‘It depends what makes you dance for joy. Shall we say ten thousand pounds to start with? Play your cards right, and I think you could do very well out of me.’
‘And I think the sooner you leave you the better. I’m not interested in you or your money, and if you say another word I shall call Security.’
‘Twenty thousand pounds.’
‘Shall I gift-wrap these items for you, sir, or have you changed your mind now you know you’ll get nothing from me?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you’d better find a woman who’s selling herself. I’m only selling perfume. I take it you don’t want these.’
He shrugged. ‘There’d hardly be any point, would there? Of course, it’s a shame about the commission you would have earned.’
‘Commission be blowed!’ Heather said very deliberately. ‘The store is about to close. Goodbye! Don’t come back!’
He gave her a grin that contained a hint of challenge, and walked out with the air of a man who’d achieved something, although for the life of her she couldn’t think what.
She was furious, both with him and herself. He’d raised false hopes for her pay packet, and he’d insulted her. But, far worse, for a brief moment he’d persuaded her to find him charming. Part of her had enjoyed the light-hearted game she’d thought they were playing. But then she’d seen the cold calculation in his eyes, and she’d known that the woman who went to this man’s bed for money would be a fool. And the woman who did it for love would be an even greater fool.
She hurried home. Her flatmate was out so she had the place to herself as she prepared for the evening ahead with Lorenzo Martelli, the young man Sally called ‘her lover’. He wasn’t her lover, nor had he tried to urge her into bed, for which she liked him more.
In the month she’d known him she seemed to have been under a spell, something lovelier than reality, with none of reality’s pain and trouble. She didn’t call it love, because the word ‘love’ summoned up Peter, and a wilderness of suffering at the brutal way he’d dumped her. She only knew that Lorenzo had charmed her out of her sadness.