Past Passion

He was so very good-looking, so very sophisticated, so very charming... A charm that meant nothing—nothing at all, she reminded herself bitterly, ignoring the startled look of recognition from one of the other girls from the typing pool who was approaching the main doors to the hotel just as she stepped towards them.

‘Nicola? It is you, isn’t it? Heavens! Is that...is that a wig?’ she asked Nicola uncertainly.

‘No, it’s a perm,’ Nicola told her shortly.

She had never particularly liked Lisa. She was another blonde like Susan Hodges. Nicola’s chin tilted defiantly as she saw the way the other girl was studying her appearance. Her male companion was staring at her as well, Nicola recognised, and he was staring at her in a manner with which she was not familiar. It made her feel both uncomfortable and uneasy, but she ignored these feelings, concentrating instead on the cruelty of the words she had overheard earlier in the day.

The foyer of the hotel was busy with people coming and going. A board just to one side of the reception desk had written up on it which functions were taking place in which suites, and it was easy for Nicola to find her way to the suite where their own party was taking place.

In point of fact she was familiar with the layout of the hotel, having eaten there and attended several functions with her parents over the years.

The gloomy dimness of the room made her blink a little when she first entered it. Individual tables had been set up around the small dance-floor, and she quickly headed for one occupied by some of the other girls from the typing pool.

All of them commented on the change in her appearance, but only one of them was unkind enough to remark that she was surprised to see her turning up on her own.

‘I thought you’d be coming with Jonathon,’ she added pointedly.

Now Nicola was glad of the gloom. She turned her head away and shrugged her shoulders, feigning nonchalant uninterest.

But uninterest was the last thing she actually felt when Jonathon walked in with Susie on his arm.

The two of them seemed to take a long time to walk across the room. Jonathon never even looked in her direction, Nicola noticed dispiritedly, but Susie certainly did, her eyes widening a little as she took in Nicola’s altered appearance.

Let her stare, Nicola thought defiantly, giving her head a bitter little toss. Let them both stare...

She was determined that, before tonight was over, she was going to make Jonathon eat his words, although it was becoming increasingly obvious to her that if she was actually to achieve this objective what she really needed was to have some other man paying attention to her, making it plain that he did not consider her either dull or sexless... And not just any man... It would have to be a very special kind of man, the kind of man who—

Her eyes widened, her breath catching in her throat as she stared at the man who had just walked into the room.

Unlike the other male guests, who were all wearing formal suits, this man was dressed casually, his soft blue shirt open at the throat, his jeans clinging to his thighs.

‘Wow! Just look at that!’ one of the other girls at the table giggled appreciatively. ‘I wonder where he’s come from...’

‘Who knows? But one thing’s for sure... He won’t be staying long—not dressed like that.’

‘Wanna bet?’ another of the girls commented drily. ‘He just happens to be one of our most important clients. I knew he’d been invited, but I don’t think anyone actually thought he’d come...’

Behind her the girls were giggling and chattering excitedly about the newcomer’s good looks, but Nicola wasn’t paying very much attention.

A waiter came round with a tray of champagne cocktails. Although normally she didn’t drink, Nicola took one, and gulped thirstily at it.

The champagne tickled the back of her throat and made her cough a little, but the delicious warm feeling that spread through her stomach after she had emptied her glass was undeniably pleasant.

She felt better, too...stronger, more confident, more determined than ever to show Jonathon just how wrong he was about her.

That she also felt decidedly wobbly when she stood up to accept a second cocktail from another waiter was something she decided to ignore.

It was just nerves, she told herself firmly. Just nerves... After all, no one, not even someone who never drank, could get drunk on two champagne cocktails—could they?

One of the girls got up and announced that she was going to the bar. She asked Nicola what she wanted to drink and, unsure of what to ask for, Nicola quickly repeated the order given by the girl sitting next to her, although not entirely sure what a ‘VAT’ might be.

When the drinks arrived, the odd, oily after-taste of hers was a little strange, but nevertheless good manners made her empty her glass.

Jonathon and Susie weren’t sitting with his parents, she noticed woozily as she searched the room for them. Jonathon was in fact talking to the man in jeans while Susie simpered up to him, batting her eyelashes and smiling. He was, Nicola recognised dreamily, far, far better looking than Jonathon. He was also far, far more masculine than Jonathon, and a tiny, delicious tremor of sensation suddenly and very shockingly ran through her at the thought of being held against that hard, male chest, of being touched by those very male hands.

Without even thinking about what she was doing, she got to her feet, ignoring the muzzy, dizzying sensation in her head and the odd weakness in her legs.

She walked unsteadily across the floor, and as she approached their table she saw the way Susie clutched possessively at Jonathon’s arm, her eyes widening, her scarlet nails digging into his jacket.

Jonathon had seen her now. She saw the shock register in his eyes as he looked at her, and immediately a pleasurable rush of warmth and triumph ran through her stomach. She gave him a pouting smile...the kind of smile she had seen Susie use so often, and then she tossed her head, so that her wild mane of curls bounced everywhere. The motion of tossing her head had, she realised uncomfortably, made her feel rather sick.

‘Hi, Jonathon.’ She ignored Susie, closing the gap between Jonathon and herself so that she could look up into the jeans-clad stranger’s face. ‘Would you like to dance?’

She could see the shock in Jonathon’s face...hear the outrage in Susie’s gasp, but she didn’t care—why should she? She was going to show Jonathon just how wrong he was about her; she was going to show him that she was desirable, sexy...that men did want her.

The man was looking at her now, an extremely odd expression in his eyes. For a moment, as he studied her, they hardened and became so cold that she actually flinched, tears threatening to blur her own eyes as through the fog of alcohol and misery engulfing her she realised that, despite all her efforts, he did not find her attractive—that he was in fact going to reject her. She put a defensive hand up to her face, and started to move back from him, her cheeks flushing with guilt and humiliation. However, before she could move away his hands came out and circled her wrist, stopping her. She stared at it in confusion. She had never realised that it would be possible for a man to hold her so lightly and yet so securely. He wasn’t exerting the slightest bit of pressure on her skin, and yet she knew that if she tried to pull away those lean fingers would tighten around her bones like manacles.

Shocked awareness cleared the drink-induced fuzziness from her eyes as they focused on his and saw the relentless, determined glittering in their grey depths. Too stupefied to resist, she stayed where she was, bewilderment following shock as she wondered why she felt as though she had suddenly stepped off the edge of the earth.

Was it the champagne cocktails? She pressed her free hand to her stomach uneasily as she heard her captor saying coolly to Jonathon,

‘Please excuse us. It seems the lady wants to dance...’

Despite the fact that she could hear no trace of irony of emphasis in his voice, she still flushed at the sound of the word ‘lady’.

‘Ladies’ did not dress the way she was dressed tonight...they did not wear the kind of make-up she was wearing, and they certainly did not approach strange men and ask them to dance.

She half hesitated, nervously conscious of a tremor of doubt churning her stomach, of a desire to escape not just from her captor, but from the entire situation she had created, and then she looked at Jonathon and saw the transfixed way in which he was regarding her, and saw also in his eyes a look of mingled anger and caution. He was annoyed because she was dancing with someone else, she recognised immediately, and not only was he angry, he was also afraid of saying so—afraid of challenging this man standing at her side for the right to dance with her.

He was, she realised on a fierce thrill of awareness, if not jealous, then certainly resentful of the other man’s presence at her side.

It was working, she recognised shakily. It was actually working...her hair, her clothes, her make-up were not, after all, the disaster she had begun to think; they could not be, could they, if they were making Jonathon see her as a desirable woman—as someone he did not wish to see dancing with another man.

Elation filled her. She turned to her captor and gave him a dazzling smile. His eyes widened again before his glance flicked away from her to Jonathon and then back again.

‘See you soon,’ she heard him saying to Jonathon, and then, somehow or other, without her being too sure how it had happened, she was on the small dance-floor and in his arms, swaying against him in time to the slow, hypnotic beat of the music.

In fact the way he was holding her felt so comforting and safe, and the pleasant heat coming off his body made her feel so warm, that she was almost tempted to close her eyes and... She gave a small, cat-like yawn, and half stumbled as she missed a step. Instantly the arms holding her tightened.

‘I think the proper place for you right now is bed, not a dance-floor,’ she heard him saying in her ear.

Muzzily she lifted her head from his shoulder and stared at him. It had happened, she had been right. Men didn’t care about the sort of person you were...only how you looked. It had to be true, otherwise why was this man, who had never set eyes on her before tonight, telling her that he wanted to go to bed with her, when, in all the months she had been working in the typing pool, only Jonathon had even asked her out, and then he had not made any real sexual overtures to her? And she knew why. Because he thought her sexless and boring... Well, if he had just heard what he—this man—had said to her, he wouldn’t think so...

Triumph filled her blood with a warm, singing heat which, mixed with the alcohol she had consumed, had an electrifying effect on her perceptions and reactions.

Recklessly ignoring the inner voice warning her to be careful, she stopped dancing and looked up at him.

‘Well, if that’s what you want,’ she told him breathlessly, ‘and if you’re sure you don’t mind leaving so soon...’