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The sweet thrill in her veins soured. ‘How passive that sounds. I thought you were dating each other.’
‘We have a long-standing arrangement—’
‘Oh, so now it’s not a date, it’s an arrangement,’ she cut him off in a voice that dripped sarcasm, her blue eyes huge with disdain. ‘I suppose we could stand here arguing semantics all night, but I wouldn’t want you to miss your backstage party.’
‘It’s not my party. Carly’s a patron of the company—’
‘How wonderful for her.’ She tried to dodge past him but he placed his hands on the table on either side of her hips.
‘Emily, you don’t have to worry about Carly—’
‘It’s not tomorrow yet,’ she gritted at him, standing rigidly within the frame of his arms, her senses flaring at the proximity of his heated body. How could he dismiss the other woman so lightly when she was right there across the hall? ‘I still have a few hours of avoidance to go, and if you don’t mind I’d like to be free to enjoy them.’
He vibrated with a frustrated tension that gave her a furious charge, and she half expected him to kiss the scornful words off her lips and show her exactly what he knew she’d enjoy.
Instead he mastered his unruly impu
lses with an impressive display of self-control.
‘What do you really want from me, Emily?’ He asked the unanswerable question, and turned away without waiting for her response.
An angry little bomb exploded in her heart.
‘And, by the way, Emily,’ she said, putting on a deep, sarcastic voice: ‘I forgot to say this in my rush to find you guilty of neglect, but thank you for saving my uncle’s life tonight.’
He turned back with startling swiftness, yanked her close, and planted a short, hard kiss on her complaining mouth.
‘Thank you. You’re a heroine.’ His genuine gratitude took the furious wind out of her sails. ‘I wish I’d been here to see you in action.’
She wished it, too. If he’d been with them, she would still be living in comfortable ignorance.
She took a steadying breath. ‘What? And missed the men in tights?’
‘You’re spending too much time with Dylan. You’re even beginning to sound like him,’ he murmured, hustling her back to the lounge. ‘But I might have a remedy for that.’
When they walked into the room, Peter was looking apprehensively towards the door, while Dylan and Carly were off to one side holding a stiff conversation, their body language suggesting a mutual reluctance.
Emily threw a quick smile and shake of her head at Peter, which he interpreted with smothered relief, quickly throwing off his blanket and announcing that he was off to bed, testily fending off all offers of help.
‘I’ll just duck my head in once or twice in the night to make sure you’re still all right,’ Emily heard Ethan say. So he wasn’t planning on staying at Carly’s when he took her home, she thought with a pang of relief.
Ethan watched Peter limp away, then walked over to the other two protagonists. ‘I’m sorry, Carly, this has been a bit of a disaster, hasn’t it?’ he said, smiling wryly into her beautiful face. ‘You should have taken up my suggestion and stayed on without me.’
She looked at the glittering diamond bracelet on her wrist that Emily realised was a watch and began huskily, ‘Well, we could still make the after-party—but no…’ she shook her head, and not a strand of blonde hair escaped the perfect chignon. ‘Naturally, you won’t want to go out again—just in case. As a patron, though, I think I should go back to the theatre—so why don’t I just call a taxi, to save you a trip?’
Emily almost liked her then, for being thoughtful enough not to insist on her escort fulfilling his duty, when she must secretly be annoyed that the medical emergency for which she had ruined her evening had proved to be such a petty incident.
Ethan made a swift call on his mobile to the corporate taxi service with whom he had an account, and while they were waiting he said to Carly, ‘Perhaps you’ll let me try to make it up to you with dinner tomorrow night?’ He was exuding the kind of polished charm that Emily was more used to seeing from Dylan and she wasn’t surprised to see Carly flutter her eyelash-extensions in gracious acceptance, but she was totally taken off guard as he continued impulsively, ‘In fact, why don’t we turn it into an occasion and make it a foursome?’ He turned to include his startled brother in the invitation. ‘Dylan and Emily can come with us—it’s been an age since my brother and I dined out in each other’s company, and we’re all four in such diverse fields I’m sure it’ll be fascinating fun.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘IF THIS is your idea of fun, you need to see a psychiatrist,’ said Emily three nights later as she observed Dylan and Carly move onto the small dance floor. In the dim light, Carly’s white strapless dress looked almost luminous next to the jet-black of her partner’s suit.
‘Why, Emily, I thought you were enjoying yourself,’ said Ethan, lounging beside her in his chair, watching her face in the flickering candlelight as a waiter discreetly removed the remains of their sumptuous meal.
‘I am, but I don’t know if they are,’ she said, watching Carly stiffen, without losing an iota of poise, as Dylan put his arms around her and said something before drawing her into the sway of couples who were circling the floor to the romantic strains of a string quartet. Now it was Dylan who looked awkward as his partner’s body blended instantly with the music, and she seemed to be taunting him with his lack of grace, the intensity of their conversation at odds with the relaxed mooching going on around them.
Carly and Dylan had been at polite loggerheads all night, taking opposing views on almost every topic, ignoring attempts by Emily to smooth things over while Ethan seemed for once content to relax and take a back seat, almost to encourage their bickering by his lack of assertiveness.
