She tried to make the time go faster. She ate some salmon and then some strawberries and cream which she didn’t really want. She drank one glass of champagne, danced with all kinds of young men she had no desire to dance with, and all the time her gaze darted anxiously to the door, just waiting for the moment when Matt would appear, and he would see her and . . .
Well, she wasn’t sure what would happen then, because in her innocently youthful fantasies she had never got beyond that particular moment when his eyes would light up with delighted fascination as he saw just how much she’d grown up . . .
As it happened, he arrived without her seeing him. She was at the far end of the room when she heard a split second’s silence, followed by a buzz of excitement, and Daisy turned around to see the tall, elegant figure in a superbly cut dinner jacket which emphasised the breadth of his shoulders, the light from the chandeliers setting the ruffled dark hair gleaming.
He must have sensed that someone was staring at him, because the brilliant grey eyes sought her out immediately, and they narrowed for a moment with an appreciative yet frowning intensity which for some reason made her skin come out in goose-bumps. She honestly thought that she might run the full length of the room and into his arms when something stopped her.
He wasn’t alone.
By his side stood the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. She looked astonishingly and disturbingly familiar, thought Daisy, frowning as she tried to think of when or where she’d seen her before.
The woman had a riot of shiny blue-black curls snaking exotically all the way down her back, and eyes which were greener than an avocado. Her unbelievably tiny-hipped body was clothed in a long, tight sheath of emerald sequins, so that she resembled some fresh and slim blade of grass. The dress was completely backless and slit on both sides right up to the woman’s thighs, leaving no one in the ballroom in any doubt that she had the most superb body that most men would ever see in a lifetime.
Daisy heard a shocked choke from behind her as one of the guests almost spat his champagne out to exclaim, ‘Good grief! Trust Matt Hamilton to have all the blasted luck! That’s Patti Page with him, isn’t it?’
Daisy stared even more and so did everyone else in the room, drawn to that startling, exotic beauty like moths to a light bulb. No wonder the woman had looked so familiar, but also no wonder Daisy had failed to recognise her. Because you didn’t expect to see a world-famous rock singer attending what was simply a provincial summer ball!
Matt began to move forward, introducing the beauty on his arm to all and sundry, and Daisy turned away and stumbled out onto the moonlit terrace, knowing that the overwhelming disappointment she felt was totally unreasonable, but unable to shake it off all the same.
He was twenty-seven, for heaven’s sake, and she was seventeen. He lived and worked in New York, and she was at the local school. He was a sophisticated, successful man of the world who had always had legions of women clamouring for his attention, and she had never even had a single boyfriend. So what had she been expecting? That Matt would take one look at her in her finery tonight and then tell her dramatically that he would wait for her, for just as long as it took?
‘Hello, Daisy,’ came a deep, familiar voice, and Daisy whirled round to stare longingly up at that magnificent face.
‘H-hello, Matt,’ she stumbled.
‘You’re looking very beautiful tonight,’ he said gravely as the grey eyes slowly looked her up and down. ‘Although I expect that a lot of people have already told you that.’
No one else who mattered, she thought. ‘Wh-where’s—your girlfriend?’ she managed, and in all the best fantasies Matt would have said, with a frown, ‘My girlfriend? Oh, Patti’s not my girlfriend—she’s going out with my best friend/colleague/the man I met on the plane ... ’
The trouble was that he didn’t say any of those things. ‘Patti?’ He smiled, and Daisy was old enough to recognise the speculative sexual glint which came into his eyes. He’s sleeping with her, she recognised, with a pain that kicked her in the stomach with the force of a sledgehammer.
‘Oh, Patti’s gone to repair her make-up. That generally takes something in the region of half an hour, so I just thought I’d come and steal a dance with you while I was waiting.’
He didn’t even give her a chance to say no, although afterwards she wished he had. Because one moment in Matt’s arms was enough to give her a taste of a forbidden paradise, and she knew that she would never be quite the same again.
Just for that one dance, Daisy closed her eyes and let herself go, drifting with him in time to the music and letting her feelings guide her rather than her judgement. She melted into his embrace, entwined her arms around his neck as though it was the most natural thing in the world. And she found that her body was drawn so sinuously close to his that it was difficult for her to breathe.
She could feel him stiffen with a sudden tension, and she was tightening her arms ecstatically around his neck when she heard him say, very abruptly, ‘Easy, Daisy. Easy,’ he repeated, frowning, a glimmer of surprise and remonstration in his voice as he loosened his hands, which had been holding her waist. And then the spell was broken.
‘Matt?’ It was a drawled, sexy American accent, and Matt and Daisy drew apart to find the green goddess standing next to them, scrutinising them with those magnificent avocado eyes. ‘My, my, Matt,’ came her acidly amused comment. ‘What’s this—cradle-snatching? She’s just a little young for you, isn’t she, honey?’
Matt laughed easily and let Daisy go, taking hold of the American woman’s strong, slim hand and lifting it briefly to his mouth. The gesture stabbed at Daisy’s heart like a stiletto. ‘This is Daisy,’ he smiled, ‘whom I’ve known since she was a little girl—she’s my honorary sister, aren’t you, Daisy?’
Daisy tried not to grit her teeth with frustrated rage as she nodded obediently.
‘And I’d like you to meet Patti Page,’ said Matt.
‘H-hello,’ stammered Daisy, feeling as flat as she always did the day after her birthday.
‘Hi,’ said Patti, her superb lips twisting with barely feigned amusement as she took in Daisy’s very obviously home-made dress. ‘Honey,’ she purred into Matt’s ear, ‘I’m absolutely starving. Something or someone’s given me the biggest appetite.’ And here she winked suggestively at Daisy. ‘So can we please go eat something?’
‘Of course we can,’ he answered, and Daisy saw the American woman’s hand slide possessively underneath his jacket, could see it moving sensuously beneath the soft, dark cloth in a gesture which just shrieked of sexual possessiveness, and Daisy knew a very real desire to scream out loud.
‘I’ll see you later, Daisy,’ Matt told her.
But she didn’t see him later, not to talk to, though she found him watching her across the ballroom from time to time, that curiously intense look on his face again. All Daisy saw was Patti creeping out of his room at dawn, and the following morning they both drove off very early, and at great speed.
And within weeks came the news that Matt and Patti were married and were expecting a baby . . .
Slowly and reluctantly, Daisy came back to the present to find Matt watching her, his elegant dark brows quizzically raised.
‘Such pensive daydreams, Daisy,’ he mocked softly, in a knowing voice. ‘Care to share them?’
Had he guessed? Could he tell by her face that she’d been thinking about him? Was she really so transparent—or was it just that Matt was uncannily perceptive where she was concerned?
Daisy pushed a wayward strand of hair out of her eyes and rose to her feet. She had to get out of here. Matt’s presence had awakened too many confused feelings within her. ‘Please excuse me,’ she said