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‘You know he’s in love with her,’ she said flatly, having realised during the course of the evening what she was witnessing was not the behaviour of two relative strangers who were indifferent to each other. The pair had a history together and Dylan’s obnoxious attitude was the adult equivalent of a little boy hitting his favourite girl to get her attention. There had been more than a strong hint of desperation in some of his sardonic remarks.
His eyebrows quirked as he followed her gaze. ‘Is h
e?’ he mused, entirely unalarmed. ‘Or is it just that Dylan only wants what he can’t have?’
‘Like you?’
His head swung back and he grinned wolfishly. ‘Why? Who is it you think I want that I can’t have, Emily?’
She folded her arms, staring intently at the dancers, refusing to answer the loaded question.
‘The woman I want I can have anywhere, any time, and she knows it as well as I do.’ she felt a shocking warmth on her knee, the weight of his hand sliding slowly up under the filmy hem of her skirt to tease at the stretchy lace top of her stocking where it bit lightly into her silky inner thigh, sending quivering thrills streaking up into her heated core. She gasped, jolted into meeting his bland look. How could he sit there looking so calm and distinguished in his dark suit and pearl-grey shirt and tie while he was engaging in such wicked indecency? He would get them thrown out of the restaurant.
‘Actually, I was thinking of Anna, your ex-fiancée,’ she struck back cruelly, reaching under the shield of the tablecloth to remove the fingers moving tantalisingly close to their goal, and firmly crossing her legs to quell the dangerous excitement that threatened her fragile composure. ‘Dylan told me all about your broken engagement.’
‘Did he indeed? What else did he tell you about me?’
‘Everything!’
Her terrifying declaration rebounded on her when he merely laughed.
‘So, you must have been asking, then. Did you also ask him about Carly?’ he guessed slyly. ‘And did he tell you that they had an affair last year but he got cold feet when she started to hint at a more permanent arrangement?’
Emily’s eyes widened and he smiled. ‘I thought not. So, you see, his dog-in-the-manger act isn’t going to cut much ice with her now. She’s moved onto bigger game. He’ll have to work a lot harder this time round, if he wants to take her away from me.’
He sat back and waited as Emily’s brain clicked over the possibilities. ‘I—is that why you two have being going out together?’ she ventured tentatively. ‘To make him jealous?’
He shrugged. It was his turn to be cruel. ‘Would it make you feel better if I said yes?’
Her eyes flashed and he looked savagely pleased.
‘Not pleasant, is it, Emily? To have burning questions that no one is willing to answer.’
She fiddled unconsciously with her heavy wineglass, her thick lashes lowered to reveal the burnished bronze eye shadow that emphasised the tilt of her eyes. Peter had shown her the reports that his local investigator had produced, but they were not as definitive as he had made out—there seemed more speculation, conjecture and hearsay than actual hard evidence. Her parents had evidently not responded to any inquiries, which, considering how elusive they were even to Emily, was not surprising, and she had been trying to get a call through to them to prove to Peter that his assumptions were wrong.
‘Perhaps Carly will tell me,’ she said stubbornly.
‘I doubt it. I told her you were a gold-digging hussy, that if you didn’t get your claws into Peter you’d be after Dylan or me.’
‘You didn’t!’ she cried, almost spilling the last of the wine.
‘At the time I thought you were,’ he said in his own defence. ‘In fact, the jury is still out on that one.’
‘I’m not a gold-digger!’
‘So you’re admitting you’re a hussy?’
She squeezed her crossed legs together and blushed. He had every right to think so, the way she had been carrying on.
‘I’m just an ordinary woman trying to get on with her life.’
‘If you think you’re ordinary you need to see a psychiatrist,’ he said drily, bringing their conversation full circle as Dylan and Carly returned to the table, accompanied by a distinct chill.
Emily thought the rest of the evening might prove to be awkward but over coffee and liqueurs Ethan finally roused himself to run interference and kept the talk ruthlessly general until Dylan asked Emily about the knuckle-bones story he’d heard from Peter. Even Carly seemed to be intrigued by the idea.
‘You mean you grew up in a string of refugee camps?’
‘We didn’t always live in the camps themselves. Sometimes we were billeted or lived in nearby villages.’
