Uncomfortably Saskia refused to look at her reflection in the hall mirror. All that lipstick! It felt sticky, gooey, and as Lorraine drove her towards Hilford she had to force herself to resist the temptation to wipe it off. As for the unbuttoned cardigan she was wearing beneath her suit jacket—well, the moment she was inside the wine bar and out of Lorraine’s sight she was going to refasten every single one of the top three buttons Lorraine had demanded she leave undone. True, they did nothing more than merely hint at a cleavage, but even that was far more of a provocation than Saskia would normally have allowed.
‘We’re here,’ Lorraine announced as she pulled up outside the wine bar. ‘I’ll pick you up at eleven—that should give you plenty of time. Remember,’ Lorraine hissed determinedly as Saskia got out of the car, ‘We’re doing this for Megan.’
We? But before Saskia could say anything Lorraine was driving off.
A man walking in the opposite direction paused on the pavement to give her an admiring glance. Automatically Saskia distanced herself from him and turned away, mentally squaring her shoulders as she headed for the entrance to the wine bar.
Lorraine had given her a long list of instructions, most of which had made Saskia cringe inwardly, and already her courage was beginning to desert her. There was no way she could go in there and pout and flirt in the enticing way that Lorraine had informed her she had to do. But if she didn’t, poor Megan could end up having her heart broken and her inheritance cheated away from her.
Taking a deep breath, Saskia pulled open the wine bar door.
CHAPTER TWO
ANDREAS saw Saskia the moment she walked in. He was seated at the bar, which was now being besieged by a crowd of young men who had come in just ahead of her. He could have stayed in and eaten in the office block’s penthouse apartment—or even driven to the closest of their new acquisitions—but he had already endured two lengthy phone calls he would rather not have had this evening: one from his grandfather and another from Athena. So he had decided to go somewhere where neither of them could get in touch with him, having deliberately ‘forgotten’ to bring his mobile with him.
He hadn’t been in a particularly good mood when he had arrived at the wine bar. Such places were not to his taste.
He liked good food served in comfortable surroundings where one could talk and think with ease, and there was also enough Greek in him for him to prefer somewhere more family centred and less of an obvious trawling ground for members of the opposite sex.
Thinking of the opposite sex made his mouth harden. Athena was becoming more and more brazen in her attempts to convince him that they should be together. He had been fifteen the first time he had been exposed to Athena’s sexual aggression, and she had been twenty-two and about to be married.
He frowned as he watched Saskia. She was standing just inside the doorway, studying the room as though she was looking for someone. She turned her head and the light fell on her smoothly glossed lips.
Andreas sucked in his breath as he fought to control his unwanted reaction to her. What the hell was he doing? She was so damned obvious with that almost but not quite scarlet lipstick that he ought to be laughing, not... Not what? he asked himself caustically. Not wanting...lusting...
A strong surge of self-disgust lashed him. He had recognised her, of course. It was the girl from this afternoon, the one the receptionist had congratulated on her early departure from work. Then she had been wearing a minimum of make-up. Now... He eyed her lipsticked mouth and kohl-enhanced eyes grimly. She was wearing a suit with a short skirt...a very short skirt, he observed as she moved and he caught sight of the length of her sheer black tights-clad legs. A very, very short skirt!
As the turned-over waistband of her once respectably knee-length skirt made its presence felt, Saskia grimaced. Once she had found Mark she fully intended to make her way to the cloakroom and return her skirt to its normal length. It had been Lorraine, of course, who had insisted on shortening it.
‘I can’t go out like that,’ Saskia had yelped.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Lorraine had derided her. ‘That’s nothing. Haven’t you seen pictures from the sixties?’