Flowers for My Love (5 page)

But he existed mostly on large cheques provided by a doting mother. His parents owned property in the heart of London and he had a penthouse in one of their properties in Knightsbridge.

Lila Stanford greeted them charmingly. ‘So happy to meet you,’ she said warmly. ‘I believe you’ve both been ill. I want you to regard this house as your home for this very brief visit, and do enjoy yourselves.’

To Rex, she said, ‘Dave is looking for you. I’ve put you in with him. Do go and find him while I take the girls to their room.’

She escorted Davina and Cheryl upstairs, chatting on the way about her family whom she obviously adored.

‘George, my husband, is overwhelmed about our grandchild and we shall be celebrating this evening with a dance and a party.’

Her look at the two girls was warmly appraising. Their spring suits were very becoming and this latest girl Rex had taken up was certainly different from the usual fast set he went around with.

She remained talking to them until someone called her from below.

‘Please excuse me, won’t you?’ she asked, smiling apologetically. ‘You’ll soon find your way about. By the way, we have an indoor swimming pool. If you look through your window you’ll see it—or rather the glass roof. We had it built on at the back of the house. You can stop in to look at the baby in the nursery on your way down if you wish. Come down when you’re ready.’

When she had gone Davina and Cheryl smiled at each other.

Cheryl said, ‘Glad you’ve come?’

Davina nodded. Her charming face softened. ‘Let’s get ready so we can peep at the baby.’

When, after inspecting the baby, they went down to the lounge Lila’s husband George came forward to greet them.

‘Sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived,’ he said, shaking hands warmly.

A dapper man well into his fifties, he was still slim and athletic. His brown hair, sprinkled with grey, was receding at the temples, but for all that he did not look his age.

‘I’m on top of the world today,’ he went on. ‘Seen my grandson yet?’

Davina laughed. ‘Yes, he’s a poppet. How proud you must be.’

George introduced them to his family, Corinna who was small and brown-haired like her father, David who was dark and serious and Jane the youngest girl. George took Davina in to dinner and Cheryl went with Rex. Davina sat by David who was shy and very different from his cousin Rex who sat opposite to her with Cheryl looking charming in her evening dress of pale blue chiffon.

The dinner was very enjoyable, with everyone toasting the new baby in champagne. Presently, in the room cleared for dancing, Davina was claimed by several young men.

The dancing was in full swing when Davina paused between partners to look for Cheryl. Suddenly someone took her in his arms and she was swung into the next dance number.

She was laughing up at him when the expression on her face became fixed.

‘Nick!’

She cried his name in utter surprise as he smiled down at her. Davina was of medium height, not too tall or too small, yet she was well below that lean strong face from which grey eyes studied her intently. She would have been very uneasy had she been able to read his thoughts.

Nick Tabor was a connoisseur of beautiful women. He regarded them as essential to the background of everyday life.

He had enjoyed taking them out to shows and meals and with a hint of cynicism he would admit that the affairs he had indulged in had been fun while they lasted.

As for settling down with one of them, such an idea had never been entertained for long. His work was the prime factor in his life and he worked as hard as he played. He wanted nothing changed. Yet since meeting this slip of a girl with her beautiful brown hair as shining and rich as any blonde, he had been immediately drawn to her.

Granted, had she fallen into his arms as the others had done he might have forgotten her, but since meeting her he had experienced a startling impulse to seize her in his arms and hold her close. But holding her thus was giving him no satisfaction. There was no clinging to him, no adoration in her lovely eyes. She danced as lightly as a leaf borne on the wind, and the lack of spontaneous surprise about her piqued his vanity.

Her untouched look of utter serenity piqued him too. It made him very aware of her in his arms, aware of the sudden quickening of his pulses. Never had he imagined that one day he would meet someone who would be different for him from all the other women he had known.

This girl he knew from experience was entirely unawakened, and while his intelligence demanded a woman who was not naive in any way somehow it did not seem to matter. All he knew was that he had never expected to meet a girl who could make all the other women he had known unimportant. He was discovering that there was something, some chemical reaction inside him that responded to the unconscious appeal she made to his animal instincts. He wanted to have her yet treat her gently. She appealed to his better nature, yet she fired him with an urgent need to possess her.

He could never suffer fools gladly, neither could he stand simpering, shallow women no matter how beautiful they might be. This girl was neither. She had character and she was exciting. He had never faltered on being challenged, and Davina threw a challenge which made him feel alive and vibrant. What would be the outcome he neither knew nor cared. He only knew that from the moment their eyes had first met something had happened to him that was very beautiful and stimulating.

Davina came out of a sense of shock at seeing him again with a startled little gasp. The colour swept to her cheeks as a strange frightened feeling swept through her whole being.

‘Where ... where did you spring from?’ she gasped. ‘I ... I never expected to find you here.’

He smiled and guided her from the dancers to the edge of the floor.

‘Are you better?’ he enquired politely.

‘Yes, thanks. I’d like to thank you again for what you did.

Cheryl is here too. We’ve been invited for the weekend.’

‘I’m glad. So have I. There isn’t much of you, is there? It’s like dancing with a will-o’-the-wisp. Any minute now you’re going to be borne upwards on a moonbeam to outer space leaving me dejected and alone.’

He laughed down audaciously into her face and her heart began to slip out of control.

She laughed. ‘Too bad you’ll be too big to follow me,’ she teased, feeling absurdly happy and lighthearted.

He said darkly, ‘Beware, I have long arms. What I possess I don’t give up easily. How is Darren?’

‘Fine. He’s gone back to medical school. He’s settling down nicely, I’m happy to say.’

‘But he won’t have anything nice to say of Nick Tabor?’

‘He appreciated your kindness to me.’

He said dryly, ‘That was very noble of him. You want someone at the back of you when dealing with teenagers. A woman is no good on her own.’

She was immediately on the defensive. ‘I’m doing fine up to now. We’re a very compact little family and are happy together providing no one disrupts us.’

‘In other words you want to be left alone?’ He digested this, then added coolly, ‘And you’re happy about Cheryl and Rex?’

Davina looked up at him sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Simply that she deserves someone better. She needs looking after, and Rex delights in looking after number one—

himself.’

The frankness of her regard disarmed him. ‘But aren’t all men selfish?’

He laughed. ‘True. But don’t tell anybody, will you? You’ll spoil my fun.’

She said dryly, ‘I doubt if anyone can do that. You’ll have your own way regardless, I’m sure of that.’

Nick raised a provocative brow. ‘True again. You seem to know me fairly well. It might interest you to know that I’ve been trying to make up my mind about you.’

Her fingers moved a little in his hold as he guided her away from boisterous dancers.

‘Really? I should feel flattered, but I don’t. It only means that you’re at a loose end and therefore dangerous to naive girls like myself.’

He swung her round and piloted her to the door.

‘Now let’s see if you’re as brave when we’re not in a crowd of people,’ he murmured darkly.

Davina found herself in the garden before she realised what had happened and she shuddered suddenly in the night air. The weather had been warm for spring, but the nights still very chilly.

Nick had whipped off his jacket and was placing it around her shoulders. His breath was warm on her cheek as he bent his head to breathe in the fragrance of her hair.

His body heat retained in the jacket seeped into her very bones. It was almost as if his arms were around her.

It was both maddening and embarrassing that she could think of no cutting reply.

She found herself saying rather defiantly, ‘It’s rather chilly, as you’ll discover now that you’ve shed your jacket. Please take it back. I’d hate to think that you might catch a chill through being so chivalrous.’

Her hand, already lifted, was taking the jacket from her shoulders, but his hand was on hers preventing her.

‘I won’t catch a chill,’ he told her confidently. ‘In any case I shall have plenty of the stuff that cheers later this evening with George.’

Davina looked at him aghast. ‘You mean you’re going to sit up half the night drinking with him?’

He placed an arm loosely around her shoulders and walked her into the garden along one of the paths.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘We’re having an orgy when all nice little girls are in bed.’

She heard the laughter in his voice and looked up at him indignantly.

‘I might have known you were having a joke at my expense! Although I wouldn’t put it past you, having indulged in that kind of thing in the past.

‘You’re determined to think the worst of me, aren’t you? I wonder why? Is it because you’re afraid of liking me too much?’

Davina stopped in her tracks. Some sixth sense was warning her to turn back to seek the safety of numbers inside the house.

‘I think we’d better go back in, don’t you?’

‘So you
are
afraid of me.’

Nick placed one hand beneath the jacket at her back and the other crept slowly around her. He gave her a wry smile as his hand moved over her back.

‘The only way to get over your fear of me is to get to know me better.’

He bent his head as he spoke and set his mouth lightly to hers. His kisses were light and friendly. But if they were meant to be that Davina’s heart responded to them madly.

She melted against him as his kisses deepened. The blood ran hotly in her veins. Everything was forgotten in the joy of soaring as it were above all earthly things.

But she was too dedicated to her commitments and to her family to forget them for long. It was an effort to set her feet on the solid earth again, but she managed it.

‘If that was to pay for the loan of your jacket then you’ve been amply rewarded. Here, take it.’ Slipping out of his jacket, Davina flung it at him and fled into the house. Lila came to her as she was standing to recover herself.

‘Ah,’ she cried, ‘there you are. Have you seen my husband anywhere? I believe a friend of ours, Nick Tabor, has arrived and I thought George would be with him in his study, but he isn’t there. You don’t happen to have seen a tall, fair young man anywhere around?’

Davina felt her face grow hot. ‘I didn’t know you were friends of Nick Tabor.’

‘My husband has known him for years and Corinna fell passionately in love with him before she met her husband. But then all the girls fall for Nick. Do you know him?’

‘He’s one of our customers at the shop,’ Davina told her.

‘Then you do know him. The trouble is he’s always so hard to pin down for a party. He only came here this weekend to talk over some investments with George. Nick has a mind and memory like a computer. If he worked for himself instead of being an international banker, he’d make a fortune.’

‘How lucky for him,’ Davina said dryly.

Lila lifted finely pencilled brows. ‘Do I detect a note of censure?’

‘Not really, but if there’s anything I hate it’s these so-called human computers.’

Even as she spoke Davina felt a presence behind her back.

By the way her pulses were racing it could only be Nick.

‘Why, Nick, we were just talking about you.’ Lila’s light laugh was beyond malice. ‘I’m afraid Davina doesn’t care for you very much.’

‘Obviously she has poor taste in men—or should I say no taste at all for them,’ he mocked from somewhere above her head. ‘However, perhaps we can change her mind during her stay in your delightful house.’

Lila shook her head as though such problems were beyond her.

Playfully she said, ‘Do you know, Nick, I have a feeling that George can’t be far away now I’ve found you. You have some business with him, I believe.’

Nick gave a mocking half bow. ‘That is so, madame,’ he assured her teasingly. ‘However, I hope I don’t find him yet, because I haven’t eaten since early this morning on the plane from Paris and I don’t care to drink with him on an empty stomach. I have to keep my brain alert. It’s what I’m paid for.’

‘Oh, you poor thing! Why didn’t you say? Come along, I’ll see that you’re fed. Excuse us, Davina.’ Thrusting her arm through Nick’s, Lila led him away, at the same time saying over her shoulder, ‘Here comes David. I think he’s looking for you, Davina.’