Sophie's Seduction

‘What was Amber thinking, taking her on?’

Sophie, unashamedly eavesdropping now, strained to hear as the other girl lowered her voice to a confidential undertone.

‘You know that diamond bracelet that Amber wears…?’

There was a pause when presumably the other girl had nodded. ‘Well, that was a little parting gift from Oscar Balfour.’

‘Amber and Oscar Balfour…wow! Why didn’t I know that?’

‘It was years ago, and it didn’t last long.’

‘Oscar Balfour…he’s quite attractive for an older man, isn’t he? Actually, quite sexy and he looks like he knows…’

Grimacing, Sophie had no desire to hear the women discussing her father in that sort of detail and covered her ears. When she uncovered them again one girl was saying, ‘And let’s face it—a Balfour girl working here…God, you couldn’t pay for that sort of advertising.’

‘That twin…Bella, the skinny one…?’

‘The impossibly gorgeous one?’

‘All right, the gorgeous one. Do you remember that time she was pictured wearing a dress from that charity shop and the shelves emptied overnight.’

Sophie did remember. She remembered when the subject had been raised during a family dinner.

Zoe had joked that she didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Sophie, she said, had been wearing charity-shop clothes for years.

Sophie had joined in the laughter, even inviting further hilarity by comparing the practicality and comfort of the sports bras she favoured with push ups that consisted of a few scraps of lace. But later in her own room she had looked at her wardrobe, filled with the sorts of clothes—or tents in boring colours, as Annie had once described her style—that made her glamorous sisters despair, and she hadn’t smiled.

The tent situation was not accidental, but her taller, slimmer sisters who did not have breasts that made men snigger and stare would not have understand her decision to hide her ample bosom under voluminous tops.

In a family famed for beauty, grace and wit—the very things that Sophie had missed out on—she had, presumably by way of compensation, been given instead the clumsy gene. A nuisance…yes, but to Sophie’s way of thinking not as much of a blight as having heads turn when you walked into a room the way they did automatically for her sisters.

A Balfour girl who disliked the limelight—a Balfour girl…how she hated that phrase—who was not witty or beautiful, made her something of a freak.

So much so that Sophie sometimes wondered if the real Balfour baby had been left at the hospital the day they brought her home—but she had the Balfour blue eyes, the same piercing Balfour blue of her father’s eyes.

For the average Balfour, being the centre of attention was as commonplace as breathing and something that they took as much for granted.

It was Sophie’s idea of hell.

But she had a solution. It had taken her time but at twenty-three she had just about perfected the art of fading into the background. Being short and on the dumpy side gave her a head start, so now the only time strangers noticed her was when she managed to trip over her own feet, or spill something.

She did both in graceful unison when a voice behind her said, ‘Can I help you?’

Sophie yelped, spun around and dropped her bag on the waxed floorboards. A tall blonde woman dressed in a snug-fitting red sheath that showed off her slim figure watched, one brow raised, as Sophie dropped to her knees and began to pick up the coins that had tipped out of her purse.

‘Sorry…I…’ Pushing her hair back from her flushed face Sophie held out her hand.

The woman looked at it with a lack of enthusiasm.

Sophie dropped her arm. ‘I’m Sophie…Sophie Balfour—I’m meant to be here…working…I…My father…’

‘You are Sophie Balfour?’ The blonde woman looked openly sceptical.

Sophie who had encountered this response before nodded and repressed the impulse to say, No, I’m an impostor! I kidnapped the real Sophie Balfour! ‘Yes. I think you were expecting me.’

‘I was expecting…’

The woman didn’t finish the sentence; she didn’t need to. It was no struggle to fill in the blanks—she’d been expecting someone with glamour and style.

And she got me.

The blonde compressed her red-painted lips. If there had been any movement possible in her forehead—Sophie had seen more lines on a newborn baby than on this woman’s smooth face—she would definitely have been frowning, but she made a quick recovery and produced a strained smile.

‘I’m Amber Charles. Your father tells me you’re very talented.’

Sophie gave a self-deprecating shrug, but there was animation in her expression as she admitted, ‘I enjoy colour and texture…’ She stopped, the animation fading when she realised that the svelte designer was regarding the colour and texture of her outfit with a look of growing horror.

She glanced down, genuinely not sure what she was wearing.

‘I’ve got my CV.’ Her school grades would not put an admiring light in the other woman’s eyes.

Sophie had shown no talent for anything academic, or for that matter anything sporting at Westfields, and she had often wished she’d had the guts to run away from the place like Kat. But instead she had kept a low profile and waited for the day she could leave.

Amber held up a hand and shook her head. ‘I’m sure they’re excellent.’

Want to bet? Sophie thought, and smiled.

‘A high level of girls from Westfields go to Oxbridge. My cousin’s daughter graduates next summer—she adores it. Which university did you attend?’

‘Actually, I didn’t go to university.’

The pencilled brows lifted.

‘I did a home-study course,’ she explained, wondering if she ought to say she passed with flying colours.

‘How…nice.’

Sophie watched her boss struggle to smile; clearly her dad had been economic with the details when he wangled her a job with his ex-flame.

‘Well, Sophie, what are we going to do with you?’

From her expression Sophie was thinking it possible that vanish was her first choice.

‘You may be talented…’

Sophie knew she ought to rush into this doubtful pause and confidently announce she was actually not just talented but a bit of a genius, but selling herself was not her thing.

‘…but it’s not enough to have talent…’