and—’
‘Oh, God!’ he groaned. Six-five in his bare feet, he did not do bijou or beams... Was his petite PA punishing him for something?
‘Don’t be such a misery. You’re very lucky that the Pink Unicorn had a cancellation.’
‘I’ve sacked people for less. I’m ruthless, haven’t you heard?’ The previous month’s article in a particular Sunday supplement, even though it had spawned several rebuttal articles in well-known financial journals, had left a public perception of him that suggested his wealth could not have been made without an utterly ruthless disregard for the rules or his fellow man.
‘Where would you find someone else who gets your weird sense of humour?’
‘You think I’m joking?’
‘Or someone who is as efficient as me who doesn’t weep when you scowl or fall in love with you when you don’t?’
He fought back a smile and, with resignation in his voice, grumbled, ‘Who the hell calls a place the Pink Unicorn?’
* * *
Now Seb knew—the same people who sat a poor guy with a classical guitar out on a lawn on a zero-degree February evening that neither the heat from a glowing brazier nor the open-sided gazebo affair lit by lanterns offered any protection against. To add insult to injury they’d had him wear some ridiculous Spanish get-up that no real Spaniard would have been seen dead in, while he played a cheesy love song in the candlelight as loved-up couples groped one another.
Sebastian’s lip curled. If this was romance, they could keep it!
It was a spectacularly stomach-churning sight, but probably a fitting end, he mused, to a day where the high point had been getting a parking fine from an overzealous attendant.
It should have been a good day, a celebratory occasion. His thirteen-year-old half-sister had won the under-fifteens prize at the science fair her school was hosting, and against all the odds their mother, Lady Sylvia Defoe, had turned up in a display of rare parental support.
He should have known better, yet, as she had walked into the room causing conversations to stop, taking the attention as her due, Seb had almost got sucked in by the ‘caring mother’ act.
Until, that was, she had stepped back from the arm’s-length maternal embrace, looked at her daughter’s face and delivered some very loud advice on skin care, adding complacently that she had never had acne or actually even a spot, and then, presumably because she had not traumatised her thirteen-year-old daughter enough, she had gone on to flirt with every male in the room that caught her eye while her daughter had cringed and wished herself elsewhere. Seb, who had been there, done that, had felt his half-sister’s pain as his own anger had built.
The breaking point had come when Seb had found their mother in a classroom in a very close embrace with the newly married biology teacher. The doors had been wide open—anyone could have seen—but then maybe that was the idea. His mother loved nothing better than creating a scene.
Offering the embarrassed man a tissue for the lipstick smeared across his red face, he’d then suggested the teacher might like to rejoin his wife. Seb had waited until the teacher had gratefully scuttled away before asking his mother, on whom subtlety was wasted, point-blank what the hell she thought she was doing.
‘I don’t know why you’re cross, Seb?’ She’d pouted. ‘Why shouldn’t I have a bit of fun? Your father had an affair with that awful...’ She’d given a heartbroken sob and allowed the tears she could produce at will to fall.
‘I’ve heard it all before, Mother, so don’t expect any sympathy from me. Get divorced, have affairs, get remarried—I’m bored with the entire never-ending cycle—but if you embarrass Fleur again, we’re finished.’
The tears had stopped; she’d actually looked almost scared. Even though he’d known it wouldn’t last, it had still made him feel like a bastard.
‘You don’t mean that, Seb.’
On the point of retracting, he’d pulled back. ‘Every word,’ he had lied. No matter what she did, she would always be his mother, but this was about Fleur, and she needed protecting. ‘Do you ever think about the people you hurt when you’re doing exactly what you want?’ He’d searched her beautiful face for a moment before shaking his head. ‘Sorry, that was a stupid question.’
A scowl glued to a face that caused several female heads to turn his way, Seb strode towards the entrance of the Pink Unicorn that had been geared out for the occasion with, surprise, surprise, garlands of dried red roses. If there was one of those damn things on his pillow he would... He sighed and thought, what was the point? The rest of the world was so caught up with the romance fable one single voice of logic would be lost in the brainless babble.
Allowing himself a superior smile, he turned his head to brush the snowflakes that had begun to fall off his shoulder. The night might end with a few cases of exposure, he thought as his cynical stare brushed over the heads of the clusters of couples. The mild contempt etched into his lean patrician features gave way to one of stark shock as his sweeping survey came to a shuddering stop.
As he stared, the scorch of heat that began in his belly spread through his body like flash fire, darkened the intense brown of his deep-set eyes, framed by straight, strongly delineated brows almost as dark as his long, curling lashes, to jet black.
He didn’t notice what she was wearing beyond the fact the dress she had on was blue and he would very much have liked to see her without it. She had a sensational body, sinuous curves and endless legs, and the lust that had erupted at the sight of her gave a fresh kick in his belly and lower, where it settled as his hot, hungry stare slid over those delectable curves before he dragged it back to her face.
The sense of recognition was crazy because he had never even imagined a woman who looked like her, let alone met one. Her face was a perfect oval, but it was not the symmetry of her features that held his gaze or caused his stomach muscles to clench viciously, but her expression, as, laughing, she looked up at the falling snow, her head thrown back a little to reveal the long, graceful curve of her throat.
Her lips were full, her eyes big in the light from an overhead lantern, her hair a wild explosion of tempestuous colour, gold, red, then gold again, curls that fell down her slender back almost to her waist.
A whoosh of cold air hit his face, breaking the grip of the spell that had held him motionless for countless seconds. Lowering his heavy eyelids long enough to give his nervous system time to recover from the carnal impact of the redhead, Seb dragged a hand across his dark hair and released the breath that had been trapped in his chest in a long, slow, hissing sigh.
He looked again, already distancing himself from that initial uncontrollable visceral reaction. It had been a long day and he’d been too long without... There are some things, thought Seb, that a man cannot rely on his PA to schedule... Like a life...?
Just as he was making a mental note to free up his weekend and deciding who he might share it with—that part had never been hard for him—the redhead’s laughter drifted his way. Low and husky, it had a deliciously tactile quality. It felt like a finger running up and down his spine.
Not accustomed to envy, he experienced a twinge of something close to that emotion as he turned his critical, hostile gaze on the man who had invited this laughter...husband...lover...? As the thought slid through Seb’s head the man in question turned and placed a hand under his partner’s chin, drawing her face up to his.
This time, the sense of recognition Seb experienced was not to be wondered at: the lucky man was the husband of the local GP. Alice Drummond was a woman Seb had time for. She juggled a demanding career with two children and a husband who, at twenty, had written one book someone had called insightful, which was the sum total of his achievements to date, and he was still living off the kudos.
When he wasn’t having romantic weekends with redheads with endless legs.
It