he sleep with you?’
Only in her tortured and exquisite dreams. ‘How dare you ask me that?’
There was a pause. Caroline looked her straight in the eye. ‘I’ll ask you again, Holly. I’m a very understanding woman, you know, and sex has nothing to do with respect—especially where Luke is concerned. Did you sleep with him?’
Thoughts buzzed into Holly’s mind like sandflies, but the most disturbing dominated all the others. She could hear Caroline saying it defiantly, almost proudly: ‘Oh, I’d never have agreed to marry him if he hadn’t come into money.’
She met Caroline’s gaze without blushing. Guided solely by instinct coloured with a gut feeling of pure indignation, Holly realised that with her next words she could wreck her reputation. But she had gambled everything else—why not her reputation? ‘I stayed in his house for days,’ she replied, with slow deliberation. ‘And you know Luke. What do you think?’
‘I’ll tell you what I think! I think you’re deluding yourself if you think you stand any chance with him.’ Caroline gave her a smile which was almost sympathetic. ‘Because Luke was always rather bored by any woman who was such an easy lay!’
AFTER Caroline had flounced out of the shop, telling Holly exactly what she could do with her wedding dress, Holly went through to the kitchen at the back and sat down, her hands trembling, her nerves shot to pieces by what Luke’s fiancée—Luke’s fiancée!—had just told her, and by the enormity of what she had done in retaliation.
Luke was engaged to be married.
That was the one fact which overrode every other thought. Crucial.
But even more crucial was the fact that he had deceived her. He had lied by omission. He had allowed an easy companionship to develop, and had ignited the flames of sexual desire when he could have effectively doused them completely by telling her the simple truth.
That he was engaged to be married.
Holly buried her head in her hands as she thought about him and found that she wanted to weep—she who never wept. Who as a child had constantly kept the noncommittal smile expected of her, even when her life had been torn up by the roots, time and time again.
It was bad enough that he had lied. Bad enough that he had chosen to commit himself to someone who, yes, Holly could see, had all the attributes of a good wife. Caroline was intelligent enough. Neat, organised, attractive, and determined but, oh ... how could a man like Luke—Luke—be contemplating spending the rest of his life with her?
Because even worse than the pain of his deceit was the pain of knowing why he had pushed her away, and why he had stayed out of her life in the days since that frustrating encounter. For he wasn’t hers, and he never would be. Holly had finally met a man she would change her life for, but he belonged to somebody else.
But businesswomen couldn’t hurl themselves to the ground and drum their feet in anger and frustration, which was what she felt like doing! There wasn’t even a packet of biscuits to defiantly plough her way through—not that she really wanted to start comfort eating at this stage in her life.
Instead, she spent the afternoon sewing her first full order—a gown for a Christmas wedding, with a full white taffeta skirt and a buttoned bodice in deep forest-green velvet The tiny bridesmaids’ dresses had the pattern reversed, with velvet skirts and taffeta bodices, and Michelle was going to make mistletoe and holly coronets.
She was undisturbed for the most part, with just two customers wandering in. Young women who said that they wanted to browse. They also wanted to enter the free draw for the prize-winning dress, which Holly suspected was their main reason for coming into the shop!
They filled out their cards respectively, and dropped them into the slightly garish red satin box which Holly had provided.
‘When’s it being drawn?’ asked one.
‘New Year’s Day,’ answered Holly with a faint smile.
‘At the stroke of midnight?’ asked the other hopefully.
‘Like Cinderella, you mean?’ Holly smiled properly then. Your emotional world could collapse around you, and yet romance never seemed to die. Thank heavens. ‘Why not?’ She shrugged.
The rest of the afternoon dragged like Christmas Eve to a child. At four o‘clock she was longing to shut up shop and go upstairs. There were accounts which needed to be sorted out and she could put the finishing touches to the green velvet wedding dress in comfort. Enough to keep her busy for the rest of the evening, anyway. That was if she could resist the temptation to crawl beneath the duvet and just wish that the world would go away.
She was just tucking a frilly blue garter to the back of a drawer when the shop bell rang and she looked up, her words dying on her lips when she saw who it was.
Her first thought was that it didn’t really look like Luke at all, since he was wearing an unfamiliar deep blue suit and a silk tie of palest blue. A tie! Luke! She would never have imagined him wearing such fine wool and silk, though it came as no surprise to see how well the formal clothes fitted his rugged frame. But the impeccably cut outfit had the effect of distancing him, making him look like some cool and devastating stranger.
Luke quietly closed the door behind him and then locked it, and something about his face and the rigid set of his shoulders made Holly run her tongue over her lips and say nervously, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘What does it look like? I’m locking the door.’
‘But we’re still open!’ she objected, her pulse picking up speed like a racehorse. ‘You can’t do that.’
‘Oh, can’t I?’ He turned round then, and the shadowed fury which darkened his features made Holly freeze with apprehension.
‘Just watch me, sweetheart,’ he drawled, and he began to walk towards her.
Holly correctly read the menace and determination in that walk, and some mad, unthinking part of her wanted to run away from him. She found herself looking frantically from side to side, as though a trapdoor would suddenly appear and she would be able to make her escape.
Luke could see her anxiety, but he felt not a jot of pity for her, only the anger which had burned through his veins all afternoon and which was threatening to consume him.
He was directly in front of her now, and Holly saw that he was controlling his breathing only with great difficulty.
‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered, her voice sounding like a husky croak.
It was the wrong thing to say. His mouth curved into a thin parody of a smile which chilled her.
‘You know damn well what I’m doing here.’
‘I d-don’t.’
He drew a breath as though he were taking in poison. ‘What exactly did you tell Caroline?’
‘You mean your fiancée?’ she
