‘Too sexy,’ Jenny put in mischievously.
‘That too,’ Helen agreed.
‘But he’s a brilliant actor.’
‘So he ought to be for the money he earns. I read in a magazine article only last week that he was being paid millions of pounds for his last film. No one is worth that much money.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Jenny’s eyes twinkled. ‘If I had a couple of million I’d buy him.’
‘I don’t think you buy the man, just his talent.’
‘Oh, I’d buy that too,’ Jenny said meaningly.
Helen burst out laughing. ‘You’re impossible!’ she chuckled.
‘As long as it makes you laugh I don’t care what I am. You don’t laugh enough.’
She sobered. ‘There doesn’t seem to be a lot to laugh at.’
‘Not since Michael.’
‘No,’ Helen agreed abruptly. ‘I think I see your sexy actor,’ she changed the subject, indicating Leon Masters as he stood across the room.
Jenny followed her line of vision. ‘Oh boy, I just have to get an introduction. I’ll ask Brent. Coming?’
‘No, thanks,’ Helen grimaced. ‘I don’t want to listen to how wonderful he thinks he is.’
‘He may not be conceited.’
‘Want to bet?’
‘No,’ Jenny laughed. ‘Although Matt and Brent think he’s great.’
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, love, but as far as I’m concerned that’s no recommendation.’
‘Okay,’ her cousin shrugged. ‘You’ll be all right?’
‘I think I’ll be safe,’ she teased.
‘See you later!’
Helen watched with amusement as Jenny persuaded her boss to introduce her to their host, smiling as Jenny proceeded to try and dazzle him with her beauty. From the way Leon Masters listened to her with lazy amusement she didn’t appear to be succeeding.
Suddenly he looked up and those tawny coloured eyes met hers across the smoke-filled room. She shifted uncomfortably under that steady gaze, her violet eyes shadowed. She turned away, her cheeks fiery red. The look in his eyes had been insolent and assessing, and she had felt almost naked as his gaze ran slowly over her.
She looked back at him, her nervousness lessening slightly as she saw he was now concentrating on Jenny’s bubbly conversation. At least Jenny would be pleased.
Leon Masters looking at her like that had unnerved her. He had looked at her as if he saw her as an attractive woman, something she hadn’t felt for a very long time. Oh, she was passable to look at, quite pretty if you liked small, dark-haired women. But Leon Masters looking at her like that had made her feel totally feminine.
He was hot property in the acting world, and had been for the last fifteen years. He was constantly working, his acting superb. She had just seen him in a play on television where he had been almost unrecognisable in the role of the bumbling idiot, a character far removed from the suave man of experience he was in reality. He looked totally the dominant male tonight, dressed completely in black from head to foot, the black silk shirt clinging to his powerful shoulders and chest, the trousers fitted snugly to his hips and thighs.
It was obvious that most of the women here were attracted to his rugged magnetism, and Helen supposed he could be called very attractive with his over-long sun-bleached blond hair, piercing tawny-coloured eyes set over a hawk-like nose, firm mouth with a full sensuous lower lip, the lines of experience beside nose and mouth that added, not detracted, to his looks, and the lithe masculinity of his tall powerful body. With the exception of Helen, there wasn’t a woman in the room who wouldn’t give anything to be his partner for the evening, and yet he appeared to be alone.
At thirty-four he had never been married, to Helen’s knowledge, and looking at him now as he flirted easily with Jenny and another girl who had joined them she thought it wasn’t hard to work out why he had remained single. Why marry one woman when there were hundreds, thousands, for the taking? A wife might be a tie he didn’t need; there had certainly never been a shortage of women in his life.
‘Enjoying yourself?’
Helen turned to smile at Matthew Jarvis. ‘Are you?’