Love Is Blind Read Free Page A

gym-toned muscles – muscles so perfect they wouldn’t have looked out of place on a marble statue – and ran one hand up under her skirt while staring into her eyes. Rupert’s even profile, square jaw and black-rimmed glasses always made her think of Clark Kent. By day, he looked so earnest, go-getting and smart in his pin-stripe suit. Then at night he was wild as the Caped Crusader. Removing his glasses was Rupert’s signal that he was in the mood to go over to the Dark Side …
    Anthea watched her fiancé place his specs on the coffee table and, taking her cue, snuggled herself deeper into his arms. She inhaled his familiar scent as he pulled her down on to the shag-pile rug.
    Afterwards, they lay entwined on the living-room floor, as if their limbs had been deliberately styled for an advert. The waves of the incoming tide lapped at the stone wall below the apartment. Their living room, a glass cube, hung suspended over a private infinity pool. ‘An infinity pool? Oh, where will it all end?’ Rupert had joked the day he’d advised her to put down the deposit.
    ‘So I’ll book flights for Friday then, shall I? We have to get there before it’s too late.’ The June sunlight flickered through the fronds of a potted palm. Despite the calm all around them, Anthea felt her boyfriend jerk in surprise at her question. ‘Rupert?’
    He winced. ‘I don’t think I can get away from work right now, darling. Besides which, maybe Jane’s right? Single, hetero men in London are definitely harder to find than Melanie Griffith’s birth certificate. Jane has at last found a man who wants to marry her. Maybe we should just let her go ahead?’
    ‘Are you insane! The point is, if I intervene now there will be less of a mess to clean up later.’
    ‘But face facts. If Jane were any uglier she’d need to get her mirrors insured. And maybe that mayor’s got a point? What other chance do plain Janes like her have?’
    ‘The best thing about having a sister, Rupert, is that when she doesn’t know what she’s doing, there is always someone else who does. Namely me. In our teens, I stopped Jane from going out with more inappropriate men than I care to remember!’
    ‘But being single in her thirties probably does make a woman rethink her view of what is “inappropriate”, Annie.’
    Anthea gave her future husband a flat, measuring look. Whenever he called her ‘Annie’, it meant that he was trying to get out of something – taking out the rubbish, a function at her office … naming their wedding date. ‘So, I take it you’re not coming with me to Australia to save my sister?’
    ‘Think about it, babe. If I walk into a bar in a mining town, I’ll accidentally set off the Wanker City Lawyer Detector and get pulverised. Besides, I’ve had a tip off about the markets. I think the time is nearly right to sell my shares …’
    Anthea’s eyes lit up. ‘Really?’ Selling his shares was Rupert’s coded way of saying that he was finally ready to marry her, settle down and have children.
    He squeezed her closer to him. ‘I think the time is right, don’t you?’ he said, in a voice dripping with honey, ‘to make the ultimate long-term investment …’
    ‘Oh, sweetheart, I do, I really do.’ She kissed him deeply.
    ‘I’m sure you’ll do what’s best for that sad sis of yours.’ Rupert was nodding his head sympathetically, but his mind was somewhere else. He was thinking about the stock market, his current case … Anthea was too excited by the prospect of her own wedding arrangements to be annoyed by his distracted manner.
    ‘Besides, you’ll be back in no time.’ There was a tone of smug certainty in his voice. ‘Jane’s just trying to get one up on you. There probably is no fiancé.’ Then he snatched the invitation out of the bin where he’d tossed it earlier. ‘She’s calling him Bill Jackman, eh?’ Rupert sounded amused. ‘Well, even if he does exist, one peep at your sister naked and it will