to go back and check the table plan.’
As she watched the hapless couple making their way back to the entrance to the room, Kelly couldn’t help feeling a little bit guilty. Was she being overly suspicious in suspecting Dee’s magical sleight of hand might somehow be responsible for their missing seats, especially when she could quite plainly see from where she stood that the place cards the couple had been studying with such bewilderment bore hers and Harry’s name?
A middle-aged couple and their daughter, the Fortescues, Kelly realised, were taking their places at the table, and another couple were taking their seats opposite Harry’s and Kelly’s own, which left three spare seats to Kelly’s left. Discreetly she leaned across to study the place cards, her heart thumping just a little bit too fast as she read, ‘Mr Julian Cox, Miss Eve Frobisher, Mr Brough Frobisher.’ She had no idea just how Dee had managed to get them seated next to Julian, nor did she wish to be enlightened. Dee was turning out to be a master tactician, an expert in the art of gamesmanship and subterfuge.
‘Kelly, you’re on our table! What a coincidence!’ Julian was exclaiming with very evident pleasure as he walked up.
Demurely Kelly said nothing, instead simply smiling at him from beneath down-swept lashes.
Half an hour later, when they had all been served with their main courses, Kelly acknowledged that Julian was even less likeable than she had previously guessed. Ignoring his girlfriend to flirt with her, he had progressed from blatantly sexually motivated compliments to the kind of sensual innuendo which Kelly found teethgrittingly unwelcome.
Her conscience overcoming her sense of duty, she leaned across the table to ask Eve gently how long she had been living in the town and if she liked it.
‘It’s very pretty,’ was her slightly hesitant response, and Kelly didn’t miss the way she looked first at her brother before replying to her, as though seeking either his support or his approval.
Kelly felt distinctly sorry for her. She was no match for a man of Julian’s unwholesome calibre, that much was more than evident to her, and Kelly hadn’t missed the way she had bitten her lip once or twice when Julian’s compliments to herself had pointedly underlined just how sexually attractive he found her.
‘What do you do?’ Kelly asked her, trying to draw her out a little, but it seemed she had asked the wrong question because immediately the younger woman flushed and looked helplessly at her brother before replying.
‘Oh, nothing … I’m afraid my art degree isn’t … doesn’t …’
Her voice trailed away and Julian cut in boastfully, ‘Eve doesn’t need to work, do you, my sweet? She has her own income … a trust fund …’
As he spoke he reached for her hand and squeezed it, lifting it to his lips to kiss her fingers in what Kelly considered to be an excessively exaggerated and insincere manner, but to judge from the pretty pink blush that coloured Eve’s pale skin she didn’t seem to find anything wrong with his manner towards her.
What would she say, Kelly wondered grimly, if she knew that whilst he was kissing her fingers his other hand was resting meaningfully on Kelly’s chiffon-clad knee, and she had in fact just had to edge determinedly away from him to stop him from rubbing his leg potentially even more intimately against hers?
He really was totally repulsive, Kelly acknowledged with repugnance as she started to turn towards Harry, stopping when unexpectedly Brough Frobisher entered the conversation, telling her coolly, ‘As a matter of fact, Eve works for me. What about you? What do you do?’
Before Kelly could answer him, the Master of Ceremonies called on them for silence whilst their host made a speech.
Gratefully Kelly got to her feet, glad to have the opportunity to shake off Julian’s wandering hand. Her dislike of him was growing by the minute—and not just on her own behalf. The minute Julian had mentioned Eve’s trust fund Kelly had immediately been aware from his avaricious expression just where the other girl’s attraction for him lay. Poor thing, like Beth before her she was obviously too unworldly and naive to see through him, but surely her brother must be able to recognise just what Julian was like.
Although he had listened in silence to Julian’s conversation throughout the meal, more of an observer than a participator, Kelly had been keenly aware of the intensity of his silent scrutiny of them all. Was she being over-sensitive in thinking that he had been particularly watchful where she was concerned? At one point, just before the Master of Ceremonies had provided his welcome diversion, Kelly had actually felt as though Brough Frobisher’s gaze was somehow burning a laser-like beam right through the table to where Julian’s hand was resting on her leg. Not that she had wanted it to be there. She gave a small shudder. He repulsed her now even more than he had done before.
‘I can’t encourage him. I don’t like him. He’s loathsome,’ she had protested despairingly to Dee last night.
‘All you have to do is let him think that you’re interested in him,’ Dee had soothed her. ‘All we need is for him to show himself in his true colours so that we can …’
‘So that we can what?’ Kelly had pounced, but Dee had simply given her a mysterious smile.
The speeches were almost over; the Master of Ceremonies had announced that there would be dancing in the ballroom. Hopefully then she would be able to escape Julian’s unwelcome attentions, since he would be duty-bound to dance with Eve.
‘Your lipstick’s all gone and your hair needs brushing,’ she heard Julian saying critically to Eve as the speaker sat down.
‘I’m afraid Eve doesn’t really have much idea about how to dress properly. She isn’t into designer clothes. I dare say you didn’t have much change out of a thousand pounds when you bought yours?’ he questioned, and Kelly knew from the look in his eyes that the news of her supposed inheritance had already reached him via that mysterious ‘grapevine’ Dee seemed to know so much about. As he spoke Julian’s glance slid from Kelly’s eyes to her mouth, and he murmured in a much lower voice, ‘Mind you, one has to admit the poor darling doesn’t exactly have the right kind of raw material … unlike you … Has anyone ever told you that you have the most amazingly sexy eyes … and mouth …?’
Kelly had to fight to suppress the dark tide of colour threatening to betray her feelings. It wasn’t embarrassment that was driving the hot blood up under her skin, but anger. How dared he behave so insultingly towards his girlfriend? No wonder she was looking so unhappy. But that was no reason for her brother to give her, Kelly, such a contemptuously angry look. She wasn’t the one who was responsible for Eve’s humiliation.
‘I was just going to go to the Ladies to tidy up myself,’ she fibbed, smiling warmly at Eve. ‘Do you want to come with me?’
‘Oh, yes …’
Smiling with relief, Eve got up to accompany her.
‘Have you known Julian long?’ she asked Kelly shyly as they stood side by side in the elegantly decorated cloakroom, studying their reflections in the mirrors in front of them.
‘Mmm … quite a while,’ Kelly responded.
‘He’s a very special person, isn’t he?’ Eve enthused, her eyes shining with emotion, her expression betraying just how deeply involved with him she was.
Kelly’s tender heart ached
