CHAPTER ONE
‘CLAY LINCOLN! Are you mad, Cassie?’ Robyn’s beautiful velvet-brown eyes were narrowed with disgust. ‘I’d rather walk through the streets of London stark naked than ask Clay Lincoln for help.’
‘You wouldn’t be asking him for help though.’ Cassie Barnes’s voice was as impassive as her face. ‘You would merely be giving him the chance to buy into a thriving little concern that will eventually net him a considerable profit.’
‘Whatever.’
‘He’s ridiculously well off, Robyn.’
‘So?’ It was truculent.
‘So…’ Cassie sighed patiently, her role of elder sister by five years very evident by the maternal streak in her voice ‘…you need a backer if you’re going to take your business onto the next stage, and everyone else you’ve approached is either flat broke or simply not interested, your bank manager included. Clay seems the perfect solution to me.’
‘Clay Lincoln is not a perfect anything!’ The bitterness was acidic. ‘And frankly I’d rather stay as a one-man band for the rest of my life than have anything to do with that low life.’
‘No, you wouldn’t.’ Cassie looked at the lovely heart-shaped face in front of her which at the moment was flushed a defiant red, the colour indicative of the hot temper that went with the clouds of burnished red-gold curls tied high on Robyn’s head. She sighed again, this time silently. Robyn had inherited all of their mother’s volatile, fiery nature and none of their father’s placid equability.
‘You know you wouldn’t,’ she said again. ‘You’re ambitious and incredibly talented and good at what you do, and you’ve worked your socks off to get where you are right now. How many other women of twenty-eight have their own PR company? And you’ll go places, I know you will. You deserve success, Robyn.’
Robyn looked at her sister’s sweetly earnest face and the dark shadows beneath Cassie’s mild hazel eyes—courtesy of the fact that she had been up half the night with her twin boys which didn’t sit well with being five months pregnant—and felt instant contrition. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Cass, I am really. I’m being a pig and I know you mean it for the best but I couldn’t approach Clay Lincoln for all the tea in China.’
‘Well, Guy still sees him occasionally; I’m sure he would—’
‘Cassie, no!’ Robyn interrupted vehemently.
‘All right, all right.’ Cassie held up her hands in defeat. ‘Whatever you say, Robyn.’
‘I’ll expand in time and for the moment Drew is happy to work all the hours under the sun. She’s just thrown the latest live-in boyfriend out ’cos he was messing around, and she’s off men.’
‘Until the next one arrives,’ Cassie said darkly. She disapproved of Robyn’s assistant’s somewhat promiscuous lifestyle from her matronly position of being married for twelve years to Guy Barnes, her first boyfriend whom she had met when she had been sixteen and had married five years later.
‘As you say, until the next one arrives.’ Robyn laughed in agreement. If she was to speak truthfully she would have to admit to a sneaking admiration for Drew. She had known the tall, leggy blonde since they had done a postgraduate diploma in public and media relations together, and in all that time—seven years now—Drew’s torrid love life and penchant for picking the worst rats in society had never got the other woman down. After each disastrous affair Drew would have a little cry, declare she was going to devote herself exclusively to her career, her cats and her friends—usually in that order—and blow her current bank balance on designer outfits to cheer herself up. The longest the celibate state had lasted had been one month some years ago, and that had only been because Drew had had a severe attack of a particularly nasty flu and had been in bed for two weeks.
‘Robyn, most days you’re in your office before eight a.m. and you don’t get home until eight or nine; later when there’s a launch party of something. When do you ever relax?’ Cassie said worriedly.
‘It’s not as bad as that.’
‘It’s worse,’ Cassie said plaintively. ‘You never get the chance to meet anyone.’
‘Cass, I meet people all the time,’ Robyn said firmly, knowing where this conversation was going to lead. It was the same one they had had many times in the past and it never varied in its content.
‘You know what I mean.’ Cassie had got the bit between her teeth, her freckles all but popping off her face in protest. ‘The last time you went out on a date was months ago. All work and no play—’
‘Makes this lady a fulfilled and happy one,’ Robyn interrupted with a grin at her sister’s disgruntled face. ‘I like my life the way it is, Cass.’ And at her sibling’s snort of despair, she added, ‘I do. You know I’ve never been one for serious relationships, Cass. It’s not my style.’
‘No relationships at all is your style,’ Cassie retorted promptly.
‘Perhaps, but that’s me. You chose Guy and kids and domesticity; I chose career.’ Robyn was trying very hard to keep it friendly and calm but it was hard. Since their parents had moved to a retirement bungalow in the south of France Cassie had taken on the role of bossy and protective older sister with a vengeance. She meant well, Robyn reminded herself, and there wasn’t a malicious or nasty bone in Cassie’s whole body, but she did go on at times!
‘But having a career doesn’t cut out meeting Mr Right,’ Cassie began fervently, only to stop and lift her head as she added, ‘That’s Guy and the kids home, and just when we were having such a good chat.’
‘Pity,’ Robyn agreed drily, noting with a pang of guilt that the sarcasm went completely over Cassie’s head.
At least Guy’s return from his Sunday afternoon visit to the park with the twins focused Cassie’s attention on tea and baths for her exuberant offspring, but once Robyn was on her way home to her little flat above the office of her PR business in Kensington later that evening, she found her thoughts returning to the conversation with her sister, or to one particular part of it anyway.
Clay Lincoln. If she shut her eyes—which would be very dangerous consi
dering she was driving her little blue Fiesta—she could see him as clearly as anything. Black hair, ice-blue eyes and a smile to die for—or so she had thought once, she corrected herself swiftly. Twelve years ago to be exact, when she had been a very young and silly sixteen and he had been a devastingly experienced twenty-three.
He had been at university with Guy and so had briefly been part of her sister and brother-in-law’s circle. She had idolised him from afar as a spotty adolescent just going into her teens when Clay had spent time with Guy and his friends in the university recesses. If he’d deigned to speak to her at all it had been with the sort of indulgent kindness most adults applied to children.
And then her spots had cleared up and she had had the brace off her teeth and had learnt how to manage her riotous mass of curly hair, just in time to be Cassie and Guy’s bridesmaid when her sister had got married.
Her stomach turned over and she breathed deeply, willing the memories back under lock and key. It worked usually; she kept the little box in her mind labelled Clay Lincoln closed at all times having learnt from past experience that she only had to relax her guard for a while and the lid flew open, regurgitating all the pain and humiliation. Tonight, though, seemed to be an exception.