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Banishing the picture edging into her mind, she held out her right hand. ‘How nice to meet you. I was just giving Sholto my best wishes for you both.’
Averil’s hand briefly met hers. ‘Thank you.’ She glanced up at Sholto, whose expression was enigmatic, his eyes resting on Tara with suspicion lurking in their depths.
The solid feel of the glass tumbler in her left hand was comforting. She tried a social answering smile, and asked, ‘When is the happy day?’
‘Soon,’ Sholto said, as Averil answered, ‘We haven’t decided—’ and then looked at him again, apologetically.
Sholto explained, ‘There hasn’t been time to discuss the details. We only bought the ring yesterday.’
So the engagement was new. ‘I’m sure you’ll work something out.’ Tara kept the smile in place. Turning it on Averil, she said, ‘May I see it—the ring?’
Averil’s left hand was half concealed in the pastel pink folds of her skirt. Tara saw it clench before it was reluctantly proffered for her inspection.
The large oval diamond flanked by two smaller ones suited Averil’s slim, tapered fingers and pink-painted nails.
‘Lovely,’ Tara said perfunctorily, her own ringless fingers clamping even harder on her glass. Tipping it to her lips, she emptied it completely. ‘Well, I think I’ll get myself another drink and join the party. Have a good time, you two.’
She turned away from them, making blindly for the lounge doorway and wending her way back to the bar. No one was there, but she helped herself to more gin from one of the variety of bottles standing on the counter, splashing a liberal amount into the glass before adding squash. Her hand shook and she spilled a few drops.
When she looked about, the room seemed to blur before her eyes, the sounds of chatter and laughter rising to a raucous hum until she wanted to cover her ears.
She held herself tightly together, taking three deep breaths. Perhaps she shouldn’t have poured another gin. The final humiliation would be to get herself drunk and do something stupid. She’d snatched a couple of sandwiches at lunchtime, between customers, and had eaten nothing since. Although she’d never felt less hungry, some food would be a good idea.
As she went in search of it, a warm male hand fell on her shoulder. ‘Tara! Chantelle said you were here! I’ve been looking for you.’
‘Andy—’ Tara turned with resignation. Andrew Paget towered over her, a wide grin showing perfect teeth that went with his over-long flaxen curls, guileless summer-sky gaze and carefully nurtured, brawny frame. A dazzling white T-shirt two sizes too small accentuated his sun-bed tan, and designer-label dress jeans lovingly hugged dramatically muscled thighs and calves.
She couldn’t help smiling back at him. Andy had that effect on women. There was not a lot between his surgically flattened ears to complement the magnificent body and the Greek-god face, but she’d known him when he was an undersized kid with unevenly mown sandy hair and a mouth full of brand-new dental braces. Behind the fragile self-assurance engendered by a late growth spurt and the correcting of his disastrous teeth and ears, followed by a determined regimen of body-building, lurked the child who had endured the nickname of ‘Wingnut’ from the day he started school.
Tara had always had a soft spot for him during the two years they’d both attended the same school, before her father sold his hardware business in a Waikato town to invest in a new business selling how-to books to supermarkets and garages, then later bought out a surplus goods firm in Auckland. When Andy turned up years afterwards working in a sporting goods store in the small suburban mall where Chantelle and Tara had their own shops, his metamorphosis had stunned and amused her.
The women his new image attracted had improved Andy’s confidence considerably, but that in no way changed the basic sweetness of his nature. Only, his conversational powers were extended by any discussion that ranged beyond football, pop songs, the innards of cars and the esoteric mysteries of body-building. He’d got his job less, she suspected, on any perceived sales ability than on the advertising value of his mere presence, kitted out from the store’s range of expensive sports clothing.
‘What did you want me for?’ she asked him.
His grin widened. One thing Andy had learned from the parade of women competing for his delighted attention was a rather obvious form of sexual banter. His gaze dropped innocently over the figure-hugging red dress that stopped well short of Tara’s knees and returned to her eyes, mischief dancing in his.
Before he could say anything, she told him crisply, ‘I need to eat. Put those muscles of yours to good use, will you, and carve me a path to the food?’ She’d glimpsed a couple of tables against the wall of the other room, laden with filled dishes.
Andy took her hand and did as she’d asked, fetching up before one of the tables with a look of triumph. Tempted to say, ‘Good boy,’ and pat him, she settled for, ‘Thank you.’ As she picked up a plate and began placing a selection of nibbles on it, she added, choosing her words more carefully this time, ‘Why were you looking for me?’
Shoving a sausage roll into his mouth, Andy apparently swallowed it whole. ‘Chantelle said you’re on your own.’
‘Yes, I am.’ She hadn’t brought anyone because she figured that would make it easier to slip off home early. These days parties tended to pall after a couple of hours, and she usually avoided them. Did Chantelle think she’d be lost without a partner?
Looking round idly, her gaze skittered away from Sholto and Averil, talking to Philip and another man. Chantelle didn’t know, did she? No, she told herself. If she had, she’d have warned me.
‘So’m I.’ An oyster patty followed the sausage roll, leaving a fragment of pastry on his lower lip.
‘What?’ Absently she reached up and removed the flaky crumb, dropping it onto the edge of her plate.
‘Alone,’ he explained. ‘I don’t know anyone.’
Light dawned. Andy was shy, and had made a beeline for the one person he knew well. Childhood insecurities died hard. ‘I don’t know many people, either. Shall we stick together?’ She smiled at him kindly, then bit into an asparagus roll, cool and bland.
Andy picked up another from the table and popped it into his mouth. ‘Chantelle introduced me to this woman,’ he muttered, furtively looking about the room. ‘Over there.’ Quickly he averted his eyes, and Tara’s curious glance over her shoulder failed to identify which woman he meant.
‘Didn’t you like her?’ she asked, finishing the roll and picking up a club sandwich. Andy was almost fatally friendly. She couldn’t imagine him taking an instant dislike to anyone, especially a woman. He was so overwhelmingly grateful for their interest that he practically fell over himself trying to please them.
‘Like her?’ He looked as though the concept was beyond him. ‘She—she’s a professor! At the university.’ His expression was one of awe bordering on terror.
Tara bridled. What had the woman done—deliberately intimidated him? If so, she was both cruel and a snob. It wasn’t Andy’s fault that he’d not been blessed with an academic brain like some people. ‘What did she say to you?’
‘Say?’ He looked at her blankly. ‘Not much. “Hello,” and “What do you do?” is about all, really.’ He swallowed. ‘I g-got her a drink and then took off to find you.’
‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘Nothing. She doesn’t look like a professor. But how could I talk to her?’
‘Just the same way you talk to me.’ If the professor didn’t like football, cars or pop music, she could at least have pretended to. Maybe she’d learn something. But maybe Andy hadn’t given her the chance.
He shook his head. ‘She’s one of those intelligent women. What could I say to her?’
A smile lurking on her mouth, a pastry case filled with creamed corn poised in her hand, Tara raised her brows at him.
Andy looked at her silently, then blushed to the roots of his golden locks. ‘Sorry, Tara! I didn’t mean you aren’t—I just meant—I mean, she—’
Tara laughed aloud, placing a comforting hand on his bronzed arm and patting it. ‘Never mind, I know what you meant. I was teasing you.’
Relief washed over his superb features. ‘Oh—good. That’s all right, then. I wouldn’t want to offend you, Tara.’
‘You haven’t.’ She picked up her drink and hooked a casual hand into his arm. ‘Come on, let’s circulate.’
She didn’t particularly want to circulate, but she wasn’t intending to lurk in corners all night, either. Unable to stop her eyes from travelling to where she’d last seen Sholto, she found her gaze colliding with his dark stare. His eyes flicked to Andy and back to her face, a corner of his mouth momentarily curling in contempt before he looked away.
Shaken and hot with rage, she tightened her grip on Andy’s substantial arm.
‘Ow!’ he protested, looking down at her in surprise.
Hastily she loosened her fingers, horrified to see the curved indentations of her fingernails showing red against his hair-dusted tan. ‘Andy! I’m sorry!’
Recovering, he grinned. ‘Just give me warning next time, huh? Women don’t usually mark me there! If you like I’ll show you—’
‘No, I don’t like,’ she said repressively. ‘Behave yourself or I’ll throw you to your professor and leave.’
‘Awp!’ He looked cowed. ‘I’ll behave, promise!’
Tara put on a friendly smile and without difficulty struck up several conversations, watching Andy regain some assurance as the women predictably reacted to his looks and diffident charm, and the men regarded him with covert envy.
He seemed to be getting on with a group of mainly young people who shared his musical taste, and she was murmuring an excuse to leave his side when he grabbed at her hand and said in lowered but panic-stricken tones, ‘Don’t go away!’
A young woman with a cuddly figure and halo of short, gingery corkscrew curls had joined the group, and one of the others said, ‘Jane—have you met Tara and Andy?’
‘Hi, Tara.’ Jane gave Tara a smile that lit her rounded, unpainted face, and then turned to her companion. ‘Andy and I met earlier, didn’t we?’
Andy nodded, a strangled sound rising from his throat. His fingers convulsed around Tara’s, making her suck in her breath, but she heroically refrained from complaint.
This was Andy’s professor?
‘I couldn’t help overhearing what you just said about the ThreadBears,’ Jane told him. ‘Hardly anyone’s heard of them yet, but in my opinion they’re the best group this country’s produced since Crowded House.’
‘You like them?’ Andy sounded stunned.
‘I think their music is really interesting,’ Jane said. ‘Don’t you? Did you see their latest video clip on TV last night?’
‘You like the ThreadBears?’ Andy repeated.
‘Yes, I do.’ Jane’s smile faded as she looked enquiringly up into his face, and then widened again. ‘I know,’ she said resignedly. ‘You thought I’d only be interested in fossils or dead languages or logarithms or something.’
Cautiously, he said, ‘What are logarithms?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Jane answered cheerfully. ‘I’ve always been too intimidated to ask. Something to do with maths. My field is popular culture.’
Perhaps she wasn’t quite so young as her curls and fresh complexion made her appear.
It took a few minutes for Andy to progress from uneasy monosyllables to entire sentences, but Jane’s enthusiasm and her respect for his opinions soon opened him up. He gradually relaxed his death grip on Tara’s hand, eventually freeing it so that he could wave his own hand to make a point.
‘I’ll fetch some more drinks,’ she murmured, taking his empty beer glass in nearly numbed fingers. He hardly noticed as she slipped away.
Near the bar a few people were dancing to a tape player. One of the guests was dispensing drinks, and Philip was among the dancers, his arms wrapped about his wife.
‘Been married fifteen years, those two,’ the man behind the bar confided as he poured a beer for Andy and an iced tonic for Tara, ‘and look at them. Beauty, isn’t it?’
Tara smiled, hiding a pang of envy. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘They’re very lucky.’
She picked up the glasses and turned carefully, to find her way blocked by a white designer shirt and charcoal dinner jacket. Sholto, holding two empty wine glasses.
He was inches away, both of them halting suddenly to avoid a collision. He looked at the drinks in her hands and said softly, so that only she could hear, ‘Doesn’t Lover-boy have the manners to fetch his own drink—and yours?’
‘He’s having an interesting conversation. I offered.’
‘Conversation?’ Sholto drawled. ‘I have it on good authority that the guy’s as thick as a couple of four-by-twos and his conversation is on a level with Neanderthal man’s.’
Tara might have admitted the general premise, but she’d never have put it so brutally, nor discounted Andy’s many and not unimportant virtues. Angry, she said, ‘Jealousy will get you nowhere, Sholto.’
‘Jealousy? Over you?’ The contempt was back, in his voice. ‘Dream on, darling.’
Annoyingly, she flushed. As he made to walk round her, she said, ‘I wasn’t talking about me. Almost every man here is jealous of Andy’s physique—and his looks. Just as every woman admires them.’
‘Every woman?’ His brows rose.
‘Is Averil an exception? Well...’ she paused pointedly, then shrugged ‘...perhaps,’ she conceded doubtfully. ‘There’s no accounting for taste, is there?’
‘Perhaps she’s not as easily impressed by the flagrantly obvious as...some.’ Sholto turned his head, his eyes going towards the group about Andy’s large frame. ‘Hadn’t you better get back to him, though? He probably has a short memory span.’
Involuntarily her eyes had followed the track of his. Jane, her lively, piquant face uplifted, was talking animatedly, while Andy grinned down at her, fascinated. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Andy’s memory,’ she said. ‘Does Averil know about yours?’ If he was going to hit below the belt, he could expect to be hit back.
‘Mine?’ His eyes narrowed, gleaming under the thick lashes.
‘Does she know you’re likely to forget that you’re married?’
‘I never forgot that I was married,’ Sholto said bitingly after a loaded moment. ‘There was no chance of that.’
‘You could have fooled me,’ she said, giddy with the knowledge that she’d made some impression on his apparent imperviousness. ‘You did fool me for a while.’
‘You fooled yourself.’ His voice hardened, dark satin over steel. ‘It was you who wrecked our relationship, Tara. You believed what you wanted to, and indulged in a childish revenge. Well, it doesn’t matter to me now.’
She couldn’t answer that—he always managed somehow to have the last word.
He stepped around her and went up to the bar, and she returned to Andy’s side and stayed there for the rest of the interminable evening, leaning on his shoulder and pretending to listen, and laughing at the appropriate times.
When the crowd began to thin out and a surreptitious survey showed no sign of Sholto and his fiancée, she found Chantelle and said good night. ‘Lovely party,’ she added.
‘We enjoyed it,’ Chantelle said. ‘Are you all right?’ Her eyes turned searching, shrewd.
‘A bit tired, maybe.’
‘Philip said you were talking to Averil’s fiancé.’
‘Sholto—yes,’ Tara said steadily. ‘Do you know him well?’
‘Averil’s Philip’s cousin, though they don’t get together very often, she’s away so much. Is Sholto a friend of yours?’
Tara shook her head. ‘Not exactly. I hadn’t seen him in years. Well, thanks again.’ She turned away, making for the door.
Outside the house, the quiet suburban street was lined with parked cars. She walked rapidly along the pavement towards hers, looking round as she heard footsteps behind her.
‘It’s only me,’ Andy said.
‘I didn’t realise you were leaving, too.’ She waited for him to fall into step beside her. ‘Did you bring a car?’
‘Yeah, but I’ll pick it up in the morning. I’ve had a couple too many beers.’
‘How are you getting home?’
‘Walk it off, I guess. Maybe I’ll pick up a cruising taxi later.’ They passed under the shadow of an overhanging tree, and Andy stumbled, flinging a heavy arm over Tara’s shoulders to help regain his balance. Automatically she hitched her own arm about his waist, shoring him up. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Never could hold my liquor.’
‘Why drink it, then?’ Tara asked reasonably. She hadn’t noticed him drinking all that much.
