* * *
Max ran his finger around his collar. His flowery collar. He felt ridiculous. His hair had been washed and conditioned and cut and it was just as well it hadn’t been any longer or that fool of a barber—excuse him, hairstylist—would have had it flopping all over his face. He had been shaved too, swathed in hot towels. Actually that hadn’t been too bad—until they had slapped on some cologne without his say-so. His eyes were still watering.
If any of his mates saw him now, or caught him stinking like a tart’s boudoir, he would never hear the end of it. Thank God this was the last place he would meet anyone he knew. The dimly lit bar was crowded, but if anyone else in there was an engineer, they weren’t like any civil engineers Max had ever met. Everyone seemed to be at least ten years younger than him and half of them were outrageously dressed. Unbelievably, his own absurd shirt didn’t stand out at all compared to what everyone else was wearing. He might have to forgive Allegra for it after all. He’d been so certain that she’d deliberately manoeuvred Dickie into choosing the flowery shirt as a joke.
‘Isn’t this place fab?’ Across the table, Allegra was bright-eyed as she surveyed the crowd. Dom, the photographer, was sitting next to her and together they were keeping up a running commentary on celebrities they had spotted and what everyone was wearing. Max had tuned out after a while. He hoped Darcy King would turn up soon and make this purgatory worthwhile.
‘Don’t look now...’ Allegra leant forward with a little squeal of excitement ‘...but that’s Chris O’Donnell sitting behind you!’
‘No! Not Chris! Squeeeee!’
She looked at him. ‘You don’t know who Chris O’Donnell is, do you?’ Without waiting for his reply, she turned to Dom. ‘He doesn’t know who Chris O’Donnell is.’
Dom stared at Max. ‘You just jetted in from Mars or something, man?’
‘Chris O’Donnell is the ultimate bad boy rocker,’ said Allegra, apparently shocked to her core by the depths of Max’s ignorance. ‘He just got voted sexiest man in the country, and he’d certainly have had my vote...’ She sighed wistfully.
Max raised his brows. ‘I didn’t know you had a taste for bad boy rockers, Legs. Not your usual type, surely? I don’t see your mother approving.’
Allegra flushed. ‘I wouldn’t want him as a boyfriend or anything, but you’ve got to admit he’s smokin’ hot...’
‘So have you told Flick about your major new assignment?’ Max said, not wanting to get into a discussion about which men Allegra thought were hot. He was fairly sure the list wouldn’t include a civil engineer, flowery shirt or not.
Not that he cared about that. It was just uncomfortable to talk about that kind of stuff with someone he’d known for so long. It would be like discussing sex with his sister.
‘I rang her last night.’ Allegra’s brightness dimmed slightly.
‘Was she pleased to hear about your big break?’
‘Well, you know Flick.’ Her smile was painful to watch and Max cursed himself for asking. He should have known Flick would disappoint her. ‘She did say “Well done” when I explained that it might mean a promotion if the article was a success. But she’s writing about the political implications of the economic crisis; you can’t blame her for not being impressed by my piece on whether it’s possible to create the perfect boyfriend. I suspect she thinks it’s a bit silly.’
Max had thought precisely the same thing but now, perversely, he was outraged at Flick’s dismissal of Allegra’s assignment. ‘Did you tell her all that stuff you told me, about how these were the kind of issues that really matter to a lot of young women?’
Allegra sighed. ‘I don’t think boyfriend trouble quite ranks with the global downturn in the economy in my mother’s scheme of things.’ She squared her shoulders, sat up straighter. ‘And she’s right, of course. I should take more interest in political issues.’
She was nothing if not loyal to her mother, Max thought, still irrationally annoyed by Flick’s response. Would it have killed her to have encouraged her daughter for once? Poor Allegra tried so hard to get her mother’s approval. She had to want it bad to feign an interest in politics, given that he’d never heard her or Libby utter a word on the subject.
And she was going to find it hard, as demonstrated by the fact that barely had her resolve to be more politically aware fallen from her lips than her attention was caught by a girl teetering past in ludicrously high shoes. ‘Omigod, I am totally stealing that vampire chic look!’
Max was obscurely pleased to see her revert to her frivolous self. ‘Vampire chic?’ he echoed, knowing the disbelief in his voice would annoy her, and sure enough, she gave him the flat-eyed look she and Libby had perfected when they were twelve.
Back to normal. Good.
‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ she said. ‘Look at you! We bring you to the hottest place in town, and you sit there like you were wishing you were in some grotty pub!’
‘There’s no “like” about it. I am wishing I was in a pub.’
‘Here, have a drink.’ Allegra passed him the drinks list. ‘Maybe that’ll cheer you up—and no, you can’t have a pint.’
Morosely, Max scanned the list and choked when he saw the prices. ‘They want how much for a cocktail?’
‘Don’t panic, you’re not paying for the drinks,’ she said. ‘But, in all other respects, this is a real date, so start looking as if you’re looking forward to meeting Darcy, not as if you’re waiting to have your eyes poked out with a sharp stick.’
She shook her head as Max tried to ease the tightness around his neck. Dickie had a throttling way with a tie. ‘Relax!’ she said, leaning across the table to slap his hand away from his throat, and the scent of her perfume momentarily clouded Max’s brain.
‘You’re so repressed,’ she told him as he blinked the disturbing awareness away. ‘Now listen, you’re going to meet Darcy any minute and you’re going to have to make an effort. This is your first task. You need to make sure she likes you enough to accept your invitation to dinner cooked by you, which is your second task.’
‘You’ve explained all this,’ said Max grouchily.
‘And, just in case you were thinking of falling at the first hurdle so that you don’t have to carry on, I’ll just remind you that we haven’t had that dinner with your boss yet.’
Why had he ever put the idea of blackmail into her head? She had taken to it like a natural. He’d created a monster.
‘Remember, you’re interested in Darcy, not in a lingerie model,’ Allegra carried on bossily. ‘Ask her questions but don’t interrogate her—and don’t expect her to take all the burden of the conversation either.’
‘I’ve been on dates before, you know.’
Allegra ignored that. ‘She’ll be hoping to meet someone interesting and interested, someone charming and witty who can make her laugh, but who’s got some old-fashioned manners—don’t forget to stand up when she arrives—and who can make her feel safe but sexy and desirable at the same time.’
‘And I’m going to be doing all of this with you listening in and Dom here taking pictures?’
‘You’ll hardly notice us after a while,’ she assured him, then straightened as Dom nudged her. ‘And here she comes! Good luck,’ she mouthed to Max as he adjusted his tie and slid out of the banquette to greet Darcy.
He couldn’t help staring. Spectacular was the only word. Of course he’d seen photos before, blown up across billboards or plastered across magazines, but in the flesh Darcy was breathtaking. She glowed with sex appeal, from her artfully tumbled blonde hair to the bee-stung mouth and the voluptuous