In the end Veronica went with, ‘She’s just so very lovely.’
‘Are you insinuating you didn’t think I had it in me to pull someone so…very lovely?’
At his unexpectedly zesty choice of words Veronica barked out a laugh loud enough Kristin looked up from the table with far too smug an expression.
‘No, not at all. I gather you’re extremely…rich. And…and your vocabulary seems extensive. And you have a very nice array of suits. I’m sure there is all sorts of lovely out there just dying to be yours.’
Okay, so now she really wished she’d never opened her big mouth. The room suddenly felt very hot, especially in the region of her cheeks.
He came to a complete stop, a good three metres from the table where the Hanover House and Hanover Enterprises gangs, bar Boris who’d begged off as it was past his bedtime, were introducing themselves to one another.
Veronica again had no choice but to do the same. She turned to him, finding herself face to face. Close enough she could once again sense his signature aftershave. Could see the faint regrowth of his morning shave. Could decipher the million colours in his eyes, which ranged from smoky grey to shimmering quicksilver.
He held her eye contact as he told her, ‘Stacy is in no way mine, Ms Bing.’
‘Well, no, she’s her own woman, I’m sure. As are we all.’ She punched the air in a move that would have made Gloria Steinem proud.
A high-pitched giggle split the air and they both turned in the direction of the blonde, buxom, surely-below-the-age-of-twenty Stacy, with a y no e, who was in hysterics over something one of the drinks waiters had said. The waiter was concurrently mightily interested in her chest region, which didn’t seem to bother her in the least.
‘It was your vocabulary that put you over the line with that one, right?’ Veronica asked, sarcasm dripping from her voice.
He leant sideways, dropped his voice to a wholly intimate rumble and said, ‘I was quite sure it was the nice array of suits.’
And then he sauntered over to the table to take up position next to his date, leaving Veronica feeling unexpectedly out of her depth. Slightly baffled. And oddly exposed.
‘So tell us about yourself, Veronica,’ said Phil from Hanover Enterprises a good hour into the festivities. ‘And not the stuff on your résumé. The juicy stuff. The stuff we can gossip about once we get back to work on Monday.’
Mitch leant back into his chair as he, like everyone else at the collection of tables, turned to the guest of honour.
As the first time he’d seen her, her dark, sun-tinted hair was wild and curled, though this time her lips were bare bar the lightest wash of gloss that caught the warmth of the trillion tiny down-lights scattered across the ceiling. She wore a string of see-through beads around her neck that didn’t even pretend to be diamonds. And the lazy black dress draped over her curves with such relaxed informality looked as though it could simply fall off at any second.
He’d barely been able to keep his eyes dead ahead as he’d walked next to her earlier just in case he was needed to come to the rescue with his jacket. At least that was what he told himself the reason had been.
She leant forward, elbows braced against the table, and grinned at every one of them, until her audience quieted, stilled and sat wholly in the palm of her hand. Though somehow her gaze had managed to glance off his nose as it had swept past him.
‘Rightio. Things not on my résumé.’
Finally she looked his way, her eyes glowing with an intimate smile as she shared an in-joke just with him. It was enough to have him shifting on his seat.
‘I’m five eight. Sagittarian. A little bit in love with the young Paul Newman, extremely in love with any kind of boot that stops just below the knee. My favourite colour is red and I do prefer gardenias and white gold if anybody’s thinking of pooling together for a welcome gift of any kind. That the kind of thing you were after, Phil?’
Phil grinned, his slow-blinking eyes the sign of too much drink in his system already, as well as being completely besotted with the newcomer in his midst.
‘Close,’ he said. ‘But I was hoping for some kind of sordid reason you had to move here. We can’t fathom why you’d leave the sun and surf and beaches of the Gold Coast. So what was it? Jilted at the altar? Killed someone? Slept with the boss?’
As Mitch watched quietly on Veronica’s happy façade slipped. The smile suffered, the light in her eyes dimmed, the brazen pose suddenly made her seem as if she were hiding behind her hands. The change in her was so subtle, the table so raucous, her visage still so bright and shiny he doubted anyone else even noticed the difference.
But he noticed, and he felt it as a wildly protective twinge in his gut.
Before he even knew what he was doing, he clapped his hands together so loudly the noise reverberated off the walls. But at least everyone looked his way as he called out, ‘Right. Next round’s on me. In fact, if you’re quick off the mark I’ll pick up the whole bar tab.’
The table cheered. Phil rocked back in his chair until it almost fell over. Orders poured in. Chairs scraped, the table jiggled and half the inhabitants left. And Veronica was forgotten. By everyone but him.
How could he forget her when her beautiful dark brown eyes looked back at him brimming with a mix of chagrin and thanks. In direct response his lungs tightened so hard, and so fast it felt as though they might be about to collapse in on themselves. And once again he was bemused that these reactions were actually happening to him.
His life since coming home to Melbourne had been lived with a kind of numbness. He wasn’t silly enough not to know it had been a mostly self-induced haze, brought about by too much work, the bare minimum of time spent with his far too compassionate family, and what little social time he had left spent with women who did little to produce anything beyond a string of unmemorable nights.
But there was no denying it: the sass, the smarts, the way she could wind anyone around her little finger, Veronica Bing had his curiosity piqued to the point of discomfort.
Discomfort. That was the key word. Because there was nothing more to his attraction than desire and he knew there never could be. What he was feeling for her would only lead to an emotional dead end. Anything else he had to give had been left behind in London.
His current state was nothing a good long run and some brutal mental chewing out wouldn’t burn away. In the meanwhile he’d keep his interests fluid, his hands off and his eyes roving to the Stacys of the world. Stacy was sweet. Unencumbered. And she was also trying to get his attention.
‘Sorry?’ he said, turning to face the warm and willing girl he’d practically ignored all evening while daydreaming about the one he ought to keep well away from.
Stacy stared up at him, more thought going on behind her pretty blue eyes than he’d imagined there could be. She looked from one eye to the other, smiled sadly, then said, ‘Oh, never mind.’
She stood and headed into a quiet corner with the drinks waiter. Mitch considered heading over and staking his claim, but in the end he couldn’t summon the energy to care. Instead his disobedient gaze swung to the brunette on the other side of the table, who as it turned out was watching him too.
‘Not a drinker?’ Veronica asked.
‘Only when I’m thirsty. Is yours any good?’
She crossed her eyes and stared down into her thick red drink, then looked back up at him with a glimmer. ‘It’s doing the job.’
He picked himself up and moved around the table and took the seat next to hers. Her big brown eyes watched him all the way, and the closer he got, the more he saw that something Phil had said still stung. It was a concern. For him. As her employer. Period.
He looked off