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Still, a beneficial side effect of the announcement of his engagement to Julia was that it would, thankfully, bring Aimee to her senses—or at least what senses she possessed, Silas decided unkindly.
She had managed to leave the hotel without anyone stopping her to ask where she was going, and Julia could feel her heart starting to beat that familiar little bit faster as she turned into the alleyway that led to the shoe shop.
She stopped guiltily to look back over her shoulder. Of course she should feel ashamed of herself, and no doubt she would later, but right now all she could think of were the shoes. And there they were, in the window, with their darling high delicate heels, and the kind of low-cut front that she knew would show just the right amount of toe cleavage.
She could stand here all day and look at them. But if she did that someone else might buy them, and she couldn’t bear that. Hurriedly she pushed open the shop door.
Over an hour later she left the shop, clutching two carrier bags, her face flushed and pink with happiness and her eyes shining. It had been so impossible to choose between the two pairs of shoes she had fallen for that in the end she had decided she had to have both. They had been just too beautiful to resist.
‘No Nick, Lucy?’ Silas enquired, putting down the newspaper he had been reading as Lucy walked into the pleasantly shaded patio area at the back of the hotel.
‘No, he had to go into town to attend to a few things. He must have his mobile switched off as well, because I’ve just tried to ring him.’
Her innocent statement confirmed his own suspicions, and it was on the tip of Silas’s tongue to suggest cynically that she try Julia’s instead.
‘I hope he gets back soon. Dorland has just been on the telephone to say that there’s a big panic on at the villa. Apparently, the Tiffany necklace has gone missing.’
‘Don’t tell me he’s surprised?’
When Lucy looked puzzled, Silas explained, ‘Martina is known for her acquisitive nature, and it won’t be the first time she’s held on to a piece of loaned jewellery and refused to hand it back.’
‘But Dorland will have to pay Tiffany for it. Because they loaned it to him,’ Lucy protested, looking shocked.
‘I doubt the odd million or so would make much of a dent in Dorland’s bank account, and in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing wasn’t some kind of publicity stunt. My guess is that Dorland will have informed the media first, and not the police.’
‘Silas, you are far too cynical,’ Lucy told him gently.
‘It isn’t cynicism, it’s common sense,’ Silas corrected her, glancing at his watch and then putting down his paper. ‘Julia went into town earlier—she should be on her way back by now. I think I’ll take a walk and see if I can spot her.’
‘Julia’s gone in to town?’ Lucy’s forehead crinkled into a small frown. ‘Oh, I thought she said last night that she intended to spend the morning with you?’
‘She’d probably forgotten then about the laundry she had to pick up.’
It wasn’t his business to protect Lucy Blayne’s feelings, Silas reminded himself, but the poor girl was so obviously vulnerable—and besides, it wouldn’t serve his purpose to create suspicion and mistrust between Julia and her best friend.
She really didn’t know which pair of shoes were her favourite, Julia mused dreamily as she sauntered back to the hotel. True, the pair she had seen in the shop window had been her first love, and she had had to have them, but then the assistant had shown her the other pair, and a pang of such acute longing had gripped her that she had just not been able to choose between them. Thank heavens she had had the good sense to buy both pairs.
‘Hello, Jules.’
She came to an abrupt and wary halt as the alleyway opened up into a small square and Nick materialised in front of her. The square was quiet and empty, apart from two old men sitting outside a small café, both of whom looked as though they were asleep.
‘I’m just on my way back to the hotel,’ Julia announced, trying to assure herself that if she acted as though Nick’s aggressive attack on her had not actually taken place then somehow that would require him to behave decently.
‘Well, well,’ Nick murmured. ‘Look who’s here.’
Julia gave a small gasp of dismay as she looked across the square and saw Silas walking purposefully towards them.
‘Let’s see how he likes looking at this, shall we?’
Before she could stop him Nick had pushed her back against the wall and was kissing her with mock passion, as she fought to break free of him.
He didn’t release her until Silas’s shadow was falling across her face, and kept his back to Silas before he turned to saunter triumphantly away, so that only she could see the cruel satisfaction in his eyes.
‘It wasn’t like it seemed—’ she began shakily, as Silas stood in front of her, blotting out the warmth of the sun so that she felt so chilled she actually started to shiver.
‘Do you remember what I threatened to do when you set those wretched pheasants free?’ Silas asked her, almost gently.
Julia was not deceived; she had heard that dulcet note in his voice before and knew exactly what it meant.
‘Yes, you said if I ever did anything like that again I’d feel the flat of your hand on my butt, good and hard. You couldn’t get away with threatening me like that now. It’s illegal to smack a child.’
‘But you aren’t a child; you are an adult—even if you don’t seem to possess the ability to reason like one. And right now the best way, in fact the only way I can think of letting you know how furious you have made me, would be for me to apply the weight of my hand to that pretty little derrière of yours, until it blushes pink with shame for you.
‘Can’t you see what you’re doing? You said that you didn’t want to hurt Lucy, and yet you lied to me and to her so that you could sneak out and meet up with her husband. What if she had been the one to see Blayne pushing you against that wall as though he were about to take you right there and then?’
There was no gentleness left in his voice now, and Julia quailed beneath the savage lash of its anger.
She was no weak-willed pushover, though, to be treated like a child and threatened with the kind of humiliation Silas had just described.
‘I did not sneak out to meet Nick! I’d only just bumped into him. He kissed me like that deliberately, because he had seen you. He’s angry because I’ve told him I won’t sleep with him, and now he wants to hurt me and get at you as well!’
Her voice was trembling slightly with both indignation at Silas’s accusation and reaction to her own mental image of his open palm, spanking teasingly and sexily down on her bare behind whilst she tried to squirm free. She couldn’t help feeling a little bit turned on both by the image and her own reaction to it. There was something definitely rather naughtily delicious about the thought of such teasing love-play. Not that she was into anything as potentially painful as true S and M, but a little gentle game of forfeits with the kind of ‘punishment’ that would involve her partner indulging in some pretend bottom-spanking could be fun if she was in the right mood. And with the right man…A man like Silas?
Julia could feel herself starting to blush a little at the inner excitement caused by her own thoughts, but Silas soon brought her back to reality, insisting, ‘You claim you met Blayne by chance, and yet it was obvious to me this morning, when you said you intended to go into town, that you were hiding something.’
‘But it wasn’t a secret meeting with Nick,’ Julia protested.
‘Then what was it?’ Silas challenged her.
Julia looked down at the bags Nick had made her drop.
‘Shoes,’ she muttered guiltily.
‘Shoes?’
Silas looked from the carrier bags to her flushed face and then back again.
‘You didn’t want me to know you intended to buy shoes?’ he questioned, bemused.
Julia could only shake her head. If Silas didn’t know abou
t her shoe addiction then she certainly wasn’t going to expose herself to his mockery by telling him.
‘Come on, we’d better get back to the hotel,’ he announced, reaching down to pick up her bags.
Immediately Julia tried to stop him, not wanting to allow her precious purchases out of her own control.
‘Julia, I’ll carry them for you,’ Silas insisted, taking hold of her arm to hold her back so that he could pick them up, but he was gripping her arm exactly where Nick had bruised it the previous evening, and Julia couldn’t stop herself from giving a small, agonised gasp of pain.
‘What…?’
The sleeves of her tee shirt just about covered the bruise marks—or at least they did until Silas pushed one of them up to reveal them.
‘Who did this?’ he demanded quietly.
Julia didn’t even think of trying to lie.
‘Nick,’ she told him shakily. ‘Last night. He was furious when I told him about you…’
‘So he did this to you?’
The surge of angry protectiveness that gripped him caught him off guard. Of course no man should hurt a woman, but he was not used to experiencing such intense or possessive emotions.
