As Kelly already knew, the tickets for the ball had been unbelievably expensive, with only a relatively small number available, but, as she glanced appreciatively at her surroundings, she could well understand why.
Instead of more conventionally attaching a large marquee to the house to accommodate the event, guests were allowed to wander at will through the elegant antique-furnished reception rooms. Her own Regency-inspired dress couldn’t have been more felicitously in keeping with the decor, Kelly recognised, her attention caught by a pretty inlaid Chinese lacquered cabinet in one corner of the room, its shelves filled with what she suspected were Sèvres figurines.
Touching Harry’s arm, she pointed it out to him.
‘I’d like to go over and have a closer look,’ she told him. Nodding, Harry gallantly forged ahead to make a pathway through the throng of people now filling the hallway.
Kelly had almost reached her destination when abruptly she stopped dead. There, not a dozen feet away from her, stood Julian Cox. He hadn’t seen her as yet. He was busy talking with a pretty fair-haired young woman standing with him. In looks she was very similar to Beth, Kelly recognised, and she looked somehow as though she too possessed the same gentleness of nature that so characterised her best friend.
She doubted very much that that same description could be applied to the man standing on the opposite side of her. Tall, with incredibly powerful shoulders and frowning heavily, he looked extremely formidable and extremely masculine, Kelly recognised as her heart gave a sudden unsteady lurch against her ribs and her breathing quickened idiotically.
As though—impossibly, surely—he was somehow aware of her attention, he turned his head, seemingly focusing fiercely on her.
Kelly’s heart gave another and even sharper lurch. He had the most intensely dark blue eyes, and such a penetrating gaze that she felt almost as though he could see right into her soul.
Now she was being ridiculous, she told herself stoutly, firmly assuring herself that there was no way that either he or anyone else could have guessed what was going through her mind as she looked at him. And anyway, she reminded herself as she determinedly looked away from him, she was not here to start fantasising about the admittedly very interesting sensual allure of an unknown man; she was here for a very specific purpose, and that did not include allowing herself to be side-tracked by anyone or anything—not even her own still very disturbed heartbeat.
Even so, she managed to sneak a second brief glance at him, and she wished she had not done so as she saw the tender and protective way in which he was bending towards the soft-featured blonde girl who was standing close to Julian. Was she, as Kelly had first assumed, the new woman in Julian’s life, or was the other man her partner? Had those magnetic blue eyes that had focused on her so directly and so immediately been giving a stern warning that he was not available to any other woman, rather than conveying a virile, masculine awareness of her female curiosity?
Well, no doubt before the evening was over she was going to find out, she reminded herself. Julian had not seen her yet, but … She took a deep breath and started to move discreetly into his line of vision.
‘Are you okay?’ she heard Harry asking her in concern. ‘You look a bit flushed. It’s pretty crowded in here and hot …’
Rather guiltily Kelly gave him a reassuring smile. Any heat flushing her face had rather more to do with her emotional and physical reaction to the sexily masculine good looks of the man standing with Julian Cox than with the heat of the room.
Irritatingly, Julian had now turned away to talk to someone so that she was out of his line of vision. Boldly she deliberately changed direction, plunging through the crowd in order to bring herself back into it and, in the process, losing Harry, who became separated from her by the busy throng.
Julian might not be aware of her presence, she recognised after a discreet glance in the trio’s direction, but he, whoever he was, most certainly was. Slightly breathlessly she instinctively curled her toes, and a delicious thrill of feminine reaction ran through her as she realised just how intently she was being studied. Sternly she reminded herself of just why she was here and the role she had to play. The temptation to abandon it and to revert to her normal self beckoned treacherously. She had never been a flirt, never been the kind of woman to go all out deliberately to attract a man’s attention—she had never needed to and she had certainly never wanted to!
But, almost as though it was fate, just as she was wavering, a direct pathway opened up between her and Julian. Sternly she made herself take it.
‘Julian … How lovely to see you …’
Had she got the note of flirtatious invitation in her voice pitched correctly? Anxiously she held her breath as Julian turned his head to look at her, wariness giving way to a look of lustful male appreciation as she continued to smile at him.
‘Kelly! What a surprise …’
‘A pleasant one, I hope.’ Kelly pouted, deliberately stepping closer to him, angling her body so that she was placing herself with her back to the blonde girl standing silently at Julian’s side and thereby excluding her from their conversation.
‘I thought for a moment that you’d forgotten me …’
‘Impossible,’ Julian assured her with heavy flirtatiousness, his glance deliberately and meaningfully lingering on her body.
Really, he was a total creep, Kelly decided.
‘Here on your own?’ Julian quizzed her.
Throwing back her head, Kelly gave a small, sexy laugh.
‘Of course not,’ she chided him, her voice and the look she gave him emphasising that she was the type of woman who would never be without a male escort.
‘You’re looking very well,’ she praised him, adding purringly, ‘Very well …’
‘Then that makes two of us,’ Julian told her smoothly.
‘Julian, I think it’s time we started to make our way to the table.’
The cool, authoritative male voice intruding on their conversation caused Kelly to turn her head to look at its owner.
Close up he was even more sizzlingly sensual than she had first imagined. It must be the new persona she had assumed that was making her aware of him in such a very intimate and sexual way, she decided dizzily as her glance slid helplessly from the dark watchfulness of his eyes to his very sensual mouth. Certainly she could never remember an occasion previously when she had been so immediately and so shockingly physically aware of a man’s sexuality.
‘Oh, must you go so soon?’ She pouted again, a little disconcerted to recognise how easily both the pout and the teasing but deliberately flirtatious glance she had given Julian’s companion came to her. ‘We haven’t even been introduced …’
She could sense Julian’s surprise at the way she was behaving, and managed to hide her own reservation at her unfamiliar behaviour. Kelly could sense Julian’s reluctance to comply with her request, but his companion was already saying with a steely, not to say with a grim note in his voice, ‘Yes, Julian, do introduce us to your friend …’
‘Er … Eve, Brough, may I introduce you to an old friend—Kelly? Kelly, please meet Eve and her brother, Brough Frobisher.’
While Kelly waited for him to expand a little more on the relationship between the other couple and himself she could see from the look in Brough Frobisher’s eyes that he was decidedly unimpressed by her flirtatious manner.
At least she had had one of her questions answered, she acknowledged as Harry finally arrived at her side just as Brough was determinedly turning away from her.
Eve and her brother, Julian had said.
Ridiculous to feel