‘It’s for the dress,’ she told him as calmly as she could. ‘Briony told me how much it cost.’
She could see that he was frowning, giving her a searching look as his mouth hardened.
‘What exactly are you trying to do, Polly?’ he asked her irritably. ‘What point are you trying to make?’
‘I’m simply repaying the money you spent,’ Polly told him, trying to appear casual. ‘There’s no need for you to make an issue of it, Marcus.’
‘And if I say that I’m not going to accept this cheque?’ Marcus challenged her silkily.
Alarm flared in Polly’s eyes. She knew that tone of his, but she wasn’t going to be browbeaten by him, nor turned into a pathetic bundle of female nerves.
‘If you don’t then you’ll leave me with no alternative but to return the dress to you,’ Polly told him determinedly.
‘But it was a gift,’ Marcus responded immediately.
‘I don’t want your gifts,’ Polly retaliated swiftly, only realising her mistake too late as she saw the way Marcus was smiling at her.
‘Not my gift, Polly,’ he corrected her. ‘Briony’s. If I were to buy you clothes—’
‘Yes, I know,’ she snapped, completely losing her cool. ‘You’d buy me something much more appropriate for a woman of my age.’
‘Oh, yes, it would be something very appropriate,’ Marcus taunted her softly. His voice became much harder as he shrugged and told her dismissively, ‘Do what you like with the dress, Polly. If you want to get at me so much that you’re prepared to trample all over Briony’s feelings to do so, then I can’t stop you…’
Ignoring her angry gasp of protest, he turned round and walked out of her office. How typical of him that he should have the last word, and such a pointed one, Polly recognised angrily.
And what made it worse was that he was right. Briony would be hurt if she returned the dress to him and refused to wear it again.
She was still seething with resentment over his behaviour an hour later, when Phil rang again.
‘Whatever it takes to get you to say yes and have dinner with me, you’ve got it,’ Phil promised extravagantly, his determination to get her consent making Polly laugh.
‘No, truthfully,’ she began, fully intending to tell him that she couldn’t—and then she stopped, remembering the way Marcus had spoken to her. What right did he have to tell her what she should and should not do, whom she should and should not see, especially when he himself…? She took a deep breath and, smothering the tiny voice that warned her to be careful, told Phil recklessly, ‘There’s no need. I’d love to see your hotel…’
‘And you’ll have dinner with me?’ Phil pressed. Polly hesitated.
‘Very well,’ she agreed somewhat reluctantly. ‘But I’ll make my own arrangements for my overnight accommodation, Phil,’ she told him firmly.
‘I understand,’ he assured her.
What would Marcus have to say when he found out what she had done? she wondered a little nervously when they had concluded their call. And then, very quickly, she reminded herself that she had the right to do what she wanted when she wanted and with whom she wanted…hadn’t she?
CHAPTER FIVE
‘IT LOOKS wonderful on you.’
‘You don’t think that it might be a little bit too young?’ Polly asked the shop assistant uncertainly.
The girl raised her elegant eyebrows.
‘Certainly not,’ she assured Polly firmly. ‘In fact if anything…This designer is in her mid-thirties herself, and designs for her own age group, so if anything I should say it’s perhaps a little bit old for you.’ She gave Polly a ruefully conspiratorial smile as she told her, ‘She’s actually one of my favourite designers and I’ve promised myself one of her dresses as a thirtieth-birthday present.’
The salesgirl’s obvious belief that Polly was closer to her own age than the designer’s boosted Polly’s self-confidence so much that she found herself buying not just the dress but a pair of impossibly spindly-heeled shoes to go with it.
In a matt black thick jersey fabric, the dress had a cutaway semi-diamond-shaped neckline which did things for her décolletage and her arms and shoulders that Polly would have thought were impossible. In it she felt as soignée and feminine as any film star, and it was worth paying the outrageously extravagant price just for that feeling alone.
Marcus would have hated it on her, of course, no doubt believing that it was far too sensually alluring for her, but then Marcus was not going to see her in it, was he? Momentarily her eyes clouded, her pleasure dimming. She had bought the dress as a gesture of defiance—and to replace the one Marcus had paid for which she had mentally sworn she would never wear again. And besides, why shouldn’t she indulge herself a little? She could afford it, and it wasn’t often she got the chance to come to London to shop.