Sander even cherished any long-term intentions where she was concerned. Crystal Spencer’s daughter could not be that naïve for, as a teenager, she had often been mortified to meet some strange man at the breakfast table while her mother flirted happily with her overnight guest, impervious to her daughter’s embarrassment.
As it was dawn before Tally got to sleep, she awoke late. She was utterly disorientated when she was shaken to by Cosima the next day and discovered that it was already the afternoon.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ she mumbled, pushing her tumbled curls off her brow and sitting up. ‘How long have you been up?’
Her sibling was infuriatingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for a young woman who had gone to bed under the influence of alcohol. ‘Long enough to play a couple of games of tennis this morning and then have lunch. Now the men are off on a shoot and we’re going shopping, so you had better get up—’
‘Shopping? Why?’ Tally responded, pushing back the duvet.
‘That question says it all, Tally. There is no such thing as why when it comes to shopping!’ Cosima told her. ‘There’s a big party here tonight and you can’t possibly wear that cheap LBD again, and I want something new as well.’
‘About last night …’ Tally began awkwardly.
‘Don’t preach,’ Cosima urged with a steely look. ‘But I do owe you an apology for this room—it’s a dive.’
Tally absorbed the younger woman’s grimace at the faded walls and worn furniture deemed suitable for staff rather than guests and laughed. ‘It’s not that bad. What happened to Chaz last night?’
Cosima stiffened defensively at that question about her boyfriend. ‘He didn’t turn up because he couldn’t—he got lost,’ she said with an air of defiance that suggested that some of her friends might already have been less than impressed by that excuse.
Tally found herself being hustled out of the mansion and into a customised Range Rover that belonged to one of her sister’s friends. As she had not had the chance to have anything to eat her stomach was growling with hunger. During the drive back to London she tried to get Cosima to talk about Chaz but her sibling was disappointingly reluctant to part with any information.
Westgrave Manor was buzzing with bustling staff and caterers when Tally returned in a cab, the other girls having kept late beauticians’ appointments at the local spa. Her father phoned and asked how the weekend was going. Tally told no tales but she did take the opportunity to ask what he had against her sister’s boyfriend.
‘Charles Roberts has drug convictions. He’s an unscrupulous character and I don’t want him anywhere near my daughter,’ Anatole Karydas admitted grimly.
Tally made use of Cosima’s en-suite bathroom as she had been told to do, showering and washing and drying her hair. This afternoon had been fun. Her sibling had insisted on buying her a new dress and, although the turquoise satin mini dress with the bejewelled neckline had a shorter hemline than Tally usually wore, she felt amazing in it, loving the bright zingy colour and the way it seemed to light up her face. She had no idea what it had cost and had no intention of asking. Sometimes she felt aged by the lowering awareness that she was generally more sensible than her mother and just for once she wanted to feel young and carefree without sweating the serious stuff.
Dinner was served as a buffet. Starving as she was, Tally helped herself to food and then when she saw Sander’s proud dark head from a distance she abandoned that plate lest he think she was a greedy pig and filled another plate with a more sparing selection. Like lightning, she felt the excitement of him even being in the same room and she could barely credit the immaturity of her reactions, but her heart was already beating so fast and so violently it felt as though it were lodged at the foot of her throat and she couldn’t eat.
A dark-haired young man smiled down at her and pressed a moisture-beaded glass into her hand. ‘Have some champagne. I don’t think we’ve met,’ he murmured pleasantly. ‘I’m Robert Miller …’
‘Tally Spencer … gosh, this is awkward.’ She laughed, struggling to maintain a grip on the glass, the plate and the cutlery, not to mention the evening bag dangling on her wrist.
He took the plate for her and urged her over to a table.
A surge of dark fury rippling through him and sending golden sparks flaring in his dark eyes, Sander watched the whizz-kid software designer, Robert Miller, moving in on Tally. She did look incredibly sexy in her turquoise dress, its jewelled neckline seductively showcasing the creamy upper slopes of her breasts while the hemline showed off a good deal more of her shapely legs than had been on display the night before. The tightening swelling at his groin set his even white teeth on edge because he usually enjoyed a firmer hold on his libido.
As Cosima moved past, clinging to the arm of a tall man with dirty-blond hair spiked up, Tally called her name. Her sibling came to a reluctant halt to perform an introduction. While Cosima announced that her boyfriend had a booking at a fashionable club later that evening, Tally was instantly wary of Chaz, with his calculating blue eyes and tight controlling grip on the younger woman. At least thirty years of age, he was much older than she had expected and far too mature for a seventeen-year-old, she thought worriedly.
‘I’ll be leaving with Chaz soon to go to the club and I probably won’t bother coming back here,’ the teenager spelt out. ‘But you mustn’t tell Dad …’
Her heart sinking, Tally lifted her chin. ‘I won’t lie to him, Cosima.’
Angry resentment blazed in her sibling’s eyes. ‘But you have to—’
‘I don’t have to do anything,’ Tally responded with gentle regret. ‘And neither do you. I think you should finish out the weekend here with your friends.’
The younger woman hissed something very rude and stalked away. Wincing, Tally turned back to her companion. ‘Sorry about that, but I’m supposed to be looking after her.’
‘I suspect she’s quite a handful,’ Robert remarked with the wry smile of a man able to take a smart-mouthed teenager very much in his stride, pulling out a chair for her to sit down. ‘Anatole Karydas’ kid, isn’t she? Do you work for him?’
Uncomfortable with that pretence insisted on by Cosima, Tally half turned her head away. ‘Sort of …’
The passage of her uneasy gaze screamed to a halt on Sander, who was watching her from the other side of the room. One glimpse of his lean, darkly handsome features made her gulp, drove her mind blank. Even at that distance his beautiful dark deep-set eyes could make her shiver with helpless awareness and tug her nipples into stinging tightness below her clothing. She had never felt like that before and the tingling pool of warm dampness gathering low in her body fascinated her as he awakened her sexuality as no other man ever had.
A waiter approached her with a glass on the tray. ‘Miss Karydas sent it over with her compliments.’
‘Oh …’ Tally skimmed a brief glance at the fancy colourful cocktail and looked around for her sibling but couldn’t see her. Was this Cosima’s way of apologising? The glass was set down in front of her.
‘If you don’t eat your food will get cold,’ Robert Miller drawled.
Dragging her attention from Sander Volakis demanded every atom of self-discipline Tally possessed. She loved to look at him and the temptation to stare at the sculpted masculine perfection of his face pulled at her with embarrassing persistence. She sat down, glanced at the food and realised her appetite had vanished. She took an exploratory sip of the drink she had been sent instead. It was very fruity and much more to her taste than alcohol usually was.
‘Tally …’ Sander murmured, casting a long dark shadow over the table with his brooding stance. ‘Robert …’
Glancing up to encounter shimmering golden eyes and sensing the angry dissatisfaction he was struggling to hide in the set quality of his smile and his clenched fingers, Tally began