She could feel again the way men had devoured her with their eyes and how one short, balding man with a paunch had got bolder and touched her intimately. It was almost as if she had once more in her fingers the long-stemmed rose she’d plucked from a vase and had presented to this man, with what she’d hoped was a seductive wiggle, at the same time as she’d raised her foot with every intention of driving her stiletto heel into his shoe and thereby pulverising some of his toes.
She remembered so clearly the tall man who had materialised at her side before she could do it, and taken her arm and marched her out of the room...
‘Look here——’ She wrenched her arm free.
‘No, you look here,’ he said coolly and cuttingly. ‘Who ever gave you the impression that this job provided the opportunity to importune and proposition the guests misled you entirely.’
‘I...’ Martha closed her mouth and stared up into a pair of grey-green eyes beneath medium-brown hair and was conscious of a good physique beneath a beautifully tailored suit. She was also aware that the man was extremely well-spoken and English, not Australian, and finally that he was appraising her from head to toe with a sort of casual arrogance that was nevertheless quite damning—and it incensed her. ‘Is that so?’ she said before she stopped to think, and wiggled again. ‘Thought that’s why I was all dressed up like a tart—what a waste! Still and all——’ she realised she’d made her accent deliberately ocker ‘—I did get your attention. Are you the big boss?’
Those grey-green eyes hardened although he said gently enough, ‘May I make a suggestion—why don’t you try your services in a brothel?’ and walked away.
I don’t believe I did that, Martha was still saying to herself several days later, and going hot and cold with the embarrrassment of it all; but there was worse to come. A week to the day later she was doing the same kind of job, serving champagne and canapés at an art show this time, in an even more revealing outfit if anything, when who should she encounter but the same man.
What she hadn’t bargained for, however, was that the shock of laying eyes on him again would be rather like an electric shock. And making the discovery of how his hands, his clever eyes, his tall, easy carriage and air of assurance—that could so easily turn to such civilised yet doubly damning contempt—how all of those things had been just under the surface of her mind. How, although she hated him, there was something about him that was tormentingly attractive...
What broke the spell was the way he’d taken a glass of champagne, looked her over meditatively and in a way that had made her horribly conscious of her tight skirt and low-cut top, before he’d said only audibly to her, ‘Once a tart always a tart, I guess,’ and turned away.
Oh, no, you don’t! was Martha’s first coherent thought, and she deliberately twisted her heel, cannoned into him and, as he turned back, staggered and spilt six full glasses of champagne over him.
‘Dearie me—I’m so sorry,’ she said with utterly false contrition. ‘How could I be so clumsy? Here, let me clean you up!’ And she started to dab at him with the napkin she had over one arm.
But he took her wrist and restored her hand to her, murmuring, ‘Thank you but I’d rather you didn’t—it’s a bit public here for the kind of message you’re trying to get across, and anyway, perhaps we ought to have dinner first?’
‘Dinner?’ Martha stared at him. ‘First?’
‘Before we go to bed,’ he said patiently. ‘It might just give us the opportunity to exchange names—first,’ he added with a grave, totally mocking little smile.
‘I...’ Martha tossed her head, and her mother or father might have recognised the glint in her blue eyes. ‘OK, I’ll get my coat!’
‘Don’t you think you should finish up here before we——?’
‘No way! After last week and now this I’m bound to get the sack,’ she said prosaically. ‘Not that I mind,’ she hastened to assure him, and smiled dazzlingly up at him. ‘I’ve got the feeling I’m on to bigger and brighter things. Let’s go, mister!’
They went, Martha collecting the sack at the same time as she collected her coat, but she was too angry to care.
They went to a small Italian restaurant that was not, as she’d expected, cheap and nasty, but chic and tasteful. She hid her surprise and made a big thing of discarding her coat and smoothing the low-cut neck of her dress, refreshing her lipstick and combing her hair—things she would normally never have dreamt of doing at a dinnertable.
‘What is your name, then?’ she said brightly when she’d arranged herself to her satisfaction, and was confident that a number of other diners were looking at her with either amused curiosity or raised eyebrows.
‘Simon,’ he said.
‘Pleased to meet you, Simon. I’m Martha.’ She stood up and extended her hand. ‘You know, I’m not too sure if you’re a hotel executive or—well, whatever the hell you are is fine with me.’ And she sat down, having shaken his hand vigorously and made her comments audible to all.
‘You should be on the stage, Martha,’ he replied with a considering look that took in the golden glints in her long fair hair, her deep blue eyes, the curves of her figure—a purely male summing up of a member of the opposite sex that was at the same time quite relaxed.
‘Believe me, Simon——’ she sat forward with her elbows propped on the table, her cleavage more exposed than it had ever been in her life, and that tell-tale little glint in her eyes again ‘—I’m sure I could be. It’s only a matter of being noticed. But you haven’t told me what you are.’
He said nothing for a long moment and she just knew he was laughing at her, which incensed her all the more. So that when he did start to tell her she oohed and aahed, appeared suitably impressed, even quite dazzled. And she kept up a flow of bubbling, suggestive chatter throughout the meal until her teeth started to feel on edge.
Then the bill came and he said, ‘Well, Martha, would you like another cup of coffee or should we go somewhere more private?’
Whereupon she gazed at him narrowly, laughed harshly and said in a way that she hoped was both world-weary and incredibly common, ‘Oh, no, you don’t, mister. It takes a bit more than some pasta to get me to bed!’ And she stood up and folded herself into her coat with a flourish.
He made no move to rise; he appeared to be amused if anything and he said only, ‘How old are you, Martha?’
‘Nineteen—what’s that got to do with it?’
‘Nothing, necessarily,’ he drawled. ‘Goodnight, then.’
She glared at him and swung out of the restaurant.
Two days later she opened the door of the dingy bedsitter she rented to find him on the doorstep. And she didn’t have to simulate surprise and annoyance; she was in fact quite stunned, then furious, because two days had been ample time to discover how ashamed she felt of herself. Conversely, she was prepared to admit it to no one, least of all Simon Macquarie.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said rudely. ‘And how did you find me?’
His lips twisted. ‘It was quite simple. Don’t tell me it didn’t occur to you, Martha, that all I had to do was make enquiries from the catering company that used to employ you?’
That