Diamonds Are Not Forever

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR
Elliot

"Dad really wants us to go all out on this one...Frank are you fucking kidding me?" I snapped my fingers in front of his face, knowing I'd lost him again.
My brother was staring mindlessly over my shoulder, not listening to a word I had to say. It's not like I wasn't used to it, Frankie wasn't one for being serious, probably a good thing I was the eldest son. He grinned and waved at some unknown person behind me, I wanted to resist but I couldn't help but turn to see who was taking president over the business – taking president over me.
When I saw her brown eyes again, something new bubbled in the pit of my stomach. It felt like anger, but different. I put it down to the cheap beer mixing with the expensive whiskey from earlier. Whatever the feeling was, I knew it was all her fault that I was feeling it.
I caught her gaze in a flash before she had her back to me again, her face was still etched into my brain even when all I was left with was the back of her head.
"We should go over there."  Frankie informed me, the first ounce of assertiveness I'd heard in his voice all night, although I had reason to believe he didn't have a single assertive bone in his body. "What was her name again, the redhead?"
"Juliette."
I shocked myself. I hadn't even realised I'd remembered.
She was sat with two other women and some weird looking middle-aged guy. They looked quite the rag tag group of misfits. Juliette, with her strappy pink dress and wild red hair. Then a slightly older, thin and petite looking woman with tight blonde ringlets and baby pink lips. Bringing up the rear, a 40-something looking stocky woman with a sharp black bob and too much eye makeup.
They were far from the people we usually associated with, fuck knows what Frankie was thinking, the last thing I wanted to do was approach them.
"You should get her a drink you know; you were a dick to her." Once again, Frankie was never slow to point out when I'd fucked up. Cold and demanding was my nature, little miss red head should have held back on the cocktails if she didn't want me to do her the favour of catching her before she fell.
"I'm not going over there Frankie." My voice was stern but quiet, he still managed to hear me over the music.
Rolling his eyes, Frankie flagged down one of the waiters for more drinks.

I couldn't help myself; my eyes never left her as she laughed with her friends and placed those ridiculously high heels back on her feet. She wasn't exactly what I would describe as glamorous, not like most of the women in the bar who had brushed up against us as we came in. She wasn't my type in the slightest, and yet there was something incredibly intriguing there. Something I couldn't put my finger on.
"A Blueball please, my good man." Frankie slipped the bar man a £20 note and told him to keep the change. Not that there was going to be much change from it. "For someone who doesn't care Elliot, you sure are staring a hell of a lot."
I whipped my head back around and chugged on my bottle of beer. "Don't talk stupid." I growled back at him.
When the bar tender finally offered up a Blueball cocktail, the most ridiculous thing I'd seen in my life, he carefully took it from the bar and shot me a wink. "Wish me luck." He was teasing me.
I watched him as he sauntered over there, I was begging for him to slip on a spilt drink or something. To my dismay, he stayed upright the whole time.

Juliette was all alone, her friends no doubt in various other areas of the club leaving her solely at the hands of my brother. Before I knew what I was doing, I started straining my ears to try and hear what they were saying to each other, a stupid thing to do, like I could hear them over the music.
When I let my gaze eventually move from them, I noticed her blonde friend was waiting at the bar for some drinks. She looked familiar, like I'd seen her around before.
Then it hit me.
Pulling out my phone, I searched for the website of The Goulding Jewellers, the independent company my father was trying to negotiate terms of a merger with for us to have access to their exclusive suppliers.
 When the site loaded up, the picture of the blonde woman appeared, stood proudly in front of a storefront in the city centre. Underneath read: