to give her the benefit of his tutelage there was no point in sticking around.
For the sake of appearances, she waited until she’d drunk half her champagne before making her excuses, by which time she’d skilfully drawn in three other people to ensure Craig wouldn’t feel abandoned.
She felt vaguely dissatisfied as she hailed a taxi, which didn’t make sense, given everything had gone according to plan. Nevertheless, the dissatisfaction persisted all the way home.
Ordinarily, Sarah would have stopped in at her mother’s for a Frangelico, divulged her latest plan, and asked for an opinion on whether she’d done the right thing—but yesterday, her mother had left for her Mediterranean cruise with Massimo (who seemed set to become her fifth husband), so Sarah was going to be on her own for the next few months.
Not that a four-time divorcee was really a trustworthy love guru. Nor was her mother likely to be objective. Sarah could go on a chainsaw massacre through the city streets and her mother would find a way to make it praiseworthy. Talk about permissive parenting! Adam was always warning Sarah that their mother was her enabler, but Sarah had no complaints.
Well, maybe one complaint, given it had been her mother who’d suggested Adam take on the job with Lane. Not that anyone could have predicted how that would unfold! Adam had been sent to talk Lane out of her insane plan to hire a tutor to teach her to seduce the super-experienced David Bennett; instead Adam had signed up for the job and had been teaching Lane things Sarah didn’t want to know about for the past seven weeks. The mind positively rebelled! Everything had since gone so haywire, nobody knew what was going on! Even Lane and Adam seemed to be playing a clueless game of who liked whom.
Sarah had been petrified Lane would fall in love with her commitment-phobic brother, but according to Lane’s super-intuitive housemate Erica, Adam was the one doing the falling—which made Lane’s very deliberate introduction of David Bennett tonight cause for grave concern. Was David Bennett in Lane’s past or her future or nowhere? David said past, but who knew what Lane wanted?
How was a sister supposed to help her brother under such circumstances? Not, it seemed certain, by getting in the middle of it and posing for his enemy, however innocent the intention. Maybe that was why Sarah really wanted her mother just then—to give her the tick of approval she knew deep down she didn’t deserve.
Or maybe she was more like her mother than she thought. So desperate to find ‘the one’ she’d try anything—even though in her mother’s case ‘the one’ never seemed to end up being ‘the one’ and people like Bertie, husband number four who was just the best, got thrown on the scrap heap for nothing.
Well, at least Sarah could be certain David’s advice would be less ‘enabling’ and thus more effective than any she’d get from Elvira Quinn-Smyth-Jacobs-Grahame! Which still didn’t assuage her conscience but at least meant she wouldn’t be throwing Lane and Adam on the pyre to no purpose.
She headed up the side path to her granny flat, hoping her precious home would soothe her spirits the way it usually did. Her flat was something of a showpiece. Her father was the award-winning architect Xavier Quinn, and because he always spoiled her rotten, he’d designed it to within an inch of its life.
Not to be outdone, her mother—who was a top-notch interior designer—had thrown herself into decorating the space with her usual vivid passion. It might be tiny, but it was exquisite. Kitchen, dining and living areas merging seamlessly. Pale wood finishes. Violet sofa. Crimson coffee table. Hot pink cabinet holding her slightly battered Agatha Christie novels. A wall of shelves displaying her lovingly collected snow domes.
The bedroom was no more than an alcove, painted chartreuse, separated from the rest of the space by a blind in a glorious shade of magenta. French doors opened from the living room and her bedroom onto a superb garden, designed by Adam himself even though he had a team of landscapers at his firm (because her brother was every bit as indulgent as their parents) to provide maximum privacy from whatever shenanigans were going on up at the main house.
The whole of it was like one of her snow domes. An intensely private, tiny world where everything was perfect. Coloured the way she wanted, styled the way she liked, cut off from the wider world, protected, controlled. Not many men cared to make the trek to her place. Many men avoided it out of a misplaced fear they’d be under scrutiny, so close to her mother’s house. But that was the way she liked it—a world where she was in charge of picking and choosing who came and went.
So why, tonight, as she entered and looked around, did she feel out of step with it? Why was she walking around picking up objects then putting them back while trying to imagine what David’s place looked like?
Something about David suggested he’d been born fully matured, occupying his own loft apartment. It would be sophisticated, sleek, stylish, minimalist. Pale, cool, neutral colours. Funky metal accents. An easel positioned in a well-lit corner …
Hmm. From that perspective, he was going to hate her place. He was going to think it was nothing but an overblown, over-coloured, schoolgirl’s cubby house. And she wasn’t even going to be allowed to stalk off in a snit when he told her his opinion.
She realized with a start that she’d picked up her mother’s favourite snow dome—of Rome’s Trevi Fountain—and was giving it a too-frenzied shake. Ha! As though shaking the snow around ever did anything to change the world inside! However manic the shake, the snow still settled to reveal the same idyll. Was that a reflection of her life? Did she need shaking up? Were her insides static? Or maybe there was something significant about the fact that she’d chosen the Trevi Fountain for this abuse? Some deep-seated aversion to her mother’s latest beau, perhaps?
O-kay—that was all a bit deep and disturbing. Which is what happened when she was left to her own devices, without her mother or Lane or Erica to bounce things off. And since her mother was on the other side of the world and there was no way could she talk to Erica or Lane just at the moment without revealing her David Bennett perfidy, it was time to pack away the second-guessing for the night.
She was going to soak her dissatisfaction away in her cedar hot tub, purpose built for her minuscule bathroom (and who cared that David Bennett wouldn’t fit in it without having to break two leg bones?) and then go to bed and forget about David until next Wednesday.
Unfortunately, as she started to drift off to sleep, an image of David, arms circling her in the storeroom, slid into her brain like a serpent that had been biding its time to strike.
She sat up, snapping on the bedside light, hoping the sudden brightness would dispel it, but the picture seemed entrenched. She supposed the miracle would have been if she hadn’t thought of that particular moment once she was in bed. His erection wasn’t exactly a forgettable entity—not at that size!
She’d just bet David knew she was thinking of it, too. It’s not as if he’d been trying to hide it. Not that she believed for a second his state of arousal had anything to do with her specifically. The way Lane had described him, he was the type to always be ready. It meant no more than that tossed-out suggestion of his that they have sex. Nothing more than a bargaining chip—I’ll have sex with you if you pose for my portrait. Arrogant sod!
She giggled suddenly, remembering how he’d described himself: Yes, I’m an egomaniac, a boaster, a narcissist. He had a sense of humour, at least. Which only made him more dangerous.
She gave her pillow a thump, turned off the bedside lamp, and yanked the covers up.
No way was David lying in bed agonizing
