‘Relax, Dad, you’re not telling me anything that I didn’t work out for myself years ago. So are you scared…? You’ve been staring at her all day—yes, Dad, you have. She is the Eve in Eve’s Temptation. Brains and beauty. Oh, before you say it—’
‘What was I about to say?’
‘Beauty isn’t all about long legs and boobs, Father.’
Always good to know that your daughter thought you were shallow and sexist. ‘I am aware of that.’
‘And you obviously fancy her so don’t let me cramp your style. Go for it, Dad.’
‘Thank you very much.’
His daughter ignored the irony. ‘I think you need a challenge.’
‘Being your father makes every day a challenge.’
‘I’m a far better daughter than you deserve.’ She grinned and for a moment looked more like his little girl again. Draco pushed away the wave of nostalgia and reminded himself that nothing stayed the same.
‘I’m not going to contest that one.’ He touched her cheek. ‘How about you let me worry about my social life, kiddo?’
Her childish brow furrowed. ‘I just don’t want to see you lonely. I’m not going to be at home for ever, you know, and you’re not getting any younger.’
Feeling every day of his thirty-three years, Draco allowed his daughter to pull him onto the dance floor. Eve had already gone.
* * *
Having delivered the car and the keys to Draco, his driver squeezed his bulk into the passenger seat of the Mini beside his wife. Draco stepped smartly to one side as the Mini reversed, sending up a cloud of gravel, and shot off down the drive with a honk of the horn.
A smile played across the firm line of his lips as he watched the car vanish, narrowly avoiding a collision with one of the catering vans that were beginning to leave. On balance Draco was glad the husband and not the wife was his driver.
He strolled back towards the Elizabethan manor, which was impressively backlit now the light had faded by some state-of-the-art laser technology. Less high tech but equally attractive were the trees surrounding the house, which had been artistically sprinkled with white fairy lights for the occasion. There was no sign of Josie, who had said she’d be only five minutes when she had gone back to make up a doggie bag for her cousin, fifteen minutes ago.
Overhead a helicopter took off, and he sighed. It would have been easier to make the return journey by the same means of transport in which he had arrived, but the last time he had landed in the meadow at the timbered farmhouse where his ex-model sister lived the bucolic life of a hobby farmer with her banker husband, she had complained that her hens had stopped laying.
It did not seem very scientific, but then neither was naming a load of hens who all looked identical to him and assigning them individual personalities, so rather than risk getting in her bad books again, as she helped out a lot with Josie, having her to stay when he was out of town, he had decided to drop Josie off by car before driving back to London himself.
Philosophical about being kept waiting by his daughter, he had positioned himself beneath the illuminated canopy of a tall oak to wait for Josie just as a minibus filled with guests from the village set off, leaving behind three figures on the gravel.
‘Who is he calling drunk?’ the one who had written her number on his arm slurred, waving her fists at the bus.