followed her progress with leisurely enjoyment. She was determined not to look at him. He could see it in the way she collected their glasses. Nor was she interested in them ordering another bottle of champagne, even though she asked the question in the same breathlessly tempting voice.
‘Now, where,’ he drawled, capturing her reluctant attention, ‘do you suggest I put this?’ He rested one elbow on the table and heard his client chuckle with wicked amusement as he watched the notes between Dominic’s long fingers.
Mattie stretched out her palm.
‘Isn’t it customary to slip it somewhere rather more intimate?’
‘No.’ Mattie flashed him a smile of pure ice and prayed that Harry wasn’t anywhere within earshot.
‘Fair enough.’ He surrendered and handed her his extremely generous tip.
Mattie hadn’t expected it. He was, after all, a typical obnoxious customer who felt he had no need to treat her, a lowly waitress in a nightclub, with anything resembling respect. He shouldn’t be capable of smiling at her with such genuine rueful amusement. As if he could read her mind and could also see for himself what sort of picture he had portrayed and how it had conveyed itself to her.
She felt a second of passing disorientation, then her fingers curled around the money, well earned as far as she was concerned, and she was walking away. Out to the changing room, where she could get rid of her ridiculous outfit, step out of the high shoes which still pinched her toes even though she should have broken them in a long time ago, into sensible jeans and the flat trainers she was so much more comfortable wearing.
‘Harry,’ she said, when she had changed. He was circling the room, frowning, making sure that everyone was happy. ‘I’m off now.’ Mattie liked Harry. If she hadn’t, she would never have stuck the job out for as long as she had, but underneath his veneer of ill-tempered bossiness, he liked the girls who worked for him and treated them with fondness and respect.
‘You’re letting me down, Mattie,’ he growled. ‘Three girls short. What’s the matter with Jackie, anyway? You took over from her. She tell you anything? Suddenly flouncing out like that, leaving me in the lurch.’
‘She felt ill. Tired, I expect.’ Pregnant, Mattie thought, wondering how Harry would take the news. Finishing work at five-thirty in the morning, Mattie was also feeling the strain of her job.
‘Why don’t you stay on, Mats? Earn yourself a few extra quid?’
‘What, and get even less sleep than I manage to now?’
‘You should dump that course of yours,’ he grumbled. ‘Marketing. Pah! Still, when you get your diploma, or whatever it is that college is dangling in front of you, you just make sure you come right back here. Help manage this little joint of mine. Anyway, you’d better go. No good the punters seeing that their glamorous hostess wears jeans and trainers.’
Mattie laughed. ‘No. It wouldn’t do for them to think that I don’t live in tight dresses and high heels, would it?’
She edged her way out of the crowds, towards the exit.
Dominic, standing to one side by the cloakroom, jacket on, accepting the profuse thanks of his little group of guests for showing them an enjoyable time, almost didn’t recognise the slender blonde slipping out of the door, her jacket wrapped firmly around her.
Nor would he, under normal circumstances, have allowed his urge to follow her, catch her up, talk to her, to get the better of him. But being in that nightclub had made him realise something, made him see that the world was full of women, uncomplicated women who might entertain the idea of a brief relationship, no strings attached. Beautiful, uncomplicated women, because what other type of woman worked in a place like that? Certainly not those of the high-flying society category, such as his ex-girlfriend, who had thoroughly succeeded in purging him of any inclination to have a serious relationship.
Or so he told himself as he impatiently said his goodbyes to his client, one eye on the figure hurrying up the dark street, about to spin round a corner.
It took a bit of swift moving, swift enough to leave him insufficient time to ask himself what precisely he was doing, and then the gap was closing between them. He caught up with her just as she was about to cross the road, then he reached out and stilled her by placing his hand on her arm.
Mattie swung around instantly. It was after midnight and, although the streets were still busy, so were all the muggers. This was their time of night, when people were scurrying to catch cabs and buses, very likely with wallets poking out like beacons from jacket pockets and a bit too much drink in their blood for them to do much about a running assault.
‘You!’ Her eyes widened, then narrowed in angry suspicion.
An understandable reaction, Dominic thought belatedly, releasing her and drawing back.
‘What the hell are you doing? Following me?’ She had only seen him sitting down. Now she realised just how tall he was. Well over six feet. Much taller than she was, and she was no shortie at five feet eight. He was also a lot more powerful close up. Under the well-cut jacket, she could sense a finely honed, muscular body.
‘If I told Harry about this, he would have your head for breakfast!’ She didn’t think that anyone, including any of Harry’s very efficient bouncers, could have this man’s head for breakfast, and he obviously was of the same opinion, because he shot her a look of frank disbelief.
‘I accept tips from the punters, mister, but that is all you’re entitled to!’ She whipped back around to discover that he was still following her. Although following would have been the wrong word. More like accommodating his long stride to match hers, to keep up perfectly at her level, until they had both crossed the road, at which point she turned to him again, eyes blazing, letting him know in no uncertain terms that he could take his arrogant and more than likely drunken self up some different road, any road that was not the one she happened to be on!
‘I’ve seen your type before, let me tell you, and you disgust me!’
‘My type?’ Dominic was finding, to his own bemusement, that his instinctive ability to control conversations was being very thoroughly flattened by the spitting blonde in front of him. She had her hands stuck angrily in the pockets of her jacket, only removing one to shove some of that fabulous fair hair away from her face.
He had pursued her because something about her had turned him on. A lot. And he had wanted to apologise for the uncultured oaf he had been inside the nightclub, looking at her with a suggestiveness he knew she had recognised and been repulsed by. Quite rightly.
However, her attack on him was taking its toll on his temper, never that long at the best of times.
‘My type?’ he repeated, in a voice that had sent many a high-powered business rival ducking for cover. On her, however, it appeared to have less than zero effect.
‘Yes, your type!’ Surprisingly, Mattie found that she was enjoying this. Actually enjoying this! The initial shock of seeing him, the passing fear that he had followed her for a purpose, had somehow retreated. Obnoxious, patronising, arrogant boor he might very well be, but somehow she knew that he was not going to shove her down a dark alley so that he could have his wicked way with her.
She felt absolutely free to yell her lungs out at him and it was feeling very good to do just that. She
