‘I was just going to go to the Ladies to tidy up myself,’ she fibbed, smiling warmly at Eve. ‘Do you want to come with me?’
‘Oh, yes …’
Smiling with relief, Eve got up to accompany her.
‘Have you known Julian long?’ she asked Kelly shyly as they stood side by side in the elegantly decorated cloakroom, studying their reflections in the mirrors in front of them.
‘Mmm … quite a while,’ Kelly responded.
‘He’s a very special person, isn’t he?’ Eve enthused, her eyes shining with emotion, her expression betraying just how deeply involved with him she was.
Kelly’s tender heart ached for her, and she only just managed to resist the impulse to tell her exactly what she thought of Julian Cox and why. Instead she asked, ‘What about you? Have you known him long?’
‘Er, no … not really … That is …’ She paused and then said in a breathless rush, ‘He’s asked me to marry him. Everything’s happened so quickly between us that I still can’t quite … It’s quite a frightening feeling when you fall in love, isn’t it?’ she asked Kelly with a small, poignant smile. ‘This is the first time that I … Brough thinks it’s too soon … Julian gets quite cross with me sometimes because he thinks I rely too much on Brough, but he’s taken care of me ever since our parents died and …
‘I haven’t met many of Julian’s friends yet,’ she confided, changing the subject slightly. ‘Julian says that he wants to keep me … us … to himself for a little while …’ She smiled and blushed. ‘He’s so very romantic and loving.’
Oh, yes, Kelly wanted to agree sarcastically. So very romantic and loving that he broke my best friend’s heart, just the same way he is probably going to break yours. But caution made her hold her tongue.
How much did Eve know about Julian’s relationship with Beth?
Along with the revulsion and dislike Julian had aroused within her was a growing sense of anger and an unexpected surge of desire to protect Eve from suffering the same fate as Beth. Perhaps she herself was a rather stronger and more determined character than she had previously realised, Kelly acknowledged. With every word that Eve spoke she could feel an increasing awareness of how right Dee was to want to have Julian exposed in his true colours, and an increasing desire to help achieve that goal, even if it meant putting herself in an unpleasant, but thankfully temporary, position. Much as it went against the grain with her to subtly encourage Julian’s amorous advances, much as she disliked the role she was being called upon to play, there was a real purpose to it.
Checking her own freshly applied lipstick, she gave Eve a warm smile.
‘Don’t let Julian bully you,’ she advised her.
The younger girl’s face went scarlet.
‘Oh, he doesn’t. He isn’t … It’s just that he’s used to women who are so very much more glamorous than me and of course he wants … expects …’
‘If he loves you then he must love you just the way you are,’ Kelly pointed out, but she could see from Eve’s expression that she did not want to hear what Kelly was trying to say.
Perhaps when she saw exactly what kind of man Julian really was she’d realise just how unworthy of her love he was. Kelly certainly hoped so.
Brough frowned thoughtfully as he watched his sister and Kelly weaving their way back through the crowd to their table. Kelly puzzled him and, yes, if he was honest, intrigued him as well.
Having watched the way she behaved towards Julian, subtly encouraging his advances, it would be easy to assume that she was an extremely sophisticated and worldly young woman who was used to using her undeniable feminine sensuality and attractiveness to get whatever she wanted from life—whoever she wanted from life, regardless of whether or not the man in question was attached to someone else. But Brough had also observed the way she behaved towards her escort, Harry, and to his own sister, and there was no denying that with them she displayed a warmth, a consideration, an awareness and respect for their feelings that couldn’t possibly be anything other than genuine.
One woman, two diametrically opposite types of behaviour. Which of them revealed the real Kelly, and why should it be so important to him to find out? Not, surely, just because the man she was making a play for was the same man her sister claimed to be in love with? After all, there was nothing he wanted more than for something, someone, to make his sister see just how unworthy of her Julian Cox actually was.
Discreetly he studied Kelly. Her dress was expensive, and fitted her as though it had been made for her, but something, some experienced male instinct, told him that she was not quite so comfortable and at home in it as she wanted others to believe. Every now and again she gave a betraying glance down at herself, rather in the manner of a little girl uncertain of the wisdom of wearing her mother’s borrowed clothes. As Julian had so admiringly pointed out, she was immaculately groomed, but personally Brough would have rather liked to see her dressed casually in jeans, her skin free of make-up, her wonderful hair soft and tousled and her even more wonderful eyes and mouth …
His eyebrows snapped grimly together as he recognised the direction his thoughts were taking. It was a long time since a woman had attracted him as powerfully or as immediately as Kelly—or as dangerously. On two counts. If she was the type of woman she was portraying to attract Julian Cox’s attention, then she was most decidedly not his type. And if she wasn’t … if that unexpected and alluringly enticing chink of vulnerability and uncertainty he had so briefly glimpsed beneath the sophisticated image she was trying to portray was the real Kelly … then that would make it even more imperative that he didn’t involve himself in any way with her. His life was already complicated enough as it was, with Eve. One day he would marry, settle down, with a nice, calm, sensible girl—a woman who did not pretend to be something she wasn’t.
Of course, there was one way he could probably find out just what sort of woman Kelly really was. The way a woman responded, reacted, to a man’s first kiss could say an awful lot about just what kind of person she was, Brough mused.
His frown deepened. What on earth was he thinking? There was no way he could justify that kind of behaviour—or those kinds of thoughts.
His last serious relationship had been when he was in his very early twenties. He had thought himself in love—had thought that she loved him. They had met at university and then she had taken a year out to travel while Brough had stayed at home to be near Eve. When they had met up again both of them had been forced to acknowledge that whatever they’d had had gone.
Since then he had dated … there had been women … but by the time he had reached thirty he had decided that he must be the kind of man in whom logic and responsibility always won out over passion and impetuosity. And so he was … wasn’t he?
‘I want to dance with you.’ Kelly’s heart sank as she saw from the loaded, explicitly sexual way that Julian was regarding her as he spoke to her just how successful Dee’s plan had been. There was no doubt just what was on Julian’s mind, even without the heavy, lingering glance he gave her breasts.
He was being too obvious, too potentially hurtful to Eve and insulting towards her, Kelly decided as she shook her head and reminded him, ‘You haven’t danced with Eve yet …’
‘I don’t want to dance with her; I want to dance with you,’ Julian insisted as he reached out to raise her from her seat.
Unhappily Kelly fought her conscience. This was too much, and inexcusable. Just how much wine had Julian had to drink? she wondered uneasily, wishing that Harry hadn’t chosen just that moment to disappear.
‘Kelly has already promised this dance to me.’
The