A Rich Man's Whim(35)
‘I hope you don’t mind but I thought you might want to borrow something and I left a dress on your bed,’ Lara told her with a bright smile.
In recent days, Kat had learned to relax more with the other Englishwoman, who had made a real effort to offer her useful advice. Gradually it had dawned on Kat that Lara usually hosted Mikhail’s guests and could have bitterly resented being supplanted by Kat. For that reason the other woman’s sociability had proved a pleasant surprise, particularly when compared to Mikhail’s cool detachment.
‘But I’m sure I’ve got—’ Kat began in disconcertion.
‘You haven’t got anything suitable to wear to a nightclub,’ Lara assured her confidently. ‘You’ll want to fit in … for a change.’
‘My clubbing days are behind me,’ Kat commented quietly, ignoring that less than tactful comment on her style. ‘I’m thirty-five, Lara.’
Lara’s eyes widened in apparent disbelief. ‘But that means you’re older than him! I’m only twenty-six.’
And probably much more suitable, Kat reflected wearily, wondering why that should bother her. Lara was beautiful and bright and posing there topless and uninhibited, infinitely more likely to please Mikhail than Kat ever could. Behind her sunglasses Kat focused on Mikhail, sunlight gleaming off his carved cheekbones and stubborn jaw line, and her heart seemed to twist at the very idea of him with Lara … with any woman. It was because she was dreaming about him every night, embarrassingly erotic dreams that made her wake up perspiring in a tangle of bedding.
A few hours later, garbed in Lara’s short red dress and buffed and polished within an inch of her life by the beauty salon, Kat scanned her reflection and grimaced. In her own opinion she was showing too much flesh because the dress bared her back and a good deal of her legs, but what was her opinion worth? She was a fish out of water in Mikhail’s exclusive world and she didn’t want to go clubbing with the younger, livelier members of the party and stick out like a sore thumb … like an older woman got up in absurdly teenaged clothing? Mutton dressed as lamb? Kat cringed at the fear that she might look foolish in the dress. A tide of homesickness suddenly engulfed her, accompanied by distaste for the superficial existence she was leading where appearance and amusement appeared to be all that truly mattered. Right at this very minute, her youngest sister, Topsy, was home from boarding school and staying at the farmhouse with Emmie, and although Kat phoned her sisters most days it wasn’t the same as seeing them in the flesh and catching up on the gossip. Three more weeks marooned on Mikhail’s giant floating palace threatened like a prison sentence.
Kat sat beside Lara in the VIP chill-out room where several yards away at another table Mikhail appeared to be holding court like a reigning king. Surrounded by bottles of champagne and beautiful girls vying for his attention, he was in his element.
‘Is it always like this for Mikhail?’ Kat heard herself ask her blonde companion.
Lara made no pretence of not grasping the question. ‘You must understand that even when he was a boy he was very much in demand. He excites women because very rich, handsome and still young men are rare. They all want to be the one he marries but he doesn’t want to get married.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ Kat responded, sliding upright to go to the cloakroom, glancing back over her shoulder at Mikhail to note that two young women in very revealing outfits were performing some ridiculous form of suggestive belly dance for him and his companions. Their giggling display of their nubile bodies set her teeth on edge and made her feel about a hundred years too old for such nonsense. Mikhail’s arrogant dark head lifted and turned as though he could sense her watching him. Dark eyes gleaming, he summoned her with a lean brown hand to join him … as if she were a waitress or a pet dog or something! Stiffening at that suspicion, Kat reddened and ignored the signal. Her earlier attack of homesickness and alienation returned with even greater force. She didn’t want to be in Cyprus at an exclusive club for the rich and bored. She didn’t want to go back to Mikhail’s yacht either. She didn’t belong in either place and she missed her sisters.
She had persuaded herself that regaining the ownership of her home was worth any sacrifice and only now was she finally questioning that conviction. Mikhail was upsetting her. She could never remember feeling more unhappy than she currently felt and her self-esteem had sunk to an all-time low. Earlier he had scanned her in the crimson dress, had frowned but said nothing. The absence of his admiration, however, had been blatant and from that moment on the red dress had felt like a colossal unflattering mistake. But why was she allowing Mikhail’s opinion to matter so much to her? The means to stop the process of what felt like humiliation dead had always been within her own hands and perhaps it was past time that she acted. Her fingers tightened on her envelope purse, which contained her passport. Stas was poised by the exit doors and she walked over to him, her head high, eyes alight with sudden energy again.