killing him instantly.
Sonia had tried to assuage her grief by re-embarking on the tennis circuit, and for a few years Cory had travelled with her mother in a regime of constantly changing nannies and hotel suites.
Arnold Grant had finally intervened, insisting that the little girl come back to Britain to be educated and live a more settled life, and Cory’s childhood had then been divided between her grandparents’ large house in Chelsea and their Suffolk home, which she’d much preferred.
Sonia had eventually remarried, her second husband being American industrialist Morton Traske, and after his death from a heart attack she’d taken up permanent residence in Florida.
Cory had an open invitation