assessing inspection…
She threw the switch once more. No—stop this, right now! she told herself. So what if he’d put her back up? Why should she care? That over-made-up blonde he’d been with had treated her just as offhandedly, waving her away. So why get uptight about the man doing so?
And so what, she added for good measure, that she’d had that ridiculously OTT reaction to the man’s physical impact on her? He and Blondie came from a world she wasn’t part of and only ever saw from the outside—like at this private fashion show. Speaking of which…
She gave herself a mental shake, opened her eyes and continued with her blank-faced perambulations, showing off a gown she could never in all her life afford herself. She was here to work, to earn money, and she’d better get on with it.
Oh, and if she could to stay on this far side of the room… Well away from the source of those emotions in her head.
* * *
‘Marc, cherie, now, this one is ideal! Don’t you think?’
Celine’s voice was a purr, but it grated on Marc like nails on a blackboard. However, at last, it seemed, Hans’s wife had found a gown she liked and was stroking the gold satin material lovingly, not even looking at the model wearing it. This model was smiling hopefully at Marc, but he ignored her. He was not the slightest bit interested.
Not like that other one.
He cut his inappropriate thoughts off. Focussed on the problem at hand. How to divest himself of Hans’s wife at last.
‘Perfect!’ he agreed, with relief in his voice. Could they finally get out of here?
His relief proved short-lived. Celine’s scarlet-tipped fingers curled possessively around his arm.
‘I’ve seen all I want here. I’ll arrange a fitting for that gold dress while Hans and I are in London. But right now…’ she smiled winningly at Marc ‘…do be an angel and take me to dinner! We could go to a club afterwards!’
Marc cut short her attempts to commandeer him for the rest of the evening. Never one to suffer irritation gladly, he knew his temper had been on a shortening fuse all evening. It was galling to see his father’s old friend in the clutches of this appalling woman. How on earth could Hans not have seen through her?
But then dark memory came, though he wished it would not. Hadn’t he been similarly blinded once himself?
Oh, he could tell himself he’d been young, and naïve, and far too trusting, but he’d been made a fool of all the same! Marianne had strung him along, playing on his youthful adoration of her, carefully cultivating his devotion to her—a devotion that had exploded in an instant.
Walking into that restaurant in Lyons, Marianne thinking I was still in Paris, seeing her there—
With another man. Older than Marc’s barely two and twenty. Older and far wealthier.
Marc’s father had still been alive then, and Marc only the prospective heir to the Derenz fortune. The man Marianne had been all over, cooing at, had been in his forties, and richer even than Marc’s father. Marc had stared, the blood draining from his face, and had felt something dying inside him.
Then Marianne had seen him, and instead of trying to make any apology to him she had simply lifted her glass of champagne, tilted it mockingly at Marc, so the light would catch the huge diamond on her finger.
Shortly afterwards she had become the third wife of the man she’d been dining with. And Marc had learnt a lesson he had never, never forgotten.
Now, his tone terse, he spoke bluntly. ‘Celine, I already have a dinner engagement tonight.’
Hans’s wife was undeterred. ‘Oh, if it’s business I’ll be good as gold,’ she assured him airily, not relinquishing her hold on his arm. ‘I sit through enough of Hans’s deadly dull dinner meetings to know how!’ she added waspishly. ‘And we could still go clubbing afterwards…’
Marc shook his head. Time to stop Celine in her tracks. ‘No, it’s not business,’ he told her, making the implication clear.
Celine’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re not seeing anyone at the moment. I know that,’ she began, ‘because I’d have heard about it otherwise.’
‘And I’m sure you will,’ Marc replied, jaw set.
He did not want a debate over this. He just wanted to get Celine off his hands before his temper reached snapping point.
‘Well, who is it?’ Celine demanded.
Marc felt his already short fuse shortening even more. He wanted to get out of here—now—and get shot of Celine. Any way he could. The fastest way he could.
He said the first thing that came into his head in this infuriating and wretched situation. ‘One of the models here,’ he answered tersely.
‘Models?’
She said the word as if he’d said waitresses or cleaners. In Celine’s eyes women who weren’t rich—or weren’t married to rich men—simply didn’t exist. Let alone women who might possibly interest the likes of Marc Derenz.
Her eyes flashed petulantly. ‘Well, which one, then?’ she demanded. She was thwarted, and she was challenging him.
It was a challenge he could not help but meet—and he called her bluff with the first words that came into his head. ‘The one in the dress you didn’t like—’
‘Her? But she looked right through you!’ Celine exclaimed.
‘She’s not supposed to fraternise while she’s working.’
Even as he spoke he was cursing himself. Why the hell had he said it was that model? The one who had stiffened up like a poker?
But he knew why. Because he was still trying to put her out of his head, that was why—trying and failing. He’d been conscious of his eyes sifting through the crowded room even as Celine was cooing over the gown she was selecting, idly searching for the model again. Irritated both that he was doing so and that he could not see her.
She was keeping to the far side of the room. Not coming anywhere near his eyeline again.
Because she is avoiding me?
The thought was in his head, bringing with it emotions that were at war with each other. He shouldn’t damn well be interested in her in the first place! For all the reasons he always stuck to in his life. But he could remind himself of those reasons all he liked—he still wanted to catch another glimpse of her.
More than a glimpse.
Another thought flickered. Was it because she hadn’t immediately—eagerly!—returned his clear look of interest in her that she was occupying his thoughts like this? Had that intrigued him as well as surprised him?
He didn’t have time to think further, for Celine was counter-calling his bluff.
‘Well, do introduce me, cherie!’ she challenged.
It was clear she didn’t believe him, and Marc’s mouth tightened. He was not about to be outmanoeuvred by Hans’s scheming wife. Nor was he going to spend a minute longer in her company.
With a smile that strained his jaw, he murmured, ‘Of course! One moment.’ And he strode away across the room with one purpose only, his mood grimmer than ever. Whatever it took to shed the clinging Celine, he’d do it!
His eyes sliced through the throng, incisively seeking his target. And there she was. He felt the same kick go through him as had when he’d first summoned her across to him. That racehorse grace, that perfect profile—and those blue-green eyes which now, as he accosted her, were suddenly on him. And immediately, instantly blank.
And not