AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Fran swallowed. It was time.
Sam felt her move. He was restless himself. The meadow-sweet scent of her hair and the rich feel of the velvet against his skin was unbearably stimulating to the senses. ‘Want to sit this next one out?’ he questioned huskily. ‘Or dance on?’
‘I think I’ve had enough dancing,’ she told him truthfully. Much more of this and she would be blurting out what she had done.
‘Me, too. You’re a very distracting partner.’ He cupped her chin in his hand, mimicking the gesture of earlier. His eyes crinkled as he smiled. ‘At the risk of sounding terribly corny—do you want to save the last dance for me?’
‘There must be someone else you’d rather dance with,’ she said lightly.
‘Nope.’
Their eyes were on a collision course and Fran couldn’t have looked away, not if the world was tumbling about her ears around her. Come to think of it—in a few short minutes it might be doing exactly that!
‘Fran, Fran, Fran,’ he murmured. ‘I’m blinded by the green-gold dazzle of your eyes but you still haven’t given me your answer.’
‘If you still want to dance with me later, then I will,’ she hedged, knowing that the request would never be made.
She broke away from him and headed off in the direction of the white handkerchief, stepping outside into the crisp February air, her eyes adjusting to the darkness.
‘Pssst! Fran!’
Fran turned round in the direction of the voice and she caught a glimmer of gold, heard a stifled giggle. Five women, all in evening dress, stood huddled beneath the shadows of a nearby tree like a coven of witches.
Only five? Rosie had implied that she would be bringing at least double that number.
Swallowing down her regrets, Fran carefully picked her way over the foot-flattened grass towards them. Rosie was in the middle, wearing white, with most of her thighs on show and an air of suppressed excitement fizzing off her like electricity. The other four women were oddly disappointing. And not at all what she had been expecting. Over-perfumed and overmade-up, they looked cheap and out of place, like Christmas decorations brought out in the middle of summer.
And the last kind of women that she could imagine Sam seducing.
‘Everything set?’ Rosie whispered agitatedly.
Fran nodded gloomily. ‘The song you requested will be played in five minutes’ time.’
‘Good!’ Rosie gestured to the shivering bevy of women grouped behind her. ‘Want me to introduce you?’
Fran shook her head. ‘No, thanks. No offence, but I don’t think I’m going to strike up any lasting friendships with any of you.’
‘Is he in there?’ whispered one of the women.
‘Ask her,’ answered a redhead in a silver jump suit, who pointed a talon-like fingernail at Fran. ‘You were just dancing with him, weren’t you? We all saw you smooching!’
Fran felt the accusation gathering up like a storm cloud as she faced five mutinous faces. ‘I was not smooching!’
‘No?’ asked another spikily. ‘We actually saw him kiss you, so I’d like to know what else you’d call it! Did you like the way it felt to have his arms around you, Fran?’
‘He asked me to dance,’ Fran said, realizing just how passive she sounded. ‘What else could I do?’
A skinny brunette with bony shoulders narrowed her eyes. ‘Just be glad we’re here,’ she said huskily. ‘And that we’re saving you from certain heartbreak.’
Fran shook her head. ‘I don’t think I need rescuing.’
‘You’re trying to tell us that you wouldn’t have ended the evening in bed with Sam?’
Fran shuddered with distaste and looked down at her watch, dreading what was about to happen next and yet longing for it to all be over. ‘Your time has come, ladies,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘Over to you.’
Afterwards, Fran tried to convince herself that it wasn’t as bad as people subsequently made out. That it just happened to be bad luck that the floor had completely cleared as the evocative song began its first, sultry notes.
Sam was sitting chatting to a man at his table when Rosie appeared from nowhere and walked up with a dramatic kind of swagger to ask him to dance.
