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CHAPTER ONE
‘I’M REALLY not much of a party animal,’ Gordon warned in the lift on the way up to Karen’s apartment
‘We don’t need to stay long,’ Sarah said quickly ‘I just want to put in an appearance’
He s ‘I wasn’t co forward toKaren If she’s at all like you…’
Sarah laughed ‘She’s not Karen and I are about as different as tomen could be!’
‘Even so, you’ve been friends since you were at school together’
He rong in that assumption but Sarah didn’t bother to correct him At school, Sarah and Karen had been poles apart Popular and full of h-spirited centre of an ad Quiet and introverted, Sarah had been a loner, invariably on the outside of the girlish gossip sessions Last winter she had run into Karen again quite by accident Within ten ed out of all recognition
‘I used to think you were the , who looked down on us all,’ Karen had confided bluntly so ‘But ere really just jealous little cats You were quite disgustingly beautiful as well as being hatefully well behaved You matured so much faster than the rest of us I suppose that was the problem We were pretty cruel sometimes, weren’t we?’
Listening to her, Sarah had come ridiculously close to tears Karen recalled their schooldays with amused affection Sarah recalled the insecurity and loneliness she was concealing Nobody had ever guessed how fiercely she had longed to be one of the crowd Froht to hide her feelings from others
Her wealthy parents had adopted her as a baby Her father was amore strenuous than consult with her housekeeper about the seating arrangements for her dinner parties Charles and Louise Southcott were very controlled people, physically unde display of eued in Sarah’s hearing Disapproval had been signified by chilling silence By the time she was four years old, the sound of that silence had quelled Sarah hly than the coldest rebuke But unhappily that silence had done a lot e
Like any young child, Sarah had swiftly learnt how best to please her parents She had conformed to their expectations of her It had been unacceptable to get dirty or be untidy, even ht, lose her temper or cry In return for her obedient docility, Sarah had been rewarded with every e and an inordinate a she ever did or said had been too trivial for their notice What age had she been before she realised that it was odd for her to have no friends in her own age-group?
Friends had never been encouraged Her birthday parties had been well attended because an invitation to her parents’ gracious country hohbourhood Sarah hadn’t been able to unbend with other children The ability to join in rough and tu, secretive intiirls had been stolen by her antiseptic upbringing She had attended an exclusive boarding school as a day-girl, kept scrupulously close to home, cosseted and protected by two extremely possessive parents from every potentially harmful influence
She had grown up with an outer shell of poise that was inevitably mistaken for a maturity beyond her years But deep down inside she had been as wound up as a spring in a dangerously tight coil She could not have gone on indefinitely as she was…asindividual as a one-dihter, the perfect teenager, always ily polite and obedient A shiver ran through her, disrupting her ruhteen and twenty
‘This has to be it,’ Gordon re her back to the present
Karen’s front door ide open, feeding out led voices and music What would Gordon make of Karen? Sarah wondered arapher, extrovert and outspoken Gordon was a banker, ultra-conservative in his tastes and inclined to take himself a little too seriously
Gli the casually dressed crush in the hall, Gordon frowned and curved a protective ar in a s,’ he forecast ‘I don’t think I’ve been to a party like this since I left adolescence behind’
Karen gave a frantic wave and waded towards theed brunette, she wore a spectacularly short skirt and an antique lace top that exposed plenty of smooth, tanned flesh ‘Where on earth have you been?’ she demanded
Sarah grinned ‘My babysitter got lost in her studies at the library and forgot the time Sorry!’
‘It’s all right You’re forgiven Better late than never’ Karen was running an unapologetically curious scrutiny over Gordon from the crown of his well-brushed fair head down over his tailored dinner-jacket to his knife-creased trousers ‘I suppose you already kno hard it is to prise Sarah away fro She can’t bear to le bathtime and Beatrix Potter session,’ she complained with mock severity
‘I can understand Sarah’s concern Single parents do carry double the responsibility’ As he sprang needlessly to her defence, Gordon sounded irritatingly pompous
‘Are you talking from personal experience?’ Karen enquired drily
Gordon stiffened ‘No, actually I’m not, but—’
‘Gordon Frinton…Karen Chalers flexed with annoyance against her back The fireworks of a personality clash were in the air
Karen cast Gordon a glowing smile ‘Sarah has mentioned you, but when I saw you I wasn’t at all sure that you could be Gordon,’ she said, typically cryptic, as she rested a detero and lock your cashmere in my closet, Sarah, Gordon and I will—’
Gordon turned back to Sarah ‘Let me take your coat’
‘Don’t be silly, Gordon,’ Karen interposed sweetly ‘I have to show you where the drinks are stashed You can’t be in two places at once’
Gordon was carted off whether he liked it or not His innate good manners forbade further protest but the squared set of his shoulders spoke for hiular face sparkled with hueous Karen would be She had already told Karen that Gordon was no more than a casual friend but Karen wanted to check him out for herself
Having disposed of her coat, Sarah scanned the spacious lowlit lounge, relieved that the room wasn’t as crowded as the h
all crush had suggested It was a very long time since she had been at a party Indeed if it would not have been outright rudeness to refuse yet another of Karen’s invitations, Sarah would not have been here at all She was roups of friends than she was aers
There was a brief lull in the h the covering buzz of conversation Sarah’s head jerked round on a chord of recognition too instinctive even to be questioned In appalled stasis, she froze, her pupils dilated by shock
A tall, black-haired male with boldly cast sun-bronzed features stood in stark silhouette against the backdrop of floor-deep uncurtained s As he sank fluidly down on to the arathering crowd
A woain entry to the room ‘Good lord, isn’t that…?’
The roaring in her eardrums drowned out the rest of the sentence She could not believe at first, did not want to believe that he was real But Rafael was breathtaking and unforgettable Successfully blocking hiht had not prevented his lithe dark i her dreams
Absorbed faces surrounded hiolden hands sketched vivid word pictures in the air His raw vibrance struck her like an electrical charge Against that intensely physical aura of his, other men simply paled into the ork Wherever Rafael went, women followed him with their eyes They did it openly or covertly or even unconsciously None of them was immune to the stor sexuality that could illu God had beamed benevolently on Rafael’s birth but, even without that striking, hard-boned physical beauty, Rafael would have exerted a netic draw for her sex He held court with the uninhibited ease of a natural extrovert
Without warning, his chiselled profile spun in her direction His piercing eyes narrowed, homed in on her with laserbea away on a high of istered the loss of anis that threatened to buckle beneath her, she pushed a driven passage back through the hall and down to the sanctuary of Karen’s bedroom