on her, and not the wine at all. In that case, she needed to be even more careful. The last thing she wanted was to end up tipsy and not fully in control.
She had to keep a clear mind and all her wits about her if she was to cope with Constantine at his devastating social best. She had seen him turn on the charm so many times, seen far more sophisticated, more blasé personalities melt underneath its potent warmth not to be wary of the powerful spell he could weave with the force of his personality.
‘Did you really dress like that when you were fourteen? I find it hard to believe that the elegant Grace Vernon ever deliberately chose to appear in public looking…’
‘Such a sight?’ Grace finished for him when he seemed uncharacteristically uncertain of how to finish his sentence. ‘I think that was the idea.’
In spite of herself a small, wry grin surfaced as she looked into the darkness of his eyes.
‘I was rebelling as hard as I could. Going against everything my mother wanted. She insisted on my dressing smartly, as she did. She hated me in trousers, and jeans were anathema to her. So, naturally, I took every opportunity to annoy her by wearing them.’
‘Your mother was still married to your father ten years ago?’
‘Just. The marriage was already on the rocks, though. She’d already had more than one affair and my father had just met Diana. Mum and Dad separated very soon afterwards.’
‘And you went to live with your father. Isn’t it more usual for the child to live with her mother?’
‘I wasn’t exactly a child, Constantine.’
They had never talked about this when they had known each other before. Perhaps if they had things might have been different. He might have understood about Paula. But, no, she couldn’t let her thoughts go down that path. It led to too much pain.
‘I was old enough to have some say in the matter. I chose to live with my father and, deep down, I’m sure my mother didn’t mind. She already had her sights set on a new life in America, and a teenage daughter would just have held her back. My school was here in London, all my friends, naturally I wanted to stay.’
‘Even when he married Diana?’
‘Even when he married Diana!’
Grace moved to deposit her glass on the worktop with a distinct crash. They were getting into dangerous territory. Talk of Diana led inevitably to thoughts of Paula, her stepmother’s daughter.
‘I was really happy that he was getting married again. I thought that…’
But she never completed the sentence. At that moment their private haven was invaded by a bunch of laughing, joking party guests.
‘Come on, party poopers! You can’t stay in here all night! Ivan’s going to cut the cake, and he says that instead of it just being him who gets a wish, we can all have one too!’
Grace could only watch and follow as Constantine was led away into the next room, her friends urging her after him. It was as if a sheet of glass had come down between her and the rest of the people in the room. She could see them, hear their voices and their movements, but the sounds were blurred and incomprehensible so that she felt completely cut off from reality.
A wish. If she had been offered a wish by some fairy godmother only a couple of hours ago—less—she would have said that what she wanted most in the world was to make peace with Constantine. That if she could just come to some sort of accord with him, it would be enough to satisfy her. She had truly believed that if they could come to an understanding where they could be on civilised terms, she could be content.
But they had achieved that truce, those civilised terms, and all that it had taught her was that it was not enough. It could never be enough. She didn’t want peace with Constantine; she didn’t want civilised. She wanted so much more.
‘Happy birthday, dear Ivan…’
All around her Ivan’s guests joined in the traditional singing of ‘Happy Birthday’, and Grace forced herself to open and close her mouth along with them. But no words would form, her tongue seeming to have frozen, her lips as stiff as board.
There was no backing away from it. No avoiding the realisation that had hit her hard, like the splash in her face. The two intervening years might as well have not existed. They had had no effect on the way she was feeling. No effect at all.
‘Grace?’
‘W-what?’
Somehow she dragged her thoughts out of the shocked daze in which they were hidden, forcing her eyes to focus on the man who had come to her side.
Constantine. Hastily she veiled her eyes, hiding her feelings behind her lids, her heart jerking into a rapid, jolting beat at the thought that he might be able to read what was in her mind. The cake-cutting ceremony was over, and the party had moved on, the pulsing music starting up again.
‘Dance with me?’
Say no! Every instinct screamed the warning at her, every nerve instantly thrown into panic mode. Say no—back away—just turn—run! Anything other than expose her already weakened defences to the potent onslaught of his sensual appeal. She already knew how vulnerable she was to the sight, the sound, the scent of him. How her body reacted to just the slightest touch. She couldn’t risk…
‘Yes, okay.’
How had that happened? Just what was she doing? Grace could find no answers for her outraged sense of self-preservation. She was acting on a far deeper, more primitive level, responding purely on instinct, unable to force her mind into any form of rational thought.
So she let Constantine take her hand and draw her towards the part of the room that had been cleared for dancing. And when the music changed just as they started to dance, turning from a rhythmic beat to a slow, seductive number, she made no objection to the way he turned to her and took her into his arms, drawing her close to the warmth and strength of his body.
She fitted into his arms as if she’d been born there. And it felt like coming home. The rest of the room, the noise and all the people around her, blurred into one indecipherable mass. There was no one in the world but herself and this man, whose strength enclosed her, whose heart beat under her cheek, the strong wall of his chest rising and falling with every breath he took.
‘Grace…’ he murmured softly, her name just a sigh against her hair.
‘Don’t talk…’ Grace heard herself whisper back. ‘Just hold me…’
She had no idea whether it was simply one dance that seemed to last for ever, or if there were many such dances, impossible to count, while she was lost in a dreamy haze of sensual delight. She only knew that when at last the music faded into silence and the world around her righted itself again she was no longer in the big main room where the party was centred, but had been subtly manoeuvred out into the hall beyond.
‘Where…?’ she began in confusion.
As her eyes focused again she discovered that she and Constantine were in the shelter of the wide flight of stairs up to the next floor, hidden from everyone.
Immediately the dream world that
