The Socialite's Secret

They were, it would seem, going to be here for a very long time.

‘Who are you here with?’ she asked.

‘My brother and his friends,’ Luke said. ‘It’s his twenty-first.’

‘And why are you wearing a suit?’ Scarlet asked, and then took another tiny, tiny sip.

‘To ensure that I look like an idiot.’

‘Well, I think that you look …’ She looked over his body and then up to his pale face. He was clean-shaven but there was a dark shadow on his jaw, and his eyes, when she met them properly, were a very deep shade of brown. So dark that she couldn’t see his pupils. ‘I think you’re beautiful.’

‘I don’t think I’ve been called that before,’ Luke said, smiling at her Californian accent. ‘Though I’m quite sure you’ve been called it many times.’

Now Luke looked at her properly, in the way he’d been wanting to since he had turned around to her voice.

That dress showed far too much pale skin and the red stilettos she wore looked a little too big for her skinny legs. His eyes moved to her face and she was way more than beautiful. That fluffy hair was at odds with her delicate features and her mouth was very full and red.

A little too full perhaps, Luke thought, wondering if she’d had fillers, but, God, she was surely way too young for all that sort of thing.

He wanted to kiss her.

That in itself was a rather bizarre thought for Luke. While he thought about sex for approximately fifty seconds of every minute, to want to reach over and kiss, simply kiss, a virtual stranger was something he had never felt before.

Luke checked his memory.

Nope, not once.

This was a new feeling indeed.

‘So who are you here with?’ he asked.

‘A few people.’ Scarlet shrugged but was saved from elaborating when one of his brother’s friends came over. ‘Hey, Doc,’ he said, and picked up his drink, but then he gave Luke an odd, wide-eyed look and left them.

‘Doc?’ Scarlet checked.

‘Doctor,’ Luke said, and told her a little bit more about himself. ‘Which is the reason I’m wearing a suit. I was at an interview earlier.’

‘Doctor?’ Scarlet frowned and, almost imperceptibly, screwed up her nose, as if he had said that he specialised in sewerage and had just dropped in for a drink midshift.

‘What do you do?’ Luke asked her.

Scarlet looked at the bubbles fizzing up in her still very full glass and it matched her veins because they seemed to be fizzing too with excitement. Luke really didn’t know who she was, which meant she could be anything she wanted to be.

Anything at all.

But what?

And then she remembered her time in Africa and a very far-off dream, and she brought it to life but with a little slant.

‘I’m an OB nurse,’ Scarlet said.

‘Where?’ Luke asked, rather hoping it was at the Royal!

‘Back in LA.’

‘You’d be called a midwife here.’

‘A midwife?’ Scarlet checked. ‘A what?’

‘A midwife,’ Luke said, and watched as she started to laugh.

He didn’t get a chance to play with words and, oh, they wanted to play with words, but his brother was heading over and Luke had no intention of sticking around for a drunken conversation with him. ‘I’ve got to go,’ Luke said, and as he moved to his full height from leaning against the bar he realised just how tiny she was because even though she was wearing stilettos he towered over her.

‘So,’ she asked, ‘where are you moving on to?’

‘Moving on?’ Luke checked, and then realised that she was asking him what club he was off to next. ‘Bed.’

‘Yum!’

She took another sip of her drink and met his eyes. Luke had never met anyone like her in his life and, leaving aside the flirty offer, he actually wanted to know her some more, but well away from this dive.

‘I meant …’ Luke said, then gave up trying to correct her. ‘Can I Call the Midwife?’

Clearly she didn’t get his little joke because she frowned at his invitation to get in touch.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Luke said. She was from another part of the globe after all and, yes, he was going back to the hotel, he decided, as an overly friendly Marcus joined them.

‘Can I have a word?’ Marcus asked, slapping him on the shoulder.

‘Sure,’ Luke agreed, knowing full well that Marcus would be asking for some more money to be put behind the bar before Luke left. Marcus was studying medicine and was perpetually broke. It annoyed Luke. He himself had worked all his way through med school but he chose to say nothing tonight as it was Marcus’s birthday.

But as they pulled away from Scarlet, and Luke went to get out his wallet, it turned out that Marcus had other things on his mind.

‘How did you two get talking?’ Marcus asked.

‘What?’ Luke frowned. ‘Do you know her?’ he checked, wondering if she was cutting one of Marcus’s friend’s lunch. ‘Is she here with—’

‘You don’t know who she is, do you?’ Marcus grinned. ‘Do you ever come out from behind that stethoscope of yours? That’s Scarlet.’

‘I know that.’

‘Anya’s daughter.’

‘Oh!’

Yes, Luke did know who Anya was. After all, she had been famous before he’d even been born, not that Luke paid much attention to such things, but he had seen Anya and her entourage leave the club. Now that he thought about it, he did recall that Anya had a daughter who went everywhere with her.

He glanced over and saw that Scarlet was trying to get away from some loud, obnoxious guy who was trying to drag her over to dance, and two burly men were moving in.

She was here with her own bodyguards, Luke realised, not the vague friends that she had alluded to. Now he understood Marcus’s friend’s odd look when he had come over.

Scarlet was a star.

‘She seems nice.’ Luke shrugged. She had. ‘Anyway, I’m heading off. I’ll go and settle the bar tab and put some more behind. You have a good night.’

As Luke went to the bar Scarlet came over.

‘Dance?’ she offered.

‘I’m just leaving.’

‘Just once dance,’ Scarlet persisted, but he shook his head.

‘Not with your bodyguards watching.’

‘You know who I am now, don’t you?’

‘Not really,’ Luke said. ‘I know two of your names and I’ve heard of your mother. You’re not a midwife, I take it?’ She shook her head and Luke glanced down at the bill he had just been given. ‘There should be champagne on there,’ he said to the bartender.

‘It’s on the house,’ the bartender said, and smiled at Scarlet as it dawned on Luke that she didn’t have to pay.

Scarlet’s presence in the club was more than enough.

It annoyed Luke.

Not that Scarlet had been playing him along—now that he understood why, it didn’t annoy him in the least—but he wanted to have bought her that drink.

‘Add it,’ Luke said, and handed back the bill.

‘Sure.’ The bartender shrugged.

He turned around and Scarlet was still there. ‘Take me with you,’ she said. Her arms went around his neck and Luke went to peel them off but then he heard the desperation in her voice. ‘Please.’ Scarlet closed her eyes. She was so tired of the noise and no doubt drama would await her when she returned to the hotel. It felt like for ever that she had been trying to escape. She looked up at Luke and he was so calm and so slightly bored with it all, as was she, and she gazed into his beautiful eyes. ‘I’ll make it worth your while.’

‘You don’t need to offer sex, Scarlet.’

‘I want to spend some time with you.’

‘Why don’t you ask me to take you for dinner?’

‘Dinner?’ Scarlet frowned.

‘Well, it’s nearly one, so I’m not sure where.’ Luke smiled but he let her hands remain around his neck and his hands moved to her hips. The urge to kiss her was back.

‘I haven’t eaten since breakfast,’ Scarlet admitted.

It was almost that time again, Luke thought, but then he pushed that aside. Unlike most men, the thought of a one-night stand didn’t thrill him—his father’s perpetually roving eye meant that he’d lived with the fallout for long enough to learn from James Edwards’s mistakes.

‘You really want to take me for dinner?’

‘I do.’

‘I’m sorry I lied to you,’ Scarlet said. ‘I just wanted to see if you’d like me if I was normal.’

‘You are normal,’ Luke said.

As was his body’s reaction to her.

There was a need, an absolute need to get her away from here, to just talk, to get to know her some more and, yes, to get to that mouth.

‘Can you lose your bodyguards?’ Luke asked. He couldn’t stand the thought of them overseeing things. He wanted Scarlet away from the hype and he knew he would take good care of her. Judging by her previous offer to make it worth his while, they didn’t take proper care of her either.

‘I can’t.’ She shook her head. ‘You don’t get how it is—I can’t go anywhere without them.’

Luke didn’t play games.

Ever.

‘Can you lose your bodyguards?’ he asked again, and Scarlet heard the warning. If she said no, he’d be gone.

‘They’ll dial 911 if I disappear.’

‘Well, they shan’t get very far if they do,’ Luke said, and he told her the UK emergency number. ‘I’ll take care of you but I’m not buying you dinner with an audience.’

He wanted to take her for dinner!

‘I could go to the loo and try to …’

‘Climb out of the window?’ Luke scoffed at her plans. ‘Why don’t you simply tell them that you’re having a night off?’ But then he halted as he realised, for the first time, that life in her world wasn’t that simple.

‘Please take me for dinner,’ she said.

‘I’ll go outside and wait down the back,’ Luke offered. ‘If you can’t get out of the loo there will be an emergency exit. But,’ he warned, ‘if you tell your bodyguards what you’re up to, if I even get a hint that they’re around, I’ll hand you back over to them. I’m not going to be playing your celebrity game, Scarlet.’

Luke meant it.

CHAPTER FOUR

WHAT THE HELL was he doing? Luke thought as he stood in a cold, dark, basement alley next to bins and looked up at the tiny windows.

She’d never get through them, Luke realised.

Maybe she had changed her mind, Luke decided, because it had surely been ten or so minutes that he had been waiting. He was just about to give in when he saw one red shoe poke out of a very small gap in a window, followed by one skinny, pale leg and then another.

‘I’ve got you,’ Luke said, as he guided her legs out and tried not to notice that her dress was bunching up. He moved his hands from her flesh and then held her by the hips and negotiated Scarlet’s body out of the small opening. As he dropped her down to the ground he turned her around. She was breathless and Luke could see the exhilaration in her eyes.

Not just that she was free!

Scarlet’s dress was ruched up from her rather undignified exit and she could still feel where his hands had made contact with her thighs. Now she faced Luke and, despite his very cool demeanour, Scarlet knew that he was as turned on as she was.

Her hands moved up back around his neck and she moved into him for warmth and for confirmation of his arousal.

‘Oh,’ Scarlet said.

An odd remark perhaps but she could feel him on the length of her stomach and those hands on her hips let her rest there a moment. His voice when it came was a bit ragged.

‘Come on.’

He got the ‘Oh’ comment. Luke was feeling it too.

That urge to kiss was there and a whole lot of other urges too but a stinking dark alley wasn’t at the top of his wish list and her bodyguards would no doubt realise that she was missing some time very soon. So, rather than kiss her, Luke grabbed her hand and they ran up some metal stairs and out onto a seedy street and then turned into another.

Luke hailed a black cab and, a touch breathless, they both climbed in.

He gave the name of a restaurant that he knew stayed open late, which he had been to with friends a couple of times when he’d been in London. It was nice and low-key with booths where they could tuck themselves away and he could get to know her some more.

Luke wanted that.

He really did, but as the taxi took off, the driver glanced in the rear-view mirror and must have seen just who his fare was.

‘Scarlet!’ He turned and smiled and it annoyed Luke that Scarlet smiled back and that she and the driver started talking about Anya’s performance. Was it possible to have a conversation that didn’t include her mother?

‘Just drop us here,’ Luke said, as they reached a busier street. They walked into a different restaurant from the one he would have chosen but the reaction to her was the same there and they left.

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