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‘How curious—he hasn’t talked at all about you. What do you suppose that means?’
‘Perhaps he didn’t consider me worth mentioning until now.’ She shrugged.
‘Such modesty!’ He cocked his head and took his time looking her over, from her tousled head to her curling toes inside the white socks. ‘You know, I get the strangest feeling that you’re familiar to me in some indefinable way,’ he mused. ‘I’m sure if I think about it long enough I’ll work out why…’
Peter tensed, as if he had only just become aware of the strange undercurrents. ‘You’re imagining things—’
‘Actually, he’s not,’ said Emily, tired of waiting for the axe to fall. ‘Ethan and I have seen each other before—at a party a couple of years ago. A rather wild party I don’t think either of us ended up enjoying very much. I behaved badly and flirted with him, and Ethan turned me down flat.’
There was a small silence, then he smiled. A rock with teeth.
‘That’s not the way I remember it,’ he said.
And Emily’s heart sank into her cotton socks.
CHAPTER THREE
PETER LOOKED FROM his nephew’s white smile to Emily’s embarrassed face with a puzzled expression, halfway between delight and dismay.
‘So I didn’t really have to introduce you two at all,’ he realised, sounding disappointed.
‘Actually, you did. Emily and I never got around to exchanging names…’ Ethan trailed off suggestively, still holding Emily’s apprehensive gaze.
A graphic vision of the way she had taunted him that night popped into her head, and she could feel a wave of heat creeping up the back of her neck. Talk about your sins coming back to haunt you!
This time she had no bold mask of make-up to hide behind. Most of her cosmetics were still in the bathroom directly above her burnt-out studio, roped off as potentially at risk of collapse; the rest were now bundled in a plastic bag buried somewhere in the boot of the car. Today all she had on her face was some of Julie’s sun-blocking foundation, which was a shade too dark for her skin tone, and a dash of nude lipstick. Even though she didn’t usually wear make-up at work, for fear of contaminating the delicate materials she was handling, she had felt she needed a little feminine boost this morning, when setting out to grub amongst the ashes of her former life.
‘It wasn’t the kind of party that encouraged formal introductions,’ said Emily. ‘The music was so loud it was difficult to think, let alone hear what people were saying.’
Except in that quiet, back room, she could see Ethan West thinking, but he didn’t say anything to contradict her words. He didn’t call her a liar, or accuse her of being a thief, but instead of relief she felt her anxiety burrow deeper.
‘Oh, I see,’ said Peter, although, thankfully, he didn’t—the faintly troubled frown lifting from his lined forehead. ‘So that’s why you never mentioned anything about knowing Ethan when I talked to you about him.’
‘As far as I was concerned I didn’t know him.’ Emily was emphatic.
‘You mean you didn’t know that you knew me,’ Ethan pointed out with infuriating pedantry.
‘I didn’t know you at all,’ she reiterated.
‘Not in the biblical sense, anyway,’ he said. ‘Although not for want of trying.’
‘It isn’t as if you have any family photos on display around here, other than the ones of Rose in your office.’ Emily talked hurriedly over the top of his low comment. ‘And I might not have recognised him from a photograph, anyway. It was such a long time ago, and we met so briefly—’
‘Yes, I was just another John that night, as far as Emily was concerned—’ he paused just long enough to receive her horrified look, before clarifying ‘—John Doe, I mean. Or should I have said Joe Bloggs?’ he mused, cocking another goading eyebrow at her blooming face.
‘Oh, ho, I can see how you wouldn’t like that.’ Peter laughed, completely missing the insulting sexual allusion. ‘Ethan’s not used to being thought of as just one of the crowd,’ he told Emily.
&
nbsp; ‘He’s a high achiever—always has been. Even as a kid he used to set himself impossible goals.’
‘What happened when he couldn’t achieve them?’ Emily couldn’t help asking.
‘Ah, yes, that’s the measure of a man, the way he handles defeat, eh, Ethan?’ Peter reached up to clap his nephew on his shoulder. ‘As I remember it he never cried. He would just stick out that jaw of his and keep doggedly at it until he succeeded.’
Emily looked up at the iron-hard jaw, and noted a slight nick under the point of his smooth chin. Mr Perfect had cut himself shaving this morning. He had a tiny sprinkle of grey in the dark brown hair, too, she saw as she searched for a few reassuring flaws in his aura of invulnerability, and his skin was surprisingly pale for a man who was such a reputed powerhouse of energy. He wasn’t wearing a tie and the two buttons left open on his blue shirt revealed a suspiciously glossy collar-bone. A man who oozed testosterone the way he did would surely have a hairy chest. He must wax, she decided with a disparaging inward sniff. Vain, as well as arrogant.
‘So you’ve never actually failed at anything, then?’ she reasoned, managing to imply his character had therefore never been really measured.
