The Millionaire's Daughter (The Carew Stepsisters Book 1) Page 13

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Look spectacular,’ said Bella generously. ‘Now, forget it and concentrate. Enjoying yourself is a serious business.’

  Something in her tone made Annis look at her sharply. ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘Wrong? What could be wrong? My brainy sister looks like a million dollars and we have a whole evening of tombola ahead of us. Come on, I know where our table is.’

  There was nothing Annis could say. If something was wrong, Bella was not going to pour her heart out at the start of a dance with several hundred people looking on. Annis promised herself that she would call her sister tomorrow. In the meantime there was the evening to get through.

  It was an ordeal following Bella through the crowd to their table. Men stared, some discreetly, some with open avidity. Annis felt hot and oddly apologetic. She wanted to turn to them all and say, This is a disguise. I’m really not like this. Don’t be fooled.

  But then she got to their table and Konstantin Vitale stood up—and she did not feel like apologising any more. He stared at her without speaking. He stood very still, his face nearly expressionless. But Annis knew those clever features by now and she saw what he wanted to hide: shock; anger; unwanted lust.

  Suddenly it was all worth it.

  ‘Good evening,’ she said demurely.

  She gave him the same courteous, neutral smile she gave everyone else and slid into her seat next to a widget designer from Carews.

  There was no opportunity to speak to him during dinner. The tall ballroom had an echo like a mountain cave and it was impossible to project a voice across their table of twelve. So Annis talked to her immediate companions and felt Kosta’s eyes on her all the time. It was like a caress, that hot, brooding glance. A caress or a threat. Annis did not know which was the more alarming. Or satisfying.

  So she lifted her chin and ignored him. She became more animated with every glass, of course, and every half-heard compliment. Life was, briefly, a blast.

  By the time the dancing started she was quite convinced she had won their unacknowledged war. She had knocked his eyes out all right. There would be no more cracks about unpainted fingertips, she thought gleefully.

  Almost before the final speech ended he was scraping back his little gilt chair and striding purposefully round the table to her.

  ‘Dance with me.’ It was only just an invitation.

  The man sitting next to Annis was rueful. ‘Beaten to the draw. Maybe you’ll let me have a dance later?’

  ‘Don’t count on it,’ said Kosta before she could answer.

  He took her hand and half dragged her between the tables, some of which were still being cleared away for the dancing. In front of the tiny area of floor exposed so far, the band was playing something bouncy. Kosta ignored the rhythm and pulled her into his arms. The material of his dinner jacket was rough against her exposed skin.

  ‘Careful,’ said Annis, flushed with social success and champagne. ‘I bruise easily.’

  She thought he was going to burst into flames.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  Annis half lowered her eyelids the way she had seen Bella do and moistened her lips. She even managed a provocative pout, or she thought she did.

  ‘Proving a point. Don’t you like it?’

  He did not look provoked into further excesses of lust. He looked irritated. ‘What point?’

  ‘Management consultants are human too.’

  He held her away from him. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You said I was professional and nothing else.’

  He said slowly, ‘And this is to prove me wrong?’

  Annis tossed her head and the rubies trembled. ‘It’s to prove everybody wrong.’

  ‘Oh, my God. What have I started?’

  ‘An avalanche, I hope,’ she said sunnily.

  The music changed and she let herself be danced away by someone she didn’t know. It was very gratifying to see that Kosta did not immediately find another partner. Instead he stood watching her, narrow-eyed, while other dancers bumped off him. Then he seemed to realise where he was and strode from the floor with a determined look on his face. Annis gave a sigh of pure satisfaction.

  It was short-lived.

  ‘Annie? Annie?’

  The voice was vaguely familiar. When she turned she knew why.

  ‘Jamie,’ she said hollowly.

  Suddenly the gilding dimmed, the scent of lilies was sickly and she had an impending headache.

  ‘I didn’t know you were coming. Annie, you look great.’ Was there pique in the pleasant voice?

  Annis thought, He doesn’t want me to look great. He walked out on me and he thinks I ought to be in mourning. He was the glamorous one. He doesn’t want the tables turned.

  She took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and took a revivifying draught. ‘So do you,’ she said politely.

  ‘It’s been ages.’

  ‘Has it?’ She shook her hair back and gave him a brilliant smile. ‘I’ve been so busy, I didn’t notice.’

  He relaxed a little. ‘Oh, yes, we all know busy, busy Annis. Had your nose to the grindstone?’

  A slow fury started to build in Annis. How dared he patronise her like that? How dared he? She’d let him into her life and her home, had loved him without reservation. Had he always been sneering at her secretly?

  She widened her eyes and gave an amazingly good imitation of Bella’s slowest, sexiest smile.

  ‘Not all the time.’

  The band was starting again. Dancers jostled them. Jamie looked round.

  ‘Look, let’s go and get a breath of air. Catch up a bit.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Annis with totally deceptive amiability.

  If he thought he could take her onto the terrace and romance her back into her former trusting quiescence, he was very much mistaken. Annis had a point to make. She drained her glass and acquired another one on her way to the long French windows, in his wake.

  The autumn garden had been illuminated for the occasion. There were fairy lights in old mulberry trees and little silvery stars twined through the winter jasmine. The stars blinked on and off.

  ‘Naff,’ said Annis loudly.

  She felt as if she were on a crusade against everything phoney. Including her ex-fiancé.

  Jamie looked rather startled. But he had another point to make altogether. He began to stroke her arm.

  ‘Annie, darling. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you this evening,’ he said huskily.

  Annis nodded. ‘Lots of people didn’t believe it.’ She nodded several times more, then found that it made her feel dizzy and stopped.

  ‘I’ve missed you.’

  He walked his fingers up her arm. Once that caress had made her shiver with delight. Now the only thing that was making her shiver was cold. And it was cold. She said so.

  ‘Then let me take you home and warm you up,’ said Jamie, never one to let an opportunity go to waste.

  He slid the disreputable ruched strap down her arm and kissed her bared shoulder. Annis felt his tongue against her chilled skin and thought, No.

  She pushed him away. Jamie laughed softly. He had always, she remembered suddenly, liked a bit of opposition. He did not seriously believe any woman could not want to make love with him but he enjoyed overcoming pretend resistance. Suddenly Annis thought, Is he going to realise that this is not pretend?

  She pushed him away again. Jamie drew a little, excited breath and his arms closed round her so tight she could not breathe. She struggled, but her fragile heel caught in a paving slab and snapped. Annis lurched and grabbed at his shoulder to save herself. Jamie took it for surrender.

  ‘Annie—’

  ‘Let me go,’ spat Annis furiously.

  ‘You don’t mean that. Darling, you and I were—’

  ‘Washed up a long time ago,’ Annis said, prodding at his chest without much effect. Probably because she was also hopping on her uneven shoes. ‘Let me go.’<
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  And then there was help.

  ‘Now,’ said Kosta Vitale, chopping Jamie’s arm from her around her as if he might break it.

  He spun Annis away from him like a man who had broken up a lot of fights in his time. She staggered and sat down rather suddenly on the coping. After one swift glance he ignored her, placing himself between her and Jamie.

  ‘Go in and get a bucket of coffee,’ he said mildly enough.

  But his body said that he was quite prepared for a fight. Jamie blinked.

  ‘What the—? Who gave you the right to interfere?’

  ‘Annis,’ said Kosta briefly.

  ‘Annie?’ Jamie’s laugh was loud. ‘Annie doesn’t give men rights.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Kosta levelly. ‘But you walked into the middle of a fight between her and me. I’m sorry if the sexy dress gave you the wrong impression. It was aimed at me.’

  Annis leaned against one of the supporting pillars.

  ‘That’s not true,’ she mumbled.

  ‘And,’ concluded Kosta in the same invincibly pleasant tone, ‘it’s up to me to take her home before she falls out of it entirely.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WITHOUT waiting for her agreement, Kosta put an arm round her waist and hitched her to her feet. Annis let go of her supporting column reluctantly. She was feeling most peculiar. So peculiar in fact that she barely protested against his highhanded treatment as he marched her along the terrace, half carrying her as the effect of the broken heel made itself felt.

  He avoided the seething ballroom. ‘Ant heap,’ he said with distaste, steering her past its windows.

  Instead he took her into a small room at the corner of the house. It turned out to be a library. Table lamps and a roaring fire gave it a soft glow. Several couples had retreated here with their coffee, presumably to avoid the noise of the ballroom. They were sitting comfortably in deep sofas and antique chairs, talking or—in one case that gave Annis a sharp stab of envy—just embracing dreamily as they stared into the fire. No one even looked up as Annis and Kosta came in.

  ‘Romantic,’ said Annis scornfully, because something in so much easy intimacy hurt her heart.

  Kosta glanced down at her, unsmiling. ‘What is wrong with romance?’

  ‘It’s fiction. Rose petals and hot air.’ She waved a contemptuous hand.

  ‘You speak from personal experience?’

  Something about tonight was making Annis abandon her careful discretion. ‘Oh, I do. I do indeed.’

  ‘You must tell me about that some time,’ he said politely, tugging her after him as he weaved his way between furniture and oblivious couples.

  ‘As if you’d care,’ muttered Annis. But not loudly enough for him to hear.

  In the marble entrance hall he negotiated her onto a Jacobean settle.

  ‘Wait there. I’ll get the car.’

  At last Annis began to fight back. ‘What if I don’t want to go?’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘You want to dance on one heel?’

  ‘I could take my shoes off.’

  For some reason that made his face darken even more.

  ‘You’re twenty-nine years old and you live for your work,’ he reminded her in a furious undertone. ‘You’re not a barefoot party girl.’

  ‘You’re so hidebound,’ Annis mocked.

  ‘And you’re playing with fire,’ he said between his teeth. ‘Now sit there and don’t move.’

  ‘I ought to say goodbye to my parents.’

  ‘I’ll let them know I’m taking you home,’ he allowed curtly.

  Annis glared. ‘I’m not six years old, you know.’

  ‘I’d noticed. Just like every other man here tonight.’ He was still curt. ‘I hope you enjoyed yourself.’

  Annis thought, Nice that he’s the one losing his rag for once.

  ‘Oh, I did,’ she assured him.

  There was a seething silence. Startled, Annis almost thought that he might strike out. A delicate statue of Hermes, messenger of the gods, was in his line of fire and she held her breath at its imminent danger.

  But the moment passed.

  ‘Wait!’ he told her, the single explosive word like a gunshot.

  Then he strode out into the darkness.

  Annis sank onto the settle and leaned back into its protective wing. She felt as if she was floating. If this was irresponsibility, she loved it! For once she could abandon her ruthless common sense and leave everything to Kosta’s superb competence. She smiled to herself, basking.

  ‘There you are,’ said Bella.

  Annis’s eyes flew open. Her sister was standing in front of her, small face pinched with anxiety.

  ‘I saw Jamie. Did he upset you?’

  ‘No,’ said Annis. It was the truth which faintly surprised her.

  Bella still looked tense.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ said Annis, coming down off her lovely cloud.

  Bella’s jaw clenched. ‘Nothing new.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I changed my image,’ she burst out. ‘Toned everything down and bored myself rigid behaving well, and all for what? He hasn’t even noticed!’

  Annis remembered Bella’s unknown love object.

  ‘He’s here?’ she said, surprised.

  But Bella was too absorbed in her self-recriminations to notice, far less answer.

  ‘I’ve turned myself inside out for that man. And he doesn’t give a tinker’s damn. He doesn’t care about anybody. I know what they said. But I thought I could handle it, you know? I thought, He’ll care about me.’

  She stopped abruptly and folded her lips together as if she might cry. Shocked, Annis heaved herself upright and pulled Bella down on the settle beside her. She put a protective arm round her sister.

  ‘He will,’ she said, stroking the soft blonde hair. ‘Give him time.’

  ‘Time only makes him bored,’ Bella said desolately. She rested against Annis for a moment. ‘I wish I was like you. I feel so humiliated.’

  ‘Oh, love,’ said Annis. She felt helpless.

  Bella scrubbed a hand over her face and sat up. ‘No point in making a fuss. I gave it my best shot.’ She gave a watery smile. ‘And now I’ve got to get back to the dance floor and prove I don’t give a damn either. Maybe that will do the trick.’

  She didn’t sound hopeful. But she gave Annis a grateful squeeze and went. Annis watched her straighten her shoulders and prance back into the festivities as if she was born to party and didn’t have a care in the world. Annis’s heart went out to her.

  But then Kosta came running back, his jacket turned up against the rain, and she forgot Bella, forgot everything. There must have been sleet in the rain because some of the ice drops spangled his hair like diamonds. The sheer magnetism of the man struck her like a blow. She got up and limped towards him as if a powerful magnet had been trained on her.

  Oh, help! thought Annis.

  But she still went.

  In the car she could not think of anything to say. Kosta was equally silent, his expression grim. He was driving with a sort of angry meticulousness that made her grateful for the lack of conversation. She was fairly sure that any remark would deteriorate rapidly into a full-blown fight.

  Partly because she could not face a battle and partly because she was feeling strange again, she did not resist when he announced that he was seeing her to her door. She let him help her across the car park, but as soon as she was inside she slipped out of the uneven shoes and tossed them in the wastepaper basket in the reception area. The porter—it was the frustrated poet again—waved a conspiratorial hand as the lift doors closed on them.

  Annis leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes.

  ‘Yes, you really overdid it tonight, didn’t you?’ Kosta did not sound sympathetic.

  Annis opened her eyes and looked at him with dislike.

  ‘Who made you the thought police?’

  ‘Police!’ He was outraged.

  ‘Killjoy,’
said Annis with relish.

  He eyed her unflatteringly. ‘What is it with you? You go from business harpy to wild child with no stops in between. Do you know who you are?’

  ‘Girls just want to have fun,’ she said airily.

  The lift got to her floor. She got out safely enough but her sheer tights skidded on the deep-pile carpet.

  ‘Damn,’ said Annis, lurching into a hard body and dropping her keys.

  Their eyes met. Annis felt as if she had been plugged into some solar power source. She fizzed with it at the same time as her head reeled.

  She had not the slightest idea if he felt the same. But he felt something. She could see that all right. It was there in his eyes, just as it had been when he’d first caught sight of her this evening.

  I can make him look like that, thought Annis exultant.

  Slowly Kosta restored her to her feet and picked up the keys. His eyes did not leave her face. Annis was dizzy with the intensity of it.

  ‘I’m coming in.’ His voice was very quiet. It was not a question.

  He inserted the key and opened the door as if he had been doing it all his life. As if he had the right.

  And she let him.

  Inside he found the light which turned on the table lamps and looked round the sitting room. His expression was that of an explorer quartering the North Pole.

  ‘So this is your bolt-hole.’

  Annis pulled herself together. ‘Yes, it is. And I didn’t invite you into it.’

  ‘That’s just because you were too surprised. You would have got round to it,’ he said superbly. ‘And, thank you, yes, I would kill for a coffee.’

  ‘No,’ said Annis. She was saying no to a lot more than making him a cup of coffee and they both knew it.

  Kosta narrowed his eyes. They looked very green in the shadows that filled the room between the little lamps and the concentrated pool of light at her desk.

  ‘Why not?’ he said gently.

  Because I don’t trust you. Because you’re out of my league. Because this is going too fast and I don’t know what I’m getting in to…

  He strolled around the sitting room, picking up books and her few ornaments and examining them. Annis watched him on tenterhooks. Kosta saw it. He smiled.

  ‘I’ll make a bargain with you,’ he said. ‘You give me a coffee and I won’t psychoanalyse your reading matter.’