pretended to live by, but she stuck to hers and they were important to her.
For a start, her partner had to have a clean bill of health and a willingness to prove it. And he certainly had to understand that all she intended to share with him was her sexual self.
She had no inhibitions or hang-ups about the physical side of her nature. Why should she have? If nature hadn’t intended a woman to enjoy sexual pleasure then she wouldn’t have equipped her with the means to do so, and, that being the case, it was more of a sin, in Star’s book, to deny herself that sexual pleasure than to enforce on herself a set of antiquated rules which had been imposed on women by men to preserve their own self-bestowed right to enjoy their sexuality whilst denying women the right to enjoy theirs.
Last but not least, her partner had to accept with good grace the fact that once the sexual excitement of their relationship had faded it was time for them both to move on, although not necessarily, in her case, to another lover.
These days she spent more time in bed alone than with someone else, and, if she was honest with herself, she had grown to prefer it that way.
When her father had walked out on her mother and she had witnessed the financial and emotional devastation that his absence had caused, despite her youth, she had made herself a vow that the same thing would never happen to her, that she would never allow herself to depend financially, or indeed in any way, on anyone other than herself, and that, unlike her mother, she would not keep on falling in love and remarrying in the forlorn hope of finding someone to fill the empty space in her life...in herself...
There were no empty spaces in her life or in her, Star had decided triumphantly three months ago when the arrival of her twenty-fifth birthday had prompted a mental stocktaking of her life.
‘Mom, I need the bathroom...’
Star frowned as her attention was abruptly refocused on the small family group that she had noticed earlier by the shrill, insistent voice of one of the children.
The man with them—their father, she assumed—was, she observed, more interested in catching her eye than acknowledging his wife’s attempt to capture his attention.
‘Clay, Ginny wants the bathroom,’ Star heard her telling him.
‘Then take her,’ he responded impatiently, shaking his head when the woman tried to insist that he went with them.
The look he gave Star as his wife gave in and walked away from him with their children across the lawn of Brad’s large family home—built on the shores of the lake around which lay the small American town where he and his family lived and to which he had brought his bride, Sally’s stepmother—was one she had seen in very many pairs of male eyes before his.
Barely waiting until his wife and children were out of sight, he started to make his way towards Star.
Star did nothing. She simply stood still, watching and waiting.
He was quite attractive, she decided judiciously, though not so attractive as he obviously believed, but then she quite enjoyed a certain amount of confidence in a man, as well as that very obvious streak of selfishness, provided he did not bring it to bed with him.
A selfish lover was not to her taste at all.
As he came towards her she did not, as another woman might have done, exhibit any self-consciousness. There was no need for her to raise flirtatious fingers to the silky dark red satin of her hair which today she was wearing loose over her shoulders in a smooth, polished, immaculate fall. Nor did she need to check any other details of her appearance or draw attention to her sensuality.
The simple silk and linen dress that she was wearing had been bought in Milan and it showed. It fitted the slender, elegant line of her body perfectly. That was to say, it merely hinted at the feminine curves that lay beneath it rather than hugging or emphasising them in the way that the dress worn by the woman who had been clinging so desperately and so unsuccessfully to the man’s side had done.
Star never wore clothes which drew attention to her sexuality—there had never been any need for her to do so—not even in bed, where the only thing she wanted next to her own skin was that of her lover.
Behind her she could still hear the querulous voice of the child and the equally irritated response of her mother.
Star’s make-up, like her hair and her perfume, was understated. Her father might not have given her his physical support or indeed his financial support during her childhood, but he had given her his excellent bone structure, and by his absence he had also given her the opportunity to witness, at first hand, the folly of trying too hard to please his sex.
Not that she would ever have been tempted to try to appeal to this particular specimen of it, she decided, abruptly changing her mind about her admirer’s potential as she observed the smug satisfaction in his eyes—and the lack of humour or intelligence. She might not want to form any kind of permanent or emotional bond with a lover but she enjoyed the spine-tingling ritual of foreplay as much as any other woman, especially when it was spiced with intelligent conversation and laughter.
As she broke eye contact with him with a coolly dismissive look that told him he was wasting his time, she realised that she could still hear the whiny voice of the child behind her and her mother’s reproach as she demanded, ‘Oh, Ginny, why did you say you wanted the. bathroom if you don’t? Your father... Oh...’
Star frowned as the woman’s tone of voice changed, all its former irritation and lethargy replaced by an almost breathless note of sexual excitement and warmth as she exclaimed, ‘Oh, Kyle! Where did you come from? I didn’t see you. Clay is—’
‘I know where Clay is. I’ve seen him,’ Star heard a coolly incisive male voice interrupting, and she could tell from the way he drawled the words that he knew exactly what Clay had been doing and, moreover, did not approve.
The voice sounded interesting but the man, Star suspected, who not really her type. He sounded far too disapproving and moralistic.
She was just about to walk away and refill her glass with the rather good champagne cocktail that she had been enjoying when a purposeful quartet comprising the two adults she had just heard talking plus the two children—or, rather, a slightly uncertain trio shepherded by an extremely large and very determined sheepdog in the form of a man who would normally have caused her more than a single heartbeat’s recognition of his masculine appeal—crossed her line of vision heading towards the man who had just been trying to attract her attention.
There was really no comparison between the two men, Star decided. Clay now looked sulkily, almost seedily unappealing as he ignored his wife’s outstretched hand and frowned impatiently down at his two children, whilst the man who had sounded so determined to remind him of his marital and parental status looked...
He looked like the very best kind of sexy American male, Star admitted to herself.
Tall, lithe in the way he moved, he had a sheen of good health on his thick, well-cut dark brown hair and on his forearms where his flesh was exposed by the short sleeves of his snowy-white T-shirt.
She didn’t miss, either, the brief glance he gave her as he restored and reunited the small family group—a look which told her how thoroughly he disapproved of what had been going on.
In a flash, the automatic flare of sexual awareness she had felt was submerged by a much stronger flare of resentful anger as she recognised
