‘I presume you spend the Christmas holidays back at home?’ Derek asked, cutting into her thoughts.
‘Yes,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I usually go home as soon as school breaks up. But I haven’t this year. Still, I’ll have to make an appearance tomorrow. I always decorate the Christmas tree. If I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done. Then I help Flora prepare things for the following day. The lunch is partially catered for, but Flora likes to cook some hot food as well. Flora is the housekeeper,’ she added when she saw Derek frown at the name. ‘She’s been with the family for forever.’
‘I have to confess I couldn’t see your Nick with a girlfriend named Flora.’
‘You’d be right there. Nick’s girlfriends always have names like Jasmine, or Sapphire, or Chloe.’ That was what the latest one was called: Chloe.
‘Not only that,’ Sarah went on waspishly, ‘they never help. They always just swan downstairs at the last minute, with their fingernails perfect and their minuscule appetites on hold. It gets my goat when they sit there, sipping mineral water whilst they eat absolutely nothing.’
‘Mmm,’ Derek said.
Sarah pulled a face at him. ‘I suppose you think I’m going to get all upset and make a pig of myself again.’
‘It’s highly possible, by the sounds of things. But what I was actually thinking was that you need someone by your side at this Christmas lunch. A boyfriend of your own.’
‘Huh! I’ve brought boyfriends to Christmas lunch before,’ Sarah informed Derek drily. ‘In no time, Nick makes them look like fools, or fortune-hunters.’
‘And maybe they were. But possibly they were too young, and totally overawed by the occasion. What you need is someone older, someone with looks and style, someone successful and sophisticated who won’t be fazed by anything your playboy guardian says and does. Someone, in short, who’s going to make the object of your desire sit up and take notice. Of you.’
‘I like the idea, Derek. In theory. But even with my improved looks, I don’t think I’m going to be able to snaffle up the type of boyfriend you’ve just described at this late stage. Christmas is two days away.’
‘In that case let me help you out. Because I know just such an individual who doesn’t have anywhere to go on Christmas Day and would be happy to come to your aid.’
‘You do? Who?’
‘You’re looking at him.’
Sarah blinked, then laughed. ‘You have to be kidding. How can you be my boyfriend, Derek? You’re gay!’
‘You didn’t know that till I told you,’ he reminded her. ‘Your Nick won’t know it, either, especially if I’m introduced as your boyfriend. People believe what they’re told, on the whole.’
Sarah stared at Derek. He was right. Why would Nick—or anyone else at lunch—suspect that Derek was gay? He didn’t look it. Or act it.
‘So what do you think?’ Derek said with a wicked gleam in his eyes. ‘Trust me when I say that nothing stimulates a man’s interest in a woman as well as another man’s undivided attention in her.’
Sarah still hesitated.
‘What are you afraid of?’ Derek demanded to know. ‘Success?’
‘Absolutely not!’
‘Then what have you got to lose?’
Nothing at all, Sarah realised with a sudden rush of adrenalin. At the very least she would not feel alone, as she often did at Christmas, especially during that dreaded lunch.
This year she would not only be looking her best, but she would also have a very good-looking man by her side.
‘All right,’ Sarah said, a quiver of unexpected excitement rippling down her spine. ‘You’re on.’
CHAPTER TWO
SARAH’S positive attitude towards Christmas lasted till she pulled her white car into the driveway the following morning and saw Nick’s bright red sporty number parked outside the garages.
‘Darn it,’ she muttered as she pressed the remote to open the electronic gates.
She’d presumed Nick would be out playing golf, as he always did every Saturday, come rain, hail or shine. Come Christmas Eve as well!
If she’d imagined for one moment that Nick would be home, she’d have put on one of her sexy new sun-dresses this morning—probably the black and white halter-necked one that showed off her slender shoulders and nicely toned arms. Instead, she was sporting a pair of faded jeans and a striped yellow tank-top. Suitable clothes in which to decorate a Christmas tree. But not to impress a man, especially one who had a penchant for women who always looked as if they’d just stepped out of a beauty salon.
Still, with a bit of luck, she might be able to sneak up to her bedroom and make some changes before running into Nick. The house was, after all, huge.
Built in the 1920s by a wealthy mining family, Goldmine had been renovated and revamped many times since then. Its original stone walls were now cement-rendered white, with arched windows and lots of balconies, which gave it a distinctly Mediterranean look.
Because of the sloping site, the house looked double-storeyed from the road, but there was another, lower level at the back where the architecture incorporated a lot of glass to take advantage of the home’s harbourside position.
Actually, there weren’t many rooms in the house that didn’t look out over Sydney Harbour, the view extending across the water to the bridge and the opera house in the distance. On the upper floor, all the bedrooms had individual balconies with water views, the master bedroom opening out onto a walled balcony that was big enough to accommodate an outdoor table-setting.
The enormous back terrace had the best vantage point, however, which was why it was always the place for Christmas lunch. Long trestle-style tables would be brought in, shade provided by huge canvas blinds put up for the day. Only once in Sarah’s memory, when the temperature soared to forty degrees, had the lunch been held inside, in the family room, the only room large enough to accommodate the number of guests who swamped Goldmine every Christmas Day from midday onwards.
The tradition had been started by Sarah’s father and mother soon after they’d bought the house nearly thirty years ago, a tradition her father continued after her mother’s death, and which Nick seemed happy to honour in the years he’d been living there.
Of course, the cynic in Sarah appreciated that Christmas lunch at Goldmine was more of a business lunch these days than a gathering of family and long-term friends. Most of the guests at the table would be the people Nick did business with, valuable contacts whose priorities were where the next few million were coming from.
Sarah was under no illusion that Nick was any different from the types he mixed with. He liked money as much—possibly more—than they did.
This last thought reminded Sarah of what Derek had implied over drinks last night: that Nick was taking advantage of his position as her guardian to live, rent-free, in her harbourside home. Although she’d defended Nick in this regard, Sarah had to concede that living in Goldmine was a huge social advantage. Not so much because of its size—some of the neighbours’ homes were obscenely large—but because of its position. There was no doubt that having such an address had benefited Nick no end in the business stakes. Which was why he wanted to buy the place.
The gates finally open, Sarah drove through and parked next to Nick’s car. She frowned over at it, still perplexed that he hadn’t gone to golf today.