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‘Marcus! What in heaven’s name do you think you’re doing? Unhand that wretched woman at once!’
CHAPTER FOUR
HARRIET was beginning to think that she had been foolish to wear a backless gown on a date with a relentless womaniser.
She plucked Michael Fleet’s crawling hand out of the fabric draped around the base of her spine and replaced it on the relative safety of her hip for what seemed like the hundredth time since they had stepped onto the dance-floor.
‘Michael, do you have to hold me so tightly? I can’t breathe!’ Plastered against his chest, she received an unwelcome blast of alcohol fumes whenever he turned his face towards hers.
‘S’awlright, sweetie; if you pass out I can give you the kiss of life…’ He hugged her even more tightly and nuzzled a wet mouth suggestively against her neck.
Harriet sighed. The evening which had sparkled with such early promise had degenerated to the point where she was seriously considering ducking out on her partner.
It was ages since Harriet had been to see a play, and the glittering first-night comedy that Michael had taken her to had perfectly suited her frivolous mood. She had equally enjoyed being plied with elegant food, wine and flattery over their late supper. It had only been when they had moved on to the nightclub that her spirits had flagged. She had expected frenetic rock and uninhibited freestyle dancing, but Lizzie’s turned out to cater to the city’s more sophisticated night-owls and the live band was slow, bluesy and very much an encouragement to old-fashioned smooching on the dance-floor.
The trouble was that she didn’t want to smooch…at least, not with Michael. He had been such an entertaining companion that Harriet had taken it for granted that there must be a physical attraction between them, but when he had taken her into his arms she had been disconcerted to feel not a single spark of excitement. Instead of being aroused by his slyly wandering touch, Harriet had discovered an unexpected ticklishness, her fits of nervous giggles effectively destroying the mood he was trying to set.
At first Michael had been appealingly good-natured about her lack of response, but as the night had worn on and he’d realised that she wasn’t going to fake a desire she didn’t feel in order to pander to his ego he had begun to laugh less and drink more. He glared aggressively at other men who came to ask her to dance and sulked if she accepted. It had got to the stage where Harriet was feeling distinctly threatened by his surliness, but at least when they were out on the dance-floor he wasn’t drinking. Perhaps if she kept him dancing long enough he would sober up and accept her rejection with good grace.
His hand drifted down again and this time he wouldn’t let her pull it away. They were in the midst of a discreetly nasty tussle when an imperious finger tapped Michael on the shoulder.
‘Mind if I cut in?’
‘Yes, I do. Buzz off and find your own woman,’ growled Michael without looking round.
‘Why don’t we ask the lady for her preference?’
‘Look, mate—’ Michael swung Harriet clumsily around so that he could insult the interloper to his face. The rest of his sentence was abruptly choked off. ‘Uh? Oh—’
‘You don’t mind, do you, Fleet?’
‘Uh—sure…I mean, no, no—go right ahead…’ Michael cannoned into another couple as he hastily stepped back from Harriet, his normal fluency deserting him in his anxiety not to offend a powerful superior. ‘I’ll just…er…I guess I’ll go and sit at the bar…’
Harriet stood stock-still, her face flushed with mingled relief and dismay, as her erstwhile partner melted into the surrounding crowd. Marcus Fox looked down at her revealing expression with a wry smile. ‘It certainly pays to have influence,’ he murmured.
‘M-Mr Fox—fancy seeing you here,’ she said feebly.
‘Fancy,’ he mocked. He held out his hand, palm up. ‘Shall we dance, Miss Smith?’
Unfortunately Harriet was still too stunned by his appearance to think of refusing. Of all the ghastly coincidences! she thought as she moved stiffly into the circle of his arms.
Marcus Fox was the last person she’d expected to see kicking up his heels in a trendy nightclub. He was also the last person she wanted to see, the memory of the uncomfortable scene she had precipitated in his office that morning still appallingly vivid…
Being painted a scarlet woman by his mother-in-law had been embarrassing enough, but it was the elegant-to-her-eyeballs Lynne Foster who had truly made Harriet bristle. His ‘dear, sweet Lynne’, who hadn’t turned an exquisitely coiffured hair at the sight of him inspecting the underwear of a daring blonde.
‘I’m a criminal lawyer,’ she had told Harriet in a crisply amused voice as Harriet had scrambled off the desk in a flurry of awkwardness, brushing away the masculine hands that became inexplicably tangled in her efforts to drag down her skirt. ‘I would never dream of allowing circumstantial evidence to convict a client…or a friend.’ From the warm look she’d cast Marcus Fox it had been obvious that he was very much included in the latter category.
‘You can make a full and frank confession over dinner tonight, Marcus,’ she had teased him complacently, her tone implying that she knew he would never do anything so unbelievably tacky, while at the same time subtly establishing her territorial rights. To Harriet, her amused condescension had been far more humiliating than Susan Jerome’s scathing contempt. She had blushed to the roots of her pale hair.
As for the man in question, to Harriet’s chagrin he had remained infuriatingly detached from her embarrassment. Ignoring his mother-in-law’s quivering outrage, he had calmly introduced Harri
et in glowing terms and then suggested that she go away and tidy herself up…for all the world as if they had been messily engaged in the very activity that Susan Jerome suspected.
To compound his sin, as she moved past him he lowered his voice to murmur, for Harriet’s ears only, ‘Caught in a compromising situation twice within an hour with two different men? That must surely be some kind of office record, Miss Smith…’
Since it was physically impossible for her to blush any harder than she was already doing, Harriet took petty revenge by pausing to ask in a loud voice loaded with coy innuendo, ‘And do you want me to come back and finish our…discussion when your visitors have gone, Mr Fox?’
He punished her by replying with ineffable blandness, ‘Why, no, I think you’ve satisfied me quite sufficiently for today, Miss Smith. Miss Broadbent will let you know when I want you again.’
