gin and tonic.” Sir Julian gave her a smile and passed back the cocktail menu.
“A Coca-Cola. Cold, please. With ice—if there’s any that hasn’t melted yet.” The man Renate had called Rafiq curved his lips upward, lighting up the harsh features and giving him a devastating charm that had Tiffany catching her breath in surprise.
He was gorgeous.
“Sh-sure, I’ll be right back,” she stuttered.
“We’ll be in one of the back booths,” said Renate.
Tiffany found them easily enough a few minutes later. She handed Renate and Sir Julian their drinks before turning to the man seated on the other side of the booth.
Rafiq, Renate had called him. It suited him. Foreign. Exotic. Quintessentially male. Wordlessly Tiffany passed him the soda, and the ice he’d requested rattled against the glass.
“Thank you.” He inclined his head.
For one wild moment Tiffany got the impression that she was expected to genuflect.
Renate leaned forward, breaking her train of thought. “Here.”
Tiffany took the cell phone Renate offered, and gazed at the other woman in puzzlement. With two hands Renate mimicked taking a photo, and realization dawned. Tiffany studied the phone’s settings. Easy enough. By the time Tiffany glanced up, Renate had draped herself over Sir Julian, so Tiffany raised the phone and clicked off a couple of shots.
At the flash, Sir Julian came to life, waving his hands in front of his face. “No photos.”
“Sorry.” Tiffany colored and fumbled with the phone.
“Are they deleted?” Rafiq’s voice was sharp.
“Yes, yes.” Tiffany shoved the phone behind the wide leather belt that cinched in her waist, vowing to check that the dratted images were gone the next time she went to get a round of drinks.
“Good girl.” Sir Julian gave her an approving smile, and Tiffany breathed a little easier. She wasn’t about to get fired before she’d even been paid.
“Sit down, Tiff, next to Rafiq.”
The younger man sat opposite—alone—that ring of space clearly demarcated. Pity about the grim reserve, otherwise he would certainly have fitted the tall, dark and handsome label.
“Um … I think I’ll go see if anyone else wants a cocktail.”
“Sit down, Tiffany.” This time Renate’s tone brooked no argument.
Tiffany threw a desperate look at the surrounding booths. Several of the hostesses Renate had introduced her to earlier sat talking to patrons, sipping sham champagne cocktails. No one looked like they needed assistance.
Giving in, Tiffany perched herself on the edge of the padded velvet beside Rafiq, and tried to convince herself that it was only the gloom back here in the booths that made him look so … disapproving. He had no reason to be looking down his nose at her.
“They should put brighter lights back here,” Tiffany blurted out.
Rafiq raised a dark eyebrow. “Brighter lights? That would defeat the purpose.”
Puzzled, Tiffany frowned at him. “What purpose?”
“To talk, of course.” Renate’s laugh was light and frothy. “No one talks when the lights are bright. It’s too much like an interrogation room.”
“I would’ve thought the music was too loud to talk.” Tiffany fell silent. Now that she thought about it, it wasn’t quite so loud back here.
Rafiq was studying her, and Tiffany moved restlessly under that intense scrutiny. “I’m going to get myself something to drink.”
“Have a champagne cocktail—they’re great.” Renate raised her glass and downed it. “You can bring me another—and Sir Julian needs his gin and tonic topped up.”
Rafiq’s mouth kicked up at the side, giving him a sardonic, world-weary look.
He knew. Tiffany wasn’t sure precisely what he knew. That the hostesses’ drinks were fake? Or that the patrons would be billed full price for them? But something in his dark visage warned her to tread warily around him.
She edged out of the booth, away from those all-seeing eyes.
It was ten minutes before Tiffany could steel herself to return with a tray of drinks.
“What took so long?” Renate glanced up from where she was snuggled up against Sir Julian. “Jules is parched.”
Jules?
Tiffany did a double take. In the time that she’d been gone Sir Julian Carling had become Jules? And Renate had become positively kittenish, curled up against the hotelier, all but purring. Tiffany slid back into the booth beside Rafiq and thanked the heavens for that wall of ice that surrounded him. No one would get close enough to cuddle this man.
“That surely can’t be a champagne cocktail?” Rafiq commented.
She slid him a startled glance. Was he calling her on Le Club’s shady ploy to overcharge patrons?
“It’s water.”
That expressive eyebrow lifted again. “So where’s the Perrier bottle?”
“Water out of the tap.” Although on second thought, perhaps it might’ve been more sensible to drink bottled water. “I’m thirsty.”
“So you chose tap water?”
Was that disbelief in his voice? Tiffany swallowed, suddenly certain that this man was acutely aware of everything that happened around him.
“Why not champagne?”
She could hardly confess that she was reluctant to engage in the establishment’s scam, so she replied evasively, “I don’t drink champagne.”
“You don’t?” Rafiq sounded incredulous.
“I’ve never acquired the taste.”
More accurately she’d lost the taste for the drink that her mother and father offered by the gallon in their society home. The headache it left her with came from the tension that invariably followed her parents’ parties rather than the beverage itself.
An inexplicable wave of loneliness swamped her.
Those parties were a thing of the past ….
Yesterday she’d tamped down the fury that had engulfed her after speaking to her mother, and called her father. To have him wire her some money—even though the thought of asking him for anything stuck in her throat—and to give him a roasting for what she’d learned from her mother.
This time he’d broken her mother’s heart. He’d been tearing strips off that mutilated organ for years, but taking off with Imogen was different
