Passionate Nights: The Mistress Assignment / Mistress of Convenience / Mistress to Her Husband

‘Kelly! What a surprise …’

‘A pleasant one, I hope.’ Kelly pouted, deliberately stepping closer to him, angling her body so that she was placing herself with her back to the blonde girl standing silently at Julian’s side and thereby excluding her from their conversation.

‘I thought for a moment that you’d forgotten me …’

‘Impossible,’ Julian assured her with heavy flirtatiousness, his glance deliberately and meaningfully lingering on her body.

Really, he was a total creep, Kelly decided.

‘Here on your own?’ Julian quizzed her.

Throwing back her head, Kelly gave a small, sexy laugh.

‘Of course not,’ she chided him, her voice and the look she gave him emphasising that she was the type of woman who would never be without a male escort.

‘You’re looking very well,’ she praised him, adding purringly, ‘Very well …’

‘Then that makes two of us,’ Julian told her smoothly.

‘Julian, I think it’s time we started to make our way to the table.’

The cool, authoritative male voice intruding on their conversation caused Kelly to turn her head to look at its owner.

Close up he was even more sizzlingly sensual than she had first imagined. It must be the new persona she had assumed that was making her aware of him in such a very intimate and sexual way, she decided dizzily as her glance slid helplessly from the dark watchfulness of his eyes to his very sensual mouth. Certainly she could never remember an occasion previously when she had been so immediately and so shockingly physically aware of a man’s sexuality.

‘Oh, must you go so soon?’ She pouted again, a little disconcerted to recognise how easily both the pout and the teasing but deliberately flirtatious glance she had given Julian’s companion came to her. ‘We haven’t even been introduced …’

She could sense Julian’s surprise at the way she was behaving, and managed to hide her own reservation at her unfamiliar behaviour. Kelly could sense Julian’s reluctance to comply with her request, but his companion was already saying with a steely, not to say with a grim note in his voice, ‘Yes, Julian, do introduce us to your friend …’

‘Er … Eve, Brough, may I introduce you to an old friend—Kelly? Kelly, please meet Eve and her brother, Brough Frobisher.’

While Kelly waited for him to expand a little more on the relationship between the other couple and himself she could see from the look in Brough Frobisher’s eyes that he was decidedly unimpressed by her flirtatious manner.

At least she had had one of her questions answered, she acknowledged as Harry finally arrived at her side just as Brough was determinedly turning away from her.

Eve and her brother, Julian had said.

Ridiculous to feel that dizzying surge of excitement and relief just because Brough Frobisher appeared to be unattached.

‘We’re on table twelve,’ Harry was informing her as he manfully forged a pathway for them both through the press of people making their way towards the banqueting room.

Table twelve was well positioned, with a good view of the top table and close enough to the long row of French windows which opened out onto the terrace to offer the comfort of a cool walk along it should one wish to avail oneself of such a facility.

Curiously, though, as they approached the table a small altercation appeared to be taking place there between a harassed-looking couple, the man red-faced and plainly angry whilst his wife looked flushed and embarrassed.

‘You told me we were on table twelve,’ he was saying to her as Harry and Kelly approached.

‘And so we were … At least, that was what Sophie said …’ his wife was responding, adding helplessly, ‘She must have got it wrong. You’ll have to go back and check the table plan.’

As she watched the hapless couple making their way back to the entrance to the room, Kelly couldn’t help feeling a little bit guilty. Was she being overly suspicious in suspecting Dee’s magical sleight of hand might somehow be responsible for their missing seats, especially when she could quite plainly see from where she stood that the place cards the couple had been studying with such bewilderment bore hers and Harry’s name?

A middle-aged couple and their daughter, the Fortescues, Kelly realised, were taking their places at the table, and another couple were taking their seats opposite Harry’s and Kelly’s own, which left three spare seats to Kelly’s left. Discreetly she leaned across to study the place cards, her heart thumping just a little bit too fast as she read, ‘Mr Julian Cox, Miss Eve Frobisher, Mr Brough Frobisher.’ She had no idea just how Dee had managed to get them seated next to Julian, nor did she wish to be enlightened. Dee was turning out to be a master tactician, an expert in the art of gamesmanship and subterfuge.

‘Kelly, you’re on our table! What a coincidence!’ Julian was exclaiming with very evident pleasure as he walked up.

Demurely Kelly said nothing, instead simply smiling at him from beneath down-swept lashes.

Half an hour later, when they had all been served with their main courses, Kelly acknowledged that Julian was even less likeable than she had previously guessed. Ignoring his girlfriend to flirt with her, he had progressed from blatantly sexually motivated compliments to the kind of sensual innuendo which Kelly found teethgrittingly unwelcome.

Her conscience overcoming her sense of duty, she leaned across the table to ask Eve gently how long she had been living in the town and if she liked it.

‘It’s very pretty,’ was her slightly hesitant response, and Kelly didn’t miss the way she looked first at her brother before replying to her, as though seeking either his support or his approval.

Kelly felt distinctly sorry for her. She was no match for a man of Julian’s unwholesome calibre, that much was more than evident to her, and Kelly hadn’t missed the way she had bitten her lip once or twice when Julian’s compliments to herself had pointedly underlined just how sexually attractive he found her.

‘What do you do?’ Kelly asked her, trying to draw her out a little, but it seemed she had asked the wrong question because immediately the younger woman flushed and looked helplessly at her brother before replying.

‘Oh, nothing … I’m afraid my art degree isn’t … doesn’t …’

Her voice trailed away and Julian cut in boastfully, ‘Eve doesn’t need to work, do you, my sweet? She has her own income … a trust fund …’

As he spoke he reached for her hand and squeezed it, lifting it to his lips to kiss her fingers in what Kelly considered to be an excessively exaggerated and insincere manner, but to judge from the pretty pink blush that coloured Eve’s pale skin she didn’t seem to find anything wrong with his manner towards her.

What would she say, Kelly wondered grimly, if she knew that whilst he was kissing her fingers his other hand was resting meaningfully on Kelly’s chiffon-clad knee, and she had in fact just had to edge determinedly away from him to stop him from rubbing his leg potentially even more intimately against hers?

He really was totally repulsive, Kelly acknowledged with repugnance as she started to turn towards Harry, stopping when unexpectedly Brough Frobisher entered the conversation, telling her coolly, ‘As a matter of fact, Eve works for me. What about you? What do you do?’

Before Kelly could answer him, the Master of Ceremonies called on them for silence whilst their host made a speech.

Gratefully Kelly got to her feet, glad to have the opportunity to shake off Julian’s wandering hand. Her dislike of him was growing by the minute—and not just on her own behalf. The minute Julian had mentioned Eve’s trust fund Kelly had immediately been aware from his avaricious expression just where the other girl’s attraction for him lay. Poor thing, like Beth before her she was obviously too unworldly and naive to see through him, but surely her brother must be able to recognise just what Julian was like.

Although he had listened in silence to Julian’s conversation throughout the meal, more of an observer than a participator, Kelly had been keenly aware of the intensity of his silent scrutiny of them all. Was she being over-sensitive in thinking that he had been particularly watchful where she was concerned? At one point, just before the Master of Ceremonies had provided his welcome diversion, Kelly had actually felt as though Brough Frobisher’s gaze was somehow burning a laser-like beam right through the table to where Julian’s hand was resting on her leg. Not that she had wanted it to be there. She gave a small shudder. He repulsed her now even more than he had done before.

‘I can’t encourage him. I don’t like him. He’s loathsome,’ she had protested despairingly to Dee last night.

‘All you have to do is let him think that you’re interested in him,’ Dee had soothed her. ‘All we need is for him to show himself in his true colours so that we can …’

‘So that we can what?’ Kelly had pounced, but Dee had simply given her a mysterious smile.

The speeches were almost over; the Master of Ceremonies had announced that there would be dancing in the ballroom. Hopefully then she would be able to escape Julian’s unwelcome attentions, since he would be duty-bound to dance with Eve.

‘Your lipstick’s all gone and your hair needs brushing,’ she heard Julian saying critically to Eve as the speaker sat down.

‘I’m afraid Eve doesn’t really have much idea about how to dress properly. She isn’t into designer clothes. I dare say you didn’t have much change out of a thousand pounds when you bought yours?’ he questioned, and Kelly knew from the look in his eyes that the news of her supposed inheritance had already reached him via that mysterious ‘grapevine’ Dee seemed to know so much about. As he spoke Julian’s glance slid from Kelly’s eyes to her mouth, and he murmured in a much lower voice, ‘Mind you, one has to admit the poor darling doesn’t exactly have the right kind of raw material … unlike you … Has anyone ever told you that you have the most amazingly sexy eyes … and mouth …?’

Kelly had to fight to suppress the dark tide of colour threatening to betray her feelings. It wasn’t embarrassment that was driving the hot blood up under her skin, but anger. How dared he behave so insultingly towards his girlfriend? No wonder she was looking so unhappy. But that was no reason for her brother to give her, Kelly, such a contemptuously angry look. She wasn’t the one who was responsible for Eve’s humiliation.

‘I was just going to go to the Ladies to tidy up myself,’ she fibbed, smiling warmly at Eve. ‘Do you want to come with me?’