‘Do you really think so?’
‘Listen,’ smiled Helen, ‘I know so. Now take this sequinned boob-tube and go and try it on with these pedal-pushers!’
Megan looked down at the garments Helen had thrust into her hands, and frowned. ‘Listen, I know I’m not the world’s greatest fashion queen—’
‘Agreed!’
‘But even I know that pink doesn’t really go with green—’
‘Doesn’t go with it? Darling, they were made for each other! Clashing colours are big news this season.’
‘Honestly?’
‘Trust me on this one, Megan.’
In the end, Megan gave up trying to convince Helen that, while she was dying to meet the actor, she certainly wasn’t entertaining any false expectations about him falling for her.
‘He wouldn’t look twice at someone like me!’ she declared stoutly.
‘No,’ agreed Helen thoughtfully. ‘He most probably wouldn’t. Not at the moment, anyway…’ And she began to advance on her housemate carrying a mascara wand like a dangerous weapon.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Megan, in alarm.
‘Seeing what you look like with a bit of slap on your face!’
Soon Megan’s bed was covered with a selection of brightly coloured clothes and the face which stared back at her from the mirror was unrecognisable.
Her green-gold eyes looked three times their usual size and her skin looked as softly glowing as if she had just returned from a Mediterranean cruise. Her lips were all kind of tremulous and pouting with that carefully applied pink shiny stuff gleaming back at her. And even her mousy-brown hair looked interesting after Helen had attacked it with a hairdryer.
But Megan wasn’t sure that she liked this sleek, polished stranger who stared back at her from the mirror, and started wiping off the bronze blusher which she privately thought made her look as if she’d overdone the sunbed.
She was just throwing a used piece of cotton wool into the bin when the pile of clothes caught her eye, and she frowned. What if they’d judged it all wrong? Shouldn’t she take her one, plain, all-purpose ‘good’ black dress? Just in case. If the worst came to the worst, she could dress it down for Friday, and tart it up for Saturday.
Feeling a little like a conspirator, she stuffed it into the bottom of her suitcase—where Helen couldn’t see it.
Back in the office, Megan found herself looking at Dan in a whole new way. It was difficult not to. Here was a man who could inspire obsessional devotion from young women and who mixed with Oscar-nominated actors! She tried to be objective. Was he a hunk or not?
She supposed that he really did have an amazing bone-structure, when you looked closely. And pretty amazing eyes, too. But she soon forced herself to break the habit of staring and trying to analyse his appeal. What if he caught her doing it and thought that she was nurturing a soft spot for him? She had been expressly invited because she was the type of woman who wouldn’t fall in love with him for real!
That week he had business in Spain and Holland, and came back the day before they were due to leave. Megan had spent most of the morning fixing up the quarterly review meeting and had looked up to find his grey eyes studying her intently, in a way she’d never noticed him doing before. It was an odd kind of sensation and for a moment she felt extremely flustered.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked. He was probably having second thoughts—deciding that it had all been a mad, crazy idea, and that he didn’t want to take her away with him after all.
She would never meet his mother and brother or get to know Jake Haddon.
And she was unprepared for the jolt of disappointment she experienced.
‘Wrong?’ He looked mildly surprised. ‘Why should there be?’
‘You were staring.’
‘Was I?’
‘You know you were.’
There was a pause.
‘So I was,’ he agreed softly. ‘Is that such a crime?’
‘Of course not,’ said Megan stiffly, trying not to feel self-conscious in her pale grey cotton trousers and the darker grey T-shirt.
‘Clearly it is,’ he contradicted silkily, and there was a question in his eyes she couldn’t ignore.
‘I don’t dress to be stared at,’ she said defensively. ‘Particularly not when I’m working.’
‘No, I can see that,’ he agreed, thinking that she wouldn’t have looked out of place as a guard in a large institution, wearing that dreary outfit. Her top was so loose she might almost have been in the early stages of pregnancy! ‘Still—it’s refreshing to meet a woman who has such little vanity,’ he smiled.
Megan frowned. Somehow she didn’t like the sound of that.
He saw the lines which pleated her smooth, pale forehead and thought he’d better get in a bit of practice at making polite conversation. ‘So. Are you looking forward to the weekend?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she admitted.
Actually, she’d been besieged with doubts. Lying awake at night staring at the ceiling and practising what on earth she would say to Jake Haddon when she met him. Which was only slightly less nerve-racking than imagining what she was going to say to Dan’s mother!
‘I’m just a bit nervous about having to keep making up stories. I hate lying, that’s all. What have you told your family?’
‘I spoke to my brother and told him that I’m bringing a girl home.’
‘And that’s all?’
‘Believe me, that was enough.’ His smile was cool as he remembered his brother’s surprised silence down the telephone. ‘The very fact that I’m bringing someone to a family party will be enough to convince them that it’s serious enough to set alarm bells ringing.’
‘Alarm bells?’ she asked him curiously. ‘Why should it do that? Don’t they want you to settle down and get married?’
‘I don’t know—I’ve never asked them.’
Megan frowned. ‘Must you be so evasive all the time?’
‘Am I?’ Dan frowned, too. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, really—you’re about as forthcoming as a rock!’
‘We’ve never discussed marriage,’ he answered eventually, realising as he said it that he and his family had never discussed anything much at all. It wasn’t their way. ‘I suppose the unspoken fact is that when I do…’
‘Yes?’ quizzed Megan eagerly.
‘It’ll be someone from the same background, I guess.’
She didn’t like to ask what that background was—but she was slowly getting a good idea!
‘How rigid!’ she observed.
‘Not really,’ he shrugged, and crumpled a ball of paper in his fist. ‘Just stop and think about it. Marriage can be such a lottery. At least if you have similar backgrounds and interests, you stand a better chance of surviving.’
‘You make it sound like a trip to the North Pole!’ declared Megan indignantly. ‘Marriage is supposed to be based on love!’
He smiled. ‘I would hate to destroy your youthful idealism, Megan.’
‘Whereas I would love to destroy your