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A buzzer rang when she pushed open the door, bringing the guard’s head up from whatever he was doing. Probably reading. He looked around sixty, a jovial-faced fellow with a ready smile.
‘You’ll be here for Mr Wolfe’s party, by the look of you,’ he said cheerily.
‘Yes,’ she said, trying not to feel foolish in her Snow White costume.
‘Name, please, miss?’ the guard enquired.
‘What? Oh … er … Violet Green.’
His head dropped, presumably to check Henry’s guest list.
When he looked up again, he was still smiling. ‘You can go on up, Miss Green.’
‘Thank you. Has … um … anyone else arrived yet?’
‘Only the caterers, miss. You’re the first guest.’
She sighed a deep sigh. ‘Oh dear.’
‘I’m sure it won’t be long before the others get here. Mr Wolfe’s parties are always very popular. Ah, look, there, didn’t I tell you? There’s someone else arriving now.’
Violet glanced over her shoulder just in time to see a white stretch-limousine slide down the steep driveway before being expertly manoeuvred to stop reasonably close to the foyer door. A smartly uniformed chauffeur alighted and strode round to open the back door, standing to attention as Henry the Eighth climbed out followed by one of his wives; impossible to guess which wife. One with her head still on. Whatever, the costumes were extremely elaborate and expensive, making Violet feel instantly ill at ease in her home-made outfit.
Not that it wasn’t well made; it was. And very close to the picture most people had in their head of what Snow White had worn. It had an ankle-length gathered skirt made in a pale-blue silk, the same pale-blue silk used in the puffed sleeves. The fitted bodice was made in red velvet which matched the red velvet band in Violet’s hair, hair which she’d had dyed black for the night and styled in a shoulder-length bob.
Her shoes were black patent pumps with small heels and diamante-encrusted bows on the front, the closest she’d been able to get to the shoes in the picture of Snow White she’d printed off the Internet. The stiff stand-up collar which wrapped around her neck and framed her face was white. The only major difference in her own costume was the laced-up front, a necessity to make the costume fit.
She’d actually felt very happy with her costume … till now.
‘Is there a ladies room down here?’ she quickly asked the security guard before the swish new arrivees swept into the foyer. ‘I’d like to freshen up a bit before going upstairs.’ Despite Henry’s apartment being number one, it was located on the first floor of the building, the ground floor taken up with the owners’ car park.
‘Just down that corridor, miss,’ he indicated. ‘Right next to the lift.’
‘Oh, yes, I can see it. Thank you.’
Her hand was actually on the powder-room door when Joy’s voice popped into her head.
You’re not going to be a wishy-washy, lily-livered little nincompoop, are you?
Shame and anger revived her determination to have done with her silly shy self once and for all. With her bag clutched tightly in one hand, she moved on to firmly press the lift button instead. The doors opened immediately and she stepped inside.
This is New Year’s Eve, Violet lectured herself as she rode the lift up to the first floor. A night for facing things head-on; a night where the past was finally put aside in favour of the future. It’s up to you, Violet, to make that future a better place. A bolder place. A place where you finally look in the mirror and see the truth. Your Snow White might not be the fairest in the land but you are an attractive, intelligent woman. There’s no need for you to go through life alone. No need to shrink away from social situations just because they’re out of your comfort zone.
Lady Gwendaline never shrank away from anything, she reminded herself. And, boy, she’d been really out of her comfort zone when she’d been kidnapped by that ruffian. Whenever you feel your courage or your confidence waning, think of her and what she would do. Don’t be shy. And, above all, don’t be a wishy-washy, lily-livered little nincompoop!
CHAPTER FOUR
‘THERE’S THE DOORBELL,’ Henry said to Leo. Both men were standing at the built-in bar opening a few bottles of nicely chilled champagne. ‘Answer it for me, will you, Leo? I’ll pop out to the kitchen and let the caterer know people are arriving.’
‘Fine,’ Leo agreed, depositing the champagne bottle he was holding into one of the ice buckets before heading for the front door.
His eyebrows rose when he opened it to find the most delicious looking Snow White standing there. All alone, he noted happily; no Prince Charming by her side. He also noted that her lovely big brown eyes were staring at him like he was a little green man from Mars. It occurred to Leo that perhaps she was thinking he hadn’t bothered to dress up. He supposed his black dinner suit, white dress shirt and black bow-tie didn’t look like a fancy dress costume.
‘Good evening, Snow White,’ he said with what he hoped was a suitably suave smile. ‘Do come in. By the way, my name is Bond. James Bond,’ he added, looking deep into her eyes.
‘Oh,’ she said, her prettily pale cheeks colouring with the most enchanting blush. It was then that Leo twigged who she was.
‘You’re Violet, aren’t you? Dad’s assistant.’
‘Yes. Yes, I am. But how did you …?’
‘Call it intuition,’ he interrupted smoothly. ‘I presume you know who I am. When I’m not being James Bond, that is.’
He was rewarded with a small, sweet smile. ‘Yes. You’re Henry’s son, Leo, the famous movie producer.’
‘Maybe not so famous after my last effort,’ he replied drily. ‘But let’s not talk shop tonight. Or stand in the doorway.’
Her full skirt swished as she stepped inside the foyer. Leo closed the door before taking her elbow and steering her into the middle of the huge but empty living room.
‘I came too early,’ she said, sounding embarrassed.
‘Not at all,’ Leo assured her. ‘Everyone else is late.’
Another small smile, but it didn’t hide her tension. Henry hadn’t exaggerated when he’d said she had no confidence in herself. She didn’t, though Leo could not understand why. She was very attractive, and obviously highly intelligent. Henry would not have employed her as his assistant if she wasn’t. Violet was a puzzle, all right.
‘Henry’s out in the kitchen,’ he explained. ‘With the caterers. Look, let’s pop that bag of yours in Henry’s bedroom. Unless you want to carry it with you all night.’
‘No, not really,’ she said, and followed him meekly into the master bedroom where he told her to put the bag on the nearest bedside table.
‘Henry won’t mind. You can use his bathroom too, when needs be. Save you sharing the main bathroom with the other guests,’ he informed her as he led her back out into the still-empty living room. ‘Henry!’ he called out. ‘Violet’s here.’
Henry waddled out of the kitchen, his gait somewhat impaired by the pillow tied around his waist underneath his brown woollen habit. Leo watched his father do a doubletake when his eyes landed on Violet.
‘Good Lord!’ he exclaimed as he came up to her. ‘I didn’t recognise you there for a moment.’
Clearly, Violet didn’t usually look as good as she looked tonight. Yet Leo could see that she wasn’t just all clothes, hair and make-up. She had lovely dark eyes, porcelain skin, nice cheekbones, a lush mouth and a good body. At least, the parts Leo could see were good. Very good. He conceded that she might not be so perfect underneath that full skirt. She might very well be pear-shaped with huge thighs and thick ankles. Impossible to tell in that get-up.
‘I didn’t recognise you either,’ Violet replied.
Leo knew exactly what she meant. Henry had totally transformed himself from his usual trim, elegant self into a portly and rather drearily dressed Friar Tuck, even going to the length of covering his thick head of well-groomed silver hair with a brown wig which had the appropriate bald spot.
‘Yes, but not for the better, I fear,’ Henry said wryly. ‘Lord knows what possessed me. Whereas you, my dear girl, look absolutely gorgeous.’
There it was again, that blush, at which point Leo totally abandoned his earlier theory that Violet might be having a secret affair with a married man. Mistresses didn’t blush like that.
At the same time, he wasn’t willing to believe she was pure as the driven snow. She was too attractive for that to be the case. Real Snow Whites did not exist in this day and age. Despite looking little more than twenty tonight, she had to be … what? Twenty-five, twenty-six, maybe? University degrees took three or four years at least, after which she’d been working for his father for about four years.
No, his first theory had to be right. She’d had a bad sexual experience at uni which had knocked her for a six and made her retreat into herself. That would certainly explain her lack of social confidence.
Poor darling, he thought, and resolved to do his best to make sure she enjoyed herself at this party. He suspected it had been a big deal for Violet to come here tonight. Maybe the lure of the fireworks had finally overridden her shyness. Though, ‘shy’ was not quite the word he would use when describing her. A truly shy girl would not have shown that much cleavage …
The doorbell ringing again stopped Leo from ogling Violet’s exceptional breasts, bringing his eyes back up to Henry’s face.
‘Do you want me to answer that?’ he asked his father.
‘No, I’ll get it. You can pour Violet a glass of that champagne I bought especially for tonight.’
‘Do you like champagne?’ Leo asked her as he led her over to the corner bar. ‘You can have something else, if you like. Henry has a bit of everything behind here.’ Leaving Violet standing next to a bar stool, he made his way behind the black, granite-topped bar which had an assortment of glasses and bottles at the ready.
‘I’m not sure I’ve ever had real champagne,’ she said, making no attempt to sit on the stool. Understandable, given the width of her skirt.
‘Don’t worry. You’ll like it. Henry only ever buys the best.’
‘Have you always called your father Henry?’ she asked as he filled two crystal flutes with the chilled champagne from the ice bucket.
‘Ever since I went to uni. His idea, not mine. I suspect he didn’t want the women he fancied knowing he had a grown–up son.’ He handed one glass over to Violet before lifting the other to his lips.
‘I thought James Bond only drank dry martinis,’ she said with just a hint of a smile curving her ruby red lips.
Lord, but she was a provocative package when she smiled like that. More so because she wasn’t aware of her attraction.
‘I have a confession to make,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’
‘I don’t think I’d make a very good James Bond. I get tired even watching 007 in action. All those car chases, not to mention the fights. After which he has to make love to at least half a dozen different women, most of whom are trying to kill him.’
She laughed. Not the laughter he’d become used to with women—nothing forced or flirtatious, a natural-sounding laugh.
Leo realised at that moment just how jaded he’d become with the female company he usually kept. All the up-and-coming young actresses he met at parties and premieres who obviously saw him not as a mere man but as a step up the ladder of their careers. They fluttered their false eyelashes at him and flattered him endlessly, hanging on his every word and laughing coquettishly, even when he hadn’t told a joke.
He couldn’t imagine Violet acting that way. Nothing false about her, he thought, as his eyes dropped once more to the creamy mounds of flesh which were fighting to be freed from that corset-like bodice. Leo knew that, without a bra, Violet’s breasts would settle into lushly natural curves, not stand up high on her chest like two huge grapefruits the way Helene’s had done.
The prospect of spending this New Year’s Eve party with a girl like Violet was an unexpectedly pleasant one. He’d already been curious about her, but he hadn’t anticipated being this enchanted by her. Enchanted and intrigued.
The sounds of loud laughter brought his gaze over Violet’s shoulder to the group of guests who’d just arrived. Leo didn’t know the people beneath the costumes but felt sure their real characters matched the ones they’d chosen for the evening. Henry the Eighth and wife, along with Napoleon and Josephine. The men would be ruthless and their women little more than expensive window dressing. Leo had met their kind before.
What he hadn’t met before was Violet’s kind. She was like a breath of fresh air in a world filled with pollution.
‘Why don’t we take our drinks out into the balcony?’ he suggested, eager to get her alone and find out more about her.
CHAPTER FIVE
VIOLET HESITATED, RECALLING Joy’s warning that Leo Wolfe was someone to stay well away from.
But then she recalled her own remark that no way would someone like him be seriously attracted to someone like her. It was foolish of her to imagine for one moment that he might be. He was just being nice.
At the same time, she could not deny that she found him extremely attractive. In truth, she thought him the most handsome and the most charming man she’d ever met in her life. She’d never met anyone, man or woman, who was so easy to talk to. Except perhaps Henry. Charm obviously ran in the family, plus looking young for their age. Henry didn’t remotely look the sixty-eight years he was. In the flesh, his son didn’t look a day over thirty-five. Yet he had to be at least ten years older than that.
‘We’ll have to shake a leg,’ Leo said as he swept up the ice bucket with his spare hand. ‘If we want to get the best seat in the house for the nine o’clock fireworks display. Unless, of course, you want to stay in here and be introduced to all those would-bes if they could-bes. Do you?’ he added, and threw a narrow-eyed glance at her.
‘Lord, no!’ A shiver rippled down her spine as she quaffed back a deep swallow of champagne.
His instant smile was wide and warm. ‘A girl after my own heart. Come on then, Snow White. It’s off to the fireworks we go we go,’ he sang in a clever parody of the song the seven dwarves had sung in the Walt Disney movie.
Violet gulped some more bubbly before scurrying after his rapidly departing figure. Not that he got far, his hands being full and all the sliding glass doors being closed.
‘You’ll have to help me, Snow White,’ Leo told her, at which she hurried forward and slid open one of the doors, careful not to spill her drink at the same time.
‘Which table do you advise?’ he asked once they were both outside.
There were five outdoor settings in all, spread along the very long balcony. The tables at each end were square and had four chairs around them; the other three were smaller and circular and had only two chairs positioned on each side. Violet chose to sit at the glass-topped table right in the middle, a decision which seemed to please Leo.
‘An excellent choice,’ he said as he deposited the ice bucket in the centre of the table and sat down opposite her. ‘Just look at that view!’
In truth, the view was spectacular from anywhere along the balcony, as well as from inside. Violet had been impressed on the two occasions she’d been here before. But she’d never seen it at night, with the lights of the city as backdrop to the already beautiful harbour, not to mention the lights on the bridge, the Opera House and all the boats on the water, many more boats than was usually the case.
‘I can’t wait to see what it looks like when the fireworks go off,’ Leo said, glancing at his watch. ‘Only nine minutes to go. Now, does your champagne need a top-up yet? Yes, it certainly does.’
Violet was surprised to see that she’d already half-emptied her glass. Nerves, she supposed. Plus it was delicious. Very easy to drink.
‘Henry tells me you’ve never been to one of his New Year’s Eve parties before?’ Leo asked once both their glasses were refilled.
‘Well, no … no, I haven’t.’
‘Why’s that?’
What to say? Hardly the truth. ‘I guess I’m not much of a party person.’
Leo nodded. ‘I’m getting that way myself. I used to love a good bash but that was before I turned the big four-O last year.’
‘You’re only forty?’ Violet blurted out before she could stop herself.
Leo laughed. ‘Dear me, do I look that ancient and dissipated? And there I was, imagining that I was aging rather well.’
‘But you are!’ Violet exclaimed, flustered and flushed with embarrassment. ‘I was just thinking a moment ago that you didn’t look a day over thirty-five. But then I remembered you had a twenty-year-old son and I assumed that … that…’
‘That a man of my supposed intelligence would not have fathered a child before becoming an adult myself?’ he finished for her with a surprisingly bitter edge in his voice. ‘Unfortunately, no amount of brains can control the hormones of a twenty-year-old male, a reality of life which I have been drumming into my own twenty-year-old son. Still, things are a little different these days. Get a girl pregnant and you don’t necessarily have to get married.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought you had to get married twenty years ago either,’ she ventured, somewhat boldly for her. The effect of the champagne, perhaps?
‘You’re right, of course. I didn’t have to get married. Another hormonal error on my part. I thought I was in love. The marriage was doomed from the start, but not a total disaster. I have a wonderful son whom I love dearly.’
He took a deep swallow from his glass, then glanced over at Violet, his expression puzzled. ‘What on earth am I doing, boring you with my life story?’
‘I’m not bored,’ she said, her eyes meeting his. ‘Not one little bit.’
He smiled and she thought again how very handsome he was.
‘That’s sweet of you to say so, but I’d much rather we talked about you.’
‘Now, that would be really boring,’ she said, and took another sip of champagne.
‘I beg to differ. Henry has told me quite a bit about you already and none of that was boring.’
‘Nothing bad, I hope.’
‘Hardly. He’s full of compliments. He did mention, however, that you don’t have a boyfriend, something which I find very hard to believe. Yet here you are tonight all alone. So what’s going on, Violet? Why don’t you have some young man in your life? What’s the real reason?’
Her eyes dropped from his, her embarrassment acute.
Leo reached across the small table and touched her on her wrist. It was the lightest of touches but it sent an electric charge racing up her arm and down through her body, zapping her nipples to attention and tightening her belly. Violet stiffened at the alien sensations, yet she recognised them instantly for what they were. For this was what Lady Gwendaline had felt when her pirate had touched her.
‘I’m sorry, Violet,’ she dimly heard him say. ‘It was wrong of me to ask you such a personal question. I apologise.’
Even when his hand dropped away, there was no peace for her body. It felt like it was on fire. As her eyes lifted slowly back to his, she hoped he wouldn’t be able to see the heat in them. And the hunger.
‘There’s no need to apologise,’ she said, surprised at how calm she sounded. Thank God for the champagne. Joy was right about it giving her Dutch courage. ‘I don’t have a boyfriend because of something which happened to me in the past.’
Leo nodded knowingly. ‘As soon as I saw you tonight, I wondered if such was the case. It’s not as though you would be short of admirers. Do you want to tell me about it? Or is it too painful a memory?’
Violet realised then just what Leo was thinking—that she’d had some nasty sexual experience or she’d had her heart broken at some stage. A week ago she might have let him keep on believing that, because it was better than revealing the ugly truth. But a lot of water had gone under the bridge during the past few days. She didn’t want to lie to him. Lying was what she used to do, to herself and to others.
The fact that she was wildly attracted to the man might have changed her mind about telling him the truth if he’d been Australian. But he wasn’t. Leo was going home to England in a few days. In reality, he was the ideal person to practise opening up to. On top of that, he was, as she’d already discovered, surprisingly easy to talk to.
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘It’s not what you’re thinking. It’s nothing to do with any bad experience I’ve had with the opposite sex.’
‘What, then?’
Violet pulled a face. Where to start? ‘It’s a long story.’ She sighed a frustrated sigh. As she’d discovered earlier tonight on the way here, deciding to turn over a new leaf was very different from doing it.
‘We have all night,’ Leo pointed out kindly.
Not quite, Violet thought, knowing that any minute Henry would surely come looking for his son.
But it wasn’t Henry who brought an abrupt end to their private conversation. It was the nine o’clock fireworks, shattering their relatively quiet surrounds with loud bursts of noise whilst setting the night sky alight with a kaleidoscope of sparkling colour.
Immediately, all the guests who’d arrived by then rushed out onto the balcony, oohing and aahing as the spectacular display went on and on. Violet knew it was a small event compared to what would happen at midnight, but it was still pretty impressive. Impossible to talk during the ten-minute display, however. Impossible to do anything but watch. Then, once it was over, the inevitable happened. Henry found Leo and insisted he come with him to meet everyone.
Violet’s heart sank when Leo stood up, but lifted again when he reached down to take her hand. ‘Come along, Snow White. I need you by my side to protect me from the pack.’
Violet soon saw what he meant. Practically every woman there—even the married ones—flirted outrageously with Leo. It was an education just being by his side and watching them in action. No compliment was too over the top as Henry the Eighth’s wife and Josephine fought for his attention, followed by Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn.
Even the men were doing their fair share of none-too-subtle brown-nosing, possibly because quite a lot of the guests were from the Australian movie industry: producers, directors, screen writers and actors. Henry had gone to a lot of trouble to invite people whose company he thought Leo would enjoy.
Now that she’d met Henry’s son, Violet suspected he would have preferred to be anonymous, but he remained polite, at the same time not staying with one group for too long. His social skills were obvious as he mingled, spending just the right amount of time with each group before returning to the balcony and the people gathered there. Henry joined them occasionally, but not often, seemingly content to let his guests enjoy Leo’s company without his interference, which was probably wise of him. Henry had a tendency to dominate conversations, in Violet’s opinion.
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