Save the Last Dance (32 page)

 

Alice brushed Coreen's sharp little fingernail away. ‘What do you mean
me
…? Oh, no! No way! Absolutely
no way
!'

Now the dramatics kicked in. Coreen threw her hands in the air and her voice boomed. ‘Look around! Although we've booked models of different shapes and sizes, lots of these girls have exactly the same build as you. Poor old sick-as-a-dog Amber is virtually your body double.'

That might be true—sort of. But Alice knew for a fact that just because she'd been labelled a stick insect since her first day at school, just because she might
look
the part, it didn't mean she could actually model!

‘Coreen, you must be out of your mind. You've obviously got me confused with someone who can walk more than five steps in heels without tripping over. And there are
stairs
…'

She ran to the back of the stage and peered through a gap in the scenery. The stage was flat enough—a wide rectangle, long side facing the audience, but they'd decided against the traditional T-shape of a catwalk, reasoning that if more space was needed for dancing later it would be better to have the models walk down a short flight of steps and parade along the marble floor before turning back and doing the process in reverse.

‘Nonsense,' Coreen said, shoving her to the side to get a look herself. ‘You'll be fine.'

Alice put her hands on her hips. Her future business was on the line here, and she wasn't going to muck it up with her clompy walk and complete lack of gracefulness. She couldn't go out there and have everyone looking at her—the whole room looking at her. Especially when
someone
would be looking at her, making her stomach flutter, her pulse race. There was a huge probability she would fall at his feet—literally.

She grabbed Coreen from where she was gawking at the other guests and made her look at her. ‘This isn't a fairy story or a Broadway musical. The poor little insignificant nobody isn't going to step into the star's shoes and save the day! I can't do it.'

She waited for the fireworks, for Coreen to beg and plead and manipulate, but Coreen's eye was back at the crack in the
scenery, and she was eyeing up the runway again. It didn't even look as if her fuse was lit.

‘Hold that thought,' she said, and ran back to the dressing rooms.

 

The lights everywhere but on the stage dimmed, and a rustle of excitement went through the crowd. Gentle music—a little bit fifties, a little bit Italian—filtered through hidden speakers. The two banks of chairs with a central aisle weren't arranged to face the stage but each other, leaving a wide channel for the models to walk down, allowing the onlookers to get the best view of the outfits on display.

A lone figure stepped out onto the stage, and there was a collective gasp from the crowd. Cameron, seated in the front row, smiled. This wasn't usually his thing, but somehow this was different. He knew all the hard planning that had gone into it—every minute detail.

He knew, for example, that this wasn't really Audrey Hepburn, in a full skirt, flat shoes, prim white shirt and a scarf knotted round her slender neck, but a professional lookalike—one of a handful Alice had hired to make the fashion show a little more dramatic. By the looks of the people on either side of him, it had worked. ‘Audrey' made her way down the short flight of four or five steps from the stage to the floor of the atrium and stayed in character as she walked, looking every inch the Hollywood star. A spontaneous round of applause rippled round the room. And then, as Audrey passed him, another model appeared—this one in a white dress with big red roses on it. A white scarf covered her hair and she was wearing sunglasses.

There was something familiar about that woman.

Coreen?

What was
she
doing modelling the clothes? That wasn't
supposed to be her job—although, by the reaction of a couple of men sitting opposite him, it really ought to be. It looked as if they were ready to leap off their seats and follow her wherever she went.

He was still puzzling as the
Roman Holiday
section ended and a small spotlight came up on a lectern at one side of the stage. A woman stepped into the pool of light and coughed slightly, before leaning a little too close to the microphone so it squealed back at her.

‘Sorry,' a gentle voice said through the speakers, and every hair on every inch of Cameron's body stood on end.

He thought he was going to have a heart attack right then and there in the middle of his own party. It was Alice. And she was…Alice was…All he could think of. All he could look at. All he'd ever thought she could be and more.

The little vintage outfits she'd worn to the office had been cute, but this…Rich, dark green, swelling and curving and flowing around her. And her hair—her eyes! Dark, liquid, smoky make-up, and the deep crimson lips of a goddess. She turned round to ask someone behind the scenes something, and he really did think his heart had stopped for a second or so.

If the front of the dress had been spectacular, the back was…

He'd run out of words.

Two wide satin straps crossed over between her shoulder blades and travelled down, down, down until they reached the low back, just where the top of her bottom rounded away. Someone across the room wolf-whistled, and Cameron almost jumped out of his seat and started searching for him so he could knock his teeth out. But he managed to contain himself. Just.

She turned back again and tested the microphone, which was now behaving itself.

What was Alice doing there, staring at the audience, her eyes large and round?

O
H
, L
ORD
, thought Alice. What I am I doing here?

Every eye in the room was on her. Every ear straining to hear what she was going to say. The only problem was she didn't
know
what she was going to say. They were expecting something witty and engaging. All she had in her head was garbled phrases.

Why, oh, why had she refused to model? What was so hard about strutting about a bit? At least that would only have involved being
looked at
. But with Coreen stepping in for Amber she'd been forced into the role of auctioneer. Now she had be looked at
and
say stuff.

The plan was to auction off the pieces straight after their section of the show, so they were fresh in people's minds. The first model—Annie, the Audrey lookalike—stepped out onto the stage and struck a relaxed pose, her hands clasped behind her back in a girlish manner, and it instantly reminded Alice of stills she'd seen from
Roman Holiday
. She could almost hear the music—almost see St. Peter's Square and the Colosseum, feel her own heart beating with the first love of a shy girl escaping from her life of duty for a few precious days.

And then the words were there, inside her head. She took a deep breath and leaned into the microphone.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, imagine yourselves in Rome at the height of summer, zipping through the crowded streets on a Vespa, the wind in your hair, the swell of freedom in your heart…'

 

If anyone had asked Cameron what each piece of clothing had sold for, he wouldn't have been able to tell them. He hadn't been paying attention to the numbers, only to the soft clarity of Alice's words, the way she moved her hands when she described a piece, the smile she bestowed on the winning bidders. Cameron wasn't a man who took his time deciding what he wanted, and he knew what he wanted right now—one of those smiles.

The final section of the auction was progressing—the one with the Marilyn lookalike. Evening dresses in all colours of the rainbow, made out of all kinds of fabrics: lace, satin, taffeta, organza…

Not that Cameron knew anything about fabrics, but he retained the information because it had been delivered in Alice's voice.

She was amazing. The whole audience was eating out of her hand, leaning forward to catch every syllable she uttered. Coreen would have been a great auctioneer, parting the punters from their money with her outrageous curves and cheeky banter, but Alice…Alice was something else. Totally different.

A unique way of looking at things
, he'd said. And now she was putting that gift to work with marvellous effect.

She didn't sell the clothes, she sold the
dream
—the very essence of all those classic movies. She didn't just describe each item of the sale, but she put it in context, creating a little story about each blouse, each handbag, each dress, until the guests were desperate to outbid each other for just a little bit
of that fantasy. He wasn't sure, but he thought some of the pieces had gone for ridiculously high sums.

He'd been so busy caught up in her spell he realised that he'd forgotten to bid for anything—had forgotten to earn one of her smiles. Not that he'd have known what to bid for. Whatever would he do with a stole or a pill-box hat? It wasn't as if he had a woman in his life to shop for any more. And now the last bid had been made, for a metallic embroidered sheer dress similar to the one Marilyn had worn in
Some Like It Hot
. That dress he remembered all on his own. What red-blooded male wouldn't?

But it wouldn't have done. He wouldn't have bought it anyway, because it would have looked so wrong on her…

Oh.

Mentally he'd been looking for something for Alice, and he hadn't even known it.

He frowned and berated himself. He should have known, should have made more of an effort, because now everything had been sold and his chance to surprise her with a gift, to say thank you for the wonderful job she had done, was gone. A little voice in his ear urged him to stand up,
make
one of the happy bidders give something up for him. He could do it. It was his ball, his building, his night, and he knew he could make any outrageous demand he wanted and people would scurry round to make it a reality.

But he didn't.

In his imagination he could see the look of disapproval on Alice's face. She wouldn't accept anything he obtained for her by those means anyway. So, although it was almost painful, he kept his mouth shut and his bottom in his seat.

Silence fell, and Alice removed the microphone from its stand and walked to the centre of the stage.

‘We have one last piece of vintage clothing to auction off this evening…' She did a little twirl and Cameron felt his stomach clench, the blood pound in his ears. ‘This Elsa Schiaparelli dress.'

A murmur of excitement rumbled around the room.

‘It's a deep emerald satin evening gown, designed in 1938 for…'

The details blurred in Cameron's ears. He didn't need to know them. This was Alice's dress. No one else should ever be allowed to wear it—and he was going to make sure they wouldn't.

He was going to buy it for her.

And, in the process, he was going to earn himself one of those smiles.

 

It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision. Coreen had said she could auction this dress if she wanted to, and while it was the most beautiful thing she had ever worn and was ever likely to wear, when would she
really
ever have the chance to wear it again? After tonight she'd be back to blue jeans and T-shirts, bashed-up old trainers and her brother's fleeces.

The amount the auction had managed to raise for the local charity so far this evening was truly amazing, much more than she'd ever imagined possible, and she'd rather that this exquisite dress put an extra couple of hundred pounds in the kitty rather than sit in the darkness at the back of her wardrobe doing nobody any good.

‘I'm going to start the bidding at one hundred pounds.' The reserve was five hundred. Surely it would go for much more than that. ‘Do I have one hundred pounds?'

Instantly a hand shot up, the woman half rising out of her seat.

‘One hundred pounds to the lady over there. Do I hear—?'

‘Two hundred.'

Alice stopped mid-flow and turned in the direction of the voice. Not just
a
voice, but
the
voice. Her eyes met Cameron's. He was looking straight at her, his expression completely open. What on earth would Cameron want with a dress like this?

She couldn't look away as she said, ‘Do I hear—?'

‘Three hundred.'

This was a new bidder. She acknowledged a woman in a mink stole with a nod, but before she could open her mouth that deep, sexy log fire kind of voice said, ‘Five hundred.'

And that was how it carried on. Every time someone else bid, Cameron topped it. She stopped looking at the other bidders and felt a gentle heat rise to her cheeks as she kept her focus on him. Only on him. He was smiling too. A secret smile. A shared smile. One that connected them in such a way that the rest of the room melted away, became like background music.

She really must remember to breathe. It was interfering with the whole auctioneer thing. But the way that Cameron was looking at her—as if she was the only thing in his field of vision—seemed to be having an effect on her ribcage, making it squeeze tight around her lungs.

He's bidding for your dress. For you.

Don't be so stupid, she told herself. That would mean…Well, it would mean all sorts of things it was impossible for it to mean.

But that warmth in his eyes, his smile…

She knew it was true even as she accepted a bid of a thousand pounds from the original bidder and the whole room gasped. Cameron just smiled, and Alice knew his lips would open again, that he would add another hundred.

And he kept doing it. But Cameron was not a patient man, even though his nonchalant expression all through the auction almost fooled her. Hard lines of irritation at being constantly trumped started to show around his jaw. When the bid reached one thousand eight hundred, he snapped and stood up.

‘Ten thousand,' he said, in his low, controlled voice, daring anyone to go higher.

Nobody did. They were all too shocked, busy whispering about his outburst, and before anyone with enough capital behind them had enough thought to bid against him it had gone. It belonged to him.

She
belonged to him.

And, while the crowd dispersed in a collective hunt for another champagne cocktail before the ball proper began, she stayed centre stage and he stayed in his seat. They were grinning at each other.

She would wear this dress again. One day soon. She didn't know when or where, but she knew one thing for sure: Cameron would be at her side.

 

Cameron found himself in the midst of a group of businessmen, all congratulating themselves on their foresight in investing in his company and haw-hawing over each other's off-colour jokes. He listened with only half an ear while he scanned the vast atrium for any hint of a green dress.

He hadn't seen her since right after the fashion show, when he'd been but a few steps away from her and then Coreen had bustled her off backstage to do something urgent. She'd smiled at him, raised her eyebrows in apology, and since then he hadn't even had a glimpse of her.

When he was able, he excused himself from the group of men and went in search of her. That was the problem with
being the man of the moment. Everybody wanted to shake his hand, or have a word, or slap him on the back and remark on his ten-thousand-pound bid.

He started at the edge of the dance floor, which was packed, all the time looking, his eyes searching out a particular shade of emerald. And then he saw her, talking to some of the guests who'd been unlucky in the auction. He recognized the woman in the fur who'd bid for Alice's dress. She wasn't looking very pleased, and she was trying to press something into Alice's hand.

Cameron tried to get to her, but he kept having to dodge people as they circled the fringes of the dance floor. It seemed whichever way he decided to go people deliberately stepped in his path, causing him to zig-zag. Once he'd cleared a particularly obstinate clump of left-footed dancers he looked to the space where Alice had been standing—but she was gone.

Damn.

The fashion show had finished almost an hour ago and it was nearing eleven o'clock. He needed to find her before the party ended.

Something rather round and rather solid barrelled into him, almost sending him flying—and that was no mean feat. He twisted round to find a portly man in a white dinner jacket mouthing apologies at him.

He'd just planted his feet solidly on the ground again when he became aware of someone standing behind him, waiting for him. Some unknown instinct told him it was a woman. Slowly, very slowly, he turned to face her.

 

Alice stopped dead, and her skirt swirled round her ankles then fell into perfectly spaced folds.

There he was, maybe only twenty feet away, and she
watched as he turned without seeing her and faced the most stunning woman she'd ever seen outside the pages of the fashion magazines. If she'd needed a definition of glamour, this woman was it. Blonde. Tall. An eye-popping figure. In other words she was everything Alice was not. And she couldn't even fault her for her carriage or her dress sense. She held herself as if she was entitled to get everything her heart desired, especially the man she had set her sights on, and there was nothing cheap or nasty about her recreation of Marilyn's pink dress from
How To Marry a Millionaire
. Even from this distance Alice could tell it was beautifully made.

The blonde snaked her hand around Cameron's arm and reached down to twine her fingers with his, then leaned in close to whisper something in his ear. His back was to Alice, so she couldn't see his expression, but he leaned forward and whispered something back. Just the thought of his lips being that close to another woman, so she'd feel his breath tickle her ear, made Alice's stomach instantly freeze with jealousy.

The way was open now. A clear path between her and Cameron. She could just walk up to him, tap him on the shoulder, smile and cut in…

But she didn't

She watched her moment slide away, watched the crush of the crowd push Cameron and the blonde further away from her until they had disappeared. Stupid, she knew. But she didn't want to have to stand next to the vision in pink. She didn't want Cameron to make comparisons. Alice never did well in that kind of situation. She had never been anyone's first choice.

Later. When he was alone. When he wouldn't be distracted, dazzled…Maybe then she'd have the chance to see if that warm smile was still in his eyes for her. She turned and walked
in the other direction, her sense of euphoria deflating as quickly as an old wrinkled party balloon.