Knight To The Rescue

She frowned. ‘My father?’

‘Did he know you were going out with this Russell fellow?’

Her chest tightened. ‘Yes.’

‘And he approved?’

She shrugged in an effort to ease her instant inner tension. ‘He seemed pleased a man was taking some interest in me at last. My father is one of those men who thinks women are nothing if not married. He considers me prime spinster material,’ she finished with a bitter laugh.

‘That’s rubbish on all counts! Women don’t have to marry early these days. Or at all, for that matter. Either way, you’re only a spring chicken.’

‘I’m twenty-one next week.’

His laughter was dry. ‘Positively ancient.’

‘It is if you look the way I do. Lavinia always says that with money even the plainest girls can look good when they’re young, but after a certain age it’s downhill all the way.’

Audrey was startled by the look of sheer fury that flashed into his eyes.

‘And who,’ he ground out, ‘is Lavinia?’

‘My stepmother.’

‘Your stepmother...’ One of his dark brows lifted in a sardonic fashion. ‘And your stepmother told you you were plain?’

Audrey saw what he was thinking now. That Lavinia was the hackneyed wicked witch of a stepmother. ‘No, no, Lavinia wouldn’t be that cruel. She’s very nice to me. She tries awfully hard to help me with my hair and my clothes. But I’m a lost cause. Nothing seems to suit me.’

All the while she was talking, Audrey could see Elliot was not convinced.

‘And how old is this stepmother of yours?’ he probed, eyes unreadable as they flicked over her. ‘The one who helps you with your hair and clothes.’

‘She’s in her late thirties. But she looks younger. She’s very beautiful, and very confident in herself.’

An envious sigh escaped Audrey’s lips before she could prevent it. But she did so wish sometimes that she could look even half as gorgeous as Lavinia could.

‘I don’t know where you got the idea you weren’t attractive, Audrey,’ Elliot pronounced.

An angry resentment flared within her. ‘Please don’t keep flattering me, Elliot. It’s not necessary. I know what I am and I know what I look like.’

Suddenly there was no stopping the tears that had threatened all afternoon. They came with a rush, flooding her eyes, spilling down over her pale cheeks. Appalled at herself, she tried to choke back the sounds, to smother them by putting her wine glass down and dropping her face into her hands. And she succeeded. But her shoulders still shook uncontrollably, and she had no idea how heart-wrenching the sight of her was, huddled there, crying silent bitter despairing tears.

‘Audrey, don’t,’ Elliot groaned, and, putting his own glass down, gathered her into his arms. Quite automatically, her arms went round his securely solid chest to hug him with a desperate tightness.

When one of his hands lifted to stroke her hair, Audrey’s response took her by surprise. Despite her distress, she thrilled to his touch and when he whispered sweet words of comfort she quivered with secret delight.

‘You are nice-looking, Audrey. I haven’t been flattering you...’

How did it happen, that moment when he tipped her tear-stained face up and bent his mouth to hers? Audrey froze for a second, but his lips were soft, soothing. Instruments of sweetness and sympathy. She sighed into them, her own parting, her arms creeping up to slide around his neck.

It was then that the kiss changed, that Elliot’s mouth abruptly turned hard and demanding, his hands tightening around her. He forced her lips widely apart and his tongue drove deep.

A quiver of shock ran through Audrey’s body and she began to struggle against him, her hands beating at his chest in a wildly flowering panic.

When he finally reefed backwards, her big brown eyes lanced his with shock and confusion.

He shook his head, his face filling with self-disgust. ‘Oh, God...I’m sorry, Audrey. Terribly sorry.’ His shrug was as weary and frustrated as his voice. ‘I got carried away.’

‘But...but why?’ she choked out, staring at him. ‘I mean...’

A black, sardonic grimace twisted his mouth. ‘There’s one more lesson you must learn today about men, Audrey,’ he growled. ‘When it comes to sex they’re basically animals. Sometimes, they want what they want when they want it, and who they’re having it with doesn’t figure largely in their minds. I’ve been celibate now for nearly a year. Judging by what just happened, I think my monastic existence is about to come to an end.

‘But not with you, my dear young girl,’ he added, slicing her with a rueful look. ‘Not with you... Come on. I’m taking you home.’

CHAPTER TWO

MONDAY morning found Audrey in a turmoil. She didn’t want to go to work, didn’t want to face a sniggering Diane or a sulkily hostile Russell, didn’t want to spend the day pretending everything was fine when it wasn’t.

Slumping down on the side of her bed, she buried her face in her hands. But there were no tears left to be spilled. She’d cried herself out last Friday night, cried and cried till she was drained of tears, drained of energy, drained of all emotion.

Saturday she had spent in a deep dark depression, Sunday in an apathetic gloom.

Now, the working week was beginning and her life was going on, whether she wanted it to or not. She had no alternative but to pull herself together and get on with living. But before she could do that she had to face, once and for all, the truth behind what had happened last Friday.

Her head lifted from her hands, a confusing pain squeezing at her heart. Which had hurt her the most? she puzzled. Russell’s betrayal? Or Elliot Knight’s speedy defection?

She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure about anything any more. All she knew was what she had always known—or suspected—about herself. That she was a complete failure where men were concerned. Russell’s only reason for making love to her had been greed, Elliot’s pity. Not that his brief kiss could be termed ‘making love’.

She would never forget his shock at his own behaviour. What on earth was he doing, he’d obviously thought, kissing this silly little nincompoop? And then getting carried away. No doubt he had to have been very frustrated at the time, Audrey decided bitterly. Nothing else could possibly explain a man like him turning uncontrollably passionate with someone like her. Russell had spelt it out. She had about as much sex appeal as a squashed frog!

Russell...

She could hardly bear to think of him, to think of what he had done. Or, more to the point, what she had allowed him to do. She was a fool—a stupid, naïve, plain, insecure little fool!

More desolation was about to sweep in when Elliot’s compliments filtered back to her mind, the ones he’d insisted were sincere. He had said she had lovely skin, nice eyes and a very kissable mouth. Had he been merely flattering her, trying to make her feel better? Or could it be true? Her heart lifted a fraction. Even Russell had said she wasn’t that bad looking.

She stood up and walked hesitantly over to the cheval mirror in the corner, her hand lifting to trace over her face and mouth as she stared into the mirror. In her opinion, her skin always looked too pale, her eyes too big, her mouth too little girlish. But yes...she supposed she wasn’t really ugly. Merely colourless.

Her gaze lifted to her hair and she shuddered. Nothing colourless there.

Russell’s hurtful comment about her clothes being ghastly jumped back into her mind and her eyes dropped to the hot pink suit she was wearing. A frown creased her brow as she accepted that, while it wasn’t exactly ghastly, it certainly didn’t look good. Odd, because Lavinia had a similar suit—in red—and it looked great on her. Audrey knew her figure was not as spectacular as her stepmother’s but it was still quite good. Slender, with enough curves in all the right places.

Her frown deepened in frustration. If only she had some fashion sense of her own, some confidence in her own judgement.

But she didn’t. She never had had. She wished there were someone other than Lavinia whose opinion she could ask, someone mature and objective who would be totally honest with her. It worried Audrey that perhaps Lavinia was saying things looked nice on her simply because she didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

Her mind slid, for the umpteenth time since last Friday evening, to Elliot Knight.

Elliot would tell her how it was. Elliot was honest, to the point of being blunt. Elliot...