worked hard to achieve obviously worked. Pity she was still the same girl underneath the expensive clothes and make-up.
The large hand that suddenly clasped her jaw woke her from the short, intense abstraction. As her head turned life flowed back into her body, and it hurt, like icy fingers when the circulation in them began to move once more. ‘I take exception when a woman with me looks at another man like a drooling idiot.’ Low, conversational, his words made her blink. His face had come in close, the whole incident having the appearance of intimacy.
‘How dare you?’ she spat. The arrogance of the man was breathtaking. ‘So long as you’re paid, it’s no concern of yours what I do. Don’t get carried away with your role,’ she advised tartly. She felt humiliated at being caught out in the sort of behaviour she’d sworn to herself she’d not indulge in. Her anger, perfectly logically, was aimed at the only person who’d noticed her momentary weakness and who had had the tasteless effrontery to mention the fact.
‘It’s a waste of time to spend money on a love-struck swain if you behave with the discretion of an adolescent. Why should I waste my time and effort to act the lover if you aren’t going to co-operate?’
She was instantly stung by the insinuation that to act the lover required a vast amount of effort. ‘Because you’re being paid to do so,’ she hissed venomously. ‘So save the temperament. What are you anyway—an out-of-work actor? If you must know, you aren’t at all what I wanted. I require an escort, not a soul mate, so stop working so hard. Unless you’re an excellent liar you’ll end up making fools of us both. My mother’s interrogation techniques are honed to perfection,’ she told him drily, aware of the sharp eyes watching their every move.
He gave a snort. ‘If that—’ he jerked his head in the direction of the groom ‘—is your taste, I find it easy to believe I’m not what the doctor ordered. Take a dummy from the average shop window and you could have a facsimile of your perfect mate.’ The curl of his lip was openly derisory.
Her bosom swelled with outrage. ‘How dare you?’ The long-entrenched habit of thinking Alex encapsulated masculine perfection made her eyes flash.
‘Without any great effort,’ he murmured with casual, almost bored provocation. ‘You do keep saying that, or hadn’t you noticed? Repetition is a sign of a limited intellect, so I’ve heard.’
‘Do they employ many intellectual giants at the escort agency?’ she was pushed into responding sarcastically.
‘One for every snobbish client.’
Absurdly she felt suddenly apprehensive; there was something about the softness in his voice and the contrasting hardness in his deceptively guileless eyes Mentally she shook herself for having such fanciful thoughts. After today she would never have to see this man again; he had no influence upon her life. Still, he did have a point she would have to pull herself together if she was going to convince anyone she was totally heart-whole and leading a completely satisfying life.
Which, of course, she was. She had a stimulating career as a personal assistant in an advertising agency. A frown furrowed her wide, smooth brow as she thought of the man who had, up until recently, been her boss. Oliver Mallory, the infamous hand that had guided the well-known firm to its present place as one of the top six advertising agencies in the country. She had been his protégée and he had been her friend. Oliver had built the agency up from nothing and now he was gone. Though this left her own position uncertain, it was genuine sadness at the loss of the dear old reprobate that made her sigh.
She had everything she had wanted—a career, a flat of her own, independence, good friends, freedom—but without a man at her side she knew that her friends and relations would see only a jilted woman. The widely held conviction that a woman needed a man for fulfilment was one she personally detested. She had seen her own mother go through a series of temporary affairs of the heart, each one leaving her a little more desperate and lonely than the last. Her own recent experience of loss had made her determined never to repeat it.
‘Do you mind taking your hands off me?’ she said, raising her lowered eyes to the face of the man who was, given the time and place, in socially unacceptable proximity to her.
The hand that had captured her attention still lay along the line of her jaw; the tips of his fingers were burrowed into her hairline. His bent head was level with her own, close enough for her to be able to admire the texture of his bronzed skin, smell the masculine fragrance that drifted from him.
One of his fingers worked its way around a stray lock of hair that had escaped the confines of her wildly expensive headgear. The expression in his heavy-lidded, shadowed eyes as they watched the temporary corkscrew effect of his casual labour was absurdly riveting. Also the hard thigh pressed against her own on the wooden seat was distracting—unpleasantly so, she told herself, frowning as a pack of butterflies ran riot in the pit of her stomach.
The familiar strains of the Bridal March issued forth from the organ and, heart thudding, she pulled free, giving her escort a cold, dismissive look, as much to convince herself that he had nothing to do with the adrenaline surge that sent her heart against her ribcage as anything else. At a time like this she couldn’t possibly spare a second thought for anything but the main event.
The bride was tiresomely lovely, her responses clear and resonant. It was the groom who sounded less than his usual confident self. Georgina waited for the humiliation of the occasion to hit her, but with a sense of anticlimax she realised that she was able to view the whole ceremony with detachment. It was like watching a scene of a play she felt totally uninvolved.
Outside the sun did its duty and the guests huddled together whilst photographs were taken. Her lips curled in a cynical smile, Georgina watched her mother speaking with some animation to a distinguished-looking man she didn’t recognise. She kept her chin high and replied cheerfully to greetings from familiar faces, who looked at the tall figure at her side with varying degrees of curiosity, tinged in some cases, she was amused to see, with envy. Well, it was infinitely preferable to pity, she told herself.
‘Why did he ditch you?’
‘That’s an extremely insensitive question,’ she observed, stiffening. Her paid company was watching the proceedings with an air of impatient boredom.
’I’ve never been one to indulge maudlin self-pity.’
‘Or one to keep your opinions to yourself, it would seem.’
‘Just displaying a friendly interest.’
‘Just fishing for the salacious details, more like.’
The thick dark brows shot towards his hairline. ‘Salacious? I was just trying to make conversation, but now I’m really interested.’ The gleam of humour in his eyes was faintly malicious.
‘Actually, it was all very civilised. I went to London to do a business-studies course. We weren’t engaged or anything,’ she said with a detached smile, skimming sketchily over an emotional blow that had devastated her.
‘Everyone, including you, expected marriage,’ he observed shrewdly.
It was peculiar, but his neutral cynicism was much easier to cope with than the understanding sympathy that had been doled out to her at the time. ‘There was an understanding,’ she agreed, switching her weight from one foot to the other and checking who was within hearing distance. It would never do to have this conversation overheard.
She’d agreed that a ring was an extravagance when she and Alex were saving
