Читать книгу Modern Romance Books September Books 5-8 - Кэтти Уильямс, Annie West, Cathy Williams - Страница 16

THE LUNCH LASTED three hours, at the end of which Sofia had drunk far too much champagne. Nervous tension had not mixed well with the alcohol, and as she waited kerbside with Rafael for his driver to show up the thought of taking a train back to the cottage was almost unthinkable. She felt sick.

‘Congratulations.’ Rafael, having dispatched the last of the guests, turned to her with a wry expression.

‘For what?’

‘You made my godfather laugh. Don’t know what you were saying, but whatever it was it was doing the trick.’

He channelled her into the back seat of the Range Rover and then angled his body so that he was looking right at her, his long legs loosely sprawled, his hands resting lightly on his thighs.

‘I wasn’t cracking any jokes.’

Restless and excruciatingly aware of him sitting so close to her, she anxiously twisted the rings round and round her finger, choosing to stare through the window of the car rather than look at him, but she was all too conscious of this drop-dead gorgeous guy next to her, all too alert of the way her body had reacted when he had touched it.

She was married and, even if it was a marriage in name alone, her blood still thickened with inexplicable heat at the thought.

Marriage was the one thing her mother had craved and never managed to attain. All things considered, she didn’t think her mother would have been whooping with joy on behalf of her daughter. A marriage of convenience would not have sat well with a woman who’d believed in romance and fairy tales, even if none of them had managed to come true for her.

She slid her eyes across at him and her pulses quickened. Her brain wanted to box this up and neatly label it as the business deal it was, but her body wasn’t falling into line. Her body was too aware of the ring on her finger and all the grey areas that highlighted.

Looking down, she was startled when she felt the light brush of Rafael’s finger under her chin.

‘Look at me,’ he encouraged softly.

‘What?’ She jerked back but their eyes locked, and she found she couldn’t tear her gaze away.

She’d ended up paying little attention to him during the meal. She’d been conscious of him, but her father had consumed her attention. Now, Rafael, her husband, seemed to suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere, leaving her breathless and acutely aware of his intense, smouldering masculinity.

The other guests—stepbrother, with whom she had barely exchanged a glance, aside—had been young and attractive. Several of the women had been attached to typical corporate-looking types and had been effusive and welcoming, eager to please the man who made sure their husbands were handsomely paid. Others, like the striking, dark-skinned woman who’d sat next to Rafael, with whom he had been discussing business for most of the meal, had clearly been colleagues.

‘You did well. If you were nervous, then you did a good job of hiding it.’

‘Isn’t that part and parcel of the game we’re playing?’ She looked at him, hating herself, because she knew that there had been instances when it had felt way too real for comfort.

And she knew why. Scratch the surface and you’d find a woman still yearning to touch her forbidden husband.

She sighed and gave him a clear-eyed gaze. ‘I was nervous. David...all those people...not to mention Freddy.’

‘Forget Freddy for the moment. He’s a parasite and a nuisance and will be sorted. As for David...he wants that bond and, whether you were cracking jokes or not, you were letting him in even if it may not have seemed that way to you.’

Sofia reddened and her eyes skittered away. How could he be so nice, so...perceptive...and yet at times so coolly remote?

‘I’m not looking for a bond with anyone, least of all someone who’s never been part of my life,’ she tried, in the guise of a spirited argument to quell that side of her that seemed so foolishly susceptible to the glimpses she kept getting of a guy who could still get under her skin and stay there.

‘Stop looking for an argument, Sofia. We’re going to be...’ his mouth quirked, and again that glimpse of humour that could thread past the defences she knew she should be mounting ‘husband and wife for the foreseeable future. We need to get along...like husband and wife.’ He tilted his head and looked levelly back at her.

‘We’ll be leading separate lives. That’s what you said. We won’t even be sharing the same space.’

He had the most incredible eyes. So deep and dark, glittering with a hard, steely edge that was somehow chilling and sinfully sexy at the same time.

‘We will tonight.’

‘Will what?’

‘Be sharing the same space. We’re going back to my place.’

‘I don’t want to do that.’

‘Yes, you do.’ He raised his eyebrows and stared at her. ‘You drank quite a bit back there in the restaurant. Are you telling me that you fancy the thought of trekking back to the cottage?’

‘You were paying attention to how much I drank?’ Her stomach heaved and she breathed in deeply. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.

‘I’m your husband. Of course I was. Right now, I’d say you’re looking a little green round the gills. How much did you eat?’

‘Not a lot.’ Sofia settled resentful green eyes on him but his crooked half-smile was disarming. ‘What did you expect? I was sitting next to...next to...’

‘You can say it.’

‘Next to David. Eating and enjoying the food was the last thing on my mind.’

‘You were nervous. Like I said. Hence my remark that you did well today. My godfather hasn’t looked so energised in a while.’

‘If he was energised, then it wasn’t something I deliberately set out to achieve.’

‘It’s not the road you walk but the fact that you get there,’ Rafael drawled. ‘But back to you. You’ve barely eaten and you’ve probably drunk a lot more than you’re accustomed to. Dispatching you back to the cottage to fend for yourself isn’t on the cards. Besides...shouldn’t the blushing bride spend the first night in the same county as her newly acquired husband at the very least?’

‘Ha-ha, hilarious.’ She rested her head back against the seat and closed her eyes for a few seconds. When she glanced sideways at him, it was to find his dark eyes resting on her face and she flushed.

She deliberately held her hand out and reminded herself that the ring on her finger was worth as much as she would have got in a year of dutiful nannying. Business transaction, she told herself. Keep it real.

‘Very nice,’ Rafael drawled, and he took her hand in his and looked at the ring, which made her heartily wish she hadn’t drawn attention to it in the first place.

‘All in a day’s work,’ she responded, quick as a flash, and he burst out laughing and dropped her hand.

It burned and tingled where he had briefly held it.

‘You don’t give in, do you, cara?’ His eyes rested on her face. He was still grinning. ‘A man could either be scared of that or turned on by it.’

Which are you? The question sizzled in her brain before she accepted that he was just teasing, playing a game, definitely not flirting.

‘Can I ask you something?’ Her voice was hurried and breathless in her eagerness to change the subject and escape the frantic tug of unwanted sensations flitting through her like quicksilver.

‘Fire away.’

‘You said you wanted to lead a single life, a discreet single life...so is there anyone waiting in the wings for you now that this marriage is out of the way?’ She thought of the eager-to-please English roses and wondered if those were his type.

He looked momentarily staggered and she fuzzily thought, Why the big show of ruffled feathers when you lied to me about who you really were and what you really wanted? Since when do liars have any right to look shocked at being asked whether they were having an affair with a married woman? It felt strangely comforting to be antagonistic.

‘Tell me that you’re kidding?’ Rafael exploded with incredulity.

‘Why would I be kidding?’ She shrugged and made to look away but he held her chin in his hand again and she shot him a sullen look from under her lashes.

‘We’re here,’ he gritted, ‘but this conversation isn’t finished.’

His driver disappeared as seamlessly as he had appeared and they entered his sprawling place in silence. She could feel the simmering tension inside him and defiantly told herself that it was a perfectly reasonable question to have asked, given the circumstances of their relationship.

He slammed on lights and then spun around to look at her.

‘Sorry,’ Sofia said stiffly, keeping her distance, ‘I don’t know what made me ask that. None of my business, as I’m sure you’ll rush in and point out, and if you don’t mind I think I’ll go upstairs and go to sleep. Will I be in the same room as before?’

‘Apology not accepted,’ Rafael returned, standing with his arms folded, as immovable as the rock of Gibraltar and as menacing as a bouncer facing down a vagrant outside a posh night club.

‘Actually, I don’t feel too good.’

‘Too bad.’

‘I need to have some water. I need to sit down.’

‘You can have a bottle of water and sit by all means, but you’re going to tell me what the hell you meant by that.’

‘Or else what?’

She looked at him and felt a slow burn as his dark eyes travelled from her mulish gaze to her parted lips.

‘I just think I have a right to know who to steer clear of. Those women at the restaurant were stunning.’ She ploughed on recklessly. ‘Who knows if you’re having fun with one of them?’

‘They’re wives of friends. Jesus, this is getting more unbelievable by the second.’

‘Since when does that make a difference? I’ve had married men hit on me in the past.’

‘Don’t go there, Sofia...’

Suddenly the fight went out of her. Her stomach was back to churning and she could feel a headache coming on.

‘I don’t want to have this conversation, Rafael.’ Her voice hitched and she stared down at the expensive shoes. ‘I feel sick and tired and...overwhelmed...’

‘You have an annoying habit of starting conversations you don’t want to finish.’ He raked his hands through his hair then, without warning and just as she was about to take a few tottering steps towards the kitchen, her mouth as dry as the desert, he covered the distance between them.

She froze, and then promptly un-froze when he scooped her up in one easy movement, carrying her towards the kitchen and kicking the door open with his foot while she wriggled and tried to disentangle herself.

‘Keep still,’ he warned.

‘Put me down!’

‘I intend to.’

He deposited her on one of the kitchen chairs and then stood back as she straightened herself with one shaking hand, barely able to meet his eyes.

‘Why did you do that?’ she asked accusingly.

‘Because I got fed up having a long, going-nowhere conversation in my hall with you.’ He turned and fetched her a glass of water. ‘Drink this. You need to hydrate. Do you want something to eat?’

‘Something like what?’

‘God, you’re the most difficult woman I have ever met in my entire life.’

‘Well, that doesn’t augur well for this marriage of ours!’ Sofia couldn’t contain her sarcasm and he suddenly grinned. Her pulse-rate accelerated into overdrive.

‘Like I said, the one thing it ain’t going to be is boring,’ he murmured. ‘Now, stop talking for five seconds and listen to me carefully. I don’t have relationships with married women. Never. I don’t care how many of them throw themselves at me and I don’t care what they look like. A married woman is out of bounds.’

‘But you would be happy to have an affair with another woman even though you’re married!’ Sofia threw at him for the sake of argument, promptly forgetting all good intentions to keep things cool and civil between them without emotions of any sort getting in the way.

‘As we both know, this isn’t the real deal. If it were, then there is no way I would go near any woman. Believe it or not, I may have relationships but I like to stick to one woman at a time. You look sick. You need to go to bed.’

‘I drank too much,’ Sofia conceded. She stood up but her legs were suddenly wobbly and she had to stand still to gather herself for a few moments. She knew that he was looking at her, so cool, so urbane, so sophisticated. So much the opposite to her.

And just like that the tears she had been desperately trying to hold back began to leak out.

Horrified, she stared down at her feet and clenched her jaw.

‘You’re...crying. Are you crying, Sofia?’

Sofia shrugged. She didn’t trust herself to speak but she heard him curse softly under his breath and then he was lifting her up again, as if sweeping her off her feet was becoming a habit, and this time she didn’t bother to put up a fight.

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Her dress was riding up, exposing her thighs, but she couldn’t be bothered to redress that by trying to tug it down.

Instead, she kept her eyes shut while he laid her very gently on the bed, then she immediately turned away and buried her head in the crook of her arms.

‘Wait right there,’ Rafael said gruffly. ‘I’m going to bring up a jug of water and some tablets. And something to eat. You need to put food into your stomach. Don’t move.’

How long was he gone?

She didn’t know. She was aware of him putting the water on the table by the bed, and after a while she heard the sound of the door shutting quietly. When she peeped out, it was to find that an inelegantly enormous door-wedge of a sandwich had been made for her, which made her smile.

It was man fare, but it tasted wonderful.

And then, still feeling sick but so, so relieved to be in bed, she found herself drifting off.

The day she had been dreading was at an end. She would put all thoughts of her father on hold for the moment. She would definitely put all thoughts of Rafael on hold! Although, she felt herself smiling again at the sandwich he had made for her, stuffed full of cheese and ham but lacking everything else.

She fell asleep to the throbbing of a dull headache.

When she next opened her eyes, the room was pitch-black and it took her a few seconds to surface and remember exactly where she was.

In Rafael’s house, with the duvet cover loosely draped over her, because she had obviously kicked it off at some point during the night.

Her half-closed eyes peeped from beneath the duvet but she was already registering what she wanted her startled eyes to confirm. The lilac dress had been removed, as had the shoes she’d been wearing when she had been deposited on the bed.

No bra! But then, she hadn’t been wearing one. Her underwear, the lacy thong for her eyes only, was still there...

With a groan of horror, she began sitting up...and there he was, a dark shadow in a chair next to the bed.

He’d dragged over the chair by the dressing table and positioned it so that he could stretch out his long legs. His hands were linked loosely and his computer was on the ground next to him. She could see the dull flicker of the screen, which had gone into sleep mode.

Was he asleep? Awake? Something in the middle? He’d changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.

She’d begun to sink back under the duvet when, as calmly as if he were continuing a conversation they’d only just been having, ‘You’re awake. How’s the head?’

‘What are you doing here?’ She shuffled into an upright position, making sure that the duvet was tightly tucked around her, although she could feel the press of her bare breasts against the silky cotton.

‘You were sick during the night.’

‘I wasn’t!’ Had she been?

‘Too much alcohol. Happens.’

‘You took my dress off.’

‘I took your dress off. One of us had to do it and it wasn’t going to be you.’

‘How could you?’ she half-sobbed.

‘Sofia, you were half-asleep and clawing at it because you were uncomfortable. No one can sleep in something that’s as close-fitting as a second skin. You’re probably embarrassed, but you don’t have to be. You’re not the first naked woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.’

Sofia drew her knees up to her chest and rested her head on them, wishing, more than anything else that he would just disappear—poof, like a genie heading back into the bottle where he belonged.

It was okay for him—so she was just another half-naked female body!—but it wasn’t okay for her. This wasn’t supposed to have happened.

‘I’ve never felt so mortified in my entire life!’ she all but wailed, then froze as he levered himself up and moved to sit on the bed right next to her.

‘I didn’t lay a finger on you,’ Rafael said roughly. He shifted and she drew back.

‘That’s not the point. I wouldn’t have expected you to. It’s not as though you’re attracted to me. But I just hate the thought of...of...’

‘Not attracted to you?’ Rafael laughed shortly. ‘What ever gave you that idea? And you don’t get to clam up on me this time and go into hiding because you’re finding the conversation you started a little uncomfortable. Have you looked in a mirror recently, Sofia? Do you have any idea how sexy you are? Especially in a dress that was made to be torn off.’

‘Made to be torn off?’

‘I saw you walking towards me and I discovered what it felt like to forget how to breathe.’

‘You don’t mean that!’

‘I was attracted to you the first time I ever set eyes on you.’

‘You weren’t, Rafael.’ Her nerves were racing and she knew, she knew, that she shouldn’t be having this conversation, because it was as dangerous as throwing a match onto tinder, but she couldn’t help herself.

And she liked it. Liked hearing what he was saying.

‘You went out to Argentina to check me out, to see whether I would pass muster for the rich father I’d never met. You pretended...’

‘Pretended that I was attracted to you? Hate to burst the bubble of self-righteous hostility, Sofia, but I’m not that good an actor.’

Sofia could barely breathe. She was spellbound by the intense glitter in his dark eyes, mesmerised by his softly spoken words. She didn’t know whether he was saying stuff he wanted her to hear, but why would he do that? What would be the point?

‘You made sure to tell me that this wasn’t a real relationship,’ she pointed out accusingly. ‘You made sure to let me know that you intended to be off doing your own thing while I pottered and did whatever I fancied doing for a year, buried in a cottage in the countryside.’

‘Think that was because I didn’t want you in my bed?’ He leapt to his feet, leaving a cold, empty space next to her on the bed. She watched as he restlessly paced the room when the only thing she wanted was for him to return to the bed. Her head was as clear as a bell but the darkness gave her courage to say what was on her mind. She felt a surge of reckless, heady daring. When she thought about what he’d said, everything inside her melted.

Eyes wide, she followed his jerky progress through the room. When he finally came to stand in front of her, she didn’t huddle into a defensive ball. Instead, she stared right back up at him with a degree of boldness she hadn’t known she possessed.

So he fancied her. So she hadn’t been the only one to feel that fierce, uncontrollable attraction.

‘What else was I supposed to think?’

‘This conversation is...’ He shook his head and looked away for a few seconds, but his eyes swerved back to her upturned face.

‘Is what?’

‘Dangerous,’ Rafael said softly.

‘Okay.’

‘Okay? Is that all you have to say on the matter?’

‘I feel better about you taking the dress off.’

‘Because you wanted it off or because you now know that you turn me on?’ He didn’t take his eyes off her when he said that.

Heat crawled through her. She felt the pinch of her nipples and a spreading dampness between her thighs. She’d never wanted anyone as much as she wanted him, right here and right now. But she just didn’t have it in her to take that final step and brazenly invite him into bed with her.

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.

‘Sofia, I made a conscious decision not to do anything about the attraction I felt for you because I didn’t want to complicate an already complicated situation.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What do you think I mean? I wanted this to be about business. Emotions have a way of stealing the show and never in a good way.’

‘My emotions or yours?’

‘I don’t have emotions.’

Sofia opened her mouth to tell him that he surely didn’t mean that but then realised that he really did. Or that was what he told himself, because when she thought about how devoted he was to his godfather she knew that he was far from being the unemotional hard case he purported to be.

So what did they have here? Stripped down to the bare bones, what they had was a physical attraction that was as strong as a riptide, as darkly powerful as the swirl of a dangerous whirlpool in the middle of still waters.

‘Nor do I,’ she said boldly. ‘Not for you, at any rate.’

‘What are you trying to tell me, cara?’ Rafael asked thickly.

‘I’m trying to tell you that I wish you’d come sit on the bed again.’

Rafael looked at her for a long moment and she wondered whether, having reached a crossroads, he would now turn his back and walk away, stick to following his head.

She’d come so close to opening herself up to him physically when they had been out in Argentina before the truth had spilled out. She was at that point again, all cards on the table.

He slowly moved towards her and she felt her breathing slow as she watched him. So beautiful, so graceful, so mesmerisingly alpha male.

Her eyes tracked a leisurely route from face to torso and then down to where his jeans pulled tightly across his thighs.

‘You’re playing with fire,’ he said shakily, but his hand was resting lightly on the zipper of his trousers and she stared, fascinated, as he undid it.

She didn’t want to give herself time to think or even to remember that this was not the sort of thing she’d ever done before. She didn’t want her head to start following his lead and take control of the situation.

She didn’t want her own negative experiences in the past to determine what happened at this precise moment in time.

‘Maybe I am,’ she agreed in a low voice. ‘I’ve never played with fire before.’

‘Never?’ He smiled, lowered himself next to her on the bed and stretched out, arms folded behind his head. Sofia remained upright but shifted so that she was looking down at him. His gaze slid across to her and stayed there.

‘No. Have you?’

‘Once. Doesn’t everyone need a learning curve? Let me see you.’

‘See me?’

‘You know what I mean.’ He trailed a finger along her collar bone, beneath which the duvet was still pulled up tightly, shielding her naked breasts.

She slowly let the duvet drop and watched with increasingly heated excitement as Rafael sat up, barely breathing, eyes trained on her nakedness.

Her nipples were pink and swollen and she released a long sigh, relaxing her whole body into his caress as he manoeuvred himself into a position from which he could take one bud into his mouth and gently suck on it.

He propelled her back so that she was lying flat, then pinned her hands above her head and straddled her.

‘You have no idea how much you turn me on,’ Rafael offered huskily. ‘Everything about the way you look is a turn-on. The second I laid eyes on you, every other woman on the face of the earth faded into insignificance.’

Sweet words, she thought helplessly, but so meaningless in the context of what we have. But what’s the point of analysing? When we’re bound together through convenience and destined to part company before the ink on the marriage certificate has time to dry?

Meaningful or meaningless...did either matter when the physical need he aroused was so explosive?

She turned him on and that thought was as powerful as a rush of pure adrenaline...

She moved sinuously against the sheet and felt a rush of feminine empowerment as his nostrils flared and his eyes darkened in the grip of lust.

When he straightened to sling his legs over the side of the bed, he left behind a cool void that made her want to touch herself.

Should she tell him that she was not going to be able to live up to all those racy model types he dated? She’d known from the minute she’d begun developing what it felt like to have boys drool over her. Her first girlish crush had been a mistake, and her experiences after that had rammed home to her that the only reason men looked twice at her was because of her appearance. She hadn’t asked to be born sexy, but she had been, and she had grown wary over the years. So wary that the touching and experimentation that should have been part and parcel of entering adulthood had passed her by.

The constant travel hadn’t helped matters either.

Now, here she was, and he was in for a shock if he expected high jinks between the sheets.

Caught up in her thoughts, she gasped when she realised the T-shirt had been removed and the jeans were being dispatched to join it on the ground.

The bulge of his erection distorting the shape of his boxers brought hectic colour to her cheeks and she went as stiff as a board as he joined her on the bed under the duvet, pulling it up so that it covered both of them, drawing her close so that her breasts were squashed against his chest.

He slipped his hand between her thighs and stroked her softly, then he inserted his fingers underneath the damp underwear so that he could play with her.

The casual intimacy shocked her and her breathing was fast and hard as she stilled his hand.

‘What is it?’ Rafael drew back to stare at her, his expression only just discernible in the shadows. ‘I know this is maybe a little unexpected for the both of us...something we hadn’t catered for...’

‘That’s not it,’ she whispered.

‘Then what is?’ His voice gentled but there was bemusement there as well. ‘Talk to me, Sofia. Tell me.’

She gently touched his arm he cupped her face in one hand, looking right back at her with a deep, unwavering look.

‘One minute you’re hot and ready for me, and the next minute you’re playing the shrinking virgin and pushing me away. What’s that about? You don’t play games...but is that what you’re doing now, cara?’

He sounded genuinely bewildered and the reaction was so much the reaction of a decent guy that she felt something melt inside her.

‘No games. But the shrinking virgin?’ She breathed in deeply and went for it in a rush. ‘What if I were to tell you that you’re spot-on with that?’

‘I’m not following you.’ He drew back, frowning, and she could see that he was trying to join the dots and not getting there, because he just couldn’t comprehend that a woman in her mid-twenties could still be a virgin.

In his world, racy models probably lost their virginity before their teens were up.

‘I haven’t...done this before, Rafael.’

‘You...you must have.’

‘Because I look the way I do? Do you judge all women by the way they look?’

Rafael flushed darkly but remained silent.

‘You’re a contradiction,’ he mused slowly. ‘I sensed that from the very first. You’re fiery and outspoken but there’s something strangely tentative about you. How? How is it that you never slept with a man?’

Sofia shrugged. She suddenly felt vulnerable, on the verge of giving something of herself away, yet he was only asking her a question and expressing very understandable curiosity.

‘You said that everyone has a learning curve,’ she reminded him. ‘I lost my heart when I was young to a good-looking guy. Turned out he and his mates had made a bet—to see whether he could get me into bed, because they all thought I was frigid.’ She laughed mirthlessly. ‘I guess I became vigilant when it came to the opposite sex, careful not to let anyone in, because the last thing I needed was to get hurt all over again. Time moved on... We kept changing post codes because my mother was all over the place when it came to guys, so the opportunity never arose...and there you have it.’

‘Parents have a lot to answer for,’ Rafael thought aloud, his tone so low and sincere that she stopped worrying about closely held confidences.

‘I just wanted you to know,’ she said helplessly.

‘And now I do.’