Penny Jordan - Passionate Nights

One woman, two diametrically opposite types of behaviour. Which of them revealed the real Kelly, and why should it be so important to him to find out? Not, surely, just because the man she was making a play for was the same man her sister claimed to be in love with? After all, there was nothing he wanted more than for something, someone, to make his sister see just how unworthy of her Julian Cox actually was.

Discreetly he studied Kelly. Her dress was expensive, and fitted her as though it had been made for her, but something, some experienced male instinct, told him that she was not quite so comfortable and at home in it as she wanted others to believe. Every now and again she gave a betraying glance down at herself, rather in the manner of a little girl uncertain of the wisdom of wearing her mother’s borrowed clothes. As Julian had so admiringly pointed out, she was immaculately groomed, but personally Brough would have rather liked to see her dressed casually in jeans, her skin free of make-up, her wonderful hair soft and tousled and her even more wonderful eyes and mouth …

His eyebrows snapped grimly together as he recognised the direction his thoughts were taking. It was a long time since a woman had attracted him as powerfully or as immediately as Kelly—or as dangerously. On two counts. If she was the type of woman she was portraying to attract Julian Cox’s attention, then she was most decidedly not his type. And if she wasn’t … if that unexpected and alluringly enticing chink of vulnerability and uncertainty he had so briefly glimpsed beneath the sophisticated image she was trying to portray was the real Kelly … then that would make it even more imperative that he didn’t involve himself in any way with her. His life was already complicated enough as it was, with Eve. One day he would marry, settle down, with a nice, calm, sensible girl—a woman who did not pretend to be something she wasn’t.

Of course, there was one way he could probably find out just what sort of woman Kelly really was. The way a woman responded, reacted, to a man’s first kiss could say an awful lot about just what kind of person she was, Brough mused.

His frown deepened. What on earth was he thinking? There was no way he could justify that kind of behaviour—or those kinds of thoughts.

His last serious relationship had been when he was in his very early twenties. He had thought himself in love—had thought that she loved him. They had met at university and then she had taken a year out to travel while Brough had stayed at home to be near Eve. When they had met up again both of them had been forced to acknowledge that whatever they’d had had gone.

Since then he had dated … there had been women … but by the time he had reached thirty he had decided that he must be the kind of man in whom logic and responsibility always won out over passion and impetuosity. And so he was … wasn’t he?

‘I want to dance with you.’ Kelly’s heart sank as she saw from the loaded, explicitly sexual way that Julian was regarding her as he spoke to her just how successful Dee’s plan had been. There was no doubt just what was on Julian’s mind, even without the heavy, lingering glance he gave her breasts.

He was being too obvious, too potentially hurtful to Eve and insulting towards her, Kelly decided as she shook her head and reminded him, ‘You haven’t danced with Eve yet …’

‘I don’t want to dance with her ; I want to dance with you ,’ Julian insisted as he reached out to raise her from her seat.

Unhappily Kelly fought her conscience. This was too much, and inexcusable. Just how much wine had Julian had to drink? she wondered uneasily, wishing that Harry hadn’t chosen just that moment to disappear.

‘Kelly has already promised this dance to me.’

The interruption from Brough Frobisher was just as unexpected as his coolly uttered, authoritative fib.

Without allowing Julian the opportunity either to protest or argue, Brough came over to her, holding out his hand. Shakily Kelly stood up. She didn’t particularly want to dance with him, but dancing with him was infinitely preferable to having to dance with Julian.

Good manners suggested that she ought to thank Brough Frobisher for rescuing her, but to do so would surely be to step out of the role Dee had cast for her and, perhaps even worse, to give him the opportunity to point out that she herself had been actively encouraging Julian to believe that she was interested in him.

‘Your sister is very sweet,’ she commented awkwardly as Brough led her onto the floor.

‘Sweet?’ His dark eyebrows lifted as he gave her an appraising look. ‘An excess of sweetness can be unpleasantly cloying. I don’t consider her to be sweet, rather a little too naive and vulnerable. How long have you known Cox?’

His abrupt question caught her off guard.

‘Er … a while … He … we’re old friends,’ she stammered, boldly remembering her role.

‘Old friends ,’ he repeated, stressing the word as he looked hard at her. ‘I see.’

Kelly hoped devoutly that he did no such thing.

As they reached the dance floor he touched her lightly on the arm, turning her expertly towards him. The band was playing a slow, intimate dance number, and immediately she felt his arm go round her Kelly tensed.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t used to dancing in close proximity to a man, it was just that somehow it was unnerving with this man—

‘Enlighten me,’ he was saying to her. ‘What exactly is it about Cox that quite patently makes him so attractive to your sex?’

Kelly glanced warily up at him. He was immaculately dressed and she could just catch the scent of the very masculine cologne he was wearing, she noted approvingly. Julian’s apparent addiction to very strong and no doubt trendy aftershave was not to her personal taste at all. But despite Brough’s elegant grooming she suspected that without the shave he must have had before coming out this evening his very thick and very dark hair must mean that most evenings his jaw must be shadowed and slightly rough to the touch, adding a delicious extra frisson of sensuality to being kissed by him, especially if you were a woman who, like her, possessed slightly sensitive skin.

Appalled by the direction of her own unruly thoughts, Kelly realised that she had still not answered his question.

‘Er … Julian likes women,’ she told him lamely.

Immediately his eyebrows rose.

‘He certainly does,’ he agreed silkily. ‘Doesn’t that bother you? In my experience, most women prize loyalty and exclusivity in a relationship …’

‘Julian is simply a friend,’ Kelly reminded him sharply.

‘A very intimate friend?’ Brough pressed.

He was digging too deep, questioning her too closely, Kelly recognised, and in order to answer him she was either going to have to commit herself to more lies or risk betraying the fiction she was creating.

‘It’s hot in here,’ she complained, pulling free of him. ‘I need some fresh air.’

It wasn’t entirely untrue; she was hot and the terrace she could see beyond the ballroom’s open French windows did offer a much needed escape from the cause of that heat—which was not so much the air in the ballroom as the presence of the man beside her and her own feelings of trepidation and guilt.

As she headed for the terrace, it didn’t occur to Kelly that he would follow her. She could guess from the way he had been questioning her just what he thought of her, and she knew that in refusing to answer him she had equally plainly confirmed those suspicions.

It was a relief to reach the cool shadows of the terrace, and, avoiding the other couples strolling its length, Kelly turned instead to descend the flight of stone steps that led into the garden.