head with its fashionable blonde streaks, taking note of the people in the room. Many an overt stare shifted immediately when he focused on them. He knew he had a jittery effect on a lot of people. “Why is that?” he asked. “Why must I want a drink?”
Keeley gave a playful moan. Josh Hart fascinated her. She knew for a fact he fascinated every woman in town. The guy was drop-dead sexy and incredibly handsome, though strange to say he appeared uncaring about it. “I guess that’s what I love about you, Josh.” She knew her near-uncontrollable lust for him was leaving her wide open to trouble. “You’re so difficult.”
“You’re sure you don’t mean I don’t play games, Keeley?” He was getting ready to walk away from her. He knew Keeley was attracted to him. Big time. She wasn’t doing terribly well at hiding it. He knew perfectly well people had affairs in the town; quite a few here tonight, even standing in the same group as if they were all good pals. The hypocrisy of it all! Keeley was married, and to Clio’s father, who was a fine-looking man, if a real snob. That alone should have given her pause and made her behave. Probably she’d already had a drink or two. Lyle Templeton was, in fact, watching their exchange with an eagled-eyed intensity just short of a glare, his tanned cheeks turning red at what could have been construed as a public humiliation.
“God, I wish you would,” Keeley leaned closer towards him, helpless beneath the force of attraction he exuded.
“Unless you want me to stomp hard on your pretty toes, you’d better walk away, Keeley,” he warned. No use playing the gentleman with Keeley. “I definitely don’t want trouble.”
“As if you couldn’t handle it!” She gave him a conspiratorial wink, a little unsteady on her expensive red and black stilettos.
Reluctantly he put a steadying hand to her elbow. “Walk away now, Keeley.”
“Why, when I find it so much more exciting talking to you? Why don’t you like me, Josh?” she crooned, her expression utterly exposed. “Is it because people are watching?”
“Don’t be such a fool,” he bit out, the muscles along his sculpted jaw clenching. This wasn’t a staged performance. Keeley really did find him thrilling, God help her.
Across the room Clio saw Josh’s blue eyes start to smoulder and burn. She knew he had long since learned how to withhold any powerful bouts of anger but she could see he was turning edgy. It was there in his frozen stance, the rigid set of his chiselled jaw. She was something of an expert on Josh’s body language. Even the squaring of his wide shoulders was ominous. Keeley was being sickeningly indiscreet, making a fool of her father. Soon everyone would know how infatuated she was with Josh. That presented a whole raft of complications. The attraction concerned her greatly, though she understood Josh’s magnetic pull. With Keeley’s short scarlet dress and her palpable air of excitement, she gave the impression she was about to explode.
Since Keeley had married her father she had started to dress up to the nines. In some ways she had become a different person, assuming a softer, more polished appearance. Clio realized with a shiver of apprehension there was the potential for disaster here. Keeley was two people. The first, her father’s wife; the other, a woman, Clio suspected, who had a largely unfulfilled sexual appetite. And that appetite was for Josh.
Keeley had chosen her father for his money and the position it afforded her. The marriage wasn’t working out. Should anyone be surprised? Only Clio and her grandfather knew Keeley had claimed to have fallen pregnant before the marriage. Unintentionally, of course. Her grandfather had urged a DNA test, proving paternity. Her father wanted no part of that. The child was his. He would take full responsibility. Only the child turned out to be either a secret miscarriage or a phantom pregnancy. Keeley Bradley had been no inexperienced young woman. She had been in her late twenties at the time of the marriage, a trail of lovers behind her.
After her mother had drowned, her father, hitherto so happy, had turned into a sad, solitary man, who would forever mourn the loss of his wife. He had broken down at the funeral, sobbing out his wish to have drowned with her. But here had been a man of forty-five, in the prime of life. After a decent period of time, he had been advised by everyone who cared for him to try to move on. Allegra was gone. He had the rest of his life to live out. His response?
“Move on? I don’t know what that means, Clio. I’m lost in limbo with little hope of getting out.”
Much as her father loved her, Clio knew she was no replacement for her mother.
No one was.
Ironically Keeley Bradley had entered their lives at her father’s 50th birthday party, given by Leo for a small group of family and close friends. Keeley had gained entry by virtue of partnering Clio’s playboy cousin, Peter, when his previous date had had to cancel with a migraine. Keeley was a very provocative young woman and she had looked on serious wealth for the first time. She had gone after Lyle with the full force of her sexuality. Her father in the end was only human. Women could and did use sex as a weapon. Keeley had brought her father down.
Her movements so flowing they hid all sense of urgency, Clio skirted various groups with a smile and a few words, arriving at Josh’s side within seconds. She placed her hand on the sleeve of his white dinner jacket, feeling the hard musculature beneath the cloth. “Excuse me, won’t you?” She glanced at her stepmother, who stared back at her with a battery of expressions, dislike predominating. “I wonder if I could speak to you for a moment, Josh?”
He felt a certain degree of contempt for himself as sensations crashed around inside his chest. She had only put her hand on his arm yet it had much the same effect as a charge of electricity. Apart from the kiss on his cheek he had received from her a lifetime ago, this was the first time she had actually touched him, albeit through his dinner jacket.
You’re one pathetic guy!
Yet his response couldn’t have emerged from a smoother or more in-control mouth. “Why, of course.” He knew Clio did everything graciously, but he saw her sudden appearance for what it was. Diplomatic intervention. Clio had the art of creating a serene atmosphere in her grandfather’s mansion. And she was nobody’s fool. She had very accurately deduced how he was feeling, how her stepmother was looking for a bit of dangerous sex on the side. Apparently he qualified. It was Clio’s job to keep watch.
She led him through one of the sets of doors into the cooling, star-studded night. The French doors opened out onto a wide covered verandah with a polished teak floor. Beyond that, the broad floodlit terrace with acres and acres of magnificent tropical gardens before them were also illuminated. The rhythmic splash of the waterfall into the lake carried clearly on the night air. A caressing breeze blew, bringing with it the intoxicating scent of gardenias. As Clio moved she signalled one of the young uniformed waiters who brought out champagne on a silver tray to them.
“Have one, please, Josh,” she said, as far away from him as the stars in the sky. “I don’t suppose it’s your drink of choice?”
He removed a frosted flute from the tray, passed it to her, felt the shock waves all over again as her fingers fleetingly touched his. “Drink of choice? There’s not much I don’t like in the way of alcohol, Clio, except maybe rum. Red wine I very much like. Champagne, especially when it’s French, like now,” he commented dryly, on the Bollinger. “It’s the only white wine I really like. I’m not one of the Chardonnay set.”
“Good. Neither am I. So drink it.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Don’t
