Read Online High Society by Penny Jordan - Free Book Online Page B

You’re
embarrassing me.’ Lucy laughed.
    * * *
    ‘So, tell me some more about this shoe fetish thing
you’ve got.’
    It was after lunch and Lucy and Nick had gone upstairs to pack,
and Julia and Silas were still sitting outside, finishing the bottle of wine
Silas had bought to go with the alfresco lunch they had eaten in the small hotel
courtyard.
    ‘It isn’t a fetish. It’s just that I can’t help wanting to buy
shoes.’
    ‘Uh-huh. And toe cleavage? What exactly is that?’
    Honestly—men. They didn’t know anything! Julia shook her head
and explained in a kind voice, ‘It’s when the front of your shoe shows a bit of
your toes, and it’s seriously sexy.’
    ‘Show me?’
    ‘I can’t—not properly anyway—because I’m not wearing the right
kind of shoes,’ Julia told him. ‘You’ll see what I mean when I wear them.’
    ‘I can’t wait.’
    ‘I’d better go up and pack. We need to leave for the airport
for our flight to Naples at five.’ Would he offer to come with her? And if he
did...
    ‘I’ve got a few phone calls to make.’
    Julia tried not to feel disappointed.
    ‘And, by the way, I’ve cancelled your booking at that guest
house and booked us both into the Hotel Arcadia instead.’
    ‘The Arcadia? But that’s the most exclusive hotel in Positano.
It costs the earth to stay there, and Lucy—’
    ‘Stop panicking. Naturally I shall be paying the bill. Did Lucy
say that Dorland was going to come over?’
    ‘Yes. About three.’
    Upstairs in the suite, Julia packed quickly and
efficiently—leaving plenty of room for her new shoes. Her normal travelling work
‘uniform’ consisted of her current favourite pair of jeans, (her love affair
with jeans came a close second to her shoe addiction—Julia was simply not what
she called a ‘suit and two veg’ fan), several tee shirts and strappy tops, a
swimsuit just in case she got the chance to have a lazy day, and a long, sleek,
very plain jersey dress that rolled up into a ball, which she wore when she
needed to be dressed up. Added to these basics were casual cut-offs and a few
boho-type tops, plus a much loved floaty skirt.
    Julia adored accessorising her clothes with one and sometimes
more of her trademark boho ‘finds’. Her personal look was very different from
the designer ‘footballer’s wife’ style adopted by so many of their clients. One
of her most cherished moments was the time a stylist for Sex and the City had stopped her in the street to ask where she had
got the top she had been wearing. Julia’s current favourite accessory was a dark
brown wide leather belt, ornamented with leather flower petals sewn with tiny
turquoise beads to form the flower stamens. She had bought it from a stall at
Camden Market, and wore it at every opportunity. She had been seriously tempted
to buy a pair of Aztec-inspired turquoise earrings she had also seen on the
stall, but had managed to resist.
    Her packing finished, she looked at her watch—the plain but oh,
so elegant Cartier that Lucy had so generously insisted on buying for all three
of them out of her first profits.
    Those had been happy, heady days, filled with fun and laughter.
Julia frowned. The initial success of the business seemed to have been replaced
by a series of financial problems, causing poor Lucy to have to dig deep into
her trust fund to provide Prêt a Party with more capital. No wonder her friend
was looking so stressed.
    It was almost three o’clock. She might as well go back down and
wait for Dorland to arrive. Most of the necessary organisation for his
end-of-summer party had already been done by Dorland himself, but, as Julia
knew, he liked to fuss and fret over every tiny little detail, and virtually
every day she received anxious urgent e-mails from him.
    She had just stepped out of the lift into the guest house’s
dusty, faded hallway when her mobile rang.
    ‘Darling!’ She heard her mother’s voice exclaiming. ‘How
naughty of you not to tell us