'I don't think I can,' she said, her voice soft and low. 'Not the way they are in there.' And she tilted her head towards the door, her long, silken hair gliding over one shoulder with the gesture.
'Then let me teach you my way,' Theo murmured, and he didn't just mean dance. Beneath the ton of make-up her features were even, her nose small and straight, her lips full and luscious. In fact she was quite stunningly beautiful, he thought. He wanted her with a hunger that was turning him inside out. The fact that she appeared to have no dress sense faded into insignificance. His body had taken over his mind and he didn't give a damn.
He held her in his arms, ignoring the frenzied antics of the other dancers, and she flowed against him as if she were made for him. He buried his head in her glorious hair and it smelt of fresh apples. She had a unique personal scent like no perfume he had ever known. Their conversation was limited because of the noise of the music, but he did discover she was studying English. He made her laugh with his stories and sigh with the subtle caress of his hands against her slender body. Finally, when he asked her to share a drink with him somewhere a little quieter, her hand trustingly in his, she followed where he led.
Opening his eyes, Theo stretched all six feet four of his bronzed body, a contented sigh escaping him. He felt great, better than great—magnificent, and it was all down to the lovely Willow. Immediately he became aroused again. She was his dream woman, and she had fulfilled his every fantasy. He licked his lips. He could still taste her on his tongue, feel the perfect rose-tipped nipples filling his mouth, and the exquisite length of her long legs wrapped around his hard body. The amazing tightness of her sheathing him. Her keening little cries when they'd climaxed together, and her eager, if somewhat surprised, response when he had led her slowly into ever more erotic ways of making love. If she had not been so wildly responsive he might have thought she had never had a man before.
Yes, breaking up with Dianne was the best thing he had ever done. Willow was much more to his liking. A perfect replacement. He rolled onto his side, reaching for her, and then he realised the bed was empty. She was probably in the bathroom. At one point last night she had briefly left him and had returned with her face washed clean of makeup. Theo had been stunned by her natural beauty and had taken her all over again.
Thinking about it now, he threw back the sheet, swung his long legs off the bed, and stood up, his magnificent body fully aroused. Then he remembered—she wouldn't be in the bathroom. He felt almost like a teenager again, a broad, anticipatory grin illuminating his handsome face.
As the light of dawn had filtered into the bedroom, Willow had eagerly agreed to his suggestion to spend the weekend with him, but not under the curious eyes of his sister. He had agreed and let her slip back to her own room to get ready, arranging to meet her downstairs at nine. Theo was sure the rest of the house mates would still be asleep after the party and they could slip away unnoticed.
Although the thought of sharing a shower with Willow held great appeal, the thought of the days, and nights, ahead held even more. He cast a reminiscent smile back at the rumpled bed, saw the blood stain and froze. . .
Oh, hell! She couldn't possibly have been a virgin? No. He shook his dark head dismissing the notion. It wasn't possible, not dressed the way she had been last night. Or the fact that she had fallen into bed with him within an hour of their meeting. Anyway, Anna had told him that the new girl was doing a postgraduate course so she had to be at least twenty-two. There must be another explanation for it. He glanced around the room, and only then did he register the time: eleven o'clock. Oh, hell! He cursed again; he had overslept for the first time in years. Jet lag had obviously caught up with him—that and his energetic love- making with Willow most of the night.
Dashing into the shower, he told himself not to panic.
After the marvellous night they had shared she would still be waiting for him downstairs, he was sure. Theo's head was full of plans to introduce the beautiful Willow to all the finer things in life, himself included. He would be her style guru and take her to the best beauticians and dress her in designer gowns so she could truly fulfill her magnificent potential.
Five minutes later, dressed in denim jeans and a black polo shirt, he strolled confidently into the kitchen. Anna and her two friends, Maggie and Jo, sat at the table. A fourth, blonde girl whom Theo had never met before was also seated. She must be a hanger-on from the party, he assumed.
'Hello, Theo. Sleep well?' Anna greeted him. 'Sit down and I'll get you a coffee—you look as if you need it.'
Doing as she said, he joined them at the scrubbed pine table and listened in to their post-mortem on the night before. Finally, after drinking a second cup of Anna's strong brew, he asked the question that was uppermost in his mind, hopefully without raising his sister's suspicions. 'So where is your new tenant? I think she said her name was Willow. Tall wi
th black hair. I met her in the kitchen last night.'
All four girls started to laugh and the blonde answered. 'I'm the new tenant, Emma. You must mean The Mole, and she's gone.'
Disappointment hit him like a punch in the stomach, and he wanted to yell, Gone where? But, hiding his shock at the information, Theo queried lightly, 'The Mole? Why do you call her that?' Willow had lied to him. She was not the new student in the house, and she had obviously left without saying a word to him. He told himself not to worry—after all, Anna and her friends knew who she was. With a bit of careful questioning it should not be too hard to find out where Willow was and get her back, and he wanted her back.
'She and I attended the same convent boarding-school together. It was popular with families in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The Mole was Willow's nickname,' Emma answered. 'Think Wind in the Willows and with a name like Willow and all that black hair, it was obvious. She was much smaller then and had her head buried in a book all the time, so the name sort of stuck, I suppose. She was four or five years behind me, and never had much to say. I don't really know her all that well. We tried our best to get her involved last night but without much luck; she vanished about midnight to her room.'
Theo stilled. Not her room, his. The mention of a convent school made him feel decidedly queasy. But Theo did not betray what he was thinking. 'She didn't look much like a mole to me, with a jewel in her belly and a skirt that barely covered her buttocks,' he drawled sardonically.
The laughter erupted again and this time Anna answered. 'Well, it was a Tarts and Vicars party, not that you would notice, Theo.'
'A Tarts and Vicars. . .' he repeated, his darkly handsome face creasing in a frown. 'You mean you deliberately dressed up like tarts?' he asked angrily, amazed that his own sister could be so dumb. Surely she knew what kind of signal scanty clothes sent out to the male sex.
'Yes.' Anna grinned at him. 'But that doesn't mean we are. So you can get your older-brother disapproving scowl off your face.'
The trouble was, Theo realised belatedly, he had reacted with just such a baseless foundation last night when he had seen the lovely Willow, and he wasn't proud of the fact.
'As for The Mole. . .Willow Blain,' Emma amended when he shot her a dark glance, 'I did my best to get her involved and lent her a stick-on belly-button gem and some of my clothes so she would blend in, but—' she glanced down at her own body, and then flirtatiously back at Theo '—as you can see I'm quite small and I could not believe how tall Willow had grown in the years since we last met.'
Theo's memory summoned up all too vividly Willow's tall, lithe body. The brilliant blue eyes and skin as smooth as silk, and his body immediately reacted with shocking enthusiasm. But his incisive brain also reminded him of the face scrubbed free of make-up, and the stained bed, and just as quickly his heated response was quenched. Anger and confusion raged though him, the latter emotion not one he was familiar with. When he could trust his voice he asked abruptly, 'So Willow is not at university with you?' He rose to his feet. Theo suddenly had a horrible premonition he was not going to like what he was about to hear.
'Good heavens, no,' Emma said with a giggle. 'She was only here because my father has known Mrs Blain for years; she is employed by the diplomatic corps and is in India at the moment. Anyway, my dad asked if we could put Willow up for the night, because her mother did not like the idea of her being on her own in a London hotel, especially as it was her eighteenth birthday. She only left school yesterday and she had to catch a flight out of Heathrow this morning to join her mother.'
'Why are you so interested, Theo?' Anna asked, her brown eyes, full of merriment, resting on his face. 'Surely you didn't fancy her? Especially when the lovely Dianne has been on the telephone countless times already this morning. I think Willow took the first call before she left and I have fielded the rest. You'd better ring Dianne back; she was beginning to sound frantic.'
Not half as frantic as Theo felt. His stomach churned and he was savagely angry with the four grinning girls, but even more so with himself. Theo could not believe he had been so arrogantly self-centred and had seduced a beautiful, innocent young girl into his bed without a second thought. How could he have been so blind not to have seen that, beneath the appalling make-up and clothes, Willow was barely eighteen.
'Theo,' Anna prompted, 'are you going to ring Dianne?'
'No. We split up, and if she calls tell her I am out.' Glad of the excuse and sick to his stomach, Theo stormed out of the kitchen, and the house.