‘Do you like it?’
‘It...it’s unexpected... I don’t believe...ah...that I’ve ever seen you in something like that...’
‘A change is as good as a rest,’ Jess piped up. She didn’t want to look at him because she feared that she might find it hard to tear her eyes off him. Underneath the coat, he was wearing a pair of black trousers and a white shirt, with a charcoal-grey V-necked jumper in the softest cashmere. He succeeded in looking both casual and insanely elegant at the same time.
‘Ah...’
When he failed to continue, she looked at him quizzically, braced to defend her choice of clothing and to stand up for statuesque women and their right to wear whatever they chose to.
‘Yes?’ She arched an eyebrow and he flushed.
‘Nothing.’ He circled her arm with his hand. ‘Don’t be nervous,’ he added, for want of anything better to say. ‘I know you don’t like this kind of event.’
‘I never used to,’ she said airily, ‘but that was years ago. I’ve got a lot more confident since I’ve been teaching. When you have to control a classful of kids and establish order, you can’t afford to be too much of a shrinking violet.’
‘Got it,’ he muttered.
They paused ahead of the sequence of bustling rooms. It was an open-plan space that managed to retain separate areas with the clever use of partitions and banks of plants and two open fireplaces. Through the vast expanse of glass overlooking the mountains, the view was surreal in its empty whiteness.
Waiters circulated, balancing trays of food and drink.
‘I thought it was going to be a little less...crowded.’
‘So did I.’ He shrugged. ‘Don’t worry. I don’t plan on staying long.’
‘I’m not worried,’ she said irritably. About to reassure him that he was no longer dealing with the insecure girl who’d shied away from parties, she followed his gaze to where he was staring narrowly at a slight figure reaching for a glass of champagne.
‘Jesus,’ he swore softly under his breath. ‘You’re not going to believe this, but Caitlin is here...’
CHAPTER FOUR
ITTOOKAfew horrified seconds for that to sink in, even though the evidence was standing straight in front of Jess in the form of five-foot-nothing of drop-dead gorgeous Barbie doll in a tight, short red dress and killer heels.
She jerked Curtis off to the side, behind the wall, and hissed, ‘Did you know that your ex was going to be here?’
Jess had met Caitlin twice, when he had brought her to visit his godfather. Towering over the dainty blonde, and still in her comfort-eating phase, Jess had never felt more self-conscious, and being introduced by Curtis as ‘My best friend...don’t know what I’d do without her...’had failed to help matters, making her sound halfway between shrink and favourite maiden aunt.
‘I had no idea.’
‘So youdidn’tinvite me here as a buffer against awkwardness from your ex...?’
‘Would I be so devious? I admit,’ he said grudgingly, while handfuls of people continued to walk past them towards the open area just out of sight, ‘I knew a couple of girlfriends from distant times past might be on the scene, but you have my word that I had no idea that Caitlin was going to be here.’
Things fell into place abruptly. Vague stories of wanting to dodge female predators with stars in their eyes, true though that might very well have been, had probably come second to a very real desire on Curtis’s part to avoid the attentions of women he had probably dumped. He was always unfailingly fair, he had once told her, telling the women he went out with that he wasn’t interested in anything long-term, but did that mean all his exes relished the time when he decided that they had gone past their sell-by date? Did that mean that they all shrugged their shoulders and parted with a rueful shake of their heads and the wordsThat’s only fair, I was warned after allin their minds?
Doubtful.
‘We can’t huddle out here for much longer,’ he broke the silence to say. ‘Pretty soon they’ll send out a search party to find out where we are. Philippa knows we’ve arrived. She caught my eye over the waiter with the tray of champagne cocktails.’
‘I never signed up to this,’ Jess all but wailed and he looked at her with sympathy.
‘Nor did I,’ he said grimly. ‘But here we are and there’s not a damn thing either of us can do about it.’
Navy eyes met green and Jess breathed in deeply because he was right, of course, here they were. And it wasn’t as though she could skulk out and find the nearest taxi to deliver her back to the sanctuary of the hotel.
She reminded herself that she was twenty-six years old, a woman with a responsible job and why on earth should it matter that Caitlin was going to be around for a weekend that now seemed to stretch into infinity?
She wasn’t the insecure girl who preferred to blend into the background and leave the limelight to others. She had moved on since those times.
