with two women he had never seen in his life before tonight?
‘Why would you go to a party with someone you wanted to ditch?’ Rose asked innocently and Nick gritted his teeth together. ‘I mean, the poor woman probably thought that you really cared about her.’
‘If you knew Susanna, the very last word you would use to describe her would be poor.’
‘Still…’ Rose allowed that one little word to drop into the silence.
Looking at her, Nick momentarily forgot Lily’s presence. ‘Still…what?’
‘Must be awful to break up with someone you care about in front of other people. I always think that when I open the newspapers and they’re full of some poor celebrity couple who end up being forced to wash all their dirty linen in public. And in a way, that’s not even as bad as the dirty linen being washed in front of friends…she must have been feeling pretty desperate…’
Lily was watching this interchange with a certain amount of bewilderment.
‘And on that note…’ Nick stood up. Surprisingly, exchanging barbs with Rose had so completely absorbed his attention that nothing else had occupied his mind. Not Susanna, not work, and he had completely forgotten Lily’s presence even though she had been standing in his direct line of vision.
‘Oh, dear…leaving so soon? Well, shall I call a cab for you? You won’t find one here, you know. It’s not central enough. Lily…’ Rose looked at her sister ‘…you look done in. Why don’t you hit the sack and I’ll wait up until Nick leaves?’
‘Don’t be silly, Rose.’ She yawned widely. ‘How can I invite Nick here for a nightcap and then disappear off to bed?’
‘I have already given him a nightcap. It was called a cup of coffee.’
‘Rose doesn’t do an awful lot of drinking…’ Lily smiled at Nick ‘…do you, Rosie?’
‘I’m sure Mr Papaeliou isn’t interested in my alcohol consumption.’ Lord, but she sounded prim and proper.
‘The name’s Nick,’ Nick said irritably.
Rose ignored him. ‘There. You’re falling asleep on your feet, Lily. Go to bed. I’ll see Mr Pa…Nick…out.’
‘Well…’
‘I can lie in in the morning,’ Rose insisted. ‘You know you always go to the gym first thing.’
‘S’pose…’
Rose guided her sister in the direction of the staircase so that the temptation of bed was just a little more irresistible. ‘Well nothing. You’ve been on your feet for the better part of the day while I’ve been here, just lolling around and taking it easy.’
‘If you’re sure…’
Oh, boy, Rose was absolutely sure. She gave Nick a gimlet-eyed stare, but as soon as Lily had vanished up the stairs he removed his jacket and lounged against the wall, looking at her.
Rose, all at once and unbidden, became acutely conscious of her inappropriate garb. Something about the subdued lighting in the hall, the knowledge that Lily was upstairs, probably about to crawl into bed, the way he was looking at her in that perfectly still way…She tightened her dressing gown around her and clung onto her virtuous sense of authority. Revealing even a glimpse of her nightwear, namely pyjamas patterned with prancing reindeer, which had been given to her as a Christmas present by a friend who specialised in silly gifts, would undermine everything she now wanted to convey.
‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, moving towards her, which, for some reason, she found horribly disconcerting, ‘you’re about to resume your attack, having frogmarched Lily to bed.’
‘I did not frogmarch her.’
‘As good as. So come on, then, let’s call a taxi and get it over and done with.’ He followed her into the kitchen, watched as she sat down and scrolled through the address book on her mobile phone, then made the call. While she did, she looked at Nick and tried not to let his presence overwhelm her, because even after such a brief spell in his company she knew, could just sense, that he was the sort of man who could inspire abject fear should he want to. Not exactly a people person, she thought nastily. The sort of man who picked up women and dropped them without a backward glance or a twinge of guilt. Like the poor Susanna who had been fired up enough to make a fool of herself in front of her friends.
They had fifteen minutes to talk and Rose wasn’t going to waste a single one of those minutes, but before she could utter a word Nick strolled towards her, cornering her in her chair so that she could feel the full, undiluted power of his personality.
‘But before you say anything, I think it’s my turn, don’t you?’ He smiled.
Rose refused to be intimidated. Just who did he think he was anyway? She made herself breathe evenly. Up close like this, his eyes were the deepest of greens, the colour of the fathomless sea. Right now the fathomless sea was revealing some very icy depths.
‘I think you should get a life,’ Nick said grimly, ‘and let your sister lead her own. Is it natural for you to wait up for her like a mother hen? Making sure she gets home safe and sound? You may think it natural. I, on the other hand, consider it sad, as would most people.’ He couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. Did he care what this woman thought of him? Did he care what anyone thought of him? True freedom, he had always thought, was the freedom from caring about other people’s opinions. So why the hell was a pair of defiant blue eyes making him want to justify himself?
Rose blushed and for a few seconds was lost for words. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she knew that he was making sense, but looking out for Lily was a habit born of time and one that she couldn’t seem to let go. Their parents, her mother and stepfather, had died when they were still very young and they had gone to live with their aunt and uncle who were, as they were fond of saying, travellers in search of the meaning of life. Rose had discovered that this basically meant that they moved from pillar to post at a whim, with the practical concerns of two young people being only a minor technical hitch.
Nearly seven years older than her stepsister, Rose had been the sensible one who had made sure that Lily had someone grounded to whom she could turn and so, from the age of ten, she had become accustomed to looking out for her sister. But now Lily was twenty-two. Did she really still need the sensible older sister to wait up for her?
‘I don’t care what you think.’
‘What do you think your sister would say if she knew that you were warning me away?’
‘I think she would see it for the loving gesture that it is.’
‘Or maybe she might see it as an infringement of her right to lead her life the way she sees fit.’
‘Who are you,’ Rose spluttered, ‘to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do?’
‘Well, not a male model nor an actor, nor, for that matter, a seedy film director with an empty casting couch.’ He moved away from her chair and sat down, but pulling the kitchen chair close to hers so that there was no escaping his stifling presence. Where was he going with this particular piece of justification? he wondered.
‘I don’t care what job you do, Mr Papaeliou…’
‘I’m in finance, as a matter of fact. And believe me, when it comes to women, I don’t need to entice them with an empty casting couch.’
‘Whatever you do doesn’t change the fact that you’re a man who can break up traumatically with a woman, look around you, and within minutes be on the trail of another notch for your bedpost.’
Nick was enraged. Never had he been the object of such an unprecedented attack by someone who didn’t know him. Without vanity or pride, he could say that people tiptoed around him, the only exceptions being women at the end of a relationship who could, like Susanna, become hysterical and accusatory, but that was something