Which was okay for Patrick to say—but Ellie did not relish the thought of having to listen to several hours of Sarah telling her how wonderful Gareth was. It promised to be a very trying afternoon.
‘Buy something blue, Ellie,’ Patrick had added huskily. ‘The same blue as your eyes.’
Once again Ellie felt warmed by the fact that he had even noticed what colour her eyes were!
‘Oh, and by the way—’ he turned before getting into his car ‘—Anne and Thomas are my parents; Teresa’s my younger sister.’
Oh, great. She was going to meet all of Patrick’s family tomorrow evening, too.
‘That dress is perfect on you, Ellie,’ Sarah told her admiringly as Ellie came out of the changing room.
It might be, but a brief glance at the label whilst in the changing room had shown Ellie that the price was perfect too—for bankrupting her!
She should have known the other woman would want to go to a designer shop for her own outfit. In fact, Sarah had already picked out a gown—an emeraldgreen sheath that perfectly matched the emerald in her engagement ring—and had only returned to try the dress on after alterations.
The dress she had persuaded Ellie to try on was indeed the blue that Patrick had suggested, its material pure silk, with a fitted, mandarin-style collar and short sleeves.
‘With your dark hair swept up like it was last night, and some kohl around your eyes, you’ll look positively exotic, Ellie,’ Sarah enthused.
The gown was beautiful, it was also more glamorous than anything Ellie had ever worn before. Dared she buy it?
‘Patrick is going to be bowled over when he sees you in this,’ Sarah added encouragingly.
She wasn’t sure she wanted Patrick ‘bowled over’ when he saw her. Where could any relationship between the two of them ever go? Nowhere, came the resounding answer. And yet a part of her so wanted the dress—if only to see if she could bowl Patrick over…!
‘Why don’t you think about it while the two of us have a cup of coffee?’ Sarah proposed as she saw Ellie’s uncertainty.
‘Good idea,’ Ellie accepted with a certain amount of relief.
Although she wasn’t so sure it had been a good idea once the two women were seated in a coffee-shop further down the street and the conversation naturally turned to Sarah’s engagement!
‘It was all a bit—sudden, wasn’t it?’ Ellie suggested lightly as she stirred sweetener into her coffee.
‘Mmm,’ Sarah acknowledged thoughtfully. ‘I’ve quite enjoyed this last year—the modelling and having my photograph on the cover of magazines but you know, Ellie, it’s a very lonely sort of life too. I missed my friends, the family,’ she added wistfully. ‘Most of all the family. Marriage, the possibility of having my own family, suddenly seemed the right option.’
But, as Ellie knew only too well, Gareth most certainly wasn’t the right man to share that option!
‘You’re only twenty-one, Sarah,’ she teased. ‘There’s plenty of time for that once you’ve done all the other things you want to do with your life. Didn’t you once mention that you wanted to do some fashion designing of your own?’
‘I’ve already done some,’ Sarah told her excitedly. ‘I had totally forgotten in the excitement of the last few weeks,’ she went on ruefully, ‘but I’m waiting for Jacques, the designer I worked with in Paris, to tell me what he thinks of them.’
Ah. So Sarah hadn’t completely given up on her life in Paris after all…
‘That sounds interesting,’ Ellie encouraged. ‘Do you think that will affect your engagement to Gareth?’
Sarah looked startled. ‘I must admit I hadn’t given that much thought.’ She grimaced. ‘This being engaged and having to think of another person is all new to me,’ she added self-derisively. ‘But I would really like to follow it through if Jacques thinks I have any talent at all.’
Again, this was encouraging, Ellie thought; it showed the other woman wasn’t yet quite so tied up in her relationship with Gareth that she had given up on her own ambitions.
‘I’m sure Gareth will understand if we have to wait a while before getting married,’ Sarah added dismissively.
Ellie thought the other woman was being slightly optimistic concerning Gareth’s patience in that direction—after all, the sooner Sarah was his wife, the sooner his position at Delacorte, Delacorte and Delacorte was secured—but wisely she didn’t voice any of those doubts to Sarah.
She did, however, relay the conversation to Patrick when he arrived to collect her that evening.
‘You look wonderful, Ellie.’ He stood back to look at her appreciatively.
Ellie felt warmth in her cheeks at his praise. ‘Patrick, didn’t you hear what I said? Sarah—’
‘Still has plans to become a fashion designer,’ he finished dismissively. ‘That’s great. But—’
‘Just “great”?’ Ellie persisted frowningly. ‘Don’t you realise this could be the way to drive a rift between her and Gareth?’
‘Well, of course I realise that,’ he confirmed lightly. ‘He isn’t going to like the idea of a delayed marriage at all.’
‘Exactly,’ Ellie said with satisfaction. ‘Which is good—isn’t it…?’ she added uncertainly when Patrick didn’t look as thrilled by the news as she had been earlier.
‘Very good.’ He nodded. ‘But at the moment I’m more interested in the way you look, Ellie. That dress is—you look wonderful,’ he said again.
Ellie had given in to impulse and gone back to the shop to buy the blue silk gown, aware that it was costing a small fortune but for the moment not caring. She had also swept up her hair and applied kohl to her eyes, as Sarah had suggested. The finished effect was pretty good, even if she did say so herself. And it was also good that Patrick liked the way she looked this evening. Wasn’t it…?
That was the particular problem she had at the moment. There was no denying that she was attracted to Patrick, that she more than liked being in his company, but at the same time she was still very much aware that their relationship was nothing but a sham. It certainly wouldn’t do for either of them to forget that. Because once this situation had been sorted out she and Patrick would go back to being strangers—perhaps occasionally mentioned to each other by Toby, but other than that strangers.
The fact that Patrick was once again dressed in evening clothes, and it made her heart flutter just to look at him, was not something Ellie could allow herself to dwell on!
There was also the matter of the large flat white box he had carried in under his arm…
‘You told me off yesterday evening for repeating things,’ she reminded him dryly.
‘Telling you how beautiful you look in that dress deserves to be repeated,’ he said unrepentantly, his gaze still appreciative. ‘It’s blue too,’ he added with satisfaction.
‘Shouldn’t we be going?’ Ellie prompted sharply, after a glance at her wristwatch, not particularly wanting to get into a conversation about why she had chosen this particular gown. ‘After all, there’s politely late and then there’s just bad manners!’
Patrick laughed softly. ‘You sound like my mother!’
Great! Just the person she wanted to be likened to!
‘Oh, no, you don’t.’ Patrick removed the heavy winter coat from her hand as she would have put it on, throwing it back over a chair before laying the white box