Crossing her fingers, she told a little white lie. ‘I’m with a friend at the moment. I’ll be fine.’
‘All right. I’ll see you later, honey.’
Goldie pulled the phone from her ear, not sure how to hang up. When the phone went dark she assumed it had shut itself off. She looked up to find one of the women who’d been in Pietro’s circle smiling at her from the bar.
Only her smile held a whole lot of speculation. The green-eyed kind.
‘So, you’re with Gael, are you?’ The slight slur, figurative and literal, was hard to miss.
Goldie forced herself not to bristle. ‘No, not really.’
The blonde took her answer as an invitation to stroll closer. Expensive perfume and the faint traces of alcoholic over-indulgence reached Goldie’s nostrils.
‘No? If you’re not together then why hasn’t he been inside with us?’ she demanded.
Goldie glanced towards the living room and shrugged. ‘He’s in there now, if you want to go talk to him.’
The blonde laughed—a brittle sound that spoke of more than just a passing interest in Gael Aguilar. ‘This may be a time of equality and all that, but a woman still likes to be chased by a man.’
‘Right. Okay.’
Wanting an end to the conversation, Goldie searched for her glass, only to find it had disappeared—probably taken by one of the super-attentive waiters dotted around the place. Sure enough, one of them saw her drinkless state and darted towards her with an eager smile and a tray full of drinks.
Goldie started to shake her head. ‘No, thanks. I don’t—’
‘She doesn’t drink,’ the blonde stage-whispered to the waiter. When he started to turn away she stopped him with a hand on his arm. ‘Wait, this is fruit punch, isn’t it?’ She indicated a pink drink with a gaily coloured umbrella and a straw sticking out of it.
The waiter nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
The blonde snagged the glass and held it out to Goldie. ‘Here you go. Problem solved.’
Goldie took the drink, having no intention of drinking it. Her smile grew stiffer as the blonde examined her critically from head to toe.
‘Interesting boots.’
Again, the observation came with a smile that was meant to take some of the sting out of her words.
‘Interesting...dress,’ Goldie replied.
Her unwanted companion laughed. ‘You have a spine. I’m Heidi, by the way. And if you weren’t here with the man who broke my heart last year—the man who now looks at me like we’ve never even met before, never mind dated—I’d almost like you.’
Something tiny but sharp lodged itself in Goldie’s side. ‘You and Gael were an item?’ she asked, even though she told herself she didn’t care about the answer.
Heidi’s nose wrinkled, but Goldie saw the dart of pain in her eyes.
‘An item? How quaint. We were lovers. I shared his bed for six glorious weeks. Then I hit my inevitable use-by date and was bade, Hasta la vista, baby.’
‘Inevitable?’
Her laugh held more of the pain that was slowly emerging from the bottom of her champagne glass. ‘As regular as clockwork. No one, to date, has exceeded Gael Aguilar’s famous month-and-a-half dating limit. So don’t get your hopes up.’
Goldie frowned at the umbrella and the straw. ‘You’ve got things completely wrong. I only met him tonight.’
Heidi’s eyebrows went up. ‘And he already looks at you like that?’
‘Like what?’ she asked, growing a little hot under the blonde’s scrutiny.
‘Are you serious?’