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‘My parents split up before I was born. My mother had never wanted a child. Her ambition was to be an actress.’
Star frowned as she heard not condemnation in his voice, as she had expected, but, instead, compassion. He felt compassion for a mother who had rejected him? A tiny feather-brushing of unease—no more—disturbed the deep waters of her conviction that all men were the same, that all men were, in essence, her father—a feeling so vague that it was easy for her to dismiss and ignore it and tell herself that Kyle was even more devious than she had first suspected and adept at manipulating the vulnerability of the female psyche.
‘Unfortunately she died before she could realise it,’ Kyle continued. ‘An undiagnosed heart defect. Before her death, though, there had been...problems...and ultimately my father agreed to take me in and bring me up alongside his second family... I was very lucky...’
‘How—in being allowed to grow up alongside them?’ Star enquired mockingly.
He couldn’t deceive her. She knew all about how it felt to watch the father who didn’t want you favouring some other child whilst you looked on in impotent grief and rage.
‘In a sense, yes,’ Kyle told her evenly, ignoring her sarcasm. ‘You see, my stepmother had an older sister who... Well, let’s just say she was a very, very special person and she kinda took me under her wing...helped me to understand...to develop a proper sense of myself... taught me what it was like to be loved and valued... and that’s something I guess every child, and every adult too, needs...’
‘Here endeth the first lesson,’ Star taunted softly under her breath, but if Kyle had heard her he wasn’t responding to her taunt. Instead he was looking at the menu.
‘Would you recommend the sea-bass?’ Star queried with mock-feminine deference.
But Kyle refused to be drawn, commenting only, ‘I certainly like it.’
‘Well, then, I’ll just have to try a taste of yours, won’t I?’ Star flirted, refusing to give up.
It was only a matter of time, Star told herself confidently. With time and persistence she would be able to prove to her own satisfaction that underneath the disguise of chivalrous knighthood that he chose to wear he was just as untrustworthy, as selfish and careless of other people’s feelings as the rest of his sex.
Not that it was going to be all hard work getting him to back down from his claim that, for him, sex meant nothing without emotion. Unlike men, she did not need the crutch of self-deceit for her ego. It wasn’t simply to prove a point that she intended to challenge him—and to win. She had already acknowledged the heightened buzz of sexual awareness that being with him was giving her.
The maître d’ was hovering, waiting to take their order. Star’s mouth curled in a small feline smile as she chose one of the vegetarian options, her smile deepening as Kyle ordered the sea-bass. Before handing the menu back to the maître d’ he murmured something to him that Star couldn’t hear.
Several minutes later, as a waiter escorted them to their table, Star was amused to see the way the other diners watched them whilst trying to pretend that they were not doing so.
‘We seem to be causing something of a stir.’ she murmured dulcetly to Kyle as they sat down. ‘I wonder why...?’
‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ Kyle countered evenly, smiling at her. ‘You know perfectly well that there isn’t a single man in the place who has been able to take his eyes off you since you came down those stairs.’
Kyle wasn’t quite sure how he expected her to react to his comment, but the sudden warm peal of totally genuine laughter she gave as she acknowledged the truth of his comment made him realise that she was not as predictable and true to type as he had originally assumed, and that whilst with a little conscious effort he should be able to withstand the sensual heat of her deliberate come-ons to him, resisting the effect of that wholly natural laughter and the rueful intelligence in her eyes was going to be much, much harder.
So it was with relief that he observed her revert to type, and he was thrown as she asked him softly, ‘Not a single man... Does that include you?’
‘I’m as visually attracted to a beautiful, sensually dressed woman as the next man,’ Kyle replied drily.
It was not exactly the reaction she had hoped for but it would do—for a start, Star told herself as the waiter brought their starters.
Star had ordered mussels, which she picked up with her fingers and ate with a deliberate, almost greedy relish, triumphantly conscious of the fact that although Kyle affected not to be he was acutely aware, as he ate his way stoically through his seafood platter, of the sensuality in the way she was eating.
When she had had enough she licked the juice from the tips of her fingers with deliberate enjoyment, enthusing, ‘Mmm...that was delicious.’
. There were several mussels still left on her plate and as she made eye contact with him she picked one up and held it out to him, offering, ‘Here, why don’t you try one?’
His calm, ‘I already have, thank you,’ as he indicated the empty shells on his own plate, would have caused a lesser woman to retreat in a self-conscious fluster of embarrassment, Star acknowledged, but she was not so easily discomposed. Why should she be? She knew already that he wanted her. Now it was simply a matter of making him admit it.
As she smiled into the bemused eyes of the young waiter who had come to take their plates, she mentally congratulated herself on her inevitable victory and settled back to enjoy the rest of the game.
Their main courses arrived and were served—her own very appetising vegetarian dish and Kyle’s sea-bass.
Star waited until they had been served before recommencing her attack, pouting slightly as she eyed her own plate and then Kyle’s.
‘The bass does look good...’ she began.
There was something in the dark blue steadiness of his gaze as he returned her eye contact that wasn’t, somehow, quite in line with his predictable, ‘Would you like some?’
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ Star responded softly, already leaning towards him, reaching out with one hand to hold his wrist as he lifted his fork towards her mouth, when out of the corner of her eye she saw him make a small gesture towards the maître d’ and then saw, to her chagrin, their waiter hurrying towards their table, carrying a small portion of the sea-bass.
She could see Kyle watching her urbanely as the waiter served her with the fish, all her earlier good humour and sense of triumph evaporating in the smouldering fury of knowing that he had not only anticipated her move but very skilfully sidestepped it as well.
Star wasn’t used to men rejecting her sexual advances; she wasn’t used, in fact, to having to make them. It wasn’t normally necessary and for a moment the sheer shock of having the tables so neatly and unexpectedly turned on her held her completely silent.
‘So you’re a PR consultant,’ Kyle commented as he calmly ate his own fish.
‘Yes,’ Star agreed coolly. ‘I trained with one of the large London agencies and then decided to set up on my own...’
‘It’s a very stressful and competitive business, especially—’
‘For a woman?’ Star supplied challengingly for him.
‘For anyone,’ Kyle corrected her. ‘Especially when you’re working on your own.’
‘I like stress...and competition,’ Star told him. Was he trying to find out if she was involved with someone? If she had a partner...a backer...another man in her life? Determinedly she pushed her chagrin at his refusal to respond to her flirtatious teasing over the fish to one side. If he was interested in finding out if there was another man in her life then that was a good sign.
‘And I’m certainly far from being the only woman to set up in business on her own,’ she added.
‘True,’ he agreed. ‘They do say that the type of person most likely to succeed in business on their own is one who enjoys taking control of their own life.’
‘And you don’t approve of the female sex wanting to take control?’ Star asked softly, feeling
that she was getting back on firmer ground.
‘Not at all,’ Kyle contradicted her. ‘It’s just that I often wonder if it isn’t so much a need to take control of their own lives as a fear of being in a situation where they are not in control that is the real emotion motivating such people—a fear of making contact with others, of being open to them...and vulnerable to them...that drives them into isolating themselves—’
Star stared at him across the table as he broke off to shake his head as the waiter offered him more wine; she was torn between an aggressive desire to deny what he was saying and a passively wary one to ignore it.
‘I own and run my own business too,’ she heard him saying as the waiter left, ‘and...’ He started to frown as he realised that she had stopped eating, and asked her solicitously, ‘Didn’t you like the bass, after all?’
