The Monte Carlo Proposal Read online

  ‘I know what they think of, and I know what I think of,’ I said with a shrug. ‘They’re not necessarily the same thing.’

  ‘Well, it’s time for you to turn your attention to this afternoon’s purchases,’ he said, using the voice of a man forcing himself back to normal. ‘It’s not just jewellery, but anything else you can think of. What? What is it?’

  I’d burst out laughing.

  ‘You should keep your voice down. Do you realise how many people heard you say that? You know what they’ll think?’

  ‘They’ll think I’m crazy about you,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘No, they won’t. They’ll think I’m your tart, your bit on the side, your kept woman.’

  ‘You sound as though you’d enjoy that.’

  ‘In reality I probably wouldn’t, but I’ve always had this fantasy of being a world-class courtesan-maybe Madame de Pompadour, or another of those grande horizontales. Great fun. Well, fun for about five minutes. Then desperately boring.’

  ‘But surely Madame de Pompadour did more than lie around looking good? She had a terrific brain and helped the French king run the country. I see you as being like that.’

  ‘You’re right. I could never resist the temptation to stick my oar in.’

  He grinned. ‘I’ve been warned. Now, let’s go and see if I can distract your attention with a few baubles.’

  He took me into a succession of jewellery shops. At his command they laid everything out for my inspection, and I held my breath at the beauty of it all.

  He wouldn’t tell me the prices, but I could see they were all fabulous. Earrings, bracelets, necklaces-in all stones, but mostly in diamonds. Until that moment I hadn’t known how madly I loved diamonds.

  ‘But it’s all too much,’ I protested in an undervoice.

  ‘Not if you’re going to make the impression I want. They’ll be watching.’

  I couldn’t argue with that, so I just had to put up with him showering me with a fortune. It was hard, but I gritted my teeth and did my duty.

  ‘We’ll be the talk of Monte Carlo after this,’ I said, while the assistants in the last shop were packing things up.

  ‘Monte Carlo?’ He looked shocked. ‘Europe.’

  ‘The world,’ I declared triumphantly.

  And then I saw it. A tiny diamond brooch in the shape of a penguin. I guessed the price was a fraction of anything else in the shop, but it was charming and exquisite and I fell in love with it.

  Jack saw me gazing at it.

  ‘That?’ he asked.

  I nodded, explaining, ‘I’m mad about penguins.’

  He wasn’t like other men. He didn’t say something crass like, What about all that pricey stuff I’ve bought you? He understood at once, and pinned the brooch onto me.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It looks perfect on you.’

  When it was time to leave Jack was carrying so much valuable jewellery that the shop provided its own armoured car to take us down to the quay. A phone call ensured that the motor boat would be waiting.

  There were several faces leaning over the rail when we reached The Hawk. Jenny and Charles were there, frankly agog. Jenny told me later that they’d seen the parcels arrive earlier and everyone had been riveted by the sight. Except for Grace and Selina, who had ostentatiously not been riveted.

  ‘Can I come and see?’ Jenny asked eagerly.

  She came down to the cabin with me, while Jack fled to the sanctuary of the bar with Charles and several of the other men.

  ‘Good, that’s got rid of them,’ Jenny said gleefully. ‘Now we can have some fun.’

  While I was showing her my new clothes she ordered champagne by phone, and we drank it together.

  ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on Selina for you.’ She chuckled. ‘She’s seen the writing on the wall and she’s mad as fire.’

  ‘Is she in love with him?’ I asked.

  ‘No way. He’s just the best catch around. Don’t worry, you’re not breaking her heart. She’ll probably end up marrying Derek, who’s nutty about her, and has almost as big a bank balance as she needs.’

  ‘Is she really as bad as that?’

  ‘Worse. She used to date Charles, but his firm had a crash and he lost a lot of money. She dropped him just like that. Luckily I came along and distracted him.’

  She gave a smile that told a lot about her marriage. Then abruptly the smiled faded and she yelped, ‘That!’

  I’d appeared in a long, black velvet dress, low in the front and even lower at the back.

  ‘Wear that one,’ she said. ‘It’s sensational. And diamonds. Do you have any?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s a diamond left in the world.’

  We had a great time dressing me to kill, and Jenny’s instinct was spot on. Black velvet and diamonds were a great combination.

  ‘Can I come in?’ That was Jack, calling from outside the door.

  ‘Come in,’ I called back.

  He walked in and stood stock still, gazing at me in a way that filled me with satisfaction.

  ‘Will she do?’ Jenny carolled. ‘Will she do or won’t she do?’

  ‘She’ll do,’ Jack said quietly.

  That was all. But I’d seen the way he looked at me, and it said, Tonight.

  Jack had come to tell us that he was taking everyone to dinner ashore that evening. It turned out to be a shrewd idea. There were too many of us for one table, so we were split among three, and he managed to keep me away from Selina and Grace. I found myself sitting with Jack on one side and Raymond Keller on the other.

  Raymond seemed a nice guy, apart from a tendency to look down my dress, but since it was designed for that I supposed it wasn’t fair to blame him.

  Charles and Jenny were facing me, and the others were youngish couples. They weren’t trying to trap Jack for themselves or their daughters, so the atmosphere was pleasant. I began to understand that Jack was a master of tactics.

  He played up, slipping his arm around my shoulders whenever he wasn’t eating, clinking wine glasses with me, and sometimes murmuring in my ear.

  I could just see Grace and Selina, who kept turning their heads to send forked lightning at me. I reckoned they were calculating every penny of the diamonds’ worth, and if they could have killed me, they would have done.

  ‘Now you’ve had a chance to relax with some of them,’ Jack said to me in the taxi. ‘But tomorrow you’ll be right in the lions’ den.’

  ‘Just lead me to it.’

  ‘You were a knockout tonight. Just keep doing it.’

  ‘Doing what, precisely?’ I teased.

  He drew a ragged breath. ‘Whatever it is you’re doing. And please don’t laugh like that. It makes my life extremely difficult.’

  I laughed again. I wanted his life to be difficult.

  When we were on board we said goodnight to everyone and went straight to the cabin.

  I ran a hot bath and snuggled down blissfully into the suds, thinking of the night to come. I told myself that I couldn’t be sure what was going to happen, but I’d chosen my nightdress very carefully.

  Nothing blatant, and not as sexy as Jenny’s, but silky and elegant. And it wasn’t going to hide a lot from a man in the same bed.

  During the day we’d talked with a sensual undertone. Whatever the subject, we’d actually been speaking about something else that didn’t need any words.

  We’d undressed each other with our eyes and our minds, and that had been very nice. But I knew that I’d really decided Yes! when we’d swapped grandfather stories. That was when my heart had warmed to him as much as my body.

  Now I was preparing to make love to a man I’d known barely twenty-four hours-something I’d never done before. And why? Because he loved his grandfather. Put like that, it made no sense. Except to me.

  I towelled myself dry and used a few discreet dabs of perfume. Then I slipped on the beautiful pale blue nightdress, and I was all ready. Taking a deep breath, I went back to the bedroo
m.

  There was only one small bedside lamp on. In the shadows I could discern that the other side of the bed, which had been empty when I went into the bathroom, now had a bump. A bump that lay with its back to me, breathing evenly.

  Next to it was another bump, the shape of a pillow.

  I wanted to scream and shout. I wanted to thump him and say how dared he go to sleep? I wanted to throw every piece of glass across the room until it smashed to fragments.

  But I didn’t, of course.

  Instead I climbed into my side of the bed, put out the light and lay in the darkness, silently reciting all the rudest words I knew.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Della’s Story

  N EXT day we left Monte Carlo and headed for Sardinia. It was time for me to do my stuff.

  I made a grand entrance, sauntering to the smaller of the two swimming pools, where most of the others were stretched out. When their eyes were on me I pulled off a floaty chiffon jacket, leaving nothing but a tiny pink bikini. Then I stretched out and closed my eyes, as if totally unaware of everyone.

  ‘Well done,’ said Jack, stretching out beside me.

  I was lying on my back, my eyes closed. Now I opened them halfway and surveyed him. I managed a smile, but in truth I was furious with him for last night. To compound his crimes he was wearing tiny swimming trunks that cleared up the question of his shape once and for all.

  His build was slightly heavy, but he was tall with no fat, and gave an impression of controlled physical power that his elegant suits normally concealed. Seeing him almost naked reminded me of what might have been mine, and hadn’t been, and it didn’t improve my mood.

  ‘Good morning,’ I murmured. ‘Have we met?’

  ‘Yes, I’m the fellow who brought your coffee this morning. And I didn’t even get a tip.’

  ‘I never tip the hired help,’ I murmured languidly.

  He laughed, and whispered, ‘That’s great. Play the indifferent card for all it’s worth. Act like I’m dirt beneath your feet.’

  If he’d known how much I’d have liked to do just that he wouldn’t have risked saying it.

  ‘Are they watching us?’ I murmured.

  ‘And how!’

  ‘In that case-’

  I brushed the backs of my fingers against his face. At once he took my hand, turned it over and kissed the palm. I braced myself against the tremors that went through me, and managed to smile.

  ‘I’ve brought you some sunscreen,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t lie out like this with that fair skin.’

  He handed me the bottle and I rubbed the lotion in well, until Jack took it and said, ‘Turn over.’

  He did my back and my hips, down as far as the bikini bottom. Then I felt him undo the clasp of the bikini top and begin to work cream into my skin there.

  ‘I had to undo it or you’d have had a mark,’ he explained.

  It would have been the easiest thing in the world to let his hand drift down the sides a little. But he didn’t. He simply finished oiling me and fastened the clasp again. It was like being guarded by a Boy Scout.

  After a while someone called him from further down the pool and he went to talk to them. I stayed where I was, controlling my feelings with an effort. How I’d have loved to toss him into his own pool and hold him under. But the sun was making me sleepy, so I decided to let him live-for now.

  I must have sort of dozed, because the next thing I was aware of was a hand rubbing more lotion into my back.

  ‘Mmm!’ I said.

  ‘Like it?’ asked a laughing voice.

  That wasn’t Jack. I twisted around and found myself looking at Raymond Keller.

  He was a pleasant sight-fortyish, lean and strongly built, with reddish hair. I was still sufficiently irked with Jack to do a little flirting.

  ‘I’m not quite sure,’ I mused.

  ‘Well, let me do a little more so that you can decide.’

  ‘No, I think that’s enough for today,’ I said, sitting up and regarding him.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’ve been trying to think where I’ve seen you before.’

  ‘Maybe you haven’t.’

  ‘Sure I have. You definitely look familiar.’

  ‘You’re probably just confusing me with some other girl in a pink bikini.’

  ‘It’s not really pink,’ he said. ‘More a kind of flesh colour. From a distance you look as if you’re not wearing anything. I’ve been watching you and studying the matter very seriously.’

  His grin made it impossible to be offended. Just the same, I played it safe.

  ‘It’s pink,’ I said decidedly. ‘It makes us all look alike, you know.’

  ‘Not you. You don’t look like any other girl. Wait! I’ve got it! You were at the Davisons’ château last summer. We danced the night away, but you never told me your name.’

  I made a pretence of considering this. ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember.’

  He reeled off some more names and places, while I fenced and parried. It meant nothing. He knew we hadn’t met before. This was just a traditional opening gambit.

  But then I struck lucky.

  Jack returned and sat down on my other side, greeting Raymond briefly.

  ‘Della and I have just been trying to remember where we first met,’ Raymond said.

  ‘Really?’ Jack said politely. ‘Have you come up with anything?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I sure don’t seem to have made much of an impression on her if we did. How about the theatre, Della? I go to a lot of opening nights. Maybe I saw you at the opening of Flowers in the Rain?’

  ‘Do you mean that dreadful evening when they had to stop the show because a woman in the front row was taken ill?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said, beaming.

  ‘The actor playing the lead was put right off his stride,’ I said, in the voice of someone remembering. ‘He never really recovered after that-kept stumbling over his lines.’

  ‘Fancy us both being there! Yes, you definitely smiled at me in the Circle Bar.’

  ‘It’s a small world,’ Jack observed.

  For some reason Raymond didn’t stick around now Jack was there, and when some of the other men dived into the pool he joined them.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Jack asked me. ‘Did you really see him at that first night?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t even there. I heard about it from someone who was. The point is, he’s now convinced he’s seen me around, and will vouch for me as one of his own circle. By the time he talks to Grace and Selina we’ll have been at school together.’

  Jack roared with laughter.

  ‘You’re a really tricky lady,’ he said.

  I’d only meant it as a joke, but I spoke truer than I knew-because suddenly Grace and Selina began to eye me more cautiously. They just weren’t sure any more, and that suited me fine. It suited Jack too. He was loving every moment.

  There was a bar at the side of the pool, with stools just below the water line. After a quick dip, I swam over to get a long orange juice, and while I was sitting there, sipping, Selina came and joined me.

  I have to admit she had a figure to be proud of. She was statuesque, and might run to fat later, but just now she was at her best-as her black bikini revealed.

  Her manner was almost friendly.

  ‘So you’re an old friend of Raymond’s,’ she said. ‘You should have told us.’

  ‘I didn’t get the chance,’ I said. ‘Since I arrived things have just happened, one on top of the other. No time to think, really.’

  I simpered, just in case she didn’t know what I meant by ‘no time to think’.

  She managed to maintain her smile.

  ‘And I don’t really know Raymond,’ I continued. ‘Just distantly.’

  ‘Jack must have been incredibly surprised by you turning up so suddenly?’

  ‘We-ell, between you and me, I don’t think he was as surprised as all that.’ I became confiding. ‘You know Jack. You
can never really tell what he’s about to do next. Well, I’m exactly the same. Like calling to like, I guess.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have called Jack unpredictable,’ she said, in a slightly tense voice. ‘His firm has been built on steadiness and reliability.’

  I shrugged in a feather-headed sort of way. ‘Oh, business!’

  ‘Business is important,’ she said smugly. ‘Of course if you can’t share his interests-’

  ‘I do share his interests. Just not about business!’

  I said this with my most wide-eyed gaze, and threw in a titter for good measure.

  There was a time when I’d wanted be an actress. How I didn’t make it, I’ll never understand.

  ‘What are you two doing with your heads together?’ came Jack’s voice from the water behind us. ‘Are all the men being torn apart? Tell.’

  ‘Why do men always think we have nothing else to talk about but them?’ I asked. ‘We weren’t even thinking about you. Go away.’

  ‘Come in and swim with me,’ he said. ‘The water’s fantastic.’

  Selina immediately slipped off her stool and swam towards him, leaving him no choice but to look pleased and glide away with her.

  I wasn’t alone for long. Derek Lamming immediately took her place on one side, and Selina’s father popped up on the other. After a while they were joined by Raymond. Even Harry Oxton swam over and took a stool. He was Grace’s beau, according to Jack, and from the way her mouth tightened I guess she felt a bit proprietorial.

  So there I was, surrounded by men and flirting like mad-especially with Derek and Harry. I don’t know how long this went on, but it ended abruptly with me being yanked off my stool from behind. The next moment I was underwater, with Jack’s arm about my waist.

  ‘What are you playing at?’ he asked me as our heads broke water.

  ‘I’m trying to do a really good job for you,’ I said.

  ‘Giving Derek and poor old Harry the glad eye?’

  ‘Of course. It’ll warn Selina and Grace not to take them for granted. Look, Selina’s already reclaiming her property.’