‘Perhaps not.’ She faltered and looked to her stepcousin for support.
‘Perhaps some wine?’ Stephanie suggested, grinning. ‘It’s nice and cold.’
‘Yes, thank you, that sounds fine.’ She breathed a sigh of relief and sat down in the chair facing Callum, more because of its relative proximity than for any other reason, although the badly chosen seating arrangement now guaranteed an uninterrupted vision of him.
‘You were talking about your national costume—or, rather, the lack of it,’ he said, crossing his extended legs at the ankles and linking his fingers together on his lap.
‘What are you doing here?’ Destiny surprised herself by asking. This man, like it or not, made her say things and behave in ways that were alien to her. And her skin felt hot and itchy under the intensity of his blue eyes. Was that possible? Could someone make someone else feel hot and itchy just by looking at them? It had certainly never happened to her before.
His eyebrows shot up in exaggerated astonishment at her question. ‘Stephanie’s my fiancée. Naturally I wanted to be by her side when she met her stepcousin for the first time. She’s a very gentle soul.’ He lowered his eyes when he said this but there was a tell-tale smile tugging the corners of his mouth. ‘I didn’t want you to terrify her.’
‘Me? Terrify her?’ Her protesting voice was more of a furious splutter.
‘With your aggression.’
‘My aggression? How can you talk about my aggression?’
She reduced the volume of her voice at the sound of approaching footsteps, but the rankled feeling managed to stay with her for the remainder of the evening. Even more infuriating was the fact that her fulminating looks did very little more than provide him with a source of barely contained amusement.
Only Stephanie’s cheerful banter, as she dragged out details of Panama from her guest, besieging her with interested questions, squealing with delight when Destiny talked about the children she taught and gasping with little cries of horror at her stories of the jungle and what it contained, saved the evening. Destiny wondered if her stepcousin knew that she would be marrying someone who made the most ferocious jungle animal pale in comparison.
They had spoken not one word of business by the time eleven-thirty rolled around and she stood to leave, feeling woozy from the wine, to which she was in no way accustomed, and exhausted by her jet lag.
‘So, what did you make of the buffoons at the company?’ Callum asked, standing up as well and shoving his hands into his pockets. ‘I suppose they pulled out all the stops? Made you pore over cobwebbed reports of how great and good the firm used to be years ago? Played down what a shambles it’s in now?’ Despite consuming what had seemed, to Destiny, prodigious amounts of wine during the evening, the man still looked bright-eyed, alert and rearing to attack.
She threw him a wilted looked and stifled a yawn.
‘Mmm. That interesting, was it?’ A wicked glint of humour shone in his eyes.
‘I wasn’t trying to make a comment on what the meeting was like,’ Destiny said with lukewarm protest in her voice. ‘I’m tired.’
‘Leave her alone, Callum,’ Stephanie said sympathetically.
‘Business has to be discussed, Steph.’
‘Why now? It’s so boring.’
‘Boring for you perhaps, but you want to remember that your finances are tied up with what happens next in this little exciting scenario. I buy the company, play with it a bit until it’s running along smoothly, and your shares go up. Our Panamanian heiress keeps the company and—’
‘Do you mind not talking as if I wasn’t here?’
‘Have you ever been to London before, Destiny?’ Stephanie linked her arm through her stepcousin’s and ushered her to the front door, pointedly turning her back on her fiancée.
‘No. It’s all new and—’ she glanced over her shoulder and her eyes clashed with Callum’s ‘—a little scary.’
‘It would be. You’re just so brave to come all this way, on your own. I’d never dream of doing it!’
‘No.’ Callum’s voice behind them was silky. ‘It takes a certain type of woman to do that. Some might call it brave, darling; others might just call it—well, let’s just say that it’s a very masculine response.’
At which Stephanie flew around to face him with her hands on her hips and a simmering look in her baby-blue eyes. ‘Don’t be horrible!’
‘Me?’ He raised both his hands in innocent denial, but the blue eyes that locked with Destiny’s were unrepentant. ‘Horrible? It was meant to be a compliment! A glorious example of how far the women’s movement has got!’
‘What women’s movement?’ Destiny asked, her body language echoing Stephanie’s. ‘I’ve never been a part of any movement in my life before!’
‘No?’ He tried to stifle a grin and failed miserably. ‘Well, let’s just say that feminism has missed out there.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning that I’ll give you a lift back to your place.’ He bent over to give Stephanie a gentlemanly peck on the cheek and a pat on the back. ‘That all right with you, darling?’
‘Don’t badger her, Callum.’
‘I wish people wouldn’t constantly stereotype me.’ He pulled open the front door and gave Destiny an exaggeratedly wide berth to exit ahead of him into a clear night that was considerably more bracing than it had been earlier on in the evening.
‘What about tomorrow?’ Stephanie asked him, standing in the doorway to see them off, an angelic, diminutive shape that made Destiny feel like an Amazonian hulk in comparison. ‘The Holts have invited us to supper. Did you remember? Daisy and Clarence are going to be there as well. Oh, and Rupert.’
Callum paused and frowned, appearing to give the matter weighty thought, then he said with a shrug,
‘Meeting. Sorry, darling. You go, though. Don’t stay in because of me.’
‘You’re always at meetings,’ Stephanie said in a childish, sulky voice. ‘He’s always at meetings,’ she addressed Destiny in an appeal to sisterhood, which Destiny took up with sadistic relish.
‘If he loved you, he’d cancel, I’m sure.’
‘If you loved me, you’d cancel.’
There was a brief silence. ‘I’ll do my best.’ He sighed and Stephanie’s face radiated at this unexpected victory.
‘Oh, goody!’ She blew them both a delighted kiss and shut the front door on them.
CHAPTER THREE
‘THANK you. Thank you very much,’ he grated sarcastically, as the engine of his powerful car purred into life. He pulled away from the kerb unnecessarily fast
