bit impressed by the glamorous job in the City, his money, the fast cars, his good looks. She’d love him without any of the fancy trappings because she cared about him. She always had. Not because she wanted to. Because she couldn’t help it.
She’d hoped that going away to university would have stopped all that. Really hoped that she would meet someone who would make her forget all about Robert. Maybe she hadn’t looked hard enough. Maybe, deep down, she hadn’t wanted to. But maybe it was time to put a stop to this stupid game she’d been playing. Walk away, before she did something really stupid.
After the wedding, she promised herself, drying her cheek with the heel of her hand.
She’d stop being available. Make herself busier. Take up knitting.
Oh, for heaven’s sake! Now she was being pathetic. Well, she could put a stop to that right now. This minute. Tonight she wouldn’t hang around waiting for Robert to remember to dance with her. Tonight she’d pick her own escort home, or at least leave with some dignity on her own.
She looked her reflection straight in the eye and promised herself that if she could sort herself out a date for the wedding, she’d do that, too. It would please her mother, if nothing else. She palmed her eyes, trying to cool them.
Then she blew her nose, stood up and headed for the shower, determined that there would be no dressing down tonight. None of that barely there make-up.
She painted her nails bright red, she sprayed on her scent with reckless abandon, and instead of squeezing her hair into a French plait in order to keep it under control she left it fluffy. It wasn’t chic. It wasn’t that sleek, glossy stuff that swung and caught the light and looked like a million dollars in the shampoo adverts. In fact all that could be said in its favour was that she did have a heck of a lot of it.
She’d tried cutting it short once, but it hadn’t helped. She’d simply looked like a poodle after a less than successful encounter with the clippers. The only thing that had stopped her cutting it to within an inch of her scalp had been the sure and certain knowledge that what remained would curl even tighter, and shaving her head would just have been a temporary solution. Maybe that was the answer now, she thought, grinning as she flattened her curls against her skull with her hands. Not even dear, sweet, kind Ginny would put up with a skinhead as a bridesmaid. Would she?
A brisk ring at the doorbell put a stop to such nonsense. She checked her watch; it was still a quarter of an hour until ten o’clock. He was early, impatient with her delaying tactics, and that was unusual enough to make her smile as she pressed down the intercom.
‘You’re early.’
‘Then I’ll have a drink while I wait,’ Robert’s disembodied voice informed her.
She let him into the building and then opened her flat door before retreating to her bedroom to paint her lips as red as her nails. ‘There’s wine in the fridge,’ she called from the bedroom, staring nervously at her reflection now that he had arrived, wondering if she’d gone a bit too far.
‘Shall I pour a glass for you?’
‘Mmm,’ she said. She definitely needed a drink. Oh, well. In for a penny … She fitted a pair of exotic dangly silver earrings to her lobes and then stepped into the new shoes. They would be wasted, she decided. No one would see them. She stepped out of them again and, like the coward she was, put on a pair of low-heeled pumps.
Robert, tall, square-shouldered, with the fine, muscular elegance of a fencer and utterly gorgeous in pale suit and a dark green shirt, paused in the kitchen doorway as he saw her. Paused for a moment, taking in the wide silk pants, the tiny black and silver top that crossed low over her small breasts like a ballet dancer’s practice sweater and tied behind her waist … and said nothing.
He thought she looked like a little girl who’d been caught playing with her mother’s make-up, but was too polite to say so; Daisy could see it in his face and wanted to run howling back to the bathroom to scrub her face.
‘Have you been somewhere special?’ he asked finally, handing her a glass. For a moment she couldn’t think what he meant. ‘You couldn’t make dinner,’ he reminded her, eyes narrowed.
‘Oh. Um …’ She floundered for a moment. ‘It was just a gallery thing.’ Work. That was it, she decided, clutching at straws. Anything rather than have him think she’d done this to impress him.
‘A viewing? I’d have come if I’d known. I’m looking for something for my mother’s birthday.’
‘Are you? What?’ she asked, hoping to divert him further.
‘When I see it, I’ll know. So? Was it a viewing?’ he persisted, refusing to be sidetracked.
‘Um … No. Not exactly.’ He raised one of his dark, beautifully expressive eyebrows and took a sip of wine without commenting, leaving Daisy with the uncomfortable feeling that he didn’t quite believe her. But what else could she say? She refused to own up to staying in and watching television rather than have dinner with him. He wouldn’t understand why and she certainly couldn’t explain.
‘You shouldn’t let George Latimer work you so hard,’ he said, after a silence that seemed unusually awkward.
‘He doesn’t,’ she snapped back. ‘I love my job.’ Perhaps it was guilt at lying to him that made her so sharp. She certainly didn’t feel capable of the usual easy banter that sustained their conversation. ‘Shall we go?’
Robert Furneval reached the pavement and without thinking hailed a passing taxi. ‘We could easily have walked,’ Daisy said.
‘If you’ve been working, you deserve to ride.’ If? What on earth had made him say that? The feeling that she hadn’t been quite honest with him? Daisy had looked so guilty when she’d told him that she’d been working late. Guilty and unusually glamorous. If George Latimer had been forty, thirty years younger even, he might have suspected there was something going on.
Ridiculous of course. But being busy until nine-thirty smacked of the kind of affair where the man needed to be home with his wife and children at a respectable time. He glanced across at her, and even in the dim light of the cab he could see that her eyes were very bright. And she’d flushed so guiltily. But Daisy would never have that kind of affair. Would she?
He thought he knew her, yet it occurred to him that he had no idea what she might do if tempted. What exactly did she do in the evenings when the shutters came down at the gallery?
She never talked about herself much. Or was it that he never asked? No, that wasn’t right. He was good at relationships, knew how to talk to women … But he knew Daisy so well. Or thought he did. The girl sitting beside him in the taxi seemed more like a stranger.
He’d always thought of her as Michael’s kid sister, always there. Good natured, fun, a girl who didn’t make a fuss about getting a bit muddy. But tonight her eyes were shining and her cheeks looked a touch hectic. It was a look that he knew and understood. On Daisy, it made him feel distinctly uncomfortable. Almost as if he had lifted aside a veil and seen something secret.
She turned and caught him looking at her, and for a moment he had a glimpse of something much deeper. Then she cocked a quirky eyebrow at him and grinned. ‘What’s up, Robert? Still missing the gorgeous Janine?’ she teased.
He relaxed. She hadn’t changed. He was the one who was tense.
