eyes didn’t flicker. ‘You’re going out with another man?’
She dragged a deep breath and counted to ten. ‘No,’ she said with barely held patience. This was too ridiculous for words.
‘Ralph won’t be dining alone tonight,’ he inserted quietly. ‘Why should you?’
She gave him a sharp look. ‘That’s playing dirty.’
A slow smile creased his mouth. ‘There are times,’ he drawled cryptically, ‘when one has to resort to whatever weapons are at hand.’
Salome didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
‘Come on, Salome. Say yes. It won’t kill you. We’ll call a truce for one night.’
‘Oh, so you do accept that we haven’t exactly been friends?’ she pointed out drily. ‘Nor are we likely to be while you hold the opinion of me that you do.’
‘You could always try to convince me differently,’ he suggested with a rueful smile.
‘Huh!’ She flicked a stray curl back over her shoulder. ‘I’d have more luck convincing the Greenpeace movement to take up whaling.’
He laughed, and this time genuinely amused lights glittered in his eyes. Salome suddenly realised that their bantering was not malicious any longer. She was, in fact, quite enjoying the flow of dry wit between them. It surprised her.
‘Come on, Salome. Stop frowning and say yes. I’ve only asked you out to dinner, not to marry me!’
There was a caustic flavour in this last statement that caused Salome to flare. ‘Thank goodness for small mercies!’
He glared at her for a few seconds, his whole body tensing noticeably. But then he visibly relaxed, a ghost of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. ‘Tut-tut, you do have a temper, don’t you?’ He reached out and put a firm grasp on her elbow, and began leading her inexorably towards the door. ‘Next thing you know you’ll be changing your mind about going out to dinner with me.’
She ground to a halt, exasperation written all over her face. ‘Might I remind you I haven’t said yes yet?’
‘Haven’t you? I could have sworn you had.’
Though obviously put on, his air of bewildered confusion had a certain charm, and Salome found herself smiling. ‘Do you ever take no for an answer?’
A slow smile came to his mouth. ‘Not often.’
‘Perhaps I should refresh your memory on what it’s like to be turned down,’ she challenged.
His smile turned faintly sardonic. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’
‘I’m surprised. I would have said a man such as you would have an impeccable track-record with the ladies.’
He shrugged. ‘You can’t win them all, I suppose.’
Salome thought she caught an edge of pain in those words, and she remembered her previous impression that Mike could well be suffering from a broken heart. Unexpectedly, it touched her. She didn’t like to think of anyone having to suffer what she’d been suffering.
This line of thought also made her realise he might be thinking the same about her, and that this invitation to dinner could very well be a true gesture of kindness. Yet here she was, being difficult and stroppy about it. She resolved to give in graciously and be done with it.
‘Very well,’ she said with a resigned smile. ‘I’ll come. Just this once.’
He seemed pleased. ‘Great. What time will I come along and pick you up?’
It suddenly dawned on her that he thought she’d moved into the penthouse, so she launched into the explanation that she didn’t intend living in the penthouse but would probably sell it, and that she lived with her mother in a neat, three-bedroom brick cottage in the suburb of Killara.
Now he didn’t seem so pleased, a dark frown drawing his black brows together. Salome deduced somewhat caustically that his Christian charity in asking her out clearly didn’t extend to a twenty-minute drive both ways through busy, city-bound traffic.
‘If it’s too much trouble...’ she began.
‘No, no—no trouble.’ But the frown had not entirely disappeared. ‘Just give me the address and a time to be there. By the way, do you have any preference where we eat?’
‘Not Angellini’s,’ she said instinctively.
‘Certainly not.’ His tone was even sharper than hers, and she actually winced. It was peculiar enough going out with a man who had once despised her, and maybe still did! She certainly didn’t want to return to the scene of the crime, so to speak.
A thought struck her, though, that hadn’t occurred to her before. ‘Don’t you have to act as host at your restaurant tonight?’ she asked. He’d always been there, if her memory served her correctly.
‘Not on a Thursday.’
‘Oh...’ Her eyes dropped, her heart regretful all of a sudden that she had agreed to go out with him. He was a link with her past, with Ralph, a past she now wanted to forget. Her ex-husband must be some sort of monster, to deceive her as he had done. She actually cringed as she thought of how she had allowed him to dictate every facet of her life. God, she’d been the original puppet on a string, the perfect piece of clay to mould as he willed. And all the while he’d been making a fool of her, having lovers behind her back while she fulfilled the role he’d chosen for her—that of a decorative hostess with no more say in their life than one of the original paintings he hung on his wall.
Salome shook her head as she vowed never to surrender herself to a man’s will like that again. If she ever remarried it would be to a man who would be her partner, not her master—an equal in every way.
Her eyes lifted to see a ruthless black gaze peering down at her, the gaze of a man whom she suspected would be no more husband material for a woman than Ralph, obviously, had been. For a moment she felt oddly disconcerted, but quickly dismissed the unwarranted reaction. This swinging bachelor’s personal life was no concern of hers. ‘Well, Mike?’ she said. ‘Have you got a pencil and paper, or an excellent memory?’
CHAPTER THREE
SALOME’S mother came into her bedroom as the former was putting the final touches on her make-up, and gave the large suitcase sitting beside the door a disgruntled look. ‘Just because I asked Wayne to move in,’ she flung at her daughter in a petulant tone, ‘doesn’t mean you have to move out. I thought you were happy enough living here with me.’
Salome counted to ten, afraid that she wouldn’t be able to keep the angry frustration out of her voice if she answered straight away. When she’d come home and found her mother had asked her latest boyfriend to share not only her bed but the whole house, Salome had seen red. It wasn’t that Wayne was a bad sort. He was probably the best type of man Molly had ever been out with.
But Salome couldn’t bear to stay around and witness her mother make the same old mistakes with yet another man. So she had drastically revised her plans, telling her mother some white lies about the unit and car, saying she had decided to keep them both and live in the unit.
Actually, this was not entirely untruthful. Given her new situation, Salome could see that to leave herself destitute was insane. It was all very well to be high-principled, but she could see, finally, that she had gone too far in giving away all of Ralph’s settlement. Her marriage to him, after all, had cost her four years’ wages. So she’d decided to take the equivalent sum from the money the sale of the unit brought, and buy herself a modest unit somewhere. The same applied to the Ferrari. When she’d met Ralph she had owned an old run-about, which he’d disposed of, so she believed she was justified in using some of the money from its sale to purchase a modest vehicle.