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‘No, leave it,’ Briony commanded her as she went to pick up her brush. ‘It looks…’
‘Untidy,’ Polly supplied ruefully.
‘Er…not exactly,’ Briony told her with a grin, adding quickly, ‘Come on, Ma, we’d better make a move, they’ll be here any minute.’
She was right, Polly knew, and with another uncertain look at her reflection she turned to follow Briony.
The dress wasn’t particularly short but it did outline her shape, the boat-shaped neckline revealing the creamy skin of her throat and shoulders and the long sleeves emphasising the slenderness of her arms.
When she saw the look of relief Andrew gave her as she went into the kitchen Polly forgot about her hair and her dress. She had just finished calming Andrew down and reassuring him that everything would go well when Briony burst into the kitchen to announce that her guests had arrived.
‘Poor guests,’ Polly murmured sceptically as she followed her daughter.
It was Marcus she saw first, or rather Marcus her gaze was drawn to first. He was standing by the drinks table smiling warmly at a tall blonde girl who could only be Briony’s promised Suzi, and then he saw Polly and his expression changed. Was it because of the dress? she wondered a little self-consciously as she smoothed it down with nervous fingers.
‘Polly,’ she heard him say harshly as he crossed the floor to join her.
‘Do you like my dress?’ she asked him nervously? rushing into speech. ‘Briony chose it for me. It’s…’
“‘Like” isn’t precisely the word I would have chosen,’ Marcus began, and then stopped as Suzi came over to them and determinedly put her hand on his arm.
She was certainly very elegant, and very taken with Marcus, Polly decided as she watched the tell-tale way the girl was pushing her long blonde hair back off her face whilst moving just that little bit closer to Marcus as he asked what she would like to drink.
Chris she already knew, of course, and his godparents were a very pleasant couple in their mid-fifties, very much the kind of people Polly was used to entertaining as hotel guests.
Behind them and standing to one side of everyone else, very much as an observer, stood another man who Polly guessed must be Suzi’s boss.
Tall, loose-limbed and handsome in that clean-cut, fair-haired way that was so American, as he caught sight of Polly he turned fully towards her, his eyes warming with male interest as he discreetly scanned her face and then her body.
For some reason Polly discovered that she was looking at Marcus. What for? Marcus was far too engrossed with Suzi to notice another man’s interest in her, and even if he had done, so what? Since when had she needed Marcus’s approval to acknowledge another man’s awareness of her?
‘Everyone, this is Polly, my mother,’ Briony announced, tugging Polly into the centre of the room.
As Briony introduced her to their guests, Polly couldn’t help but notice the way Marcus turned his back on her, as though making a pretence of studying the table in front of him, whilst Suzi’s American boss, Phil Bernstein, gave her a crinkle-eyed smile and closed the distance between them to shake her hand. He continued to hold it warmly in his own as he told her admiringly, ‘Briony warned me that there was no way you looked old enough to be her mother, but…!’
‘Please don’t tell her we look like sisters,’ Briony groaned.
Phil laughed and told her without taking his eyes off Polly, ‘I wasn’t going to. Briony doesn’t look at all like you,’ he continued to Polly in a slow, liquid-honey voice. ‘You are—’ His chest lifted as his gaze roamed over her with very deliberate but non-threatening thoroughness.
‘Phil, you’re embarrassing Mrs Fraser,’ Suzi cut in, giving Polly a cool, assessing look and putting her very firmly in her place—and her generation, Polly noted—with that formal and distancing Mrs Fraser.
‘I’d like to take you up on your offer to show me round the hotel,’ she said, turning away from Polly to continue her conversation with Marcus. ‘It’s nothing like so large as Gifford’s Cay, of course,’ she added a little patronisingly, ‘but nevertheless it would be interesting to have a look. Of course, the English country house style of hotel is getting a trifle passé now, at least at the top end of the market…’
Grimly Polly listened to her slightly acid voice. There was no doubt in her own mind that the other woman was deliberately trying to patronise her, but what she really found annoying was the fact that Marcus had offered to show her round the hotel without checking with her first.
She was, after all, responsible for its day-to-day running, even if financially she and Marcus were joint equal partners.
