‘Nothing beats a little black dress, does it?’ he said as he took her elbow and steered her over to the bank of lifts. ‘The concierge informed me that the ballroom is on the first floor,’ he added, before she could ask what in hell he was doing. Not that she would have phrased it like that.
Still, she extricated her arm from his hold as soon as possible, sending him a look that held the silent but definite message that he was to keep his hands to himself. No way was she going to let him take control of the evening. Or of her. No way!
* * *
Jeremy resisted the temptation to roll his eyes. But truly, she was like a heroine out of a Victorian romance novel. Not that he’d read any, but he could imagine what such a woman would be like. All prissy and uptight, looking down her nose at men, especially ones who dared put a finger on her virginal flesh.
Alice would have been perfect for such a role, except for three factors. First, that dress. Strapless and very fitted, it gave him a clear picture of what she would look like naked. Very nice indeed, with high firm breasts, an athletically flat stomach, a deliciously small waist, long shapely legs and just enough hip and bottom for stroking. Second was the way she’d stared at him when she’d first arrived. That was not the stare of some prissy virgin. Her eyes had fairly ogled him, betraying that she’d found him as sexually attractive as he found her.
And then there was the way her whole body had quivered when his hand had brushed the back of her neck. It had been quite accidental. Jeremy wasn’t in the habit of indulging in sly, lecherous touching. He never needed to. That Alice had reacted in such a way had been very telling. The woman who’d wrenched out of his hold just now should have whirled around and glared her disapproval. But she hadn’t.
During the short ride up to the first floor in the lift, Jeremy concluded that Alice Waterhouse was nothing but a fraud. Her Ice Princess act with him was just that. An act. What was behind this pretence, he had no idea. But he aimed to find out.
THE BALLROOM WAS INDEED, Alice already knew, on the first floor. She’d been there earlier today, checking that everything was being set up according to her instructions. She’d also taken personal responsibility for putting the name cards in place, having paid great attention to the guests’ wishes when it came to seating. Each card also doubled as an auction number, being T-shaped, with the guest’s name on the front and their number on the back.
Alice exited the lift first, anxious not to give Jeremy the opening to take her arm once more. She hated having to be rude, but she would be, if she had to. And she would have to if he kept manhandling her, his touch doing things to her body that didn’t bear thinking about.
‘It’s just along here,’ she said, and hurried down the carpeted corridor.
He kept up with her easily, his stride almost twice one of hers. Of course, he was a good six inches taller than she was, with long legs. Plus she couldn’t walk all that fast in four-inch heels and a short, tight skirt.
The corridor eventually opened out into a larger space where a couple of staff members were putting the finishing touches to a bar area along one wall.
‘Pre-dinner drinks are scheduled from seven-thirty onwards,’ Alice said crisply as she walked over and pulled open one of the closed double doors that led into the ballroom, her eyes finally forced to meet those of her companion. ‘The official time for the dinner to start is eight-thirty. I asked you to be here at seven so that you would have time to read through the list of items to be auctioned, and to discuss how you might want to proceed.’
‘Proceed?’ he echoed in that wonderfully rich voice of his, stepping forward to hold the door open for her.
Alice smothered a sigh. Trust him to have gallant manners. She supposed it was part of his seductive armoury to play the gentleman with women. No doubt he would pull out chairs and hold taxi doors open. And always wear a condom.
Alice only just managed not to gasp at this last thought. Where in heaven’s name had that come from? Okay, so she found Jeremy Barker-Whittle attractive. Any woman would. He was drop-dead gorgeous. But finding him attractive was a far cry from thinking about having sex with him. Yet, as her gaze dropped from his beautiful blue eyes to his wickedly sexy mouth, she couldn’t help wonder what it would be like to go to bed with him. He must be good at it, she reasoned, if Fiona’s sister hadn’t stopped raving about him. She’d met Fiona’s sister, who was a real party girl. She’d sleep with anything in trousers, according to Fiona. So Melody must have slept with Jeremy.
‘Cat got your tongue?’ he said with a wry smile.
Alice blinked, swallowed, then shot him a small, stiff smile. ‘Sorry. I had this sudden awful thought which distracted me.’
‘Anything I should know about?’
‘Not at all,’ she said, thankful that she wasn’t a blusher these days. She had been once, but not any longer. Working in women’s refuges had toughened her up considerably. ‘I’ve been a little OCD about the seating arrangements for dinner and it suddenly occurred to me that I might have made a mistake on one table.’ Lord, but she was better at lying than she would ever have imagined. ‘Still, nothing that can’t be rectified,’ she went on. ‘Now, what I meant by how to proceed is do you want to have the whole auction after dinner, or sell off a few items between courses?’
‘Definitely sell off a few items between courses. It will keep the guests in a buying mood. And stop them from getting bored.’
‘I agree. Right. Follow me.’
* * *
Jeremy followed her into the ballroom, appreciating the sight of her satin-encased derrière much more than her still less than warm demeanour. The ice in her voice and eyes might have melted a little but there was still a long way to go before he could confidently engage her in a conversation that might satisfy his curiosity over her, as well as give him an opening to ask her out. Still, he had several hours in which to achieve his goal.
Alice led him between a myriad of circular tables, each one set to a high standard with white linen tablecloths, silver cutlery, crystal glasses and beautifully appointed name cards placed at each setting. Every table had a number in the centre, which no doubt had been emailed to the guests so that they knew where to head on entering. That was what had happened at the last charity dinner Jeremy had been to, the one that had bored him to tears.
He already knew that this evening’s dinner would not bore him in the slightest. In fact, Jeremy was looking forward to every intriguing second.
‘It all looks splendid,’ he complimented in Alice’s wake.
She didn’t stop or turn around, just said a cool, ‘Yes, it does...’ over her shoulder.
Jeremy frowned, wondering exactly what was bugging the lovely Miss Waterhouse. Surely she didn’t act like this with every man she met. Was it him personally, or something else? Maybe she’d had a row with someone. The missing boyfriend perhaps?
‘You organised all this by yourself?’ he threw after her.
‘Most of it,’ she tossed back at him. ‘The hotel staff were very helpful, of course.’
They arrived at the stage, which ran across the far end of the ballroom and which could be used for many purposes. Concerts. Award nights. Presentations. Whatever. Tonight it was set up with a podium in the middle, a microphone attached. There was a long wooden table behind it, which held an array of objects and a laptop computer, open, at one end. Clearly, this was where Alice would be standing, handing him items and jotting down the numbers of the winning bidder.
A man wouldn’t want to be of a nervous disposition, Jeremy thought as he glanced up at the podium. Fortunately, he wasn’t. But he wondered how Jacobs would have coped. Not that he knew the man well. Kenneth could be a secret exhibitionist