The little voice giggles. “Only kidding! “she says brightly. “So anyway, what were you saying about education earlier? That I should give your fiancé a lesson on the dance floor? How about it Xander?”
Xander looks amused, though he doesn’t accept my outstretched hand. Princess Caroline clings firmly to his arm. “We think not,” she says stiffly.
“No dance lesson? I’m so disappointed. How about a little something for good luck then? On the occasion of your forthcoming marriage. You need it, because it seems to me your marriage is never coming.”
She hooks my arm around Xander’s neck and drags his mouth down to mine for a kiss. A long kiss. A kiss where she uses my tongue in ways I have never dreamt of. Xander stiffens for only a moment, then he relaxes into it. When she pulls away, he looks mildly stunned. She pats him on the cheek. “Good luck, Xander Daxx. You’ll be needing it.”
Beside him Caroline is gaping at me. “How dare you?” she utters, as the diva suppresses a giggle.
The little voice blows Caroline a kiss. “You’re welcome. Toodle pip.” She struts away.
I can’t believe you did that.
“Believe it, baby,” she says out loud, mortifying me because the bystanders who are goggling at me can clearly hear her. “And don’t pretend you never enjoyed it. He tasted quite nice. You should go for him. I bet he’d love it.”
He’s taken!
“Pfft. They’re never taken. Now where’s that sweet little Benny of yours?”
Oh God. Please don’t kiss Ben. Don’t do that to him.
“Relax. He’s not my type,” she says.
But that doesn’t stop her from flirting with him when she finds him in the kitchens. She croons in his ear, asking him to drive us in one of the catering vans to Raif’s house. “Please Benny. You’re my last resort. I wouldn’t ask if I really didn’t need it.”
“But… But I’m at work,” he objects, looking severely torn between the desire to help me and the fear of skiving off work.
“It’ll only take twenty minutes,” she begs. “It’s not far. You’ll be back in forty minutes, and this party is so busy that Smithers won’t even notice. Please Benny? Pretty please?”
She opens my eyes wide and flutters my eyelashes. Ben’s shoulders sag. He has reached the conclusion that his heart can’t possibly say no. Once we are in the van, Ben still nervously looking over his shoulder as if convinced that Smithers is following us, she punches the postcode into the sat nav.
Twenty minutes later we pull up outside a row of large terraced houses whose market value is clearly too far out of my budget. Ben peers out of the van window at them. He finally looks a bit suspicious. “You don’t live here, do you?” he asks hesitantly.
She turns around in her seat to face him. “Listen, Benny, if anyone asks you, you didn’t bring me here tonight. Okay?”
Ben’s brows draw together with concern. “What do you mean if anyone asks me?”
She takes hold of his jaw in one hand and squeezes it a little too firmly. “Anyone at all, Benny. Because information is power, so I’m giving you my power. You don’t want to give my power away, do you?”
“Er, no, Of course not. But—”
“Wonderful,” she trills patting him on the cheek, before opening the door and climbing out. She ushers him away. “See you later Benny. Off you go now. And remember…” She holds her finger up to my lips. “Shhh!”
Ben looks baffled, but his anxiety about getting back to work before anyone notices that he is gone wins. He drives away.
There was no need to be so condescending to him, I complain.
“The less he knows, the better for him.”
She turns to contemplate the house. All of the windows are dark. Clearly nobody is inside.
How are you planning to get in? I ask. Did you happen to magically find his house keys in his office as well?
“Nope. Don’t need a key. Just need my wits.”
She marches jauntily around the side of the house and easily climbs over the gate that leads into the back garden. No skulking for her. She doesn’t even seem to care that people might be seeing us.
She whistles as she walks up to the back door, which has police tape on it. She opens my bag and takes out a pair of rubber gloves that I can’t remember packing. She pulls them on. She turns my body sideways towards the door and bends my elbow towards it.