Surrender To Seduction

Although the caustic note in his voice stung, Gerry nodded agreement.

‘Well—not many, I suppose,’ Lacey said defensively.

‘It’s not normal for women to look like that,’ Bryn said with cold-blooded dispassion. ‘Gerry’s right—those who do are freaks.’

‘Designers like women with no curves,’ Gerry told her, ‘because they show off clothes better.’

Narelle laughed a little shrilly. ‘Oh, it’s more than that,’ she protested. ‘Men are revolted by fat women.’

‘Some men are,’ Bryn said, leaning back in his chair as though he conducted conversations like this every day, ‘but most men like women who are neither fat nor thin, just fit and pleasantly curvy.’

So she was not, Gerry realised, physically appealing to him. Although not model-thin, she was certainly on the lean side rather than voluptuous. His implied rejection bit uncomfortably deep; she had, she realised with a shock, taken it for granted that he found her as attractive as she found him.

Lacey asked, ‘Are you in fashion too, Mr Falconer?’

‘I have interests there,’ he said, his tone casual.

Did he mean the hats?

With a bark of laughter Cosmo said, ‘Amongst others.’

Bryn nodded. Smoothly, before anyone else could speak, he made some remark about a scandal in Melbourne, and Lacey listened to her parents discuss it eagerly.

Illness or anorexia? Gerry wondered, covertly taking in the stick-like arms and legs. Lacey had her father’s build; she should have been rounded. Or just a kid in a growing spurt? Sixteen could be a dangerous age.

Had Bryn discerned that? Why else would he have bothered to warn her off dieting? Because that was what he’d done, in the nicest possible way.

Gerry drained her glass and settled back in her chair, watching the night drift across the sea, sweep tenderly through the palms and envelop everything in a soft, scented darkness. The sound of waves caressing the reef acted as a backdrop; while they’d been talking several other people had come in and sat down, and now a porter was going around lighting flares.

If she were alone, Gerry thought, she’d be having a wonderful time, instead of sitting there with every cell alert and tense, waiting for something to happen.

What happened was that a waiter came across and bent over Bryn, saying cheerfully, ‘Your table is ready, sir.’

‘Then we’d better eat,’ he said, and got to his feet, towering over them. ‘Geraldine,’ he said, holding out his hand.

Irritated, but unable to reject him without making it too obvious, Gerry put hers in his and let him help her up, smiling at the others. He kept his grip until they were halfway across the room, when she tugged her fingers free and demanded, ‘What on earth is going on?’

‘I’d have thought you’d know the signs,’ he said caustically. ‘If she hasn’t got anorexia, she’s on the brink.’

‘I didn’t mean Lacey,’ she snapped. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I discovered I had a few days, so I decided it would be easier for you if I came up and acted as intermediary.’

Impossible to tell from his expression or his voice whether he was lying, but he certainly wasn’t telling the whole story.

‘Just like that?’ she said, not trying to hide her disbelief. ‘You didn’t have this time yesterday.’

‘Things change,’ he told her blandly, pulling out a chair.

He was laughing at her and she resented it, but she wasn’t going to make a fool of herself by protesting. So when she’d sat down she seized on the comment he’d made. ‘What do you mean, you thought I’d have been able to recognise anorexia?’

‘You deal with it all the time, surely?’ he said.

She replied bluntly, ‘Tragically, anorexic young women who don’t get help die. They don’t have the stamina to be models.’

‘I know they die,’ he said, his face a mask of granite, cold and inflexible in the warm, flickering light of the torches. ‘How many do you think you’ve sent down that road?’

His grim question hurt more than a blow to the face.

Before she could defend herself he continued, ‘Your industry promotes an image of physical perfection that’s completely unattainable for most women. From there it’s only a short step to eating disorders.’

‘No one knows what causes eating disorders,’ she said, uncomfortable because she had worried about this. ‘You make it sound as though it’s a new thing, but women have always died of eating disorders—they used to call it green sickness or a decline before they understood it. Some psychologists believe it’s psychological, to do with personality types, while others think it’s caused by lack of control and power. If you men would give up your arrogant assumption of authority over us and appreciate us for what we are—not as trophies to impress your friends and associates—then perhaps we could learn to appreciate ourselves in all our varied and manifold shapes and sizes and looks.’

‘That’s a cop-out,’ he said relentlessly.

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