elegant self into a portly and rather drearily dressed Friar Tuck, even going to the length of covering his thick head of well-groomed silver hair with a brown wig which had the appropriate bald spot.
‘Yes, but not for the better, I fear,’ Henry said wryly. ‘Lord knows what possessed me. Whereas you, my dear girl, look absolutely gorgeous.’
There it was again, that blush, at which point Leo totally abandoned his earlier theory that Violet might be having a secret affair with a married man. Mistresses didn’t blush like that.
At the same time, he wasn’t willing to believe she was pure as the driven snow. She was too attractive for that to be the case. Real Snow Whites did not exist in this day and age. Despite looking little more than twenty tonight, she had to be … what? Twenty-five, twenty-six, maybe? University degrees took three or four years at least, after which she’d been working for his father for about four years.
No, his first theory had to be right. She’d had a bad sexual experience at uni which had knocked her for a six and made her retreat into herself. That would certainly explain her lack of social confidence.
Poor darling, he thought, and resolved to do his best to make sure she enjoyed herself at this party. He suspected it had been a big deal for Violet to come here tonight. Maybe the lure of the fireworks had finally overridden her shyness. Though, ‘shy’ was not quite the word he would use when describing her. A truly shy girl would not have shown that much cleavage …
The doorbell ringing again stopped Leo from ogling Violet’s exceptional breasts, bringing his eyes back up to Henry’s face.
‘Do you want me to answer that?’ he asked his father.
‘No, I’ll get it. You can pour Violet a glass of that champagne I bought especially for tonight.’
‘Do you like champagne?’ Leo asked her as he led her over to the corner bar. ‘You can have something else, if you like. Henry has a bit of everything behind here.’ Leaving Violet standing next to a bar stool, he made his way behind the black, granite-topped bar which had an assortment of glasses and bottles at the ready.
‘I’m not sure I’ve ever had real champagne,’ she said, making no attempt to sit on the stool. Understandable, given the width of her skirt.
‘Don’t worry. You’ll like it. Henry only ever buys the best.’
‘Have you always called your father Henry?’ she asked as he filled two crystal flutes with the chilled champagne from the ice bucket.
‘Ever since I went to uni. His idea, not mine. I suspect he didn’t want the women he fancied knowing he had a grown–up son.’ He handed one glass over to Violet before lifting the other to his lips.
‘I thought James Bond only drank dry martinis,’ she said with just a hint of a smile curving her ruby red lips.
Lord, but she was a provocative package when she smiled like that. More so because she wasn’t aware of her attraction.
‘I have a confession to make,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’
‘I don’t think I’d make a very good James Bond. I get tired even watching 007 in action. All those car chases, not to mention the fights. After which he has to make love to at least half a dozen different women, most of whom are trying to kill him.’
She laughed. Not the laughter he’d become used to with women—nothing forced or flirtatious, a natural-sounding laugh.
Leo realised at that moment just how jaded he’d become with the female company he usually kept. All the up-and-coming young actresses he met at parties and premieres who obviously saw him not as a mere man but as a step up the ladder of their careers. They fluttered their false eyelashes at him and flattered him endlessly, hanging on his every word and laughing coquettishly, even when he hadn’t told a joke.
He couldn’t imagine Violet acting that way. Nothing false about her, he thought, as his eyes dropped once more to the creamy mounds of flesh which were fighting to be freed from that corset-like bodice. Leo knew that, without a bra, Violet’s breasts would settle into lushly natural curves, not stand up high on her chest like two huge grapefruits the way Helene’s had done.
The prospect of spending this New Year’s Eve party with a girl like Violet was an unexpectedly pleasant one. He’d already been curious about her, but he hadn’t anticipated being this enchanted by her. Enchanted and intrigued.
The sounds of loud laughter brought his gaze over Violet’s shoulder to the group of guests who’d just arrived. Leo didn’t know the people beneath the costumes but felt sure their real characters matched the ones they’d chosen for the evening. Henry the Eighth and wife, along with Napoleon and Josephine. The men would be ruthless and their women little more than expensive window dressing. Leo had met their kind before.
What he hadn’t met before was Violet’s kind. She was like a breath of fresh air in a world filled with pollution.
‘Why don’t we take our drinks out into the balcony?’ he suggested, eager to get her alone and find out more about her.
CHAPTER FIVE
VIOLET HESITATED, RECALLING Joy’s warning that Leo Wolfe was someone to stay well away from.
But then she recalled her own remark that no way would someone like him be seriously attracted to someone like her. It was foolish of her to imagine for one moment that he might be. He was just being nice.
At the same time, she could not deny that she found him extremely attractive. In truth, she thought him the most handsome and the most charming man she’d ever met in her life. She’d never met anyone, man or woman, who was so easy to talk to. Except perhaps Henry. Charm obviously ran in the family, plus looking young for their age. Henry didn’t remotely look the sixty-eight years he was. In the flesh, his son didn’t look a day over thirty-five. Yet he had to be at least ten years older than that.
‘We’ll have to shake a leg,’ Leo said as he swept up the ice bucket with his spare hand. ‘If we want to get the best seat in the house for the nine o’clock fireworks display. Unless, of course, you want to stay in here and be introduced to all those would-bes if they could-bes. Do you?’ he added, and threw a narrow-eyed glance at her.
‘Lord, no!’ A shiver rippled down her spine as she quaffed back a deep swallow of champagne.
His instant smile was wide and warm. ‘A girl after my own heart. Come on then, Snow White. It’s off to the fireworks we go we go,’ he sang in a clever parody of the song the seven dwarves had sung in the Walt Disney movie.
Violet gulped some more bubbly before scurrying after his rapidly departing figure. Not that he got far, his hands being full and all the sliding glass doors being closed.
‘You’ll have to help me, Snow White,’ Leo told her, at which she hurried forward and slid open one of the doors, careful not to spill her drink at the same time.
‘Which table do you advise?’ he asked once they were both outside.
There were five outdoor settings in all, spread along the very long balcony. The tables at each end were square and had four chairs around them; the other three were smaller and circular and had only two chairs positioned on each side. Violet chose to sit at the glass-topped table right in the middle, a decision which seemed to please Leo.
‘An excellent choice,’ he said as he deposited the ice bucket in the centre of the table and sat down opposite her. ‘Just look at that view!’
In truth, the view was spectacular from anywhere along the balcony, as well as from inside. Violet had been impressed on the two occasions she’d been here before. But she’d never seen it at night, with the lights of the city as backdrop to the already beautiful harbour, not to mention the lights on the bridge, the Opera House and all the boats on the water, many more boats than was usually the case.
‘I