Carly gave Sarah, the PA, a slightly harassed smile.
'Okay! So far there's only been one major fall-out between the chefs.'
Sarah laughed. 'You're lucky,' she announced, 'you can add a zero to that so far as the D'Argent's are concerned. Not that they fall out so much as she falls out with him! Did you manage to find something to wear for later?'
Carly shook her head. 'I haven't had time,' she told her truthfully.
'Would these be any use, then?' Sarah asked her, pointing to the overstuffed bin liner she had just put down.
'It's some stuff Mariella told me to get rid of ages ago. Look at this—it would be perfect for you for to night,' she announced, whipping a mass of silk black fabric out of the top of the bin liner. 'It's a sort of top and palazzo pants thing, all in one.'
The fine silk floated mouthwateringly through Carly's fingers. 'Are you sure that Mariella won't mind?' she asked Sarah worriedly.
'I doubt she'll even notice. Not once she hits the champagne and cocaine,' Sarah answered bluntly.
'It's very sheer...' Carly hesitated.
'You can wear a body underneath it—although Mariella didn't. Oh, and you'll need a pair of high heels—you should be able to pick something up at the market whilst they're having dinner. And if you can't get away you can use my cabin to shower and get changed in.'
Carly gave her a grateful look of relief. 'I was wondering how one earth I was going to manage to make time for that,' she admitted. 'I daren't leave the chefs alone together for too long, and I've promised Jeff I'll make sure no one touches his box trees!'
Sarah laughed and shook her head. 'When is my prince going to come and take me away from all this?' She sighed.
CHAPTER SIX
'Here they come...'
Carly gave Sarah a slightly distracted smile as they both watched the long line of limousines queuing up to disgorge the D'Argents' guests.
Carly had changed into the black outfit Sarah had given her, and was self-consciously aware of how very suggestively revealing it was. Not even the flesh colored body she was wearing beneath it could totally offset the effect of the layers of sheer black fabric floating around her body, revealing with every movement the sensual gleam of her skin beneath the silk.
If she had had something else to wear she would have done so. Sarah had intended to be kind, Carly knew, but no way was this outfit, with its tight-fitting top and hip-hugging palazzo pants bottom, suitable as discreet 'work wear'. But the other outfits had been just as bad.
Already as people approached the gangway they were looking at her—especially the men, some of whom were giving her openly lascivious glances.
Two over-chunky and businesslike dinner-suited bouncer types were checking the invitations before al lowing guests to step forward into the open-fronted en closure, where uniformed staff were waiting to offer welcome glasses of champagne cocktail. The glasses were arranged on white trays, whilst the cocktails were a steel-gray color.
'What on earth is in them?' Carly had whispered to their own mai"tre d'.
'Champagne, liqueur and coloring,' he had told her dryly. 'Mariella D'Argent was insistent that they had to be gray!'
Prior to the D'Argents' return Carly had made a swift inspection of the yacht's receptions areas, to check that everything was as it should be. Privately she felt that the glass floor over thousands of small white lights was a bit OTT, but she had been assured that it was nothing compared with what some people asked for.
The violinist had begun to play, the dinner guests had returned, and Mariella had gone to her suite to get changed into her specially commissioned outfit.
A posse of older men and their too-young arm candy were arriving, the girls all wearing similar teeny weenie, heavily embroidered clinging dresses and tottering on too-high heels. They were all obviously bleached blondes. Carly suppressed a small sigh.
More guests were arriving, and Carly recognized amongst them some very A-list celebrities—a famous actress, the daughter of a pop icon, a couple of ex-models—all of them accompanied by good-looking men.
But Ricardo hadn't arrived as yet. Not that she was looking for him!
'I'd better go in and be on hand, just in case Mariella wants me for anything,' Sarah whispered to her.
Nodding her head, Carly continued to keep a discreet watch on the arrivals.
'We're going to run short of cocktails any minute,' the mai'tre d' muttered warningly.
It took over an hour for all the guests to arrive, by which time Carly was downstairs in the main salon, keeping an eye on the proceedings there and trying to avoid getting too close to Mariella—just in case she should object to Carly wearing her discarded outfit!
Drugs were being passed round openly, and the sound of laughter was growing louder as they began to take effect.
Already some of the guests had started to behave recklessly. A well-known media mogul had grabbed a girl almost in front of Carly and now proceeded to caress her intimately whilst the girl herself encouraged him.
This was just not a lifestyle with which she felt comfortable, Carly reflected with revulsion. She couldn't understand how anyone could find any pleasure in something that ultimately was so very destructive. Drugs were anathema to her. Her eyes shadowed as she remembered how she had seen the misery that they could cause.
She felt a tug on her arm and turned to see one of the older men leering at her. She'd realized from over hearing them talking earlier that they were Russian.
'You come with me,' he demanded drunkenly.
'I'm sorry, I'm not a guest. I'm working,' Carly told him politely, trying to disengage herself.
'Good, then you work for me...in bed,' he responded coarsely. 'I pay you good, eh?'
Carly felt nauseated. Was that how all men saw women—as someone, something they could buy? A commodity they could use? Or did she attract that type because somehow instinctively they could sense what she had come from?
Trash! She winced as though she had been knifed, hearing again the contemptuous word that had been thrown at her so often during her childhood.
'You are trash, do you know that? Garbage. In fact, that's where they found you—lying in the rubbish, unwanted—and that's where you should have stayed.'
Abruptly she realized that she could feel the man's hot breath on her bare skin.
She turned to demand that he release her, and then tensed. Ricardo was standing on the other side of the salon, watching her.
He knew what she was, Ricardo reminded himself savagely, so why did the sight of Carly allowing another man to hold her arm so intimately ill him with jealousy instead of contempt? And why the hell was
he now pushing his way through the crowd milling through the salon, in the wake of the D'Argents, in order to get to her? After all, he had already seen the proprietorial way her male companion had reached for her. And what was driving him through the crowd certainly wasn't rooted in some kind of male solidarity, or an altruistic desire to warn her latest victim of just what she was, was it? He derided himself cynically. The truth was, he preferred not to analyze just what the sight of another man holding on to her was doing to him—or why.
Instead he channeled his anger into deciding that her escort's taste in clothes—for obviously he must have bought her the abomination she was wearing—was about as good as Carly's was in men. The pair of them deserved one another, and Carly deserved everything she would get from selling herself to a man who might just as well have had what he was tattooed across his forehead.
But Carly wasn't here to have a relationship with another man, and he intended to remind her in no uncertain terms that he was supposed to be her prime concern. How dared she reject him and then let that over weight, sweaty nobody put his greasy hands all over her? Where was her pride? Her self-respect? Didn't it ever occur to her that she was intelligent enough to earn her own living and support herself, instead of debasing herself by offering herself to any man who would give her the price of a few designer rags? 'You! Here!'
Carly stared at the man who had spoken to her so arrogantly as he approached, and then realized that he was with the man who was holding her.
'How much do you want?'
He was already opening his wallet and starting to remove money from it.
Another man had joined the other two, taller and leaner, and with an unmistakable air of authority about him. He spoke sharply to them, and to Carly's relief she was immediately released.
'I apologize for my countrymen—I hope you will not condemn all Russian men as unmannerly oafs because of them?'
He was charming, and very good-looking, Carly acknowledged.
'Of course not,' she assured him. 'You are here alone?'