Читать книгу Bride for Hire - Jessica Hart - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

DAISY’S lips were soft against the firmness of Seth’s jaw and she could smell the clean, masculine scent of his skin with its faintly expensive tang of aftershave. Without intending to, Daisy found her mouth lingering against him. There was something irresistibly solid about him—something magnetising, something tantalising—something that made her drift her lips in feather-light kisses below his ear.

Seth’s arms were still folded in front of him and he stayed utterly still beneath her touch, his very lack of response a provocation. Piqued, Daisy began to press slow, enticing kisses along his jaw instead. She had forgotten her intention to withdraw after that first token touch to his throat. She had forgotten that she hardly knew this man; forgotten that what she did know she didn’t like; forgotten everything but the feel of his skin like tempered steel beneath her lips and her determination to make him acknowledge the simmering awareness in her kisses.

Slowly, slowly, she worked her way along his jaw, but it wasn’t until she reached the tantalising corner of his mouth that she felt his lips begin to curl upwards in an equally slow smile. ‘Go on,’ he said, but the steadiness in his voice made Daisy pause. She made as if to withdraw but he had unfolded his arms at last and his hands were at her waist, drawing her back against him, and suddenly it seemed the most natural thing in the world to melt into him and feel his lips part beneath hers.

They fitted against each other perfectly. Somehow she had expected Seth’s mouth to feel as cold and calculating as it looked, but it wasn’t. It was warm, warmer than Daisy would have believed possible as they kissed and then kissed again. A gathering excitement looped around them, tightening its coils around them until the only thing to do was to relax into it and slide her arms from his shoulders around his neck to stop herself being swept away altogether.

She was bewitched, intoxicated by the sweet persuasion of his lips and the unyielding hardness of his body as he held her against him, and when his hands slid beneath her T-shirt to spread possessively over her skin Daisy’s only response was to murmur low in her throat and arch her back into his touch. His fingers were searing, making her gasp as they explored her slenderness and drifted insistently upwards to curve around her breast.

It was that sharp intake of breath at the jolt of electric excitement that broke the kiss. Daisy found herself staring down into unreadable grey eyes, her own dazed and very blue, and then Seth slid his hands back to her waist to put her from him with something which might have been reluctance.

‘That was very good, Daisy Deare,’ he said, his breathing still slightly ragged. ‘That was really very good indeed. It seems that you can act, after all.’

Daisy was so shaken that she could hardly stand. Her legs felt insubstantial, as if she were held up by no more than the frantic flutter of a thousand butterfly wings. She couldn’t believe what she had done. Had that really been she, arching beneath the touch of a perfect stranger; sinking into his kiss; abandoning herself to the shivery thrill of his lips and his hands? Appalled at herself, she swallowed hard and fought to steady her own voice.

‘It’s amazing what you have to do to get a job now, isn’t it?’ It was barely more than a croak but at least she managed to get a whole sentence out, which was a miracle under the circumstances.

Seth’s cool gaze rested for a moment on the huge blue eyes before dropping to her mouth which was still burning from his touch. ‘I think I can say that you’ve passed your audition with flying colours—if you still want the job, that is?’

She wasn’t going to go through that to give up the job now! Daisy’s chin lifted a fraction. ‘Yes.’ Her voice wasn’t quite steady yet, but with every moment she was getting a better grip on herself. ‘Why else would I have kissed you?’

‘Why, indeed?’ Seth got up from the sofa, his grey eyes sardonic. ‘I just hope poor old Robert is as understanding as you say he is. Does he know just how well you “act”, Daisy?’

‘Does Astra Bentingger know how thoroughly you audition?’

Seth’s expression was flinty as he took Daisy’s chin in one strong brown hand. ‘I’ve warned you before about that tongue of yours, Daisy,’ he said and, although she met his eyes bravely, inwardly Daisy quailed at his tone. ‘Do you want to learn what I’m like when I’m pushed too far?’

One look into his eyes was enough to give her the answer to that. Daisy moistened her lips. ‘No.’

‘In that case. I suggest that you learn to keep your tongue firmly between your teeth.’ He released her face and Daisy stepped back, resisting the urge to rub her chin where he had held her. It was impossible to imagine that only minutes ago she had twined her arms around this formidable man’s neck and quivered with excitement at his kisses. ‘Astra is none of your business,’ Seth went on coldly. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re going to be working for me just like any other employee. That means you get paid to do as you’re told, not to be smart. Is that understood?’

‘Perfectly.’

He gave her a hard look then moved away, suddenly brisk. ‘All right, let’s get down to business. The deal is that you agree to act as my girlfriend until Astra’s divorce comes through or until such time as I decide that there’s no need to keep up the pretence any longer. It means you’ll have to spend at least the next few weeks with me, but in return I’m prepared to pay you a considerable sum of money—in cash—to ensure your discretion.’

Daisy’s jaw dropped when Seth told her just how much he would pay her. ‘Is that acceptable?’ he asked, turning to frown at her gaping expression.

Acceptable? Daisy had never even contemplated having such a large sum of money before! It would at least take the immediate burden of financial worries off her mother’s shoulders, she calculated quickly. ‘I think so,’ she said, pursing up her lips and trying to look as if she discussed sums like that every day of the week. ‘That sounds fine.’

‘You’ll get paid at the end,’ Seth warned her, ‘when you’ve shown me that you can behave.’

Daisy was still trembling inside from the effect of his kiss, but she managed to move away quite coolly. ‘We will go to the Caribbean?’

‘Yes, I’ve invited a number of guests to my island as a cover for meeting Astra there.’

‘Your island?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘I thought you might have a house there,’ said Daisy. ‘I didn’t think you’d have a whole island!’

One of those unsettling gleams of amusement sprang to the grey eyes. ‘It’s only a small island, if that makes you feel any better.’

‘Does that mean we’ll be stuck out on our own, or will we be able to get to the other islands?’ Daisy asked anxiously, and his brows lifted.

‘Being “stuck out on our own” is generally the idea behind having your own island,’ he pointed out with some acidity. ‘But if you’re desperate for crowds we can take the seaplane or one of the boats. Where did you want to go?’

Mike had recommended that Daisy started looking in the Windward Islands, but it had only been one of the places Tom had mentioned. ‘I was just wondering,’ she said vaguely. She had no idea how she was going to start looking for Tom, but there was no point in worrying about it until she got there. Anyway, with the kind of money Seth was offering, she would be able to afford to travel around if necessary, Daisy reminded herself buoyantly. ‘When are we going?’ she asked Seth, who glanced at her suspiciously.

‘You seem very keen to get to the Caribbean, Daisy.’

‘I’ve always wanted to go there, that’s all.’ For some reason, Daisy was reluctant to tell Seth about Tom and her stepfather’s illness. He was too ruthless, too calculating—the kind of man who would be impatient of sentiment and messy emotions—and if he thought that Daisy’s mind wasn’t going to be entirely on the job she knew that he would have no compunction in calling off the whole deal. There would be no point in appealing to Seth’s better nature. Daisy doubted very much that he even had one.

Look at the chilly way he was approaching his marriage with Astra Bentingger, and any man who could kiss like that and remain totally unmoved had to be utterly heartless. No, better by far to let him think that she was an impoverished actress, desperate for a palm-fringed beach.

‘Well, if you’re planning on island-hopping you’re going to have to wait until I’ve finished with you,’ said Seth, unwittingly demonstrating his overbearing image. ‘I’m not having you jaunting off when I need you on hand to look suitably adoring.’

‘How long do you think that’ll be?’

‘A month? Six weeks? Maybe longer.’ He quirked a sardonic eyebrow at her. ‘Think Robert will be able to manage without you that long?’

‘I expect so,’ said Daisy with a frosty look. She didn’t like the sneer in Seth’s voice whenever he mentioned Robert. Robert might not be very exciting, but at least he had a kind heart.

‘He’d better start getting used to it right away,’ said Seth callously. ‘I’ve got a number of social engagements over the next couple of weeks and, if we’re going to establish you as my girlfriend, we may as well start tonight. I’ll take you out to dinner.’

He walked over to the door, as if to indicate that the interview was now over, while Daisy eyed him resentfully. She had been planning to visit Jim in hospital that evening. The brusque way Seth gave orders and arrogantly assumed that everyone else would fall in with them without question riled her. She stayed stubbornly where she was.

‘What if I’ve got other plans for this evening?’

‘Cancel them,’ said Seth with insulting indifference and opened the door. ‘If you give Maria your address I’ll come and pick you up at eight o’clock.’

Daisy tried to imagine Seth turning up at her front door. He would look completely alien in their quiet south London street and, quite apart from anything else, it wouldn’t take him long to work out that her address was too close to Dee Pearce’s for coincidence. “There’s no need for you to collect me,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll come here.’

‘What’s the matter, Daisy?’ mocked Seth. ‘Don’t you want Robert to meet your new boss?’

‘I’d rather keep my private life entirely separate,’ said Daisy, trying—and failing—to sound quelling. Seth certainly didn’t appear noticeably quelled.

‘Just make sure you’re looking a bit smarter than you do now,’ was all he said, and nodded unmistakably at the door. ‘Now beat it,’ he said. ‘I’ve got work to do.’

Daisy bridled at his dismissal all the way home. He was insufferably rude, infuriatingly overbearing, unbelievably arrogant! There she was—prepared to humiliate herself by pretending to actually like the man and he carried on as if he was doing her a favour! Simmering, Daisy glowered out of the window of the bus. She wished she could have told Seth what he could do with his pretence but the thought of Jim, lying in hospital longing for a reconciliation with his son, had held her tongue at the crucial moment and she had had to content herself with stalking past him without a word of farewell.

The next few weeks were not going to be easy, Daisy acknowledged gloomily to herself. There was nothing easy about Seth Carrington. She could picture him with unnerving clarity, as if his image were scorched into her brain—the dark, forbidding lines of his face, the hardness of his eyes, the disturbing set of his mouth.

Daisy shifted uneasily in her seat and the colour. surged into her cheeks at the memory of how that mouth had felt against hers. What had possessed her to kiss him like that—to let herself be kissed like that? Why couldn’t she have stepped coolly away from him after a token peck on the cheek? That’s all it would have taken. Instead, she had taken him at his word and kissed him like a lover, and now she couldn’t forget the touch and the taste and the feel of him. It was as if she could still breathe in his scent; still feel the tantalising roughness of his skin beneath her lips.

Somehow, when she had been with Seth, the fact that she had been able to argue with and kiss a perfect stranger within a few minutes of meeting him had seemed perfectly natural, but now that she was away from the overwhelming magnetism of his presence the memory of her odd behaviour struck Daisy with the force of a blow and she sat, appalled, as she realised what she had done. She must have been mad!

Her mother seemed to agree when Daisy gave her a very edited version of her afternoon’s activities. ‘You went under completely false pretences to see a man you’ve never met before in your life and agreed to spend the next few weeks posing as his girlfriend?’ she summarised incredulously. ‘Daisy, what were you thinking of?’

‘I was thinking of Jim,’ said Daisy, crouching down beside her mother’s chair. ‘I know it sounds unusual, Mum, but it’s just a job. He’s not interested in me at all.’

‘So he says!’

‘He wants to marry someone else—that’s the whole point,’ said Daisy patiently. ‘Really, he couldn’t have made it clearer that I’m not his type and he’s definitely not mine!’ Treacherously her mind veered to that terrible kiss before she managed to wrench it firmly away. ‘It’s a business arrangement, that’s all, and it’s the only chance I’ve got to get to the Caribbean and look for Tom. Think what it would mean to Jim if I could persuade him to come home?’

Ellen Johnson twisted her hands together in her lap. ‘If only you could! But Tom never accepted me. I’m sure that’s why he left. He wouldn’t want to come back, knowing that I was here.’

‘He might have resented you at first, but you weren’t the reason he and Jim argued,’ said Daisy stoutly, as she had said so many times before. ‘They were both too stubborn to give in and admit that they needed each other. I’m sure Tom would come back at once if he knew how ill Jim was. That’s why I’ve got to track him down somehow. I know things are busy in the flower shop at the moment, but Lisa can cope if you just keep an eye on things.’

‘But what if this girl Dee Pearce turns up?’ worried Ellen, still unconvinced by Daisy’s breezy assurance that she had found herself a job that would take her to the Caribbean. ‘She might tell this man that you’re not friends at all, and then what will he think?’

‘She won’t turn up,’ Daisy assured her confidently. ‘I told you, Mum. As soon as I realised that the letter wasn’t addressed to me at all I took it round to her house to explain why I’d opened it. I rang the bell, but a neighbour told me that Dee had gone away. That’s why the whole thing just seemed like fate.’

‘You took a terrible risk,’ her mother reproached her.

‘If it had been some sort of shady deal I’d have just walked out,’ she pointed out, more confident now than she had been when the idea had first occurred to her. ‘As it is, it’s a perfectly straightforward job. It shouldn’t be too hard to hang around and look dumb at a few parties, and in return Seth Carrington will take me out to the Caribbean and give me enough money to find Tom. Easy.’ Daisy had forgotten her doubts on the bus and was bent on convincing her mother that she had found the perfect solution.

‘Seth Carrington?’ Ellen looked at her daughter with new foreboding. ‘Not the Seth Carrington?’

‘I’d hate to think that there were two of him,’ said Daisy wryly. ‘Why?’

‘I was just reading about him on my way to the hospital,’ said Ellen, getting up to look through the evening newspaper and fold back a page at last to show Daisy an article. ‘He doesn’t sound like the kind of man you want to get involved with.’

She handed the paper to Daisy, who glanced through the article. The first section reported Seth’s arrival in London, reviewing the ruthlessness of his reputation and the phenomenal success of his vast business empire. The second was headed ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST ELIGIBLE BACHELORS and made much of the way Seth managed to combine financial success with a jet-setting lifestyle. It contained a whole list of beautiful women who had tried and failed to secure a permanent place in his life. Daisy’s lips tightened as she read it.

Still determinedly unmarried at thirty-eight, Seth Carrington had obviously made a career of not committing himself. Right at the end there was some gossipy speculation about his relationship with Astra Bentingger (‘currently the fourth Mrs Klissalikos’); perhaps they hadn’t been as discreet as Seth had claimed.

Daisy lowered the paper with a sinking feeling at the pit of her stomach, but she refused to be intimidated. She wasn’t going to give up her plan at this stage. ‘I’m not going to get involved with him,’ she told her mother with a not entirely convincing air of confidence. ‘I’m going to look for Tom. Seth Carrington is merely incidental.’

In spite of her brave words, Daisy couldn’t help feeling more than a little nervous as she took the lift back up to the penthouse suite. Was it only that afternoon that she had stood right there and wondered what Seth Carrington would be like? In a few short minutes he had impressed himself on her consciousness so utterly that it was impossible now to remember a time when his forbidding features hadn’t dominated her thoughts.

Daisy tugged at the neckline of her dress and pulled a face at the mirror. She had done her best to look smart, but no amount of brushing could make her curls lie neatly and her make-up was limited to lipstick and an inexpert stroke of blusher. Somehow she didn’t think that Seth Carrington was going to be very impressed.

He wasn’t. ‘Is that the best you could do?’ he greeted her, opening the door of the suite himself. He was formally dressed in an immaculate dinner jacket and bow-tie, and looked so unnervingly, unfairly attractive that Daisy felt quite weak at the knees.

She quelled the feeling sternly. ‘Good evening,’ she said brightly. ‘Yes, I’m fine, thank you. Yes, I would like to come in.’

Seth scowled, but stood back to let her into the suite. Maria had gone—no doubt with relief, thought Daisy sourly. Spending a whole day putting up with Seth Carrington’s rudeness would be enough to try anybody. ‘I thought I told you to wear something smart?’ he accused her, shutting the door with a snap.

‘What’s wrong with my dress?’ said Daisy, a little offended. She had expected him to criticise her face, but she had blown her meagre savings on this dress in last summer’s end-of-season sales where it had been reduced from some exorbitant price. Everyone had said it had been worth it, though. The dusky blue colour with its pattern of tiny stars suited her dark hair and pale skin, and Daisy had always felt rather good in it... until now.

‘It looks as if you’ve picked it up off some bargain rail,’ said Seth dismissively, and her lips tightened.

‘Are you always this charming?’

‘I can’t afford to waste my time tiptoeing around your finer feelings,’ he said irritably.

‘I can’t imagine you tiptoeing around anyone’s feelings,’ grumbled Daisy, finding it easier to squabble than to notice how devastatingly attractive Seth looked in his dinner jacket. She avoided looking at the sofa where they had kissed, but it kept catching annoyingly at the corner of her eye. ‘I’ve never met anyone so inconsiderate.’

Seth looked nettled. ‘I’m perfectly considerate when I need to be but, as I keep having to remind you, you’re here to do a job.’

‘Yes, and I might find it easier if you weren’t quite so unpleasant!’

It was obvious that Seth Carrington wasn’t used to being answered back. He glowered at Daisy for a moment and then gave a short, exasperated sigh, not entirely unmixed with amusement. ‘Are you always this argumentative?’

‘Only when provoked,’ said Daisy, assuming a demure expression that didn’t fool Seth for a minute.

‘Look, I’m merely trying to point out that you don’t exactly fit my image.’ He eyed her moodily. ‘It’s not just that the dress looks cheap. It’s a good girl’s dress—makes you look too unsophisticated. It’s well known that my taste is for women with a little more glamour. We’ll just have to get you some decent clothes tomorrow.’

Daisy’s mind went back to the article her mother had shown her. Seth’s name had been linked with any number of famous women, and it had to be said that none of them would have been described as good girls. ‘Why can’t we convince them that you’ve changed your image and fallen for a nice girl for a change?’

‘That’s not very likely, is it?’ said Seth with one of his disparaging looks, and Daisy folded her arms huffily.

‘You could pretend.’

‘I’m paying you to do the pretending, not me,’ he pointed out brutally. ‘And if you’re going to do it effectively you’re going to have to dress the part.’ He turned away to pick up the phone. ‘I’d better cancel our reservation.’

‘My dress isn’t that bad, is it?’ asked Daisy in dismay.

‘It is for what I had in mind,’ said Seth as he punched out a number. ‘I had intended to take you somewhere where we’d be noticed, but I’m not being photographed with you looking like a schoolgirl.’ He waited while the phone rang at the other end. ‘We’ll go somewhere quiet instead tonight.’

Daisy was secretly relieved as the lift slid silently back down to the ground floor. She wasn’t sure that she was quite ready to start acting out her role in front of the paparazzi just yet. A sleek black car was waiting outside the hotel entrance and at Seth’s appearance a uniformed chauffeur sprang into action, holding open the door for Daisy who sank wide-eyed back into the luxurious seat.

‘I’ve never been in a car like this before,’ she confided to Seth after he had given the chauffeur his instructions.

The glance he gave was half puzzled, half amused. ‘Don’t tell me that air of innocence is real after all?’

Daisy regretted her impulsive remark. She could still remember the look on his face as he had released her. ‘Perhaps you can act after all,’ he had said. The last thing she wanted was for him to think that she wasn’t quite the actress she claimed to be! ‘I don’t usually travel in such style, that’s all,’ she said, trying to assume a world-weary air, but she wasn’t sure whether Seth was quite convinced. He continued to watch her with a speculative expression until they reached the restaurant.

Any hopes Daisy might have had about popping round the corner to a cheap and cheery Italian were dashed when the car drew up outside one of the most expensive restaurants in London, but at least they were shown to a secluded table and the atmosphere was dark and intimate and positively reeking with discretion. There would be no flashing cameras here.

She opened her menu with enthusiasm. ‘I’m starving,’ she said, momentarily forgetting her world-weary role. ‘I didn’t have time for lunch.’ Glancing across at Seth, she found him watching her with an oddly arrested look in his eyes and she lowered the menu guiltily. ‘Oh, dear, I suppose it’s not very sophisticated to be interested in food?’

Seth gave one of his sudden, heart-shaking smiles. ‘I won’t tell,’ he promised. ‘It’ll be a refreshing change to have a meal with a woman who doesn’t just push salad around her plate all evening.’

Trusting that to mean that she would be allowed a pudding as well, Daisy ordered the most substantial starter she could find and then dithered happily over a choice of main course until Seth grew impatient and ordered for her.

‘She’ll have the lamb,’ he said to the waiter, who had been standing there with his pencil patiently poised for some time.

‘I was just going to order the poussin,’ hissed Daisy indignantly as the waiter removed the menus with admirably concealed relief.

‘I thought you were hungry?’ he retorted. ‘If I hadn’t made the decision for you we’d have been here all night.’

Daisy contented herself with muttering under her breath and buttering her roll with a certain lavish defiance.

‘Talking of “all night”,’ Seth went on, leaning casually back in his chair, ‘you’d better move into my suite tomorrow.’

Daisy’s head jerked up, knife poised in mid-butter. ‘Move in?’ she echoed in dismay. ‘Why?’

‘It’s not for that rather nice body of yours which you keep so cleverly concealed beneath those shapeless clothes,’ he said with a dryness that sent the colour rushing to her cheeks.

Grateful for the dim light, Daisy reapplied herself to her roll and forced down the treacherous memory of his hands curving around her breasts and sliding down her spine, warm against her skin. ‘I don’t see why I have to move in with you.’

‘Because, Daisy, word will soon get around if I’m seen putting you chastely into a taxi every night and, while you and I may know that we’re not going to fall into bed as soon as we get in, we want everyone else to think that we can’t keep our hands off each other, don’t we?’

‘I don’t see how anyone’s going to know whether we sleep together or not,’ grumbled Daisy, who wished that she couldn’t imagine the prospect in quite such unnerving detail and was desperately trying to disguise her perturbation with bolshiness. ‘Why can’t I just sneak out the back way?’

‘Someone would be bound to see you and the next thing we’d know there’d be a snippet in the gossip columns, speculating about just how close our relationship was.’

‘But who cares what we do?’ cried Daisy. ‘Who on earth is going to be interested in what time I go home?’

Seth shrugged. ‘You’d be surprised. I’m afraid it’s one of the drawbacks of fame. People seem to think that as soon as you acquire money or influence you forfeit your right to privacy. It’s something you’re just going to have to get used to over the next few weeks. If no one was interested in me or Astra there wouldn’t be any need for you to be here at all, so you can thank the gossip columns for your job...and your job is living with me for the moment.’

‘Will...?’ She hesitated, cleared her throat and tried to sound unconcerned. ‘We won’t have to share a bed as well, will we?’

‘No.’ Seth’s eyes gleamed with ironic understanding. ‘There’s another room in the suite. Maria’s been using it, but she’s going to stay with friends so she won’t need it. She’ll come in during the day, but I’ll need you to be there, too, so you might as well stay.’

‘What do you need me for?’ Marginally reassured by the promise of a room to herself, Daisy had just taken a bite of her roll and her voice was rather indistinct.

‘In case people turn up.’ The wine waiter was presenting the bottle for Seth’s inspection, and he tasted the wine before giving a cursory nod and turning back to Daisy. ‘I’ve got a number of business meetings scheduled, but other people tend to drop by for one reason or another and that means you being there to prove that I can’t bear not to have you at my side.’

‘I can’t sit around all day just on the off chance that someone’s going to drop by,’ she protested. ‘I’ll go potty without anything to do.’

Seth watched the waiter pour the wine into her glass. ‘I’d have thought you’d be used to that.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Daisy indignantly. Most days she hardly got a chance to sit down at all!

‘Being an out-of-work actress,’ he explained, raising an eyebrow at her expression. ‘I’ve always imagined that meant sitting by the phone, waiting for the call to stardom.’

She had forgotten that she was meant to be an actress. ‘That’s the advantage of an answering machine,’ she said. Really, she was getting quite good at lying! ‘It means I can keep busy.’

‘Doing what?’ Or can I guess from that very talented performance you gave this afternoon?’

Daisy shot him a hostile look. She didn’t want to be reminded about that particular performance. ‘Actually, I work in a flower shop,’ she said coldly, deciding that it was best to keep as close to the truth as possible. ‘When I haven’t got a part, that is,’ she added, just to remind him of her acting credentials.

‘I don’t suppose you earn much in a flower shop?’ said Seth, who could have bought a whole chain of flower shops without even noticing a blip in his bank balance.

She sighed, thinking of the last difficult year when business had fallen off and the bills had mounted. ‘No.’

‘I’d have thought a girl with your interest in money would have jumped at the chance of being paid to sit around,’ he said in his caustic voice. ‘It’s not as if it’s going to be hard work. There’s a television and a health club and, if the worst comes to the worst, you can always read a book.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Daisy without enthusiasm.

A silence fell. Running her finger around the rim of her glass, Daisy studied the deep golden colour of the wine. She wished that she could stop noticing Seth’s hands; wished her eyes would stop following the line of his jaw back to the place below his ear where she had first kissed him. He was drinking his wine, but she could feel his uncomfortably acute gaze on her face and had the sudden, horrible certainty that he knew exactly what she was thinking.

‘Have you told Astra about us?’ she asked awkwardly. It was the first thing that came into her head as she searched desperately for something to say, but as soon as the words came out she could hear the implied intimacy in that ‘us’. ‘I mean, have you told her about me?’

Seth’s expression was curiously shuttered. ‘Yes.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She was pleased, of course.’

‘Oh.’ Daisy felt unaccountably put out. ‘Did you tell her that I wasn’t Dee Pearce?’

‘I said that I’d come to an agreement with you instead of Dee,’ said Seth. ‘I didn’t go into details.’

‘Didn’t she want to know what I was like?’ If she had been in love with Seth Carrington she would want to know exactly who he was going to be spending so much time with, Daisy reflected. Perhaps Astra Bentingger knew that she didn’t have to worry.

‘I told her that you didn’t really look right for the part,’ said Seth, sounding so bored that Daisy was nettled.

‘Did you tell her how I convinced you to give me the part anyway?’ she asked sourly, hoping to embarrass him, but she might have known that it was impossible to do that.

Seth merely looked across the table at her, his grey eyes inscrutable. ‘I told her that you were a better actress than you looked,’ he said. ‘I also said that I thought it extremely likely that you’d drive me round the bend but that, having got so far, I’d just have to put up with you.’