AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“In my sloggy clothes?” I joke.
“Yes.” His reply is perfectly serious. “I’ve never… I don’t stay in with women, Dayna. It’s not… I don’t do the homey-night-on-the-sofa thing.”
My body tenses against his, and I twist my fingers in my lap. “I figured you weren’t suddenly working late. What changed your mind?”
He gently lifts me from his shoulder and strokes my temple. “You. You make me want to be a different person. In a good way, I think.”
I smile. One step at a time. I press my mouth against his with such force there’s no doubt about how I feel. He kisses me back with the same ferocity.
“Well, that, and I worked out that staying in meant I got this body to myself all night.”
I laugh against his mouth and shift so I’m straddling his hips. The movie is forgotten.
“SHE’S GOING TO kill you for driving, you know that, don’t you?” Rachel mutters as she applies a bright pink to her lips in the passenger mirror of my Audi A6.
“I need a backup plan,” I explain.
She blots on a tissue, making a noise somewhere between a kiss and a pop. “Always locate your nearest exit and have a getaway vehicle waiting.”
“Exactly. Plus I’m sure I’ll have done a thousand other things wrong before she even realises I’m not drinking.”
I pull the car to a stop on the gravel path outside my mother’s mansion in Mortlake, one of the wealthiest suburbs of London. Or more correctly, Richard’s mansion. Richard, my mother’s second multi-millionaire husband, who, in my mother’s defence, she’s been with for nineteen years — although she’ll always call it twenty to make Anna’s birthday seem legitimate.
I take the two Cartier bags from the almost-backseat of the coupé and hand one to Rachel. “You bought her a sapphire bracelet.”
Rachel peeks into the bag. “Couldn’t I just keep it? I’m pretty sure she doesn’t remember me from one year to the next.”
“Yep, sure. Then you can feel the wrath of Veronica.”
“Good point. I’ll avoid pissing off your mother at all costs.”
I switch my flat shoes for cream patent heels and straighten my black lace wrap dress, feeling the cold pinching at my bare shins. Rachel adjusts her peplum dress and ruffles her bob. We each hang our handbags over our forearms.
“Ready for three hours of afternoon tea hell?” I ask with not a trace of amusement.
“Just pass me the champagne.”
I throw my keys to one of the staff, who drives the car away. “Let’s do it.”
Chantelle, the housemaid, opens the front door as we reach the porch. “Dayna, Rachel, how are you?”
“Very well, Chantelle, thank you. How’s the party?”
“Oh, wonderful. Veronica has done a smashing job, as ever.”
“I’m sure you had a part in that,” I say, receiving a blush and the waft of a hand in return.
“There’s champagne right there and canapés aplenty,” Chantelle says as she closes the door behind us. “Afternoon tea will be served in the dining hall, but guests are mingling in the reception rooms just now.”
“Christ, it gets more pretentious every year,” Rachel mumbles as we each take a flute, Rachel’s filled with champagne, mine with fresh orange. “Which nineteen-year-old really wants afternoon tea for her birthday? If it were me I’d want to swap champagne for sambuca, I’d want to taste Amsterdam in my cake and I’d want to put on my shortest, tightest dress and find me a hunk to get down and dirty with.” As if to illustrate the point, she downs her champagne in one and switches out for a full glass.
“You’re such a hussy.”
She sticks her tongue out at me as she grabs a beluga caviar blini from a waiter offering a tray full of canapés. “And you love me for it.”
I laugh. “I do. I love you more for stomaching this for another year with me.”
“Free booze, and you buy the gifts.” She shrugs. “No biggy.”
