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PROLOGUE
ANOTHER wedding celebration. Star scowled as she studied the elegant invitation before throwing it onto her desk.
She was very tempted to make some excuse not to go—but if she did her friend Sally was bound to pounce on her absence as a sure indication that she, Star, was afraid that the old-fashioned superstition that Sally had practised on the occasion of her own wedding might have some potency to it after all.
Which was all nonsense of course. Just because the other two women who had caught Sally’s bridal bouquet along with her had within six months of Sally’s own wedding become brides themselves, it did not mean that she, Star, was going to fall into the same trap. No way. Not ever.
She scowled again, even more horribly this time. The fact that Poppy, the other bridesmaid at Sally’s wedding, had got married had not come as all that much of a surprise to Star, but the announcement that Sally’s stepmother had also married—just a small, private wedding—and was now holding a celebration party with her new husband for all his friends and relations in America... Uneasily, Star stared out of her study window. It so happened that business was taking her across to the States so she could, in fact, make it to the party, and if she didn’t go...
If she didn’t go Sally would tease her unmercifully about being afraid that there was something in that stupid, old-fashioned tradition that whoever caught the bride’s bouquet would be the next to marry.
But weddings were not her thing at all—she had only gone to Sally’s because Sally was her oldest and closest friend. After all, she had attended far too many of her father’s to have any faith any longer in the durability of the supposedly lifelong vows that people exchanged in the heat of their emotional and physical desire for one another, their compelling need to believe that those feelings would last for ever.
No, weddings, or parties to celebrate them, were quite definitely not her scene, and marriage even less so.
But, that being the case, what had she to fear in going to Claire’s party? Wasn’t she, her will, her determination, stronger than any foolish superstition? Of course she was, and, just to prove it, throwing open her window, Star took a deep breath and said firmly and loudly, ‘I am not going to fall in love. I am not going to get married. Not now. Not ever. So there.
‘Now,’ she muttered as she closed the window, ignoring the startled and slightly nervous glance of the elderly lady walking across the lawn in front of the apartment block, ‘do your worst, because, I promise you, it won’t make any difference to me and it certainly won’t change my mind. Nothing could. Nothing and no one.’
CHAPTER ONE
STAR surveyed the crowd of happy well-wishers surrounding the recently married couple with cynical contempt.
How many of those exclaiming enthusiastically about the happiness that lay ahead of Claire and Brad now that they were married could truthfully put their hands on their hearts and swear that their marriages, their permanent relationships, had truly enriched their lives, had truly made them happy?
If they’d known what she was thinking they would no doubt have questioned the ability of someone who had never been married and who was so vehemently and vocally opposed to any kind of emotional commitment to pronounce on the state of marriage at all, much less to criticise it, but Star believed that she had access to far more experience of what marriage actually was than most of them would be able to boast.
‘Star. Claire said you were going to be here.’ Silently Star suffered the enthusiastic hug of her oldest friend.
Sally’s voice voice muffled slightly by the thick, smooth, shiny sweep of Star’s dark red hair as she continued to hug her whilst telling her, ‘I’m so pleased about Ma and Brad, I just wish she wasn’t going to be living so far away. It was a wonderful idea of Brad’s family, wasn’t it, to organise this post-wedding gettogether and to invite us all over to share it?
‘Has Brad confirmed officially yet that you’re getting the PR contract for the British distribution side of things?’ Sally asked as she released her.
‘Not yet,’ Star told her calmly.
‘But you are going to get the contract,’ Sally insisted.
‘It looks likely,’ Star agreed sedately.
‘There’s only you left now,’ Sally teased her friend, changing tack. ‘Out of the three of you who caught my bouquet, two are now married, despite the vow that all of you made to stay single.’
Star gave a small, dismissive shrug.
‘It was inevitable that Poppy would marry James once she had got over her adolescent crush on Chris, and as for your stepmother...’ Star looked thoughtfully towards Claire, who was standing arm in arm with her new husband, her head inclined towards him as they exchanged a small, intimate smile.
‘You can stop looking at me like that,’ she warned Sally firmly. ‘I’m afraid I fully intend to be the exception to the rule, Sally. I intend to stay very firmly single and free of any kind of long-term emotional commitment.’
‘What if you fall in love?’ Sally probed spiritedly.
Star gave her a contemptuously bitter look.
‘Fall in love? You mean like my mother, who has fallen in love so many times that even she must have lost count, and who uses that state as an excuse for submerging herself and everyone close to her in a swamp of emotional chaos? Or were you meaning that I should, perhaps, follow my father’s example and show my “love” by begetting children whose existence becomes virtually forgotten when he moves on to a new love and a new commitment?’
‘Oh, Star,’ Sally protested remorsefully, reaching out to touch her friend’s slim, tanned wrist in a gesture of female sympathy. ‘I’m sorry. I—’
‘Don’t be,’ Star interrupted her crisply. ‘I’m not. In fact I’m grateful to both my parents for showing me reality rather than allowing me to believe in a false ideology. All right, so my parents might have taken to unconventional lengths the modern view that we each have a right to pursue our emotional happiness, no matter what the cost, but tell me honestly, Sally, how many couples you can name who remain genuinely happy in their relationships once the initial gloss has worn off.’
‘You’re such a cynic,’ Sally complained on a sigh.
‘No,’ Star punched back. ‘I’m a realist. I accept what, at heart, most women know but cannot allow themselves to accept—that the male human being is genetically programmed to spread his seed, his genes, just as far as he physically can, to impregnate as many women as he possibly can, and that is why he finds it biologically impossible to remain faithful to one woman.
‘And that is also why, in my opinion, if a woman wants to be happy she has to adopt his way of life, to enjoy herself sexually when it suits her and not him, to choose her sexual partners because they please her and to refrain from becoming emotionally involved with them, and to remember, if and when she chooses to have a child, that the chances are that she will be the sole emotional support to that child—!’
‘Oh, Star, that’s not fair,’ Sally interrupted her sadly, wincing when she saw the sardonic eyebrow that Star raised in silent mockery to her protest. ‘All right, I know that there are men like your... Men who do... Men who can’t be faithful to one woman,’ Sally agreed. ‘But not all men are like that.’
‘Aren’t they? But then you would say that, wouldn’t you?’ Star asked her grimly. ‘After all, you’ve got a vested interest in believing it, haven’t you?’ she added. ‘Speaking of which, how are things between you and Chris at the moment?’
‘They’re fine,’ Sally told her quickly.
Star knew her so well. Too well at times. Star knew how to get under her skin and pinpoint those small, tell-tale areas of vulnerability. She always had done and it didn’t even help Sally to remind herself that Star’s mode of defending herself and her own vulnerability was to go on the attack. Sally knew how much Star hated any reminders, any discussions about her emotional history, and how prone she was to fending them off by targeting her ‘attackers’ own weak points.
Not that her relationship with Chris was weak or under threat in any way, Sally hastily assured herself. It was true that just lately Chris had been working longer hours and away from home rather a lot, but...
Sally, suddenly realising that Star had switched her attention to someone else, turned round to see what had distracted her and was rather puzzled when she could see nothing out of the ordinary.
‘I must go,’ she told Star. ‘Chris will be wondering where I am.’
‘Mmm...’ Star agreed, steadily returning the appreciative interest of a man standing several yards away.
He had been watching her virtually all afternoon, despite his outward absorption in the woman clinging determinedly to his side.
She had two children with her, both of them petite and fair-haired like her. She was quite obviously their mother. Was he their father? Star gave a small shrug. What concern was that of hers?
She was not the kind of woman who deliberately made a play for another woman’s man, enjoying the challenge of taking from and competing with her own sex, but neither did she necessarily believe that it was up to her to be the guardian of someone else’s relationship.
As a young adult in her late teens and early twenties, she had gone through a phase of sexual experimentation with a variety of short-lived partners. But these days she was extremely choosy—too picky, in fact, or so she had been told—and she was very strict about adhering to a certain set of rules and standards that she had evolved for herself—not, perhaps, the same rules that society hypocritically pretended to live by, but she stuck to hers and they were important to her.
For a start, her partner had to have a clean bill of health and a willingness to prove it. And he certainly had to understand that all she intended to share with him was her sexual self.
She had no inhibitions or hang-ups about the physical side of her nature. Why should she have? If nature hadn’t intended a woman to enjoy sexual pleasure then she wouldn’t have equipped her with the means to do so, and, that being the case, it was more of a sin, in Star’s book, to deny herself that sexual pleasure than to enforce on herself a set of antiquated rules which had been imposed on women by men to preserve their own self-bestowed right to enjoy their sexuality whilst denying women the right to enjoy theirs.
Last but not least, her partner had to accept with good grace the fact that once the sexual excitement of their relationship had faded it was time for them both to move on, although not necessarily, in her case, to another lover.
These days she spent more time in bed alone than with someone else, and, if she was honest with herself, she had grown to prefer it that way.
When her father had walked out on her mother and she had witnessed the financial and emotional devastation that his absence had caused, despite her youth, she had made herself a vow that the same thing would never happen to her, that she would never allow herself to depend financially, or indeed in any way, on anyone other than herself, and that, unlike her mother, she would not keep on falling in love and remarrying in the forlorn hope of finding someone to fill the empty space in her life...in herself...
There were no empty spaces in her life or in her, Star had decided triumphantly three months ago when the arrival of her twenty-fifth birthday had prompted a mental stocktaking of her life.
‘Mom, I need the bathroom...’
Star frowned as her attention was abruptly refocused on the small family group that she had noticed earlier by the shrill, insistent voice of one of the children.
The man with them—their father, she assumed—was, she observed, more interested in catching her eye than acknowledging his wife’s attempt to capture his attention.
‘Clay, Ginny wants the bathroom,’ Star heard her telling him.
‘Then take her,’ he responded impatiently, shaking his head when the woman tried to insist that he went with them.
The look he gave Star as his wife gave in and walked away from him with their children across the lawn of Brad’s large family home—built on the shores of the lake around which lay the small American town where he and his family lived and to which he had brought his bride, Sally’s stepmother—was one she had seen in very many pairs of male eyes before his.
Barely waiting until his wife and children were out of sight, he started to make his way towards Star.
Star did nothing. She simply stood still, watching and waiting.
He was quite attractive, she decided judiciously, though not so attractive as he obviously believed, but then she quite enjoyed a certain amount of confidence in a man, as well as that very obvious streak of selfishness, provided he did not bring it to bed with him.
A selfish lover was not to her taste at all.
As he came towards her she
did not, as another woman might have done, exhibit any self-consciousness. There was no need for her to raise flirtatious fingers to the silky dark red satin of her hair which today she was wearing loose over her shoulders in a smooth, polished, immaculate fall. Nor did she need to check any other details of her appearance or draw attention to her sensuality.
The simple silk and linen dress that she was wearing had been bought in Milan and it showed. It fitted the slender, elegant line of her body perfectly. That was to say, it merely hinted at the feminine curves that lay beneath it rather than hugging or emphasising them in the way that the dress worn by the woman who had been clinging so desperately and so unsuccessfully to the man’s side had done.
Star never wore clothes which drew attention to her sexuality—there had never been any need for her to do so—not even in bed, where the only thing she wanted next to her own skin was that of her lover.
Behind her she could still hear the querulous voice of the child and the equally irritated response of her mother.
Star’s make-up, like her hair and her perfume, was understated. Her father might not have given her his physical support or indeed his financial support during her childhood, but he had given her his excellent bone structure, and by his absence he had also given her the opportunity to witness, at first hand, the folly of trying too hard to please his sex.
Not that she would ever have been tempted to try to appeal to this particular specimen of it, she decided, abruptly changing her mind about her admirer’s potential as she observed the smug satisfaction in his eyes—and the lack of humour or intelligence. She might not want to form any kind of permanent or emotional bond with a lover but she enjoyed the spine-tingling ritual of foreplay as much as any other woman, especially when it was spiced with intelligent conversation and laughter.
