‘I’m fine,’ Farah quickly assured her. ‘I was sick the last time I had champagne.’
‘So?’ Tia asked.
‘Oh, you’re adorable,’ Pansy interjected as if Farah was a puppy she’d just won in a competition. ‘Isn’t she adorable?’
Amy cast her a cool smile and sipped her own champagne as if she had no trouble with the drink at all. ‘How long have you and Zach known each other?’
Farah felt the woman’s interest like the pointed end of a sword to her solar plexus. ‘Not that long.’
‘Was it a whirlwind courtship?’ Cherry asked, sipping a red drink with a paper umbrella sticking out of the top.
Farah thought about her father ordering Zach to marry her. ‘I guess you could call it that.’
‘You must have something special going on under the hood,’ Tia drawled knowingly. ‘To keep the attention of man like that.’
‘Have you seen the way he looks at her? H. O. T. Hot,’ Pansy said. ‘Oh, look, there’s the girl I saw earlier with the goody bags. Yoo-hoo, over here.’
Feeling a small glow at Pansy’s observation that Zach looked at her in some special way, Farah watched as a much younger woman in a tiny bikini sauntered over with a basket of small delicately fringed purses inside.
‘What’s in them?’ Tia eyed the bags with bored interest. ‘If it’s not diamonds, I’m not interested.’
‘Chocolates,’ the woman said.
‘Oh, definitely not, then.’ She shuddered as if the woman had said snakes.
‘I’ll take one,’ Cherry said, reaching into the bag. ‘What about you, Panse? Amy?’
‘Which is which?’ Pansy eyed the three different-coloured purses.
‘There’s dark, white and a combination of the two.’
Pansy selected the combination. ‘Farah?’
‘Oh...’ Farah scanned the small purses, suddenly remembering the other night when Zach had ordered strawberries and chocolate sauce and proceeded to eat most of them. Off her. She couldn’t prevent a small smile from sneaking across her lips and her heartbeat quickened. ‘Dark, please.’
‘Really?’ Amy stepped forward to eye the selection. ‘I’d choose the white if I were you.’ She rifled through the purses as if hunting for the perfect specimen. ‘Zach is more a vanilla kind of guy.’ She glanced up at Farah through a veil of thick lashes. ‘If you know what I mean.’
Farah blinked, wondering if she’d heard her right. When she saw Pansy’s wide-eyed stare and Tia’s amused smirk, she knew she hadn’t misinterpreted the other woman’s subtle put-down. Heat rushed into her face, making her insecurities spike. She bent over the basket, pride insisting she choose the purse holding the dark treats. This woman might be right about Zach’s preferences, but he wasn’t hers any more, and Farah took some comfort from Zach’s earlier reassurance that Amy was in his past.
‘Maybe he’s changed,’ she said casually, attempting to calm her galloping heartbeat. ‘Five years is a long time.’
Amy’s small smile could have frozen the sun. ‘Five years?’ She cocked her head, as if confused. ‘I meant last week.’
Last week? Farah felt herself reel and couldn’t stop the barrage of questions from flooding her brain. Had Zach lied when he’d said Amy was in his past? And what of the tender consideration he’d given her over the past few days? Had that just been his way of making the best of a bad situation?
‘Oh, look, there’s Morgan O’Keefe,’ Amy said. ‘If you’ll excuse me?’
There was a short, loaded silence as they watched Amy saunter across the crowded deck and then Pansy patted her arm. ‘Don’t mind her,’ she said. ‘She was obviously looking to start a row.’
‘She’s jealous,’ Tia said offhandedly. ‘She was sure she was the next Princess of Bakaan but it didn’t come off. Move on, I say.’
‘Oh, right, like you’ve moved on from Gary?’ Pansy chortled.
‘Do not mention that man around me,’ Tia hissed, making the other two girls burst into peals of laughter.
Farah watched them, feeling as if she was listening to them from afar, a sort of numbness working its way through her system.
‘Ready to go?’
Zach appeared at her side and Farah pinned a bright smile on her face. ‘Of course.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN