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In a few days she would say goodbye to him for ever. What was that going to do to her?

Confusion, panic and alarm tore into her at speed.

She was his plaything for a few days, that was all.

But what was he to her?

The thought of making the very same mistakes her mother had spent half her life making made her feel sick but there was no way she could blame Javier for that. Unlike the men her mother had given her heart to, Javier had been honest with her from the very start.

If she had feelings for him, the blame would lay squarely on her own shoulders.

But she didn’t.

It was just the effect of the extraordinary place she was in right now, where champagne flowed and people who could change lives with the click of a finger were all around her.

She was duly introduced to a group of younger men and women. She recognised one of the guys who had stared earlier at her, with curiosity and interest.

Everyone seemed to know Javier and deferred to him, but then he had that effect on people.

Hope decided that the best way of slaying inconvenient thoughts was to throw herself into the thick of things and do what she’d promised herself she’d do the very second she’d decided to sleep with him.

She would live in the moment.

Someone was asking her about her job and she surfaced to find herself looking at just the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. Tall, thin as a reed, with long, poker-straight blonde hair that fell in a sheet to her waist. She was in a clutch of other equally gorgeous women and a couple of men who hung on the edges.

They were all dressed in the style of the Rococo era. The women were in extravagant Marie Antoinette corseted gowns, and the men were in velvet frock coats. No powdered wigs, but the impact was stunning.

‘I’m an art teacher. I teach fine art and photography to adults.’ Hope smiled and felt a little stab of pride at the job she had and the obstacles she’d faced along the way.

‘OMG! You teach art?’

‘And photography.’

‘That’s adorable!’

She heard Javier’s amused chuckle from behind her, but when he leant to whisper in her ear, all he asked was whether she would mind him disappearing for a couple of minutes to network with someone he’d just spotted.

She didn’t mind.

She was, apparently, adorable among this beautiful group of young people, few of whom seemed to hold down any kind of job.

The man she had spotted earlier began chatting to her, tugging her to the side and fanning away the others who were laughing and ribbing him. There was a little clamour as she was pulled towards the walnut sideboard groaning with every imaginable delicacy.

His name was Oscar. He was very languid, which made him seem jaded and old for his years, because he couldn’t have been much older than mid-twenties. But he became very energised when Hope told him that he would make an excellent model to paint.

‘You have a good face for it,’ she said truthfully, reaching to cup his chin in her hand so that she could inspect him in forensic detail, with an artist’s eye. ‘A little too beautiful but you have nice cheekbones and your expression is interesting. You can’t be as moody and disillusioned as you seem to be, can you? You’re younger than me, for Heaven’s sake.’

She smiled and he blushed with pleasure.

‘You’re not over the hill,’ he said in the sort of cut-glass accent that made her automatically want to think about curtseying.

‘That’s true…’ she laughed, ‘…but trust me, experience can be more ageing than you think. You’re English. Where are you from?’ She was only half engaged because she was back to wondering where Javier was amid this multicultural expensive crowd of people.

She wasn’t going to look around her. She didn’t own him and she was already fighting to stave off disturbing questions about her innermost feelings for him. Lust or more? She didn’t want to explore that, no way.

* * *

Javier, in conversation with a tech tycoon, stiffened as his dark gaze unerringly fell on Hope. He’d left her chatting to a group of posh, young kids. They were the sons and daughters of billionaires, a couple of whom he knew were circulating in the room. She appeared to have been appropriated by one of the boys and from the looks of it was having a whale of a time.