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Maggie pulled a wry face. “Not the kind of thing I usually dress in, that’s for sure.”
Clint rubbed a hand across his chin. It had been, once. A long time ago. Maggie had been the quintessential socialite. So much so that he’d been worried she’d end up married to some stuffed-shirt banker at twenty one. He’d certainly not expected her to be a vegan, part-time caterer with a secret love-child by God only knew who at twenty six.
“You look lovely, anyway.”
“Thanks, dad.” She kissed his cheek. “It looks like more people than expected.”
He shook his head drolly. “No. Just several of Cressida’s family are the size of two or three.”
She laughed at his unkind observation, though it was accurate. As she looked around the room, she saw many portly, overweight family members, who had nonetheless valiantly squeezed themselves into the latest fashion week dresses.
“Except that one, who looks like she hasn’t eaten in a month,” he said with more irreverent humour, nodding to a waif-thin woman against the far wall. Painfully slender, with a face Maggie recognised from a billboard in the West End, and dressed in a barely there sheath of a dress. The woman was stunning, in that heroin addict way.
Maggie hooked an arm through her father’s and leaned closer, so that no one would overhear their conversation. After all, gossiping was bad enough, but being caught out was worse. “Who is she?”
“The God-daughter.” He lifted his brows heavenward. “A terrible bore, if you ask me.”
Maggie laughed, though she felt badly for it. “Oh, daddy, models are never boring,” she remarked sarcastically, watching as the tiny thing flicked her white blonde hair over her shoulder. “Does she always look, so…”
“Like she’s got a stick up her arse? Yes. I suspect there was a bad wind change when she was younger, and her face just got caught like that.”
Now Maggie did laugh, a beautiful sound, like bells in the wind. She looked up at her dad, with every intention of scolding him, but a movement caught her attention instead. A swift, searching turn of a dark head. A response, perhaps, to her laughter.
She shifted her focus, and felt like she’d fallen through a crack in the earth’s surface. The molten lava was licking at her heels.
It was him.
Unmistakable this time. How had she ever mistaken anyone else for him? Two years had passed, but he hadn’t changed a bit. He was wearing a dark suit and a slate grey shirt. No tie, open at the neck, to reveal a hint of the chest hair that she knew ran down his muscled wall of abdominals to the waistband of his pants.
Her face drained completely of color, and she gripped her father’s arm even tighter.
“Darling? Is everything okay?”
“Fine,” she nodded, her throat thick with feeling. She’d spent two years telling herself that her night with Dante Velasco had been a beat out of time. That it had been an aberration. An experience that would never, could never, be repeated. In fact, she’d even come to doubt the strength of what she’d felt. It seemed so unbelievable, to have fallen to his bed within minutes of meeting him. It was as uncharacteristic as it had been stupid.
Her pale blue eyes shone with distress, but the rest of her face was carefully kept blanked of emotion. “I just thought I saw someone I knew.”
“’Fraid not. All a bunch of Cressida’s uptight friends.” He pulled a face. “Shame that Rosie and whatshisface couldn’t make it.”
“Whatshisface?” She remarked with a small smile that almost hid her inner turmoil. “Luca Abramo is one of the best known names in the country, thanks to the recent acquisition of that airline.”
“Oh, yes, well, I liked him anyway. And I always like your Rosie.”
Maggie nodded. She wished they were there too. Rosie always knew just what to say to make Maggie feel better. Even Rosie had no idea about Maggie’s relationship with the Spanish wine baron, and it was better kept that way.
“Dad, I’m just going to go and check on something in the, um, in the kitchen.”
He lifted his brows in an expression of mock fear. “Don’t let Cressida see you. She’s told me I’m to intervene if you so much as go near an apron.”
Somehow, Maggie managed to say something amusing in response. Her mouth moved but her brain didn’t engage. She even smiled as she walked away from him, but inside, her stomach was a swirling pit of anxiety.
What the hell was he doing there?
Of all the places she had hoped against hope to see Dante Velasco, this was not one of them.
Even as she’d fled the party, she had known he would follow her.
As she stepped out of the drawing room and moved in the direction of the kitchen, he placed an arm under her elbow, and silently propelled her into the closet beneath the stairs. It occurred to her to wonder how he knew such a closet existed, but the thought disappeared as quickly as it had entered her mind. He was a man who seemed to know everything.
