Читать книгу The Playboy In Pursuit - Miranda Lee - Страница 9

HER phone rang at ten to eight, just as she was doing some last-minute frantic primping.

‘What a time for someone to ring,’ Lucille muttered as she hurried from her bedroom to the living-room.

Not that she hadn’t already had three hours to get ready since arriving home at five. But three hours simply weren’t enough for this kind of date. There was so much to be done. So much to be worried over, and to change her mind over. Not the least of which was what one should wear to seduce a man who’d been seduced by the best of them.

In the end she’d gone for broke, in a dress which would have revived an octogenarian on life support. It was part of the wardrobe she’d splurged on after her divorce had come through but never worn. Emerald chiffon with a low-cut V neckline, sheer tight sleeves and a softly layered skirt which fell to mid-calf, leaving her slender ankles and sexily shod feet in full view. Her cleavage was deep and her hair up in a fashionably dishevelled style, with tendrils falling all round her neck.

Lucille swept the receiver up to her ear, clinking with one of the crystal drop earrings she’d just hooked into her lobes.

‘Yes?’ she said sharply down the line.

‘It’s Val. I’m stuck in a traffic snarl on the bridge. I’m going to be late getting to your place.’

Hearing his voice brought home exactly what she was doing. This wasn’t some wild sexual fantasy she was about to embark on. This was a real man she was planning to seduce. And she was a real woman. A woman who hadn’t made love in so long she’d probably forgotten how!

Lucille’s stomach crunched down hard, then churned. She couldn’t go through with this. She simply couldn’t. What had she been thinking of? Aside from any other consideration, the man was a playboy, for pity’s sake. Maybe he would know all the right moves in bed, as Erica had pointed out. But her pride simply wouldn’t allow herself to let such a man think she was nothing but an easy lay.

Which he would.

‘Lucille?’ he prompted.

‘Yes, I’m here,’ she said stiffly. At least she would have time to change again, into something less provocative.

‘Sorry about this,’ he said.

‘It can’t be helped. You needn’t have worried. Or called.’

‘I didn’t want you to think I was deliberately keeping you waiting, or that I was an arrogant creep with no respect for time or women.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought that,’ she bit out, though she probably would have.

‘You sound a little upset.’

‘Not at all. I’m just not ready yet.’

His laugh was low and incredibly sexy, reminding Lucille of why she’d been brought to this.

‘Now I understand,’ he said. ‘I sometimes forget it takes women for ever to get dressed. Off you go, then, because I want you ready and waiting when I arrive. I’m literally starving.’

She bristled. ‘I thought you said you always ate late.’

‘I seem to have forgotten to eat today, and the cupboards in my new apartment were bare, except for coffee and tea.’

‘Oh, dear. I should have seen to that.’

‘That’s what Erica said when I called to thank her for everything. But don’t fret. I soothed her concerns by saying I was going out for dinner tonight and you’d promised to attend to the matter first thing in the morning.’

Lucille’s heart missed a beat. ‘You didn’t tell her you were taking me out to dinner, did you?’

‘No…’

‘Thank God.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why didn’t you want me to tell her?’

Lucille didn’t know what to say.

‘I have an awful feeling,’ Val went on drily, after an embarrassing stretch of silence, ‘that your reluctance to answer has something to do with your poor opinion of my character.’

Lucille didn’t deny it.

‘Mmm. We will explore this subject more in depth over dinner, when you can’t get away with going silent on me. Ah, the traffic’s moving. I might not be too long after all. Better shake a leg, Lucille, or you’ll be going to dinner in whatever you have on at the moment. Dare I hope it’s your birthday suit?’

She did end up going to dinner in what she had on at that moment, because Erica rang as soon as she hung up, chastising her for not catering to Val’s basic culinary needs on the spot, after which she tried to pump Lucille for her personal opinion of the man. By the time Lucille had neatly side-stepped her boss’s questions and got off the darned phone, it was too late to change. Her intercom buzzer began ringing before she could take more than two steps back towards her bedroom.

Lucille groaned, accepting ruefully that she would have to go to dinner as she was. Hopefully Val wouldn’t get the wrong idea about the way she looked. Not that she was all that provocatively dressed by modern standards. Val was probably used to his dates wearing a whole lot less. As long as she didn’t act provocatively, or flirtatiously, he would have no reason to get out of line.

The dangly earrings could go, however, she decided sensibly, unhooking and tossing them on the hall table as she hurried past on her way to the intercom beside the front door. Now that she’d come to her senses she could hardly believe that her self-esteem had let her sink so low as to actually consider throwing herself at such a man.

If she’d been able to politely get out of dinner, she would have. A bit hard, however, when he was right downstairs and she’d only spoken to him minutes before. All she could do was keep her defences in place and not let him get to her sexually a second time.

‘That you, Val?’ she said coolly, on flipping the switch.

‘The one and only. All dressed and raring to go?’

‘Just about.’ All she had to do was get her purse. ‘I won’t be more than a minute. You might as well wait down there.’

‘Fine.’

Lucille contemplated changing her shoes, but that old rebellious streak won out and she didn’t. A mistake, possibly, she worried as she rode the lift down to the lobby. The black patent high heels gracing her feet tonight made today’s cream stilletos look sedate. Not because they were higher. That would have been impossible. But because of the amount of exposed foot. There was only one pencil-thin strap anchoring her foot to the sole and another wickedly sinful one snaking around her ankle. They were painful shoes to wear, but made her feet look gorgeous and her sleekly stockinged legs even better.