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party.
                His
companions proved to be a good-natured enough crowd, if well on the rocky path
to inebriation. She sat with them for a few minutes, gracefully accepting the
champagne the young man toasted her with. But when he seemed to think that
theirs was the budding romance of the century instead of a two-minute stand,
she worried that he would be too hard to dislodge when her real prey showed up.
    So she announced that she simply had to visit the
little girls' room. He stood up politely as she left and, with a good-humored
shrug, turned to chat to the woman on his other side, leaving her just a little
peeved at being so quickly replaced in the dating game. A game that was
beginning in earnest for her.
    Over by the bar she caught a flash of rich blond
hair, shoulder length on a dark, silk-mix dinner suit. The price of the suit
alone would have provided multiple exhaust transplants for Cíara's sporty
little car. She opened her purse and took a surreptitious look at the
photograph, fixing the face again in her mind, before gliding closer and closer
to her quarry.
    Slender, almost delicately built, the young man
was shorter than she had imagined but his face was every bit as attractive as
in the photograph, with an intense, green-eyed sensuality. Seeing the pretty
girl to whom he was chatting, she thought perhaps Serena McLaughlin was a lot
shrewder than she’d given her credit for in wanting to know how the man she
loved might cope with a barrage of temptation. Watching Anton Wallace flirt
with the wide-eyed redhead at the bar, she reckoned his temptability quotient
was pretty low.
                She signaled the
barman and ordered a mineral water with lemon, keeping a beady eye on her prey
from beneath sedately lowered lashes. She was close enough to see the fine
lines around his mouth and appreciate the impact his green gaze was having on
the woman. Not much resistance there, she thought, wondering if she shouldn’t
just let nature take its course. If the couple left together, she could follow
them, see if they went to his or hers, or if they parted very formally at the
foot of the stairs.
                Yeah,
and maybe you could shin up the ivy outside and take photographs of them in
flagrante delecto, a mocking voice piped up in her head. ‘Cos, short of
actually being in the room, there was no way she could prove that anything
other than a business discussion took place between the two. And Walters had
stressed it had to be concrete proof, or firsthand testimony of intent….
                Cíara
briefly wondered if she wouldn’t be happier in another line of work. Any
other line of work.
                Then
her cheeks warmed as she realized Wallace and his companion were looking right
at her, returning her stare. There was nothing else for it but to lower her lashes
delicately and flutter them around a little in a minor come-hither way. Maybe
she could report that her advances had been ignored, not mention the other
woman who had her claws into the man, collect her check and walk away?
                But
you were hired to get the truth….oh, would you ever shut up! She snapped at
her conscience, and wondered if holding two-way conversations with one’s self
was a sign of stress or an indicator of incipient madness. Either way, when she
raised her eyes again it was to see Wallace smiling at her and raising his
glass, while the woman next to him had lost her pretty pout as she glared
daggers at this unwanted competition.
                Then
the woman’s glare turned murderous as her companion, without a word in her
direction, smiled winningly at Cíara and strolled the short gap that divided
them to come to rest directly in front of her.
                “Surely
you’re not here all alone?” he asked, his voice a soft purr with a distinctive
South African roll to it. She lowered her eyelids again as indecision flooded
through her