Читать книгу Fascination - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 13

WAS THERE ANY dignified way in which she could extract herself from this situation, Robin wondered with aching embarrassment seconds later, as her composure slowly returned to her.

No, there wasn’t, she decided, feeling a cringing awkwardness at her total lack of control. For one thing, she was wearing only panties, stockings and her evening sandals, while Cesare was still dressed in his black silk shirt and trousers.

Not that he looked completely together, she realised, as she looked at him from beneath lowered lashes: his shirt was unbuttoned where her questing fingers had sought to touch his bare flesh, and his dark, overlong hair was slightly tousled from the way those same fingers had become entangled in its thickness as she’d clung to him. There was a flush of arousal on his high cheekbones.

An arousal that he hadn’t satisfied.

That she hadn’t satisfied!

It might have been some time since she’d known a man intimately, but she knew she had never been a selfish lover, that a lack of physical consideration for her partner was not something Giles had ever been able to accuse her of.

Although she could never remember responding to her husband in the abandoned way she had to Cesare!

But, although only minutes had passed, wasn’t it just a little too late for her to even attempt to give Cesare the release that his throbbing body, pressed against hers, so obviously craved?

‘What are you thinking now?’ Cesare’s voice was harsh in the pregnant silence that had grown between them.

Robin hesitated before answering. ‘That this is the most embarrassing moment of my entire life,’ she told him honestly.

‘Embarassing?’ Cesare repeated, standing back slightly to look at her, her hair rumpled and silky, her eyes overbright, her mouth slightly swollen from the force of his kisses. Her breasts were still aroused from the touch of his hands and lips, and there was a lethargy to her limbs that spoke of recent arousal and release. ‘You are beautiful, Robin,’ he assured her. ‘In fact, once we are husband and wife, I wish for you to hate me in that way every night of our married life!’

‘You’re so sure, after … after that … that I’ll marry you, aren’t you?’ she accused with an indignant glare, and she bent down to snatch up her dress from the carpeted floor and hold it against her bare breasts.

Cesare sensed that she was once again being deliberately provocative, but the unsatisfied ache of his own body meant he was in no mood for yet another argument.

There was no way Robin could deny her physical response to him, or his response to her, and any more prevarication between them was pointless.

He gave a sharp inclination of his head. ‘I suggest you tell your father we are to be married as soon as a special licence can be arranged—’

‘Oh, you suggest, do you?’ Robin echoed sarcastically as she pulled her dress back on and zipped it firmly back into place.

‘Yes—I—suggest,’ Cesare repeated forcefully, the familiar ache of his body certainly not improving his temper.

What should have happened now was for the two of them to go to bed together and finish what they had started. But one look at Robin’s rebellious expression told him that definitely was not going to happen!

No matter. He had the rest of their lives together to take his fill of this highly sensuous woman. A few days, perhaps weeks, to wait; delay would only make his anticipation all the sweeter.

‘At least give me some credit for having the sense not to make it an order, Robin,’ he grated.

She gave a derisive snort. ‘I have no intention of giving you credit for anything, Cesare!’

He quirked dark brows over mocking brown eyes. ‘Not even for being a considerate lover?’ he taunted softly.

‘For being an experienced one, you mean!’ she came back self-disgustedly, and her cheeks burned anew at his reminder of her earlier loss of control.

And something else, if Cesare was not mistaken. Perhaps she had not had the same consideration for his own pleasure?

‘I have had other lovers, yes,’ he conceded. ‘But then, so have you.’

‘One lover,’ she corrected. ‘I would never—That … what happened just now would never have happened if—’ She broke off suddenly. ‘I have to go,’ she muttered almost inaudibly.

It wasn’t what they had planned for tonight, Cesare knew, but in view of what had just ocurred he was inclined to let Robin make her escape.

Before, no doubt, spending a frustratingly restless night himself.

Although there was some sweet consolation for him in the fact that Robin claimed her only lover had been her ex-husband.

It was a surprise, a very pleasant surprise, and her uninhibited response to him encouraged him in the belief that Robin would accept him as a husband much sooner than she thought she would.

‘Very well, Robin,’ he conceded. ‘I will allow you to—’

‘You aren’t allowing me to do anything, Cesare,’ Robin cut in impatiently. ‘My God, you’re arrogant,’ she added disgustedly. ‘I’m leaving now because I want to, not because you’re allowing me to! Don’t think—don’t ever think—that you’ll control me with physical pleasure, Cesare. Because you won’t!’

Had that been his intention? However, the physical pleasure they had just known together was not a weapon to be used but to be enjoyed—reveled in, even.

Did Robin think—did she really not know—that the pleasure she had experienced tonight was much rarer than people would have you believe? That, no matter what all those glossy magazines might say, many women went through the whole of their life without experiencing a single orgasm in the arms of their lover. Pleasure, yes, but not necessarily the deep, orgasmic response that Robin had just given so freely.

He was not about to refuse the gift she had given him, let alone throw it back in her beautiful face!

‘Just go, Robin,’ he told her sternly. ‘With your agreement,’ he added, ‘we will meet again tomorrow evening—’

‘At a restaurant this time!’ she came back swiftly, eyes flashing angrily.

He gave a humourless smile. ‘At a restaurant this time,’ he conceded. ‘Do not ever think you will control me with physical pleasure either, Robin,’ he warned.

Her eyes widened briefly, followed by a frown, before she turned on her heel and marched out of the room.

Cesare heard the lift doors open and then close seconds later as she left.

No matter.

He had tomorrow night. And the night after that. And all the other nights for the rest of his life …

‘You spent yesterday evening having dinner with who?’ her father said incredulously, as he sat across the breakfast table from Robin the following morning.

‘Oh, Daddy,’ she replied, her tone teasing, ‘As I know there is absolutely nothing wrong with your hearing, I’m sure you heard me the first time.’ She raised mock-reproving brows, her elbows resting on the table as she cradled her morning cup of coffee in her hands.

Although she hadn’t exactly had dinner with Cesare—or at least they had never finished eating!—she inwardly acknowledged ruefully, still writhing with embarrassment inside herself every time she so much as thought of the time she had spent in Cesare’s arms the previous evening.

Nothing like that had ever happened to her before.

Oh, the physical side of her marriage to Giles had been satisfying enough at the beginning. Less so as they’d become caught up in the tests and charts and temperature-taking that had been part of their effort to conceive the child Giles so wanted. The child Robin had wanted too.

That she was now going to have in Marco, if her marriage to Cesare Gambrelli took place.

And now she’d met Marco, she had every intention that it would.

She had woken up this morning—in her own bed, thank goodness—filled with what she could only describe as a feeling of satisfied langour. Caused by Cesare’s lovemaking, she knew.

But it was that langour, the knowledge that when she and Cesare were married she would become his wife in the full sense of the word, as well as her joy in the prospect of becoming Marco’s mother, which had encouraged her to start the awkward process this morning of breaking the news of their relationship to her father.

The sooner he knew, the sooner she could become mother to that enchanting little boy.

Her father looked stricken by her news as he stared across the breakfast table at her. ‘I—But … Cesare Gambrelli, Robin?’ he finally burst out disbelievingly. ‘I wasn’t aware that you even knew the man!’

‘You introduced the two of us last Saturday at the charity dinner, remember?’ she reminded gently.

‘Well, yes, but—’ He shook his head. ‘When did the two of you meet up again?’ His brow furrowed.

Robin was aware that this conversation was going to be delicate, to say the least, and also aware that Cesare wasn’t the most patient of men—that if she didn’t talk to her father then Cesare surely would. It would be so much better coming from her.

‘He called at the house to see me.’ She deliberately didn’t say he had come only yesterday. ‘To invite me out to dinner. And I accepted.’

‘He came here?’ Her father’s face was very pale.

‘Yes.’ Robin tilted her head to one side. ‘Is there some reason why he shouldn’t have?’ She kept her tone deliberately light.

Her father stood up to pace the room, still in his dressing gown as it was Saturday morning and he didn’t have to go in to work—although he had brushed his hair and shaved before coming down to breakfast.

‘Perhaps I should have talked to you about this earlier, Robin,’ he admitted, ‘but I had no idea you and Gambrelli would ever meet again after the charity dinner. Damn it, I hoped you would never meet again! You see, Robin, the other driver involved in Simon’s accident—’

‘Was Cesare’s young sister, Carla,’ she interrupted calmly. ‘Yes, I know.’

‘You know?’ her father breathed, and he stopped his pacing.

She nodded. ‘Cesare and I have talked about it—’

‘You’ve talked about it?’ he repeated.

‘Daddy, I’m sure we’ll get much further with this conversation if you stop repeating everything I say. And, yes,’ she sighed, ‘Cesare and I have talked about the accident—about Simon and Carla’s deaths. Strangely, it only encourages both of us in the belief that the two of us were meant to meet …’

She was laying it on a bit thick, Robin knew, but for his own sake she really did have to convince her father that her relationship with Cesare was a love match, and not the vendetta against the Ingram family that it really was.

Her father looked desperately upset just at the thought of her going out with Cesare Gambrelli. How much more upset would he be if he knew his beloved only daughter was being forced into a marriage with this man?

Or at least it had been coercion on Cesare’s part …

Meeting Marco, holding him in her arms, being captivated by the warm innocence of his baby smile, had changed all that.

She refused to allow that the pleasure she had found last night in Cesare’s arms might also have had something to do with her change in attitude.

‘Daddy, wouldn’t it be wonderful if something good could come out of that tragedy?’ She looked up at him appealingly, slightly ashamed of herself for using such feminine wiles on her father—he never had been able to resist the appeal in her violet-coloured eyes—but ultimately knowing it was for the best.

Better that her father should voice his reservations about her relationship with Cesare now, and have those reservations allayed, than he should learn the real reason she was seeing the other man and then absolutely refuse to let her comply with Cesare’s demands.

‘Well, yes, of course it would …’ Charles acknowledged distractedly. ‘But I wrote to the man after the accident, you know. The letter came back inside another envelope a week later—ripped into four pieces!’ He grimaced. ‘I had the distinct feeling he would rather have plunged a knife into my throat!’ he added with a shudder.

So, Cesare had received her father’s letter of condolence, and had obviously read it—before returning it in a way that could only be perceived as a threat.

No wonder her father had warned her to stay away from Cesare!

She gave a rueful smile. ‘Cesare can be a little … dramatic, can’t he?’ She forced the sound of affection into her voice. ‘It’s all that Latin blood,’ she continued brightly. ‘But I can assure you that he’s no longer angry about what happened.’

Her father looked sceptical. ‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’

‘Positive.’ She beamed reassuringly, putting her cup down to stand up and give him a hug. ‘Now, take that frown off your face and be happy for me. I’m hoping to introduce Cesare to you as your future son-in-law some day soon!’ she told him gaily.

‘You’re going to marry the man?’ her father said disbelievingly.

‘If he asks me.’ Robin nodded. ‘And I think he will.’

‘But you said you were never going to marry again! That no man would want you because you can’t give him children—though I’ve never believed that,’ he told her firmly.

‘But that’s the wonderful thing about Cesare,’ Robin came back brightly. ‘He already has a male heir to inherit, so it isn’t going to matter that I can’t give him children of his own,’ she dismissed, not inclined to get into a discussion of exactly who Cesare’s heir was.

In fact, it might be better if she changed the subject altogether! ‘Keep your fingers crossed for me, hmm, Daddy?’ she encouraged happily.

Her father still looked as if he would prefer to lock her in her bedroom and keep her there until Cesare Gambrelli had disappeared from London altogether. But, as he really wasn’t about to do that, he had no choice but to accept what she told him.

‘Just take care, Robin?’ he said gruffly, and he laid his hand on her cheek affectionately. ‘I’m not sure I altogether trust Gambrelli’s motives.’

‘Don’t be silly.’ She smiled confidently. ‘And of course I’ll be careful,’ she assured him, feeling her heart aching at the deception she was practicing on her father, but knowing it would ache even more if he were to discover the truth and forbid her to marry Cesare, and so force Cesare into carrying out his threat against Ingram Publishing.

No, it was much better this way, she reassured herself.

She had no intention of showing Cesare any of that compliance when she met him at Gregori’s restaurant later that evening, as they had arranged during a very brief telephone call earlier in the day. Had no intention of making this any easier for Cesare than she already had with her response to him the previous evening.

‘Did you sleep well last night?’ Cesare prompted tersely, once the ordering of champagne and food was of the way.

‘Very, thank you,’ she came back briskly. ‘You?’

Little wildcat, Cesare fumed inwardly. He knew damn well she only had to look at him to see the dark shadows beneath his eyes and the lines of strain beside his nose and mouth and know that he hadn’t slept. At all. Instead he had prowled his hotel suite until the early hours of this morning, going down to the gym when it opened at six o’clock to work off some of his excess energy, if not his sexual frustration, on the rowing machine for an hour.

Robin, on the other hand, looked fresh and alert this evening; the deep purple dress she wore was the same colour as her eyes, her hair hung loose about her shoulders, and she had huge gold hoops in her earlobes, her deep peach lip gloss silkily inviting on those sensually pouting lips.

An invitation that made Cesare want to wipe everything from the table between them, lay Robin upon its surface, and bury himself deep inside her!

‘Do not play with me, Robin,’ he warned icily. ‘I am not in the mood for games.’

‘Dear me—sexual frustration hasn’t improved your demeanour, has it?’ she saucily pointed out, before turning to give the wine waiter a glowing smile as he poured some champagne into a glass for Cesare to taste.

Cesare took a sip of the wine before placing the glass back on the table. ‘It is corked,’ he said coldly. ‘Bring me a sixty-three. Chilled to the correct temperature this time.’

‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’ The startled wine waiter grabbed the bottle and two glasses and hastily back away.

‘That wasn’t kind,’ Robin reproved softly once they were alone.

His eyes glittered darkly as he scowled across the table at her. ‘I thought we were both agreed that I am not a kind man.’

Robin didn’t remember them ever agreeing on that, but Cesare certainly hadn’t been very polite to the wine waiter. The poor man was probably a gibbering wreck in his wine cellar at this moment, as he desperately checked the temperature of the second bottle of champagne before serving it!

‘I will leave him a large tip at the end of the meal, if that will make you feel better, Robin,’ Cesare compromised.

‘Well, no, it isn’t really a question of making me feel better, now, is it?’ she reasoned lightly, very aware of the fine edge to Cesare’s control. ‘I’m not the one you were rude to.’

‘I was not rude—’ He broke off as the man once again appeared beside their table, sighing deeply at his flustered removal of the champagne cork. ‘It is not your fault that the previous bottle of wine was … unacceptable,’ he assured the waiter smoothly, very aware that there had been nothing wrong with the first bottle of champagne at all, that he had only verbally bit out at the other man because Robin had smiled at him so warmly.

Her smiles, and everything else about her, belonged to him!

Not that she had given many smiles in his direction, but Cesare found he deeply resented her bestowing her good humour on anyone else, either.

He had never been possessive where his lovers were concerned. His previous relationships had always been brief, never lasting longer than a month or two, and at the first sign of any serious intent on the woman’s behalf he would end the affair and move on.

This slight possessiveness he felt where Robin was concerned had to be because she was to be his wife, and as such he would require exclusivity, he assured himself.

‘There, now.’ Robin smiled at him mischievously once the wine waiter had left their table, the bottle of wine completely satisfactory this time. ‘That didn’t hurt too much, did it?’

‘I did not apologise because you thought that I should,’ he told her haughtily. ‘I merely realised I was not … polite to him earlier,’ he accepted curtly.

No, he hadn’t been, Robin acknowledged—but she doubted that too many other people had ever told this man when he was being impolite, let alone reproved him for it as she had.

She sat back as their first course was placed on the table—pâté for Cesare, smoked salmon for herself—very aware that several other women in the restaurant had looked at Cesare admiringly when they’d arrived together a short time ago, and that several of those women were still eyeing him covetously.

He did look rather tall, dark, and handsome tonight, she allowed ruefully, with that overlong dark hair curling silkily onto the collar of the pale grey shirt he wore beneath a charcoal grey suit. His dark good looks and those dark brown eyes were riveting, to say the least, and the expert tailoring of his suit showed his wide shoulders, tapered waist and thighs to their advantage.

Something that at least half a dozen other women in the restaurant seemed just as aware of!

‘This marriage you’re proposing between the two of us, Cesar—’ she kept her gaze lowered on her smoked salmon ‘—is it to be an exclusive relationship? Or are you expecting me to ignore the odd mistress or ten?’ She looked up at him challengingly as she said the last.

Cesare had been in the process of eating some of his toast and pâté, but he put it back down on his plate as he frowned across at her. ‘Would it bother you if I was?’ he probed softly.

She pulled a face. ‘No one likes to be made to look a fool. I just thought it might be better if I was aware of the … arrangement beforehand, that’s all.’

No, it was not all, Cesare reflected darkly. If he were to take mistresses during their marriage, then no doubt Robin would consider she had the same freedom to take a lover, or lovers. But, as he had never shared a lover, neither did he intend sharing his wife.

‘There will be no mistresses, Robin,’ he vowed. ‘I have no idea why you should think there would be when I will have a perfectly desirable wife waiting for me at home. Now, do you think we could eat our meal this evening without the danger of the indigestion I am sure both of us suffered yesterday?’ he added, before she could come back at him with any of her clever replies.

Robin raised blonde mocking brows. ‘I’ve already told you—I slept perfectly well last night.’

Cesare glared at her frustratedly for several long seconds before leaning forward across the table to easily hold her startled gaze with his. ‘Perhaps I should warn you that at this moment this tabletop is looking very tempting as a place to make love to you!’ he hissed between gritted teeth.

Those purple eyes remained locked with his for several long, expectant seconds, like a deer caught in the headlights of a car, and the sexual tension between them was so strong Cesare felt as if he could almost reach out and touch it.

‘Good—I see that we understand each other.’ He finally nodded his satisfaction at her silence, his teeth showing very white as he smiled. ‘Now, could we eat our food? Please?’ he requested dryly, as he remembered her reaction to anything she construed as an instruction on his part.

Robin’s hand shook slightly as she picked up her fork and began to eat her smoked salmon, not even tasting its delicacy as she recognised the sexual awareness that was once again singing through her veins.

She had never been so aware of anyone in her life as she was Cesare, and she wondered what it meant.

If it meant anything!

She could just be one of those frustrated women who suffered from sexual starvation at the end of their marriage. Especially as she knew now exactly what a wonderfully satisfying lover Cesare was …

‘I spoke to my father about you this morning,’ she ventured, once they had eaten their first course and the plates had been taken away.

Cesare raised dark brows. ‘In what way?’ he prompted guardedly.

She grimaced. ‘I told him that you had ravished me last night and now I had to marry you! In what way do you think I spoke to him about you, Cesare?’ She sighed her impatience with his suspicion.

He shrugged wide shoulders. ‘You could have decided to tell him of my … intentions towards Ingram Publishing.’

‘Hardly likely, after all the trouble I’ve already gone to to keep it from him—’

‘Trouble?’ Cesare repeated in a dangerously quiet voice.

Robin’s cheeks flushed uncomfortably, and she knew he had to be referring to the time she had wantonly spent in his arms yesterday evening. ‘I merely told my father that we have been seeing each other since the two of us were introduced last weekend,’ she snapped. ‘And that when—if—you propose to me, I intend accepting.’

Cesare gave a humourless smile. ‘And how did Charles take to the possibility of having me as a son-in-law?’

‘Badly.’ Robin didn’t even attempt to prevaricate. ‘But he’ll come round,’ she added confidently.

‘I admire your optimism,’ Cesare drawled.

It was impossible not to admire this woman, Cesare acknowledged. She certainly hadn’t backed off from his threats, and now she had opened the subject of their relationship with her father too. Which he appreciated could not have been easy.

‘Perhaps if you hadn’t sent his letter of condolence back quite so—aggressively?’ she reminded him.

Cesare’s mouth tightened. ‘My sister had been dead a matter of months; I was not feeling … kindly disposed towards anyone, let alone a member of the Ingram family.’

In fact he had felt murderous at the time. Carla had gone for ever, and Marco had been left completely parentless—although Cesare still hadn’t given up on finding the man who had deserted Carla when she’d most needed his support; he had a private investigator looking into exactly who had been his sister’s lover fifteen months ago. Because he would find Marco’s father, and when he did—

‘My father—both of us—we were suffering too,’ Robin reminded him huskily.

Yes, he could see that now. Cesare realised that Robin and her father had still loved the reprobate that Simon Ingram had become, that they had felt his death as keenly as he had felt Carla’s.

But that realisation changed nothing.

Made absolutely no difference to his own plans to make Robin his wife.

In fact, Cesare was even more determined on that resolve since last night!