have a perfectly lovely time and you’ll look beautiful. Chantal will guarantee it.’
Cory smiled but said nothing. The day wasn’t going at all as she had planned.
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS five to seven and Cory was panicking big time, not least because she barely recognized the girl staring back at her out of the mirror. When she’d left Chantal earlier that afternoon, the little Frenchwoman’s parting encouragement had been, ‘Chérie, make up your mind to enjoy a night on the tiles in haute couture style! Yes? You will look enchanting. As the late Gianni Versace once said: ‘‘If you make an entrance and nobody turns to look at you, my dear, find a back door and leave. And then find a new dress.’’ I promise you, chérie, you will not have to find the door,’ Chantal had said with great satisfaction. ‘Not in that dress.’
It was beautiful. Cory’s gaze left the frightened eyes in the mirror and travelled downwards. And in this case the clothes did definitely maketh the woman. The midnightblue silk just missed being black, the cap-sleeved bodice with flattering collar-bone-skimming neckline topping a skirt with the same leaf transparencies and beading, and, as if all that wasn’t enough to catch the eye, the skirt had vertiginous side slits. These had caused Cory to protest that she couldn’t possibly wear the dress out before she had tried it on, but once Chantal had zipped her up she’d had to admit that it did something to her figure and skin that was riveting.
‘This is the one,’ the little Frenchwoman had cried. ‘This is the dress that makes you a goddess.’
Goddess was going a bit far, Cory thought, her gaze returning to check her make-up for the umpteenth time. But the dress did do something for her that was amazing. She dreaded to think how much it had cost her aunt. None of the clothes in the exclusive shop had had anything so vulgar as a price label. Presumably if one couldn’t take the heat one stayed out of the kitchen!
When she’d made noises about the cost, Chantal had merely tapped the side of her small nose and shook her beautifully coiffured head in disapproval. ‘This is the gift, yes?’ she had scolded, making Cory feel terribly unsophisticated. ‘Your aunt will know and this is enough. Now…’ She had gone on to recommend another couple of establishments where Cory could purchase suitable accessories but, although she’d thanked the older woman, Cory had known she wouldn’t be stepping through their doors. Shoes and bags at several hundred pounds a go just wasn’t an option on her salary.
Instead she had looked round various high street shops and market stalls, eventually finding delicate strappy sandals in just the right shade with a little purse to match in Covent Garden. Racing home to her flat in Notting Hill—the purchase of which had taken every last penny of her inheritance, but which had been supremely worth it—she had showered, washed her hair and set about moisturising and perfuming for the night ahead.
Should she have left her hair down? She glanced again at the silky smooth chignon she’d persuaded her shoulderlength waves into. It had seemed too fussy somehow, the dress being so stunning, but her hair had been up and down three times before she had made up her mind.
‘Stop it.’ She breathed the words out loud into the quiet, pastel-coloured bedroom. ‘It’s just a nightclub, they’re just people like everyone else, he’s just a man.’ And he’d reduced her to talking to herself already after one brief meeting!
An authoritative buzz from the lobby entry intercom brought her hand to her throat before she breathed deeply, willing the panic to subside. Walking through into the small square hall she steeled herself to press the button situated to the side of her front door. ‘Yes, who is it?’ she asked with a breathlessness she could have kicked herself for.
‘Nick Morgan.’ Succinct and to the point.
‘I’ll be right down, Mr Morgan. If you’d care to wait in the lobby…’ She pressed the building’s door release before flying back into the bedroom in a tottering scramble which warned her that the sandals didn’t lend themselves to anything other than dignified sedateness, not unless she wanted to end up on her rear end, that was. And that was unthinkable in front of Nick Morgan.
Snatching up her purse, which was just large enough to hold her keys, lipstick, two twenty pound notes for emergencies—in case he didn’t intend to see her