High Society (4 page)

Until tonight.

Tonight? That passionless brush of his mouth against her own?

Passionless for him, maybe, but
she
had certainly felt a distinct kick of sexual curiosity galvanising her body.

Don’t even think about going there, Julia muttered warningly to herself, and then jumped as Nick materialised at her side and demanded huskily, ‘Missed me?’

‘Have you been somewhere?’ Julia riposted sweetly. ‘I’ve been too busy to notice—although I expect Lucy will be wondering where you are.’

‘Well, in the morning you can tell her that I spent the night in your bed, if you want to.’

He was standing in front of her, blocking her in, having placed one hand on the column behind her.

‘I’ve already told you, Nick, I’m not interested.’

‘Of course you are. You’ve been acting like a bitch on heat ever since I dropped you for Lucy.’ He was smiling at her as though the words had been a compliment and not an insult, Julia saw, and a surge of angry contempt for him mixed with compassionate pity for Lucy gathered force inside her.

‘Really?’ She kept her voice deliberately light. ‘I must tell Silas that. He’ll be delighted to learn that other men are aware of how much I want him.’

Immediately Nick removed his hand from the column behind her.

‘Silas?’ he demanded. ‘You mean Silas is shagging you?’

‘We are lovers, yes,’ Julia lied firmly. How could she ever have found anything attractive in Nick? Even the way he spoke revealed his contempt for women.

‘Why?’

‘The usual reasons. He’s sexy, and I want him, and—’

‘No, I meant why should he want to shag
you
?’ Nick told her brutally. ‘With his money he could have anyone he wants.’

Her original distaste for Nick’s comments was rapidly turning into outright loathing for Nick himself.

‘The “anyone” Silas wants is me. And the only man I want is Silas. You, Nick, are married to Lucy. She’s my friend, and—’

Julia protested in shock as Nick suddenly grabbed hold of her upper arms and forced her back against the column, shaking her so hard that she only just avoided banging her head on the hard stone.

‘Are you sure you don’t want it? I think you do. I think you’re gagging for it. And I think I should give it to you hot and hard, right here and now. You owe me, Jules, and I intend to collect—one way or another.’

All of a sudden Julia didn’t just feel angry and repulsed, but actually afraid. There was an ugly sound to Nick’s voice, a miasma of lust and contempt somehow emanating from him. Instinctively she fought to break free of him as he held on to her, twisting and turning, the fragile fabric of her dress tearing beneath his grip. Her furious panic gave her a fierce determination not to give in to him, even though he was hurting her. But it was only when she kicked out at him and her heel caught his leg, that he yelled out in pain and let her go. She could hear him cursing her as he held his calf, and she pushed past him and started to run towards the building and safety, too afraid of him coming after her to turn round to look and see if he was following her.

She was still trembling almost fifteen minutes later in the sanctuary of the ladies’ room, where she pulled off her torn dress and re-dressed in the jeans and tee shirt she had been wearing earlier in the day, which she had stuffed, rolled up, into a bag she had left with the caterers.

There would be bruises on her arms in the morning from Nick’s assault on her.

Assault. The word tasted gritty and unpleasant in her mouth, but he
had
assaulted her. Would he have raped her if she hadn’t broken free and escaped from him? Julia was not a naive teenager. She knew full well that there was a sordid underbelly to the glamourous celebrity lifestyle depicted in magazines such as
A-List Life
, but this was the first time its sleaziness had actively touched her. She had spoken the truth when she had told Silas that she neither drank to excess nor took drugs. In addition, she might not be sexually innocent, but she was very firm about maintaining a professional distancing manner when she was working, and she was most certainly not promiscuous. The drink-and drug-fuelled group sex sessions of the type that featured in the lives of many of their clients, as well as in the more downmarket tabloids, held absolutely no appeal for her.

But she had not been aware of how dangerous Nick was. He was taking her refusal to have sex with him far more personally than she had expected, treating it as though it were a personal strike against him he had to avenge. Shuddering a little as she remembered the horrible way he had spoken to her, and how frightened he had made her feel, Julia bundled her torn dress into the bag that had held her jeans and top. Suddenly Silas’s constant presence for the rest of the summer felt more comforting than burdensome. Not, of course, that she would ever tell Silas himself as much.

Along with Lucy and Nick, as well as the catering staff and virtually everyone else who had accompanied them to Majorca, Julia was staying at a small budget-priced hotel in one of the main holiday resorts. She had planned to get a lift back to the hotel with Lucy and Nick but now she knew that nothing would persuade her to do so. Instead she would have to blag a lift with one of the contractors.

‘Jules, have you seen Nick anywhere?’

She tensed as she heard the anxiety in Lucy’s voice as she came hurrying toward her.

‘Not recently,’ she answered truthfully.

‘He might still be with Alexina Matalos, then,’ Lucy sighed. ‘She wants us to quote for her husband’s fiftieth birthday party. Oh, and Silas was looking for you. I’m so pleased about the two of you.’

‘Not as pleased as I am,’ said a deep voice.

‘Oh, Silas, good. You’ve found her.’ Lucy laughed as he materialised beside them out of the darkness.

‘What happened to the dress?’ he asked Julia as he smiled in acknowledgment of Lucy’s statement.

‘I changed it. Jeans are more practical for putting out candles than chiffon.’

‘How much longer will it be before you’ve finished here?’

‘I’m virtually done, but there’s no need for you to hang around waiting for me, Si...
darling
,’ she emphasised, conscious that Lucy was listening to them.

‘How are you planning to get back to the hotel?’ he asked, ignoring her hint.

‘Oh, I’ll get a lift with one of the contractors,’ Julia told him airily.

‘Fine. I’ll come with you.’

With
her?

She knew they were supposed to be an item, but surely that was taking things too far? Especially when he would then have to make his way back to wherever it was he was staying, which she presumed must be the same ultra-exclusive boutique hotel in Palma as Dorland.

‘Well, now that you two have made contact with one another, I’d better go and find Nick,’ Lucy announced.

‘There’s really no need for you to come back to the hotel with me,’ Julia repeated as soon as Lucy had gone.

‘Julia, we’re going now, if you’re coming,’ one of the contractors called out.

‘Can you fit both of us in?’ Silas asked him.

‘Sure.’

Silas’s hand was splayed across the small of her back, urging her forward.

It was funny how, though Silas’s hand held far more hard strength than Nick’s, she somehow wanted to relax into his touch rather than shrink back from it. That might be funny, but what was definitely not was the discovery that, instead of moving forward, she really wanted to turn sideways instead, and move closer to Silas.

Why? she derided herself, deliberately trying to whip up awareness of her own foolishness. So that she could get another look at his mouth? Another taste of his mouth? But her body’s reaction, far from being an appropriate recognition of her folly, was a wilful misunderstanding of the message she was sending it. It, it seemed, would very much like another taste of Silas.

When had she become the kind of woman who actively liked courting danger?

CHAPTER THREE

‘H
OLA
, S
EÑOR
.’
The receptionist beamed up at Silas from behind the desk. ‘Here is your key.’

His key? Julia stared at him.

‘You aren’t staying here?’

Silas was a ‘five-star hotel and nothing less’ man. No—correction. Silas was a ‘private villa and his own personal space’ man who, she was pretty sure, had never stayed at a three-star hotel in his life.

‘I’ve booked us a suite and asked them to move your stuff to it from your room. That way Blayne won’t be under any misapprehensions about us or our relationship.’

A suite? Us? Their relationship?

‘Something wrong?’ Silas asked her.

‘Do you really need to ask?’ Julia challenged him as soon as she had got enough breath back to speak. ‘Silas, no way am I going to sleep with you.’

‘
Sleep
with me?’

‘You know what I mean,’ Julia told him crossly.

‘We’ll discuss it in our suite, shall we?’ Silas suggested in a gentle voice that felt like a very thin covering over very hard steel as it fell against her frazzled nerve-endings. ‘Unless, of course, you feel that having the hotel staff witness a potential quarrel between us is going to add reality to our relationship?’

Since he was already standing next to her, bending towards her in a way that no doubt looked sensually lover-like to their audience but, Julia nastily decided, was just another example of the dictatorial side of his nature she had always disliked, she didn’t have much choice other than to allow him to propel her towards the rackety lift.

‘I suppose this wretched suite is on the top floor,’ she complained as the lift started to lurch upwards.

‘Since Señora Bonita has assured me that it is possible to see the sea from its windows, I imagine that it must be,’ Silas concurred, so straight-faced that Julia had to look at him very carefully to catch the smallest of small betraying quivers lifting the corners of his mouth.

‘And you believed her? The sea is miles away.’

‘No doubt the
señora
assumes we will be far too busy gazing at one another to concern ourselves over her enthusiastic laundering of reality.’

‘This lift takes for ever, and I’m not even sure that it’s safe,’ Julia complained. For some reason she wasn’t prepared to explain, even to herself, it seemed a very good idea to keep her gaze concentrated on the lift door and not on Silas.

“‘A long, slow ride to heaven” was how the
señora
poetically described it to me.’

Forgetting her determination not to look at him, Julia turned round and accused him, ‘You’re making that up.’

Silas gave a small shrug.

‘Silas, why are you doing this?’ Julia demanded, then her eyes widened as the lift suddenly shuddered theatrically and then dropped slightly, throwing her off balance and against Silas.

Immediately his arms went round her to steady her, and equally immediately he released her and moved back from her.

‘Something wrong?’

Julia glared at him. What was he trying to imply?

‘This lift isn’t safe,’ she told him.

Silas watched the emotions chase one another across her face. She had always had the most expressive eyes, and they were telling him quite plainly now exactly what she thought. Fortunately, he was rather more adept at guarding his own expression, otherwise she would have been able to read equally clearly in his eyes exactly what he had really wanted to do when he’d had her in his arms.

Her grandfather’s gruff comment to him that he was worried about her had brought him here to Majorca, but ironically it was thanks to Nick Blayne that he was at last able to manoeuvre himself into a position of intimacy with her. Even if that intimacy was, for the moment, merely fictitious.

‘Silas, you can’t possibly really intend to marry Julia,’ his mother had protested unhappily the night they had both attended Julia’s eighteenth birthday.

‘I take it you don’t approve?’ Silas had challenged her.

‘Do you love her?’ his mother had demanded, equally sharply.

‘Sexual love is little more than an emotional virus, and in my opinion should not be used as the basis on which to build a relationship. I have thought for some time that Julia would be the perfect wife for me—once she has matured.’

‘Silas...’

‘I’ve made up my mind. After all, who could possibly be a better wife for me? She knows exactly what her duties would be once I inherit, both as a countess and as the mistress of Amberley. It will make the old boy happy—and tidy up a lot of loose ends. From a practical point of view, a marriage between us makes good sense. She’s too young at the moment, of course. But I don’t want to leave it too long.’

‘Good sense? Silas, you’re talking about marriage as though it’s a...a business deal.’

‘No, Mother, I’m merely being practical. As well as my responsibilities to Amberley, I’ve got to think of the Foundation as well. I don’t want a wife who is going to change her mind and demand a huge divorce settlement. Julia has been born into a tradition of arranged marriages that goes way, way back. She understands these things.’

‘Does she? My money is on her refusing you, Silas. Julia is a very feisty and passionate young woman. And an arranged marriage—that is so archaic!’

‘They worked very well for hundreds of years, and they kept families and property together.’

His mother had sighed faintly and told him grimly, ‘Sometimes you sound more like those dry dusty trustees you inherited from your father than a young man in his twenties. Don’t you care that you will be depriving Julia as well as yourself of sharing your lives with someone you love?’

‘Mother, love is merely an illusion—a delusion, in fact. A marriage built on mutual understanding and shared goals is far more practical, and far more likely to survive.’

‘I doubt that Julia will agree with you. Look at her!’ his mother had demanded, and dutifully Silas had looked across at the short spiky brown-and pink-striped head that had been all he could see of her over her dance partner’s shoulder.

‘Helen said that she came back from school with her belly button pierced and talking about having a tattoo—the family coat of arms, if you please.’

That had been the year Julia had fallen passionately in love with the leader of a local animal rights group, Silas remembered. The love affair might have been short-lived, but the results of it were still very much in evidence. The group, led by Julia, had defied her grandfather’s gamekeeper and ‘rescued’ the young pheasants he had been rearing, with the result that one could not travel within ten miles of Amberley now without encountering wandering cock pheasants.

It was also this relationship that had been responsible for the five engaging greyhounds Julia had ‘rescued’ and brought home and who now lived a life of luxury, having won her grandfather’s heart via their shared misery at winter rheumatism and their love of a good whisky before bed.

Julia wasn’t eighteen any more, though. And Silas had decided that it was time to put his plan into action. Julia’s grandfather was growing frail, and Silas was very fond of him. It would mean a great deal to him to see his granddaughter married to his heir, Silas knew. Like him, the old Earl was also a very practical man—and what could be more practical than for his heir to marry his granddaughter, tying together the two remaining strands of the family and securing the future of Amberley at the same time?

It was very fortuitous that fate had decided to weigh in on his side and assist him in bringing his plans to fruition. Not that Silas considered that he needed to have fate on his side. He was perfectly capable of constructing his own good fortune.

The lift had finally stopped its sawing motion. Julia got out with relief, not sure whether to be appalled or triumphant when she realised that the ‘penthouse suite’ was actually in the rafters of the house, and that the tiny window in the corridor beside the lift was so low that an adult would have to kneel down in order to be able to look out of it.

She watched whilst Silas inserted the key into the lock of the heavy-looking door, and then opened it.

The room that lay beyond it was furnished as a sitting room, its double doors open to reveal the bedroom that lay beyond it. And a
huge
bed.

‘Apparently there are two bathrooms,’ she heard Silas informing her. ‘And the sofa in the sitting room area converts to a double bed.’

‘In case we want a foursome?’ Julia couldn’t resist saying lightly.

There was a cold steeliness in the look Silas lanced in her direction.

‘The only kind of bed-sharing foursome I find acceptable is the non-sexual variety with a couple and their two children. And if Blayne’s been dragging you down into that kind of gutter—’

Julia’s face burned.

‘It was just a joke, that’s all. I didn’t mean anything... I suppose you’re expecting me to sleep on the sofa bed?’

‘No. You can take the bed. After all, I’m not the one who has the problem waking up in the morning, am I?’

It was true that she was more of an owl than a lark, Julia knew, and it was also typical of Silas that he wouldn’t have forgotten that as a teenager she had preferred to sleep late in the mornings—especially when she was on holiday.

‘Which side of the bed do you prefer to sleep on?’

Julia gave him a suspicious look. ‘If I’ve got the bed to myself it doesn’t matter, does it?’

Silas exhaled slowly and warningly.

‘Julia, it would help us both if you were able to refrain from looking for a sexual connotation in everything I say. My question about which side of the bed you prefer was provoked quite simply by a desire to know which of the two bathrooms it would make sense for you to use. That is to say, if you sleep on the left-hand side of the bed then, should you need the bathroom during the night, you would probably automatically use the one on the left. On the other hand—’

‘All right, Professor, I get the picture.’ Julia stopped him crossly. ‘Why on earth couldn’t you just say that, Silas?’

‘Why couldn’t you simply answer my question?’

‘This is never going to work,’ Julia told him, raking her hand impatiently through her hair.

‘It certainly won’t work if you don’t want it to,’ Silas agreed succinctly. ‘If we want it to work then it’s up to us both to make sure that it does.’

She certainly didn’t want another run-in with Nick like the one she had had earlier in the evening, But his behaviour towards her had set her wondering just how he treated Lucy, and if in helping to preserve her marriage she was truly doing her friend a favour.

‘There’s no way I want to be the cause of Lucy being hurt,’ she agreed. ‘But if she’s unhappy in the marriage too, then—’

‘Has she told you that she’s unhappy, or are you relying on Blayne for that piece of information?’

‘I haven’t discussed her marriage with Lucy, but—’

‘But you have discussed it with her husband?’ Silas pointed out coolly.

Julia slanted him a sideways and slightly wary glance. He was angry with her now; she could tell that just from the way in which his voice had hardened.

‘This isn’t the eighteen hundreds, Silas, when a woman couldn’t speak to a friend’s husband or have male friends.’

‘It isn’t your friendship that Blayne wants, though, is it?’

She was tired, and a small dull ache at the back of her eyes was steadily becoming an insistent stabbing pain. All she wanted to do was to have a bath and go to bed, not stand here arguing with Silas.

‘Why don’t you climb down off your moral high horse?’ she suggested grittily. ‘After all, you aren’t in this just out of altruism, are you?’

‘What do you mean?’

He went so still so quickly, like a hunter suddenly on the watch, that her own body tensed as well.

‘I mean that aside from wanting to protect Gramps, there has to be something else in this for you.’

‘Such as?’

‘This woman you no longer want, for instance? The one you were happy to take to bed but don’t want to get seriously involved with?’

‘Like Blayne with you, you mean?’

He had relaxed again now, but he was still firing those poisoned darts, with deadly accuracy. Well, she could fire a few of her own.

Giving a small shrug, she told him, ‘If you want to put yourself in the same category as Nick, then go ahead.’

She had known, of course, that he wouldn’t like her comment, but she hadn’t correctly calculated just how much.

When he took a step towards her she found that she was automatically stepping back, and, even more betrayingly, wrapping her arms around herself, her hands on her bruised flesh as though to protect it from further assault.

There was a look now in his eyes that she could not interpret—at least not with her brain. Her emotions were reacting to it with a sudden rush of hot miserable tears that burned the backs of her eyes.

‘I can’t understand what on earth you’re even doing here in Majorca,’ she burst out, exhausted. ‘I suppose it must be something to do with the Foundation?’

There was the smallest of pauses before Silas agreed quietly, ‘Yes.’

‘Another acquisition, I suppose?’ She was just too tired to argue now.

‘In a manner of speaking. Although this one is very special...unique, in fact.’

‘And worth the trouble this fake relationship with me is going to cause?’ Julia asked him wryly.

‘Well worth it,’ Silas confirmed softly, before continuing, ‘Now, which side of the bed?’

‘The left. No, the right... I really don’t mind. Which side do you prefer?’ Julia asked him, and then went bright red. ‘No, I didn’t mean that. What I meant was, which
bathroom
would you prefer...?’

When he continued to look at her, she bit her lip, and then told him huskily, ‘I can imagine what you’re thinking, but I don’t want to have sex with you, Silas.’

Just the lazy way in which he raised one eyebrow was enough to up her heart-rate.

‘I wasn’t aware that I had invited you to. But, if I had, why would you want to refuse me?’

‘Why?’ Julia took a deep breath and gave him an outraged look. ‘Isn’t it obvious? We don’t mean anything to one another—we don’t even like one another, never mind lust after each other. And even if we did... Well, it would just be too... Sex carries implications and...and responsibilities. And it’s...’ She was beginning to flounder and she knew it.