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CHAPTER FOUR
DAZEDANDBEWILDERED, Chloe experienced a quite irrational sense of abandonment as she watched the couple walk away arm in arm. She hung back as the guests made their way through the double doors, which had been flung open revealing a long table covered in white linen and groaning with antique crystal and fine china. The last to enter the room, Chloe saw that Eugenie was directing guests to their places. As she watched Nik bent down and kissed his niece’s cheek.
‘I’m working, Uncle Nik,’ she remonstrated, kissing him back despite her protest.
Chloe watched him throw a quizzical glance at his sister. ‘Child labour, Ana?’
‘Laying the foundations for a healthy work ethic, you mean,’ Tatiana shot back.
‘You were right the first time.’ Eugenie raised her voice as her uncle moved away. ‘No, you’re down that way, Uncle Nik,’ the girl called, pointing in the opposite direction from where her uncle was heading.
‘No, kiddo, I think I’m sitting here.’ Nik picked up one of the place cards and held it up to show her his name.
His niece frowned, pulling a slim tablet from her pocket. ‘But I thought...’
Her mother leaned in and closed the tablet. ‘It’s fine, love,’ she said drily, picking up a card from the floor and, glancing at the name on it, placing it at a gap on another table.
Her brother reacted to the pointed look she sent him with an unrealistic innocent expression.
Watching the interplay, Chloe had a sinking feeling, and so she was unsurprised when the teenager smiled at her and directed her towards where Nik was holding out a chair next to his place.
Chloe’s eyes brushed his and her stomach vanished completely!
The prospect of spending the entire meal next to him made her feel nauseous. Oh, get over yourself, Chloe, she told herself sternly. What’s the worst that can happen—you get indigestion?
‘Now, isn’t this nice?’ The innocence was gone and instead there was a feral gleam of challenge in his steady stare as he stood behind the chair waiting for her to take her seat. ‘So cosy,’ he murmured, pushing in the chair neatly behind her legs before taking his own seat.
Cosy?Huh. Chloe decided, nodding to the woman seated to her right, that was the last word she would use where Nik Latsis was concerned, so she didn’t voice any of the half-dozen sarcastic responses that trembled on her tongue. The best way to cope with this situation was simply not to rise to the bait; instead, she would rise above it.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, rather pleased with her aloof little nod, a nice combination of condescension and coldness. Yes, she decided, the high ground was definitely the route to take in this situation. Right but not very easy when even without looking at him she could feel the male arrogance he was radiating.
He set his elbows on the table and looked at her. ‘You’re dying to ask me, so go ahead.’
She squared her shoulders, and took a long swallow of the very good wine, looking at the plate that had been put in front of her; it smelt fantastic but she had virtually no appetite. ‘Sorry, I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I’ll put you out of your misery, then. You’re right, Lucy and I are not a couple, just, as they say, good friends.’
‘Well, that’s a relief. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep tonight if you hadn’t explained that to me.’
Far from annoying him, her sarcastic riposte drew a broad grin. ‘Ana often invites potential mates to her cosy little dinners.’
‘This dinner isn’t little or cosy or, as it happens, all about you.’
A smile quivered across his lips. ‘Ouch!’
‘You could always try dating agencies, which would be a bit more scientific than relying on your sister to set you up,’ she suggested.
‘I’ve always thought a sense of humour is overrated, especially when I’m the joke. Ana wants to see me settled down; she thinks that marriage is the magic bullet that will solve all my problems. She means well but it can get...tiresome. But you don’t want to know all that; the point is... Lucy isn’t my girlfriend.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because I want you to say yes when I ask you to come home with me tonight.’
Having delivered this conversational dynamite in the same manner a normal person would discuss the weather, he calmly turned to the man on his right and inserted himself into the conversation concerning the most recent banking scandal.
Chloe couldn’t hear what they saying, because she couldn’t hear anything much beyond the static buzz inside her own head. Of course, she was going to say no to him.
She rested her hand on her thigh, running her fingers lightly across the raised damaged skin under the fine blue silk. The outline of the ugly ridges beneath her fingertips had an instant mind-clearing effect, and the doubts fluttering around in her head vanished. A man who hadn’t bothered hanging around to say goodbye the morning after they’d had mind-blowing sex wasn’t interested in her emotional journey; he only wanted perfect.
