Sweet Madness

Charlotte had phoned, suggesting lunch. Well, not exactly suggesting lunch—demanding lunch would have been a more accurate description—but done in such a way, with an appeal to Sam’s better nature, and the assurance that only Sam could help her work through her problems, that a refusal would have been not only churlish but impossible. ‘You’ve got to see me, Sam,’ Charlotte urged on the phone. ‘I’m desperate!’

Sam’s reluctance to see too much of her sister stemmed from the time when Charlotte had cold-heartedly run off with Sam’s fiancé. Eight years on, tempers had cooled and Sam had forgiven, if not forgotten. And family was, after all, family. ‘OK,’ she agreed. ‘Where shall we meet?’

‘Luigi’s.’

‘Much too expensive,’ said Sam firmly.

‘Oh, Sam—don’t be so dreary. Let’s go there—it’s fun. And I’ll pay.’

‘No, you won’t—I’ll pay for myself.’

One o’clock found Sam sitting at a table at the side of the room, waiting for Charlotte to arrive. The table was discreet and quiet, the kind of table she was always seated at, though Charlotte was the opposite. She always insisted on, and got, the centre-stage seat.

The waiter brought her a glass of fizzy water and a plateful of crudités and Sam sat munching and sipping until Charlotte breezed in.

She looked, thought Sam, absolutely wonderful—every inch the model she had once been. She was tall, leggy, elegantly boned, with china-blue eyes and the kind of long flaxen hair which Rapunzel would have given her eye-teeth for—all combined to make her a number-one head-turner. She was dressed in a white linen sleeveless mini-dress which showed off the smooth pale toffee colour of her tanned skin. Bare brown legs were finished off with soft white leather pumps.

Sam, who had come straight from the studio, was dressed in her habitual uniform of leggings and a top, both a deep charcoal-grey colour which didn’t show the dirt, but which didn’t actually do a lot for her understated looks, so unlike her sister’s, of dark brown hair with eyes to match, set in a milky-pale complexion.

They ordered food—avocado salad then pasta for Sam while Charlotte opted for melon followed by a grilled Dover sole. ‘I’m dieting,’ she confided.

Much more weight loss and she’d fall through the slats in the chair, thought Sam, but said nothing.

‘And wine—we must have wine!’

‘Not for me,’ protested Sam. ‘I have to work this afternoon.’

‘Well, I don’t. Bring me the wine list, will you?’ Charlotte gave the waiter a dazzling smile, and he sped off to obey her.

They ate their first courses while Charlotte slugged great gulps of wine and proceeded to tear the latest sensation of the modelling world apart. ‘It almost makes me feel like starting up again,’ she said moodily, taking another sip from her glass, the liquid leaving her lips shimmering.

Sam speared a curve of chicory. ‘Well, you can’t,’ she said practically. ‘You’ve got Flora to look after. And you still haven’t told me why you wanted to see me so urgently today. What’s the panic?’

‘Bob is.’ Charlotte drained the glass and had it refilled immediately.

‘Bob?’ It was, Sam reflected, almost amusing that Charlotte should be so insensitive as to ask Sam’s advice about the man she had seduced away from her without compunction. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘You mean apart from the fact that he’s dull, stuffy, totally wrapped up in golf and takes me for granted?’

‘You did marry him,’ said Sam rather pointedly, but the remark went completely over Charlotte’s head. She had almost finished the bottle and was now slurring her words slightly.

‘I need someone who understands my needs,’ she said dramatically. ‘Someone who—my God! Look who’s here!’

Sam cast a sideways glance then wished she hadn’t because, just entering the restaurant, accompanied by a stunning redhead, was the man popularly coined ‘the thinking woman’s fantasy’, Declan Hunt, the acclaimed photographer. The man who, having made a mint in the States, was back in London with his secretary to set up a brand-new photographic studio.

And the man who was interviewing Sam next week for the prestigious post of his assistant.

‘It’s Declan Hunt, isn’t it?’ she said, keeping her voice deliberately casual, as she observed Charlotte’s eyes glittering avariciously, wishing that something, anything, could transport her a hundred miles away from here.

‘Mmm,’ said Charlotte lasciviously, running a pink tongue over frosted lips. ‘Sure is. Wonder who the overblown Amazon with him is, though.’

Sam looked at her sister aghast. ‘What a dreadful expression to use,’ she objected in a whisper. ‘And apart from anything else, it’s completely inaccurate. The woman’s an absolute stunner.’

She was, too, tall, with beautiful long limbs and a shapely, magnificent bosom. Her hair was naturally auburn by the look of it and it fell in thick waves past her shoulders. She was wearing a kind of Sherwood-green jerkin and trousers tucked into brown leather boots which made her look like a very sexy bandit indeed.

‘Huh,’ said Charlotte, and, taking a last swig, she rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘Well, let’s give her something to think about.’

‘Charlotte—where the hell are you going?’

‘To see my old friend and colleague, dear Declan.’

Sam watched in silent humiliation as Charlotte weaved her way over to their table and shrieked, ‘Declan!’ to the darkly tousle-haired man whose brief frown indicated to Sam that, for a moment, he couldn’t remember her sister from Adam.

This was soon rectified by Charlotte, who reminded him in a voice loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear. And here Sam bent her head, scarlet with shame, as Charlotte threw her arms around his neck and clung to him like a limpet.

She saw him shoot an apologetic look over his shoulder at the redhead whom Charlotte had pointedly ignored, before disentangling Charlotte firmly and indicating with a polite glance at the table that he wished to proceed with his meal.

Unfortunately, that was not to be an end to it. Charlotte came back to her own table, obviously disgruntled, and hell-bent on re-establishing her reputation as a femme fatale. And it seemed that her intentions to discuss her marriage problems with Sam had flown right out of the window, since Bob was not mentioned by her again, and any attempt by Sam to reintroduce him into the conversation was firmly quashed. Instead, she flirted like mad with the men on the next table, before allowing the two braying merchant bankers with their striped shirts and gin-flushed faces to join them, bringing with them a bottle of champagne.

As their laughter grew louder and more uncontrolled, Sam looked up, aware of being caught up in the dazzle of a hauntingly bright stare, as blindingly mesmerising as the headlights of a car on a pitch-black night. There was a renewed wail of affected laughter from Charlotte and her conquests, and an unmistakably derisive twist appeared on the hard, cold mouth of Declan Hunt—before he turned away, bending his head to listen to the beautiful redhead who was whispering into his ear with an amused smile. And it wouldn’t take three guesses to imagine what she was saying to him, thought Sam gloomily.

Her torment ended only when Bob, Charlotte’s husband, appeared at the door of the restaurant, with Flora, their daughter. And while Charlotte went off to repair her lipstick in the powder-room, Sam hurried over to her niece to sweep her up in a bear-hug, and have lots of wet kisses pressed enthusiastically into her neck.

‘You’re so good with kids, Sam,’ said Bob, a touch wistfully, when the small hairs on the back of her neck started prickling as she became instinctively aware that she was being stared at, and, once again, she raised her head to look in the direction of the man who stared, frozen in time as he surveyed her with a pair of puzzled blue eyes.

Sam came back to the present to find that the eyes which studied her now were not puzzled; anything but. They were faintly disapproving.

‘So you’re Charlotte Gilbert’s sister,’ he repeated.

‘Yes. We don’t look alike.’ We aren’t alike, she wanted to say, but you couldn’t very well denigrate your sister to a total stranger.

‘No, you don’t.’ The eyes held her in their thrall, piercing and direct, like twin blue swords.

That day in the restaurant, he had been wearing a dark and superbly cut suit with a dazzlingly white collar and a tie and, barring the thick and unruly waves of his dark hair that had stubbornly refused to lie flat, he had looked the epitome of elegant sophistication.

But today he looked different. Today, he was dressed from head to foot in denim, with the dark hair curling untidily over the collar of his denim shirt, and the blue of the material only emphasised the cold blueness of his eyes. The denim of his jeans was faded to a paler blue, the fabric stretched almost indecently over long, muscular thighs which seemed to go on forever . . . Today, he was worlds away from the man she had seen in the restaurant. Today, he looked earthy, an innate sexuality shimmering off that lean physique like a haze.

Sam gulped. ‘About that day—’ But he silenced her with a shake of his head, so that all those tangled curls moved with a life of their own.

‘That day had little enough to commend it without raking it over any further,’ he said coldly. ‘Tell me, do you make a habit of going on long, boozy lunches and picking up total strangers? It could get you into all kinds of trouble.’

She half wanted to say, I’m not like that—I was sober! But something in his high-handed manner angered her. Why should she attempt to defend herself to him? He probably wouldn’t give her the job now in any case. And, even though she had been embarrassed by Charlotte’s behaviour at the time, now she perversely felt a sudden stirring of loyalty. Charlotte had been out of order, yes—but, from the disapproving expression on Declan Hunt’s face, anyone would have thought that they had both stood up on a table and performed a striptease!

She stared at him, her dark brown eyes sparking with insurrection, wondering how he would terminate the interview, when she decided that she would not give him that pleasure. ‘It’s all right, Mr Hunt,’ she told him, with an attempt to sound at her most reasonable. ‘I quite understand that you probably don’t want to consider me for the job now.’

The flamboyant swoop of one ebony brow curved up by a fraction. ‘Oh? And why’s that?’

‘You obviously disapprove of how I conduct my social life—’