The One And Only

‘Man,’ her cousin finished impatiently. ‘Of course he’s a man!’

A rather attractive one too, as Joy recalled. He was the actor appearing regularly in a popular detective programme on Friday evenings. ‘How on earth did you manage to win an evening out with a man?’ Joy decided she had either missed something in the earlier conversation, or Casey was keeping something back. And, knowing Casey as she did, she thought she knew which one it was!

He looked more than a little irritated now. ‘Well, if you must know…’

‘Oh, I think I must.’ She nodded derisively.

‘I entered a competition in one of those women’s magazines Lisa is always reading. And I won the damned thing!’ he added disgustedly.

Lisa was Casey’s steady girlfriend of the last year, if the word ‘steady’ could be applied to the stormy relationship they both seemed to enjoy.

‘I told her the damned things were all a con, that no one ever actually won anything in them,’ Casey continued disgruntledly as Joy stared at him.

‘And then you won.’ Joy’s lips twiched as she made an effort to hold back her humour. ‘First prize!’

‘Yes!’ he bit out impatiently. ‘And the people who ran the competition assumed Casey Simms was a woman—’

‘Well, they would—when the prize was Valentine’s night out with a handsome hunk!’ Joy knew she wasn’t going to be able to contain her laughter much longer—the humour of the situation was just too much.

He glared at her. ‘Don’t rub it in!’

She chewed on her top lip to stop the throaty laughter from erupting. ‘And just where are you and Danny supposed to be having this intimate dinner for two?’ Casey had really done it this time. But then, he had never done anything by halves.

‘In London,’ he snapped. ‘But we aren’t—you and he are!’ Casey looked at her challengingly.

She shook her head, repressed laughter making her eyes appear an even deeper green than usual. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘I can’t go!’ her cousin wailed.

‘Well, obviously not,’ Joy conceded, openly smiling now. ‘But Lisa could—’

‘No way!’ Casey instantly protested. ‘Do you think I’m stupid enough to let my girlfriend go out for the evening, especially that evening, with a lech like Danny Eames is reputed to be?’

Joy raised auburn brows, brows much darker than the long fiery-coloured hair she wore confined when at work, but preferred to leave loose about her shoulders at other times. ‘But it’s all right to send your favourite cousin out for the evening with him?’ she derided drily.

‘My only cousin,’ he corrected distractedly. ‘And my favourite one, of course,’ he added at her openly mocking expression. ‘I’m going to look so stupid if it ever comes out that I entered a competition in a women’s magazine—’

‘Maybe you should have thought of that earlier,’ she pointed out reasonably.

‘Joy, you know I would do the same for you if the positions were reversed,’ he persisted wheedlingly.

‘The answer is no, Casey,’ she told him dismissively.

‘Oh, please, Joy.’ He looked at her pleadingly.

Joy knew that look only too well—and the trouble it could get her into. ‘I said no, Casey,’ she repeated firmly.

Which was why she was here now, pretending to be Casey Simms for the week!

The hotel was as luxurious as Casey had promised it would be, and she had enjoyed the little she had seen of London since her arrival yesterday. But Danny Eames, far from being the interesting individual Casey had persuaded her he would be, was one of the most boring people, male or female, she had ever met in her life!

Lisa had lent her a dress to wear for the evening; in fact, Lisa had provided most of the clothes Joy had brought with her, after looking through Joy’s wardrobe and declaring its contents were much too librarianish. Joy’s protests of that being exactly what she was had been met with little sympathy, let alone understanding. And with Casey as well as Lisa to argue against, each of them as incorrigible as the other, Joy hadn’t stood a chance, and had arrived at the hotel yesterday with two suitcases full of Lisa’s expensively flamboyant clothing. As a model, Lisa often managed to buy her clothes cheaper than she might otherwise have done, and she usually chose the clothes that would most get her noticed.

As with the dress Joy was wearing this evening. It was unlike anything she had ever worn, or dreamt of wearing, in her life before. She had to admit that the green shimmering material made her eyes appear even deeper in colour, and her hair glowed fieryred as it fell loosely to just below her shoulders. But the dress also clung to the slender length of her body, finishing abruptly several inches above her shapely knees. But of the evening gowns Lisa had provided, this was the least revealing—the black one was backless, and the red one virtually frontless!

But she needn’t have worried about the allure of the dress; Danny Eames was far too interested in himself to notice what Joy was or wasn’t wearing. She also had the feeling that he might have enjoyed the company of the real Casey Simms more than hers.

As it was, he hadn’t stopped talking about himself since the representative of the magazine had introduced the two of them earlier this evening in the foyer of Joy’s hotel. The only time he had given his ego a rest was when they were actually watching the show, and even then he had wasted little time, after they had left their seats during the interval, before beginning to criticise the actors in the show, at the same time making it plain he could do a better job of all the parts, male and female, than his fellow actors and actresses were doing.

And supper after the show, for all it was in one of the most famous restaurants in London—Joy recognised several of the diners as actors, or faces she had seen in the daily newspapers—was turning out to be just as much of a nightmare.

Joy was going to strangle Casey when she got home at the weekend. This had to be the longest evening of her life!

And what made it worse was that several of the other women dining here were actually eyeing her enviously for her companion of the evening; as far as Joy was concerned, any one of them was welcome to the egotistical idiot!

‘…and so I told the director that if that was all he wanted to go and hire himself a performing monkey…’

Joy faded in, and as quickly faded out again of the one-sided conversation at their table, deciding as she did so that the director had probably known when he was talking to Danny Eames that he had hired a performing monkey. Although a monkey would probably have had more intelligence than Danny Eames seemed to have. Joy pitied any woman who had to spend more than one evening in this man’s company. Thank God she wasn’t one of them. He—

‘…to introduce me to your dining companion, Danny?’

Joy had been in danger of falling asleep with her eyes open, but the different timbre of voice, this one huskily deep, broke her out of her inner torment, and she turned curiously in the direction of that voice. Any diversion had to be welcome.

And this wasn’t just ‘any diversion’, she quickly realised, instantly recognising the man who now stood so confidently beside their table as the man who played the part of Danny’s boss in the detective programme: Marcus Ballantyne.

This man was actually the real star of the television series Danny Eames seemed to feel would fall apart without the aid of his so-brilliant acting. And Joy should know—she had been listening to just how wonderful Danny thought he was for the last four hours.

But Marcus Ballantyne really was a true talent, star of numerous television series over the last fifteen years. He had made his big break into Hollywood ten years ago, returning there periodically to star in films that were inevitably box-office hits. But he remained true to his native England, preferring to make his home there, occasionally making appearances on the West End stage in plays destined to be a success simply because Marcus Ballantyne deemed them worthy of his time and talent.

But the last thing Joy needed was another egomaniac to join them and bore her to sleep!

Joy knew Marcus Ballantyne was in his late thirties—older than Danny Eames by at least ten years. He was well over six feet tall, with slightly overlong dark hair, and deceptively sleepy blue eyes, a deep, dark blue that, as Joy looked up at him, she could see contained a sharp intelligence. Maybe she wasn’t going to be bored, after all…

Danny had risen hurriedly to his feet at the sound of the other man’s voice, some of that overbearing self-confidence leaving him as he shook the older man by the hand, evidence that even he bowed to the older man’s superior talent. ‘Marcus,’ he greeted, a little too enthusiastically. ‘I didn’t know you came to places like this.’ He looked pointedly around the noisy restaurant.

‘I’m not in my dotage, Danny,’ the other man drawled derisively.

The younger man’s cheeks were slightly flushed. ‘No, of course not. I just…well, I didn’t think… It’s good to see you, Marcus,’ Danny finished lamely.

‘Is it?’ the older man drawled, dark brows raised mockingly.

Joy looked more intently at Marcus Ballantyne; he obviously shared her opinion that Danny was an idiot, and he made no attempt to hide his contempt for the younger man. Which posed the question: why had he bothered to come over to their table at all if he felt that way about Danny?

As he turned that probing blue gaze in her direction, Joy suddenly knew exactly why.

There was no mistaking the admiration in that gaze as it swept over her appraisingly. Joy felt a quiver of awareness down her spine as she seemed unable to break that searching blue gaze.

This had never happened to her before. She had never been instantly physically aware of a man in her life before. But there was something about the hard lines of Marcus Ballantyne’s face that was mesmerising; the lean length of his body in the casually expensive clothes exuded a physical magnetism that Joy couldn’t help being completely aware of.