Читать книгу The Billionaire's Virgin Temptation - Michelle Conder, Michelle Conder - Страница 10

THE THEME ON the gold-leaf invitation for Sydney’s most renowned masquerade ball this year had been ‘daring, romantic, seductive...’

Tick, tick and tick, Ruby thought, stifling a yawn and giving a smile she hoped conveyed Having a great time and not I wish I was sipping this glass of Riesling at home on my sofa in front of the latest instalment of Law & Order.

And wearing comfy pyjamas, Ruby mused longingly as she took in the packed ornate ballroom.

A lavish ball was the last place she wanted to be after a gruelling eighty-hour working week that had gone from bad to worse and still required more hours to be put in, but she was here in support of her sister, so leaving wasn’t an option just yet.

And she supposed it was an interesting interlude from her everyday life sitting in her poky little law office, fighting the good fight. When else would she get the chance to join the who’s who of the theatre world in a multimillion-dollar Point Piper mansion with unrivalled harbour views beyond the infinity pool?

Everywhere Ruby looked there was a dazzling display of elaborately costumed guests milling about and talking in a profusion of excitement and colour. It was like stepping back in time with women in wigs and masks and men with feather-plumed hats drinking impossibly elegant flutes of champagne that sparkled like liquid gold beneath the light of a thousand chandeliers. Frescoes of cherubs and deer stared down from the ceiling and the iconic gunmetal-grey Sydney Harbour Bridge glowed through the open French doors, reminding everyone that they were in fact in Sydney and not visiting some Venetian mansion on the banks of the Grand Canal during Carnevale.

Ruby surreptitiously adjusted the neckline of her fitted gown, which kept slipping to reveal a little too much cleavage for her liking. She was supposed to be Marie Antoinette but her mirror had deemed that she looked more like Little Bo Peep on steroids, making her thankful she was well-hidden behind an elaborate black lace mask.

‘You know I really appreciate you coming along with me tonight, don’t you?’ Molly murmured.

Thanks to live music from the twenty-piece band where a well-known pop star was belting out her latest hit, Ruby had to lean in close to catch her sister’s words.

‘I’m enjoying myself,’ she fibbed, not wanting Molly to feel guilty about roping her into accompanying her. Molly was on a personal quest to waylay some in-demand director and convince him that she really needed to star in his next award-winning Hollywood epic. Molly had paid her dues at drama school and appeared in small-to-medium theatre productions and TV shows, and Ruby would do anything to help make her sister’s dreams come true.

‘No, you’re not,’ Molly said, shrugging good-naturedly. ‘But I appreciate the lie. I’m also under strict instructions to make sure you have fun and relax for once.’

‘Let me guess.’ Ruby gave her sister that look, knowing full well where her instructions had come from. ‘Mum told you to find me a nice man I can fall in love with so I can produce lots of grandbabies.’ Nothing new there. ‘Which is so not going to happen, and, for the record, I take serious umbrage at the insinuation that I don’t normally relax and have fun because I do. All the time!’

‘Oh, did I only insinuate that last bit?’ Molly feigned a shocked expression. ‘I meant to say it outright.’

‘Ha-ha.’ Ruby narrowed her eyes menacingly. ‘I know how to relax.’ She had a yoga class booked the following morning, didn’t she? ‘And how to have fun.’

‘You work,’ Molly corrected. ‘But that’s okay. Tonight I will ply you with drinks and ensure that you meet some tall, dark and handsome man to while the evening away with.’

Ruby grimaced. As any self-respecting lawyer knew, weekend work was par for the course. Particularly with the big cases, and Ruby had just embarked on one of the biggest of her career, so men were not a priority for her right now. If they ever had been.

‘You can’t tell if a man is handsome or not while he’s wearing a mask,’ Ruby pointed out, ‘and you already know that I don’t hold to Mum’s mantra that a woman isn’t complete without a man on her arm.’

‘Mum is old-school,’ Molly agreed. ‘You can’t hold that against her.’

‘I don’t hold it against her. I’m just not intending to follow in her footsteps.’

‘By not dating at all?’

‘I date,’ Ruby defended, tucking a recalcitrant strand of her blonde hair back under her poufy white wig. ‘When I have the time.’

Molly gave her a good-natured eye-roll. ‘The last time you went on a date, dinosaurs roamed the earth.’

Ruby laughed at the visual. ‘I’m not a romantic like you and Mum. I don’t see “the one” in every man who looks my way.’

‘That’s because you never give any guy a decent chance. You find something wrong with all of them and quickly move on. But seriously, Rubes, just because Dad left Mum for another woman it doesn’t mean every man will do the same to us.’

Ruby couldn’t deny that their father’s desertion had left her somewhat jaded when it came to romance, but that wasn’t the only reason. In her experience men wanted more from a woman than they were prepared to give and she had yet to meet a man who challenged that theory.

Even Sam Ventura.

Especially Sam Ventura—even if he now was her best friend’s brother-in-law.

And why did his name leap into her head every time the conversation turned to men and marriage? He was the very last man she should be thinking about in that way. Two years ago he’d charmed her and kissed her senseless before making a trite promise to call and then failing to follow through on it.

Not that she should have been surprised. She’d been taken in by his good looks and intelligent conversation, but neither of those things was a precursor to nice manners and true decency. At least not where he was concerned!

Lord, but it still made her blush to recall how she had invited him up to her apartment for coffee.

Coffee!

She might as well have just said bed and been done with it.

His failure to call and the subsequent photo she’d seen of him with his arm around another woman the following day at a polo match had solidified for her that men weren’t worth the effort. The worst thing for Ruby was that she had let Sam in that night. She’d let down her guard with him in a way she never had before, and worse, she’d thought they’d shared a connection. A connection that had transcended the physical.

Fool that she was.

She’d found out via a visiting LA attorney that Sam had a reputation for being a charming rogue who made Casanova look like a good bet. Something she wholeheartedly believed after how easily he had nearly seduced her that night. He’d made her feel like a besotted thirteen-year-old in the throes of her first crush, carrying her phone around for a whole week, waiting for a phone call he’d never intended to make.

Her extreme reaction to him was something that had scared her witless because she had always imagined herself immune to the romantic vagaries that governed her mother’s life. She supposed she had Sam to thank for showing her otherwise. Showing her that if she wasn’t careful she could be just as susceptible to a pretty face and buff body as the next woman.

Not that she would thank him. She didn’t want to have anything to do with him again. He was too big and too male and definitely too full of himself to be of interest to her. Something she hoped she’d made crystal clear by ignoring him at Tino and Miller’s wedding last year.

‘I don’t think every man is an EC,’ she denied to Molly now, using their shorthand for Emotional Coward. ‘But I do wonder how we’re even sisters. You’re like Snow White, talking to all the animals and skipping through the flowery fields, and I’m—’

‘The Wicked Queen,’ Molly filled in. ‘Only you’re not afraid of ageing, you’re afraid of commitment.’

‘I am not afraid of commitment.’

Molly’s eyebrow rose above her white mask as if to say I’m not getting into that argument again. But it wasn’t true.

‘I’m cautious,’ Ruby countered. ‘I don’t feel the need to leap into something before I’ve had a chance to study it from all angles.’

‘You’re not supposed to study love,’ Molly laughed. ‘You feel it. You experience it. You live it.’

Ruby shuddered. ‘You might. I don’t.’ And what would Molly say, she wondered, if she knew Ruby hadn’t even gone all the way with a man yet? That she was still a virgin like an old maid from the Victorian era!

Suddenly a loud honking sound drew her attention. Molly giggled as an irate swan cut a swathe through the glittering crowd and started pecking at the golden tassels hanging from an unsuspecting woman’s gown. The woman reeled back and would have slipped if the man standing beside her hadn’t put his hands out and swiftly caught her.

Ruby felt the breath back up in her lungs as she took in the man’s height and the breadth of his shoulders, the angle of his leonine head and dark hair styled in loose layers that could only have come from an upmarket salon.

‘Oh, my,’ Molly murmured. ‘Would you get a load of that?’

Ruby watched as the man wearing a masculine bronze mask competently corralled the indignant bird outside and returned to check if the woman was okay.

‘He’s gorgeous,’ her sister added on a sigh.

‘You can’t possibly know that,’ Ruby scoffed. ‘He’s wearing a mask that covers half his face.’

‘He carries himself like a man who doesn’t need to be handsome but is. Look at those shoulders—’

‘Padding.’

‘And the way his thighs fill out his dark suit trousers. No padding there, I’m guessing.’

Despite Ruby’s protestations, Molly was right—the man exuded power and confidence and his square-cut jaw, smooth olive complexion and sensual mouth conveyed that he was likely very good-looking behind the bronzed mask. He was also very familiar...

It’s not him, she assured herself, her eyes taking in the way his lips twisted into a half-cynical, half-sexy grin as the grateful woman gripped his arm and whispered something into his ear.

It couldn’t be him. Sam Ventura lived in LA and, even if he was visiting Sydney, what would he be doing at a fancy-dress ball thrown by theatre people?

Well, he wouldn’t be here, she reasoned. It was her imagination running overtime. Again. ‘Men like that only want one thing from a woman,’ she told Molly with lofty finality.

‘I know.’ Molly sighed. ‘Do you think he would want it from me?’

‘Molly!’

Ruby was saved from reminding her sister that she’d just ended a relationship with one feckless boyfriend and hardly needed another when one of Molly’s friends approached her. Perturbed by how very much the dark-haired man reminded her of Sam Ventura, Ruby offered to go to the bar, where they were serving on-demand cocktails.

‘Cosmopolitan,’ Molly requested.

‘Same,’ her friend added.

Leaving them to their excited chatter, Ruby headed for the gilt-edged bar that looked as if it was a permanent fixture but was most likely shipped in from Italy especially for the night.

She sighed as she joined the queue at the bar. Molly truly believed that love awaited her around every corner, while Ruby was of the view that danger awaited her. She wasn’t looking for romance and happy-ever-after. Her independence had been too hard-won to hand over to some man who would want her to compromise everything she had and then most likely walk away without a backward glance anyway. A man like her father. And like Sam Ventura.

No, that wasn’t fair. She might not like Sam very much but she didn’t know him well enough to tar him with her father’s particular brush. Still, why give a man who had heartbreaker written all over his too handsome face the chance to prove that he was? And why was he still on her mind? she wondered grouchily.

Love turned thinking women into veritable psych-ward patients, she knew that. Just look at how she had been after only kissing the man that one foolhardy night. He’d pulled her into his arms and she’d nearly lost her dignity and her panties in one fell swoop! Not that she’d been in love with him, but she’d certainly been in lust with him and that had been more than enough to keep her up late some nights.

‘Sorry, darling,’ a male voice crooned too close to her ear as she was jostled from behind. Ruby glanced over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of four colourful characters wearing Zorro-style masks with their eyes on her cleavage.

Very original, she thought, turning away and steadfastly ignoring them as she waited for the woman in front of her to collect her drinks order. If there was one valuable lesson Ruby had learned from watching her mother all these years, it was not to let her emotions do the thinking for her. Only fools rushed in and when they did they were often sorry with the results.

‘So I said, listen, doll-face.’ The guy who had jostled her spoke behind her with an over-the-top drawl. ‘You want it, you know where to find it. On your knees.’

His companions guffawed as if they were smug private school boys at a secret frat party instead of a posh event. Ruby rolled her eyes. Boys masquerading as men, she thought, half listening as they traded stories about their sexual exploits that were clearly too far-fetched to be believed.

‘Wait till you hear this one,’ one of them said in a low voice. ‘The other night Michael picked up this girl and get this—’ the wag paused for effect ‘—he says he kissed her and didn’t even realise it was his ex until she slapped his face and told him they’d broken up six months earlier. Apparently she’d changed her hairstyle and got implants.’

‘God, I wish I had his life,’ a nasally voice whined. ‘He’s an animal.’

Before she could give them a snarky look another voice interceded, a deep, velvet-coated voice she’d listened to all evening one long-ago night.

‘He’s an idiot,’ he said. ‘No man forgets a woman he’s kissed. At least he doesn’t if he has any integrity.’

Ruby’s heartbeat doubled and her skin turned pasty beneath her heavy make-up. It couldn’t be him. It just couldn’t!

‘What can I get you, ma’am?’

Startled by the question, Ruby stared blankly at the bartender.

‘To drink,’ he offered, gesturing to the vast array of colourful bottles on the marble shelf behind him.

‘Sorry.’ Ruby cleared her throat and forced herself to relax. ‘I’ll have...’ She frowned, trying to remember what Molly and her friend had asked for. ‘I’ll have two Cosmopolitans and a white wine.’

‘Riesling? Chardonnay? Chab—?’

‘Whatever’s strongest,’ Ruby cut in. And make it fast, please. Her palms were sweaty and she clasped them together, willing herself not to turn around to check who owned that all too sexy voice.

Fortunately she didn’t hear it again and when the bartender finally returned with her order she threw him a relieved smile and grabbed her drinks.

Keeping her head down, she turned and would have run smack into the side of one of the men if a masculine hand hadn’t shot out in front of her. Liquid sloshed over the side of one of the glasses and her eyes flew upwards to meet concerned brown ones.

Bedroom brown eyes with thick, dark lashes.

Her pulse raced erratically. It was the man in the bronzed mask. The tall one with the impossibly wide shoulders and long legs. The one who had saved the woman from being eaten by the swan. The one with the chocolate-brown hair brushed back in mussed waves just like Sam’s, and the impossibly kissable mouth perfectly positioned in a smoothly chiselled jaw. Also, just like Sam’s.

A shaft of liquid heat detonated low in her pelvis, sending plumes of sensation outwards just as it had done in that trendy pub two years ago. Just as it had done at Miller’s wedding one year ago.

It’s not him, she assured herself. It’s not him. It’s not—

‘Sorry about that.’ A hint of a lazy smile played at the edges of his mouth. ‘My fool acquaintance wasn’t watching where he was going.’

Ruby froze, her IQ falling by a hundred points. The man who—please, God—couldn’t be Sam Ventura cocked his head with bemused candour at her stultifying silence, his gaze falling to her lips before drifting lower and stopping on the drinks she was gripping precariously in front of her. ‘You need a hand carrying those?’ His dark gaze returned to hers. ‘I’d be more than happy to assist.’

Mentally berating her stunned-mullet act, Ruby kicked her brain into gear and clamped her lips together. This was not Sam Ventura. He was just a very good-looking, powerfully built replica who seemed very much like Sam Ventura.

‘Thanks, but no, thanks,’ she bit out in a low tone. ‘Believe it or not, I don’t need a man to make my life perfect.’

And why on earth had she said that?

Grimly aware that she had silenced them all, she turned her back on the little group and willed her jelly legs to hold her upright as she hurried back to Molly.

* * *

Well, well, well, if he hadn’t just been put in his place by the very beautiful, and very cool Ruby Clarkson, Sam mused, watching as she disappeared into the crowd as if the hounds of hell were after her. Because, as surprising as it was to run into her so soon, it was her; there wasn’t a shred of doubt in his mind.

A fiery spark of heat ignited inside him as he noted the graceful, swan-like neck and hourglass figure in the lavender gown. Obviously she hadn’t recognised him and that was a little...disappointing?

Two years ago he’d kissed her and felt as if he were standing on a tight wire being swung from side to side without a safety net to catch him. One year ago he’d wanted to repeat the experience and could have sworn she did too, and now she passed him by as if he was what? Nobody special? An irritant, even?

Ignoring the four bozos he hadn’t liked in high school and liked even less now, Sam grabbed his beer and headed into the party as the men behind him laughed uproariously at another lewd story that was as likely to be true as Sam suggesting that his father had put him first as a boy. Pure fantasy.

Shoving that thought back where it belonged, he took a pull of his beer.

Had Ruby really not recognised him?

The thought was like a burr in his side as he caught sight of lavender silk from across the room.

Not her, he realised as the woman lowered her hand-held mask to speak to her companion. His heartbeat steadied and he frowned as he realised that it had sped up in the first place. He wasn’t here to hit on anyone. He certainly wasn’t here to hit on Miller’s off-limits friend. Yet he couldn’t deny that his senses were instantly charged at having seen Ruby again so unexpectedly. Which had answered one of his earlier questions—no, the attraction he felt for her hadn’t lessened. Not even a little.

But what about for her?

He stood and watched the lively partygoers for a moment, wondering if he should prop up the bar for a bit, or head to a quieter corner until enough time had passed that he could leave. Or maybe he should hunt Ruby Clarkson down and wait for her to recognise him.

And what then? a little voice taunted. Surely you’re not thinking of finishing that thing you started two years ago?

Sam tilted the bottle of beer to his lips and took another long, fortifying pull.

Was he thinking that?

He couldn’t deny that the idea still held some appeal. More than some appeal, if he was being honest. Ruby Clarkson was a beautiful woman. What man wouldn’t want a long-legged, curvaceous honey-blonde woman spread out beneath him, naked and wanting in his bed, those glorious green eyes glazed over with desire, her lips plump and wet from his kisses, her creamy thighs parted for his possession?

Sam’s body hardened at the images rampaging through his head and softly cursed his wayward libido. No doubt she’d be great in bed. Great in his bed.

And there was that niggly note of ownership that had given him such pause two years ago. The caveman element that only she drew out of him. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like how effortlessly she drew him to her, or how often he thought about her. He certainly didn’t like how possessive he felt about her. Would one night with her in his bed solve that? Would one night rid him of the powerful pull she seemed to have over him or would it only make it worse?

Sam’s brooding gaze noticed a hint of lavender drift through the crowd towards the dance floor. Well, there was really only one way to test that theory, wasn’t there? Not that he intended to take her to his bed tonight. He wasn’t that desperate. But he could have a little fun with her, couldn’t he? A little innocent fun just until she recognised him. A smile curved the edges of his lips as he set off towards the dance floor. How long would it take her? One minute? Two?

Suddenly the evening looked a whole lot more interesting than it had half an hour ago.