High school parties were the worst punishment in the world! In fact, there should be a law banning them for all girls who had not managed to find a date—especially on Valentine’s Day.
Squeezing in between the gaggles of teenage girls who had formed a tight huddle on the other side of the dance floor, Kate Lovat clutched her empty plastic cola glass with both hands and tried to push her way through to the bar by waggling her hips and elbows.
It would be so much easier if she was a couple of inches taller!
Not even the high-heeled sandals she had bought in the January sales could bring her up to the shoulders of the posh clique of rich girl prefects who had made it their duty to take guard duty on the bar.
From this much sought-after position they could snigger and make snide comments about what every other girl at the sixth form school party was wearing or not wearing, who they had brought as their date and generally act superior in their designer mini dresses, which barely covered their gym-tight assets.
Kate had seen those assets in the school showers many times over the past three years and they still had the power to make her feel that she came from a different species of teenage girl. The kind that hated exercise and would rather eat her own feet than strut around the changing room in only a thong and heels, pretending to look for a hairdryer, which was Crystal Jardine’s speciality.
Shame that Kate was providing them with such excellent entertainment.
So far the evening had been a disaster and she could not even rely on her pals to get her out of this one. Kate lifted her chin and tried to look around the crush of bodies to catch a glimpse of her backup crew.
Amber was laughing and chatting away with Sam in the corner, oblivious to anyone else in the room, Saskia was doing her best to entertain a girl cousin who had arrived from France the day before, and Petra was flirting with every boy in the room while her handsome date was at the bar. Nope. For once she was on her own.
‘Kate...what a lovely dress,’ Crystal simpered as she sneered down at her. ‘It was so clever of you to find something second-hand suitable for a petite figure. Is that why you’re the only girl in the class to turn up without a date on Valentine’s? What a shame. After you’ve gone to so much effort to clean yourself up.’
A ripple of amused snorting ran around Crystal’s little band of followers, which had been dubbed the Crystallites by Saskia. Cold and transparent and all the same.
She couldn’t help it. Kate had to run one hand down the side of her new strapless dark purple satin prom dress. She didn’t have much in way of boobage or hips for a girl aged seventeen years and one month, but she had done what she could with the help of her friend Amber’s bra collection. ‘Oh, do you like the dress?’ Kate looked up with an innocent expression and tried to fling off a casual reply. ‘I designed it myself but I wasn’t sure about the colour for my evening gloves.’
The tall blonde replied with a dismissive choke, ‘Evening gloves? For a school disco? What era do you think this is? It’s really embarrassing for the rest of us—in fact I suggest that you should take them off right now.’ And with that she reached down and started pulling the sleeve of the glove down from Kate’s elbow before she had time to snatch it away.
Kate gasped in disbelief and took a breath, ready to tell Crystal exactly what she could do with her suggestion, but before she had a chance to reply, four things happened in quick succession.
The plastic cola glass in her right hand fell, clattering, to the hard floor, Crystal blinked, pushed out her chest and did the hair-over-one-shoulder flick she reserved for full-on boy entrancement, the other girls in the group stopped yapping and started gawping and Kate instantly knew in every cell of her body, even before she turned around, that a very tall, very gorgeous man boy had just invaded their little world.
Her senses seemed to tune out the noise of the disco blasting out from the stage and the chatter that only forty teenage girls and their assorted friends and dates could make. It was as though she had been waiting all evening, no, all her life, to hear that rustling sound of crisp fabric and a rich aromatic aftershave which smelt of everything that represented old-school class, elegance, wealth and gorgeousness.
But she was still not prepared for the manly arm that wrapped around her waist and practically lifted her off her feet.
‘Katherine, there you are. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
Kate half turned in the circle of his arms and slowly, hesitantly looked up into the face of the one and only Heath Sheridan.
Amber’s stepbrother. Captain of the university polo team, heir to the Sheridan publishing empire, top of his business class, the celebrity party favourite, nice to children and animals.
And, to her, the most gorgeous twenty-year-old man alive.
He was smiling down at her with the full-on power smile she had seen him use before on the rare occasions that he came over to London from the Sheridan estate in Boston.
But she had never been on the receiving end of it up close and personal before. At this distance she could see the flecks of gold in those amazing dark brown eyes and the small scar on his smoothly shaven chin where, according to Amber, he had fallen off his sledge as a boy.
Well, that boy was long gone.
And hurrah and hallelujah and no complaints from her about that fact.
Heath’s neat brown hair was clipped tight around his ears but just long enough at the back of his neck for her hand to touch as she raised both arms and linked them behind his head—just to lay it on extra-thick for the open-mouthed gawping audience, of course.
The fact that he instinctively slid both arms around her middle, forcing her to literally cling to his body, was a truly special bonus.
‘Darling, you look wonderful,’ Heath said, his gaze totally locked on her face. ‘And that dress is divine on you. I am so sorry my flight was late getting into London. Can you ever forgive me?’
His voice was so husky, tinged with a soft transatlantic accent and deep and intimate that she could eat it with a spoon. It seemed to echo back in the small space that separated them, burning up the air and lodging inside her head, making her feel dizzy from lack of oxygen.
‘Of course, Heath,’ she replied in a low whisper. Her eyes fluttered closed for a second as her chest pressed against the open-necked silky white shirt he was wearing, which revealed just the smallest amount of chest hair but enough to do serious damage to her blood pressure, especially when his lips pressed into the top of her hair.
‘Sorry, ladies,’ he breathed, scarcely breaking his gaze to flick a look at Crystal, ‘but I am going to have to steal my gorgeous girl away from you. We’ve been apart for far too long. Don’t you agree, baby?’
A very unladylike squeak and part giggle escaped her lips and she managed a tiny self-satisfied but apologetic shoulder shrug as she slid back into her sandals, her feet hit the floor and she clung onto Heath’s arm.
With a brilliant smile, his arm tightened around her waist, pulling her even tighter against his body and his lips met her forehead this time, claiming her in front of the entire posh clique, who were slowly moving from stunned shock to dagger-looks mode. As they moved away like some romantic three-legged race, Kate flicked her hair back and silently mouthed the words elbow gloves to the
