somehow she managed it.
‘Are you a member of Brad’s family?’ she asked him, subtly studying the contours of his body as she waited for him to reply.
Those muscles were certainly solid enough. What did he do? she wondered. Something that involved being outdoors a good deal of the time, perhaps.
‘No, I’m not. Are you related to Claire?’
He sounded more polite than genuinely interested but Star refused to be put off.
‘No. I’m actually a friend of Sally, Claire’s stepdaughter,’ she explained. ‘In fact we’ve been friends since our schooldays; but I’m not just here as a friend—I’m here on business as well. I’m a consultant and Brad’s been asking my advice on how to improve the image of their British distribution arm...’
A slight exaggeration of the truth but justified in the circumstances, Star excused herself. She was not normally given to exaggerating her own importance—in any area of her life. It was not normally necessary and she recognised that she was being far more forthcoming, supplying him with far more information about herself than she would normally have done.
But then this was not just about sex, just about meeting an attractive and very sexy man and wanting to go to bed with him, it was about proving a point, about confirming one of life’s realities, about making him back down and admit that he was lying when he pretended to be so emotionally correct and right on!
Engrossed in her own thoughts, Star missed the sudden, startled flare of recognition that darkened his eyes as he listened to what she was saying.
‘So...you won’t be attending the family dinner later this evening, then,’ Star commented, and offered temptingly, ‘Neither shall I.’
In point of fact she had been invited but she knew that Sally and Claire would understand if she didn’t go.
‘No... No, I shan’t,’ he was agreeing, his impossibly dark blue eyes—in a woman Star would have instantly suspected coloured contact lenses but something told her that this man would never fall victim to such vanity—meeting hers and causing her pulse to race a little faster. Oh, yes, he was quite definitely her type, physically at least.
‘So both of us will be at a loose end,’ Star prompted. She was beginning to wonder if she had imagined the intelligence she had seen in his eyes earlier, he was so slow on the uptake.
‘Yeah, I guess it looks as though we will...’ he agreed in a slow drawl.
‘We could have dinner together,’ she persisted, ‘at my hotel; I’m staying at the Lakeside,’ she added, mentioning the town’s most luxurious hotel.
‘The Lakeside...’ He glanced at his watch—a plain, no-nonsense affair with a worn leather strap, Star noticed. ‘I could meet you in the foyer at eight?’
‘Eight will be fine.’ Star assured him, wondering what on earth she was letting herself in for.
She said as much to Sally a few minutes later when her dinner date had excused himself and she had bumped into her and Chris walking across the lawn.
‘I hope I don’t have to work as hard in bed as I had to do to get him to have dinner with me,’ she told her friend feelingly.
Sally laughed, although Star could see that Chris looked slightly uncomfortable. Men didn’t like it when a woman was sexually aggressive, it made them feel uneasy... threatened.
‘Where is he?’ Sally demanded. ‘Point him out to me...’
‘I can’t; he’s disappeared,’ Star told her as she searched the crowded lawn.
‘Perhaps he’s got cold feet and decided to make his escape,’ Chris suggested.
Star gave him a cool look.
‘If he has, there are plenty of others to take his place,’ she responded.
She could see Sally biting her lip and giving Chris a warning look as he opened his mouth to say something else, but she waited until Chris had excused himself and left them on their own before telling her friend gently, ‘It’s all right Sally, you don’t have to protect me from Chris. I know he doesn’t approve of me.’
‘It’s not that,’ Sally protested. ‘It’s just...’
‘It’s just that he doesn’t like it when a woman behaves like a man?’ Star suggested.
‘You deliberately try to give him the wrong impression,’ Sally defended her husband. ‘You make him think...’
‘Make him think what?’ Star taunted her. ‘I make him think that I like sex...that I like men.’
‘But you don’t, do you?’ Sally countered swiftly, shocking Star into silence. Then seizing the advantage she had gained, she continued, ‘You don’t really like men at all, Star; you despise them. You think that all men are like your father,’ she added sadly, ‘and they aren’t. They—’
‘No?’ Star fought back. ‘Tell me that again in ten years’ time, Sal!’
‘Oh, Star,’ Sally protested under her breath as she watched her friend stalk off.
‘Where’s Star gone?’ Chris asked his wife a few minutes later as he rejoined her. ‘Off on another manhunt?’
‘Oh, Chris, she isn’t like that. Not really,’ Sally protested. ‘She just...she’s just so vulnerable, really. She was hurt so badly when her father left her mother and rejected her, trying to claim that she wasn’t his child, and then there were so many bad relationships in her mother’s life, so many love affairs that went wrong, that it just reinforced her belief that men can’t be trusted. She tries to pretend she doesn’t care—she even jokes that she can’t remember any more how many step and half brothers and sisters she has got because there are so many of them—but deep down inside, I know that she does care, that she—’
‘You’re far too soft-hearted,’ Chris told her lovingly, curling his arm around her and swinging her round so that they were face to face. ‘I don’t know whether it’s all this fresh air or not, but suddenly I am very, very hungry.’
‘Hungry...?’ Sally gave him a startled look. ‘Chris, we’ve only just eaten that wonderful buffet; you can’t possibly—’
‘Who said anything about being hungry for food?’ Chris whispered in her ear. ‘It’s you I’m hungry for... Mmm...and you taste very, very good as well...’
‘Chris!’ Sally protested as he started to nibble her ear, but she was laughing as she tried to push him away.
On the other side of the lawn someone else observed them. He had been watching too when Star had been with them, had seen her stalk away from Sally in obvious high dudgeon.
It was funny, but although he had heard quite a lot about her both from Sally and from Claire he still hadn’t recognised who Star was until she had made that comment about doing some PR work for Brad, Kyle acknowledged.
Listening to Claire and Sally describing her and her background as they’d explained the events surrounding the throwing of
