He thought she looked like a little girl who’d been caught playing with her mother’s make-up, but was too polite to say so; Daisy could see it in his face and wanted to run howling back to the bathroom to scrub her face.
‘Have you been somewhere special?’ he asked finally, handing her a glass. For a moment she couldn’t think what he meant. ‘You couldn’t make dinner,’ he reminded her, eyes narrowed.
‘Oh. Um …’ She floundered for a moment. ‘It was just a gallery thing.’ Work. That was it, she decided, clutching at straws. Anything rather than have him think she’d done this to impress him.
‘A viewing? I’d have come if I’d known. I’m looking for something for my mother’s birthday.’
‘Are you? What?’ she asked, hoping to divert him further.
‘When I see it, I’ll know. So? Was it a viewing?’ he persisted, refusing to be sidetracked.
‘Um … No. Not exactly.’ He raised one of his dark, beautifully expressive eyebrows and took a sip of wine without commenting, leaving Daisy with the uncomfortable feeling that he didn’t quite believe her. But what else could she say? She refused to own up to staying in and watching television rather than have dinner with him. He wouldn’t understand why and she certainly couldn’t explain.
‘You shouldn’t let George Latimer work you so hard,’ he said, after a silence that seemed unusually awkward.
‘He doesn’t,’ she snapped back. ‘I love my job.’ Perhaps it was guilt at lying to him that made her so sharp. She certainly didn’t feel capable of the usual easy banter that sustained their conversation. ‘Shall we go?’
Robert Furneval reached the pavement and without thinking hailed a passing taxi. ‘We could easily have walked,’ Daisy said.
‘If you’ve been working, you deserve to ride.’ If? What on earth had made him say that? The feeling that she hadn’t been quite honest with him? Daisy had looked so guilty when she’d told him that she’d been working late. Guilty and unusually glamorous. If George Latimer had been forty, thirty years younger even, he might have suspected there was something going on.
Ridiculous of course. But being busy until nine-thirty smacked of the kind of affair where the man needed to be home with his wife and children at a respectable time. He glanced across at her, and even in the dim light of the cab he could see that her eyes were very bright. And she’d flushed so guiltily. But Daisy would never have that kind of affair. Would she?
He thought he knew her, yet it occurred to him that he had no idea what she might do if tempted. What exactly did she do in the evenings when the shutters came down at the gallery?
She never talked about herself much. Or was it that he never asked? No, that wasn’t right. He was good at relationships, knew how to talk to women … But he knew Daisy so well. Or thought he did. The girl sitting beside him in the taxi seemed more like a stranger.
He’d always thought of her as Michael’s kid sister, always there. Good natured, fun, a girl who didn’t make a fuss about getting a bit muddy. But tonight her eyes were shining and her cheeks looked a touch hectic. It was a look that he knew and understood. On Daisy, it made him feel distinctly uncomfortable. Almost as if he had lifted aside a veil and seen something secret.
She turned and caught him looking at her, and for a moment he had a glimpse of something much deeper. Then she cocked a quirky eyebrow at him and grinned. ‘What’s up, Robert? Still missing the gorgeous Janine?’ she teased.
He relaxed. She hadn’t changed. He was the one who was tense. ‘Hurt pride, nothing worse,’ he admitted.
‘You’re getting slow. If you’re not very careful one of these days you’ll find yourself walking down the aisle and you won’t be the one behind, flirting with the bridesmaid, you’ll be the one in front, with the ring through your nose.’
‘That’s it, kick a man when he’s down.’
‘I’ll give you half an hour before you’re bouncing right back. Tell me, which terribly nice young man are you planning to send me home with tonight?’
‘Who said I was planning to send you home with anyone?’ he demanded.
‘Because you always do. I sometimes think that you must keep a supply of clones handy, to be activated in emergencies.’
‘Emergencies?’
She clutched her hands to her heart. ‘You know … Fabulous redhead … Let’s go on to a club … Duh! What’ll I do with Daisy …?’ She grinned. ‘That kind of emergency.’
‘Oh, cruel! For that, miss, I shall take you home myself and—’
‘And?’
And what? He might have teased her about boyfriends, but as far as he knew she’d never taken things further than goodnight-and-thank-you with any of the guys he’d deputised to take her home, some of whom had begged him for the privilege. Not that he was going to tell her that. She didn’t deserve to be flattered. ‘You won’t get away with a polite handshake and goodnight with me. I’ll expect coffee and a doorstep-sized bacon sandwich for my trouble.’
‘How do you know they just get a polite handshake?’ she asked archly. ‘Do they report back to you?’
‘Of course,’ he lied. He didn’t need to be told, their disappointment was self-evident. ‘I want to know that you arrived home safely.’
She grinned. ‘And it never occurred to you that they might not be telling the truth?’
‘They wouldn’t dare lie.’
‘Is that right?’ She was laughing at him. So that was all right. Wasn’t it? ‘One day, Robert, you’ll come seriously unstuck. But if you can tear yourself away from the first gorgeous redhead who smiles at you, or the first blonde, or brunette, you can have all the coffee and bacon sarnies you can eat. But don’t expect me to be holding my breath.’
‘Actually, I’m saving myself for the lovely bridesmaids,’ he said, mock seriously. ‘You did say they were lovely, didn’t you?’
‘Stunning. I’ll give you a run-down over supper. If you remember.’
‘Cat,’ he murmured, as the taxi slowed. He climbed out first, and by the time he had paid the driver Daisy was inside, the welcoming crowd parting to swallow her up in its warm embrace. She was, he knew, one of those girls everyone was glad to see. He was always glad to see her, too. He didn’t see her often enough.
Someone put a drink in his hand, then he was grabbed by an acquaintance who wanted some free advice about an investment, and he had just been buttonholed by a girl who seemed to know him, but whose name he couldn’t remember, when he saw Daisy chatting to a tall, fair-haired man he didn’t know. A man who was looking at her in a way that suggested he had only one thing on his mind.
It was a look that aroused all kinds of ridiculous protective male urges in him. ‘Excuse me,’ he murmured to the blonde, abandoning her and the mental struggle for her name without a second thought.
The man was Australian, lean and suntanned and revoltingly good-looking, and Daisy was laughing at something he’d said. In fact she looked as if she was having a very good time. That irritated him. She was his date. ‘Can I get you a drink, sweetheart?’ he said, slipping his arm about her waist.
‘No, thanks,’ she replied, turning to look at him with some surprise. Justifiable surprise, since he rarely worried about her once they were at a party. After all she knew everyone. Almost everyone. ‘Nick’s looking after me. Have you met?’ she asked. ‘Nick, this is Robert Furneval. Robert, Nick Gregson.’
Robert gave the Australian the kind of look that suggested it was time to find someone else to talk to. For a moment