frowned. What on earth was she talking about? What blonde? There hadn’t been a blonde.
Unless she meant Jessica.
Jack went still as the memory of his mother’s overblown behaviour at dinner flew into his head. She did mean Jessica.
As realisation dawned he felt like laughing because if he wasn’t mistaken Imogen was jealous. It wasn’t an emotion he’d ever experienced himself, of course—that weird tightening of his body when she’d told him she’d once gone out with Max had been nothing but surprise—but he could recognise it in others.
‘Ah, the blonde,’ he said, feeling the tension ease from his shoulders as he leaned forwards and, unable to resist any longer, wrapped his hand around her ankle and slid it up her bare calf.
With a sharp gasp Imogen snatched her legs away and clutched the edges of the lower half of her dress together.
‘Don’t think you’re going to get out of this by virtually sitting in my lap,’ she said tartly, although, with her breath catching the way it was, it didn’t come out as tartly as he imagined she’d have liked.
‘I’m not trying to get out of anything,’ he said, grinning. ‘But I can see how it must have looked.’
‘Really? I’m surprised you could see anything at all what with that cleavage constantly being shoved in your line of sight.’
‘Jessica can be a little over-demonstrative at times.’
‘A little over-demonstrative?’ said Imogen. ‘Hah. I’ve never seen anyone so tactile. Honestly, it was appalling. All that pawing and leaning over you. I’m surprised she didn’t have a wardrobe malfunction.’
Jack’s grin widened as he watched her eyes flash and colour rise in her cheeks. ‘Yes, well, I don’t think it was quite as bad as that, but she’s always been on the tactile side. It’s part of her whole “dahhhling” persona. It drives me insane but, seeing as she’s the one who wangled me the space at her table, it seemed rude to cause a scene.’
Imogen scowled. ‘Do the two of you have history?’
‘You could say that.’
She harrumphed. ‘And a future?’
‘Unfortunately, that, too.’
‘Well, then, don’t let me keep you.’
‘You aren’t,’ he said, sitting back, stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankles as he looked at her. ‘My mother’s currently strutting her stuff on the dance-floor with her latest boyfriend and I doubt she could care less what I’m up to.’
For a moment Imogen thought she must have misheard. That, despite being so cross with him she’d been so caught up in white-hot jealousy, so thrown off balance by the searing jolt of electricity that had shot up her leg when his hand had caressed it, that she’d completely lost the plot.
Either that or he was joking.
But Jack didn’t look as if he was joking. Far from it. His expression was one of faint distaste and the blue of his eyes looked strangely flat.
In the long seconds of silence that stretched between them, all she could do was stare at him in astonishment while he looked unwaveringly back. The strains of music coming from the ballroom and the distant buzz of conversation barely registered as the realisation that he was one hundred per cent serious dawned.
‘Your mother?’ she said once she’d regained the power of speech.
Jack grimaced, his eyes dark and unfathomable. ‘I’m afraid so.’
‘That was your mother?’
‘So she claims.’
‘But she can’t be.’ She thought of her own mother, who was in her fifties and favoured tweed. Her mother, who was happiest on her knees in a flowerbed, trowel in hand, and wouldn’t be seen dead with a neckline that plunged to her navel or a hemline that skirted her buttocks, let alone shaking her groove on the dance floor.
Jack let out a deep sigh. ‘That’s what I’ve wished for many times over the years, but she is, and unfortunately there isn’t a thing I can do about it.’
So many questions raced around her head that she didn’t know where to start. ‘But how …?’
‘Oh, the usual way, I should imagine.’
‘I mean she looks about twenty-one.’
‘I’ll tell her you said so. She’ll be delighted.’
‘How old was she when she had you?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘Crikey.’ She paused. ‘And how old are you?’
‘Thirty-three.’
Imogen did the calculation, then blew out a breath. Jack’s mother might not be twenty-one, but she was spectacularly, and no doubt expensively, well preserved. ‘Goodness.’
His eyes glittered. ‘Quite.’
She blinked. ‘Well, I must say, I’m speechless.’ And more relieved than she could possibly have imagined.
‘Good, because I don’t particularly want to talk about my mother.’
That was a pity because she did. She really ought to have given in and searched him on the Internet, because she’d bet her entire shoe collection that it would all be there. ‘No?’
‘No.’
‘But—’ There was so much more she wanted to know. Who was his father? Who’d brought him up? What had his childhood been like? How did he feel about having a mother who behaved like that?
‘I said no.’
And presumably just in case she was thinking of pressing the point, which she was, Jack sprang to his feet and, taking hold of her elbows, pulled her out of the chair and up into his arms. Barely before she could work out what was happening he was winding her arms around his neck, then hauling her tight against him and lowering his head to capture her mouth with his.
The minute their lips melded and tongues met, Imogen was lost. As ways of shutting her up went, she thought a second before her brain addled, this one was pretty effective. No doubt exactly as he’d intended, all traces of her idiotic jealousy and every drop of curiosity about his mother vanished in a wave of lust.
‘That dinner was agony,’ she mumbled when Jack broke for breath.
‘I’m sorry you got the wrong impression about Jessica,’ he muttered, trailing a series of hot kisses along her jaw.
Imogen shivered. ‘It wasn’t just that.’
He lifted his head to shoot her a quizzical glance before turning his attention to her ear lobe. ‘What else was it?’ he muttered.
‘I
