CHAPTER FIVE

      ELLEN TOOK A BREATH. Or tried to. There didn’t seem to be any breath left in her body because her lungs seemed to be caught in a vice. Horror drenched her—horror at the very thought of being paraded at a ball with Max Vasilikos. Her mortification would be exquisite, unbearable—hideous! As hideous as her appearance would be. She felt the colour drain from her cheeks and there was a sick feeling in her stomach.

      Max was continuing to speak, still in that same blandly smooth way. ‘If you’re worried because you have nothing to wear, don’t be. I’ll have some suitable gowns delivered and you can make your choice. We’ll have lunch first, and then afterwards I’ll leave you in the hands of the stylists I’ve booked—it’s all arranged. Now...’ His tone changed and he walked to the house phone on the desk at the side of the room. ‘Time for that lunch. Would you like a preprandial drink? You look somewhat pale.’

      In fact she looked like a dish of curds and whey, he decided, and without waiting for an answer crossed to the drinks cabinet and found a bottle of sherry, pouring her a generous measure.

      ‘Drink up,’ he said cheerfully.

      She took it with nerveless fingers but did not drink. Instead she made her voice work, though it sounded like creaky hinges. ‘Mr Vasilikos, I cannot possibly go through with this! It’s very...kind...’ she almost choked on the word ‘...of you, but...but...no, I can’t. It’s out of the question. Impossible. Unthinkable.’ She swallowed. Made herself look at him. ‘Unthinkable,’ she said again, trying desperately to put a note of finality into her strangled voice.

      It did not work. He simply gave her a straight look. She’d reverted, he could see, to having that grim expression on her face she’d had when he’d gone to Haughton to view it. It didn’t suit her—beetling her monobrow and pulling heavily at her features.

      ‘Why?’ He gave her an encouraging smile. ‘You’ll enjoy it, I promise you.’

      She swallowed again. ‘I’m not, Mr Vasilikos, a party animal.’ There was strain in her voice, as if she were forcing herself to speak. ‘I think that’s pretty obvious.’

      He was undeterred. ‘It will do you good,’ he said blandly.

      A knock on the door diverted him and he went to open it. Lunch had arrived.

      ‘Come and sit down,’ invited Max, and gestured to the table once all the food had been laid out for them and the servers had departed.

      Involuntarily, Ellen felt hungry suddenly. She also realised she must have gulped down half the sherry, for there was a taste of alcohol in her throat. She’d better eat something now...

      I’ll eat lunch, then head off to the station and get home. Maybe if I write to the charity director he’ll consider my application anyway.

      Because doing what Max was so ludicrously suggesting was out of the question—just totally out of the question.

      Thank God he hadn’t mentioned me going to the ball in front of Chloe. She’d have had a field day, sneering and mocking me. Laughing like a hyena at the thought of me dressed up for an evening with Max Vasilikos!

      Cold snaked down her spine as she made a start on her meal. It was delicious, she noticed absently—a seafood terrine with a saffron sauce, and keeping warm an entrée of lamb fillet. Hunger spiked in her and she tucked in. From the other end of the table Max glanced at her. It was good, he realised, to see a woman eating well. Not that it would put any fat on her—he knew that now. Not with a toned, sleek body like hers. Memory leapt in his head at just how toned and sleek her body was, and how it was that he’d discovered the amazing truth about this woman he’d crassly assumed was overweight.

      ‘Did you go running this morning?’ he heard himself enquire.

      She looked up. ‘I run every morning,’ she said. ‘Plus I use the school gym and the pool. Taking Games lessons also keeps me pretty active.’

      ‘Hockey?’ Max asked interestedly.

      She shook her head. ‘Lacrosse. A much better game!’ There was a note of enthusiasm in her voice that even her dismay at Max Vasilikos’s absurd notion of taking her to a ball—a ball, for heaven’s sake!—could not squash.

      Well, she wouldn’t be going to any ball—with or without him, tonight or any other night—so there was no point worrying about it. She would just put it out of her head, enjoy this delicious lunch, and then head for the station. Maybe she’d look in at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, get some more ideas for her Geography classes, pick up some learning material for her pupils. Yes, that was what she would do.

      Relaxing slightly at the realisation that of course Max Vasilikos couldn’t make her go to this ridiculous ball of his, she heard him asking, ‘Isn’t lacrosse somewhat violent?’ He frowned.

      She shook her head again. ‘You’re thinking of men’s lacrosse. That can be vicious! But then so can men’s hockey. Girls play a gentler game. But it’s fast and furious for all that. I’ve always loved it. Nothing to beat it.’ There was open enthusiasm in her voice now.

      ‘Were you in the team when you were at school?’ Max asked.

      It was good to hear her speak without that note of almost panic in her voice that had been there as she’d reacted to his mention of the evening’s ball, and he knew it was necessary for him to back off for a while, let her calm down again. Her forbidding expression was ebbing, too, and that had to be good.

      Besides, it was, he realised, something of a pleasant novelty to be lunching with a female in his private suite and not have her endlessly making doe eyes at him, batting her eyelashes, trying to flirt and get his attention. With Ellen there was no such tedious predictability. Instead it was refreshing to talk to a woman about keeping fit, exercise and sport—all of which he enjoyed robustly himself. And she was clearly in her element on such subjects, knowledgeable and confident.

      She nodded, then answered him. ‘On the wing—loads of running there.’

      He glanced at her speculatively. ‘What about Chloe? Was she sporty?’

      He knew perfectly well she wouldn’t have been, but he wanted to hear what Ellen would say about the stepsister she so glaringly resented. Would she despise her for not being in the team?

      A tight look had formed in Ellen’s eyes. ‘Chloe wasn’t in the sporty crowd,’ she said.

      Max picked his next words with deliberate care. ‘It must have been difficult for her, joining a new school after her mother married your father. She must have looked to you to help her fit in.’

      Ellen’s expression froze. Memory pushed into her head. Vivid and painful.

      Chloe, with her long blonde tresses, her supercilious air of sophistication and her worldly experience of boys and smoking and alcohol and fashion and music and make-up, had been instantly accepted into a bitchy, cliquey set of girls just like her, effortlessly becoming the meanest of the mean girls, sneering at everyone else. Sneering most of all at her hulking, clumping, games-loving stepsister, who’d so stupidly tried to befriend her initially, when she’d actually believed that her father’s remarriage might bring him happiness instead of misery and ruin.

      Max’s eyes rested on Ellen, seeing her expression close up. Had he hit home? he wondered. He hoped so—because it was for her own good, after all, getting her to face up to what was keeping her trapped in the bitter, resentful, narrow life she led, refusing to move