Читать книгу From New York With Love: Rumours on the Red Carpet / Rapunzel in New York / Sizzle in the City - Кэрол Мортимер, Nikki Logan - Страница 10
ОглавлениеA REALLY UNPLEASANT thing about waking up in a strange hotel room was the initial feeling of panic caused by not knowing exactly where you were. Even more unpleasant was noticing that the less-than-salubrious room still smelt of the previous occupant’s body odour and cigarette smoke.
But the worst thing—the very worst thing—was returning to that disgusting-smelling hotel bedroom after taking a lukewarm shower in the adjoining uncleaned bathroom and realising that you had no clothes to leave in other than the ankle-length blue evening gown you had worn the night before, along with a pair of minuscule blue panties and four-inch-heeled take-me-to-bed shoes.
All of which became all too apparent to Thia within minutes of her waking up in that awful hotel bedroom and taking that shower!
She had been too angry and upset the evening before—too furious with the arrogantly insulting Lucien Steele—to notice how faded and worn the furniture and décor in this hotel room was, how threadbare and discoloured the towel wrapped about her naked body, let alone the view outside the grimy window of a rusted fire escape and a brick wall.
Thia had been sensible enough the night before, after the lone night porter on duty had openly leered at her when she’d booked in, to at least lock and secure the chain on the flimsy door, plus push a chair under and against the door handle, before crawling between the cold sheets and thin blankets on the bed.
Not that it had helped her to fall asleep—she’d still been too angry at the things Lucien Steele had said to be able to relax enough to sleep.
She dropped down heavily onto the bed now and surveyed what that anger had brought her to. A seedy hotel and a horrible-smelling room that was probably usually let by the hour rather than all night. God, no wonder the night porter had leered at her; he had probably thought she was a hooker, waiting for her next paying customer to arrive.
At the moment she felt like a hooker waiting for her next paying customer to arrive!
How was she even going to get out of this awful hotel when she didn’t even have any suitable clothes to wear?
Thia tensed sharply as a knock sounded on the flimsy door, turning to eye it warily. ‘Yes...?’
‘Miss Hammond?’
She rose slowly, cautiously, to her feet. ‘Dex, is that you...?’ she prompted disbelievingly.
‘Yes, Miss Hammond.’
How on earth had Lucien Steele’s bodyguard even known where to find her...? More to the point, why had he bothered to find her?
At that moment Thia didn’t care how or why Dex was here. She was just relieved to know he was standing outside in the hallway. She hurried across the room to remove the chair from under the door handle, slide the safety chain across, before unlocking the door itself and flinging it open.
‘Oh, thank God, Dex!’ She launched herself into his arms as she allowed the tears to fall hotly down her cheeks.
‘Er—Miss Hammond...?’ he prompted several minutes later, when her tears showed no signs of stopping. His discomfort was obvious in his hesitant tone and the stiffness of his body as he patted her back awkwardly.
Well, of course Dex was uncomfortable, Thia acknowledged as she drew herself up straight before backing off self-consciously. What man wouldn’t be uncomfortable when a deranged woman launched herself into his arms and started crying? Moreover a deranged woman wearing only a threadbare bathtowel that was barely wide enough to cover her naked breasts and backside!
‘I’m so sorry for crying all over you, Dex,’ she choked, on the edge of hysterical laughter now, as she started to see the humour of the situation rather than only the embarrassment. ‘I was just so relieved to see a familiar face!’
‘You—do you think we might go into your room for a moment?’ Dex shifted uncomfortably as a man emerged from a room further down the hallway, eyeing Thia’s nakedness suggestively as he lingered over locking his door.
‘Of course.’ Thia felt the blush in her cheeks as she stepped back into the room. ‘I—is that my suitcase...?’ She looked down at the lime-green suitcase Dex had brought in with him; it was so distinctive in its ugliness that she was sure it must be the same one she had picked up for next to nothing in a sale before coming to New York. The same suitcase that she had intended collecting, along with her clothes, from Jonathan’s apartment later this morning... ‘How did you get it?’ She looked at Dex suspiciously.
He returned that gaze unblinkingly. ‘Mr Steele obtained it from Mr Miller’s apartment this morning.’
‘Mr Steele did...?’ Thia repeated stupidly. ‘Earlier this morning? But it’s only eight-thirty now...’
Dex nodded abruptly. ‘It was an early appointment.’
She doubted that Jonathan would have appreciated that, considering he hadn’t emerged from his bedroom before twelve o’clock on a single morning since her arrival in New York. ‘And Lu—Mr Steele just asked him for my things and Jonathan handed them over?’
Dex’s mouth thinned. ‘Yes.’
Thia looked at him closely. ‘It wasn’t quite as simple as that, was it?’ she guessed heavily.
He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘I believe there may have been a...a certain reluctance on Mr Miller’s part to co-operate.’
Thia would just bet there had. Jonathan had been so angry with her yesterday evening that she had been expecting him to refuse to hand over her things when she went to his apartment for them later. An unpleasant confrontation that Lucien Steele had circumvented for her by making that visit himself. She could almost feel sorry for Jonathan as she imagined how that particular meeting would have panned out. Almost. She was still too disgusted with Jonathan’s unpleasant behaviour the previous evening to be able to rouse too much sympathy for him.
But she was surprised at Lucien Steele having bothered himself to go to Jonathan’s apartment himself to collect her things; Lucien had let her leave easily enough last night, and he didn’t give the impression he was a man who would inconvenience himself by chasing after a woman who had walked away from him as Thia had.
She drew a shaky breath. ‘No one was hurt, I hope?’
‘I wasn’t there, so I wouldn’t know,’ Dex dismissed evenly.
‘I had the impression you accompanied Mr Steele everywhere?’ Thia frowned her puzzlement.
‘Normally I do.’ His mouth flattened. ‘I spent last night standing guard in the hallway outside this room, Miss Hammond.’ He answered her question before she had even asked it.
Thia took a step back in surprise, only to have to clutch at the front of the meagre towel in order to stop it from falling off completely. Her cheeks blushed a furious red as she tried to hold on to her modesty as well as her dignity. ‘I—I had no idea you were out there...’ Maybe if she had she wouldn’t have spent half the night terrified that someone—that dodgy night porter, for one!—might try to force the flimsy lock on the door and break in.
A suitable punishment, Lucien Steele would no doubt believe, for the way in which she had walked away from him last night! Because there was no way that Dex had spent the night guarding the door to her hotel room without the full knowledge, and instruction of his arrogant employer...
‘I doubt you would have been too happy about it if you had.’ Dex bared his teeth in a knowing smile before reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulling out an expensive-looking cream vellum envelope with her name scrawled boldly across the front of it. ‘Mr Steele had Paul deliver your suitcase here a short time ago, along with this.’
Thia stared at the envelope as if it were a snake about to bite her, knowing that it had to be Lucien Steele’s own bold handwriting on the front of it and dreading reading what he had written inside.
At the same time she felt a warmth, a feeling of being protected, just knowing that Lucien had cared enough to ensure her safety last night in spite of herself...
* * *
‘A Miss Hammond is downstairs in Reception, asking to see you, Mr Steele. She doesn’t have an appointment, of course,’ Ben, his PA, continued lightly, ‘but she seems quite determined. I wasn’t quite sure what I should do about her.’
Lucien looked up to scowl his displeasure at Ben as he stood enquiringly on the other side of the glass-topped desk that dominated this spacious thirtieth-floor office. Lucien wasn’t sure himself what to do about Cynthia Hammond.
She was so damned stubborn, as well as ridiculously proud, that Lucien hadn’t even been able to guess what her reaction might be to his having had her things delivered to her at that disgustingly downbeat hotel in which she had chosen to stay the night rather than accept his offer of a room at Steele Heights. He certainly hadn’t expected that she would actually pay him a visit at his office in Steele Tower.
And he should have done—Cynthia Hammond was nothing if not predictably unpredictable. ‘How determined is she, Ben?’ He sighed wearily, already far too familiar with Cyn’s stubbornness.
‘Very.’ His PA’s mouth twitched, as if he were holding back a smile.
The wisest thing to do—the safest thing to do for Lucien’s own peace of mind, which would be best served by never seeing the beautiful Cynthia Hammond again—would be to instruct Security to show her the door...as if she didn’t already know exactly where it was! But if Cyn was determined enough to see him, then Lucien didn’t doubt that she’d just sit there and wait until it was time for him to leave at the end of the day.
He pulled back the cuff on his shirt and glanced at the plain gold watch on his wrist. ‘I don’t leave for my next appointment for ten minutes, right?’
‘Correct, Mr Steele.’
He nodded abruptly. ‘Have Security show her up.’
Lucien leant back in his high-backed white leather chair as Ben left the office, knowing this was probably a mistake. He already knew, on just their few minutes’ acquaintance the evening before, that Cynthia Hammond was trouble.
Enough to have caused him a night full of dreams of caressing that pearly skin, of making love to her in every position possible—so much so that he had woken this morning with an arousal that had refused to go down until he’d stood under the spray of an ice-cold shower!
He had even had Paul drive by the hotel where he knew she had spent the night on his way to visit Jonathan Miller’s apartment this morning. The neighbourhood was bad enough—full of drug addicts and hookers—but the hotel itself was beyond description, and fully explained Dex’s concern when he had telephoned Lucien the night before to tell him exactly which hotel Cyn had checked into and to ask what he should do about it. What the hell had possessed her to stay in such a disreputable hovel?
Money. Lucien answered his own question. He knew from his conversation earlier that morning with Jonathan Miller that Cyn really was exactly what she had said she was: a student working as a waitress to put herself through university, and just over here for a week’s visit.
Her finances were not Lucien’s problem, of course, but he had been infuriated all over again just looking at the outside of that disgusting hotel earlier, imagining that vulnerable loveliness protected only by the flimsy door Dex had described to him. Dex had been so worried about the situation Lucien believed the other man would have decided to stand guard over her for the night whether Lucien had instructed him to do so or not!
Just another example of the trouble Cynthia Hammond caused with her—
‘Wow! This is a beautiful building, Lucien! And this office is just incredible!’
Lucien also gave a wow, but inwardly, as he glanced across the room to where Cynthia Hammond had just breezily entered his office. A Cynthia Hammond whose black hair was once again a straight curtain swaying silkily to just below her shoulders. The beautiful delicacy of her face appeared free of make-up apart from a coral-coloured lipgloss and the glow of those electric blue eyes. She was dressed in a violent pink cropped sleeveless top that left her shoulders and arms bare and revealed at least six inches of her bare and slender midriff—as well as the fact that she wore no bra beneath it. And below that bare midriff was the tightest pair of skinny low-rider blue denims Lucien had ever seen in his life. So tight that he wondered whether Cyn wore any underwear beneath...
And that was just the front view. Ben’s admiring glance, as he lingered in the doorway long enough to watch Cyn stroll across the spacious office, was evidence that the back view was just as sexily enticing!
Cyn did casual elegance well—so much so that Lucien felt decidedly overdressed in his perfectly tailored black suit, navy blue silk shirt and black silk tie. ‘Don’t you have some work to do, Ben?’ he prompted harshly as he stood up—and then sat down again as he realised his arousal had sprung back to instant and eager attention. The benefits of his icy cold shower earlier this morning obviously had no effect when once again faced with the enticing Cynthia Hammond.
Trouble with a capital T!
‘Thanks, Ben.’ Thia turned to smile at the PA before he closed the door on his way out, then returned her gaze to the impressive office rather than the man seated behind the desk, putting off the moment when she would have to face the disturbing Lucien Steele. Just a brief glance in his direction as she had entered the cavernous office had been enough for her to feel as if all the air had been sucked from her lungs, and her nerve-endings were all tingling on high alert.
This black and chrome office was not only beautiful, it was huge. Carpeted completely in black, it had an area set aside for two white leather sofas and a bar serving coffee as well as alcohol, and another area with a glass and marble conference table, as well as Lucien Steele’s own huge desk, bookshelves lining the wall behind him, and an outer wall completely in glass, giving a panoramic view of the New York skyline.
It really was the biggest office Thia had ever seen, but even so her gaze was drawn as if by a magnet inevitably back to the man seated behind the chrome and black marble desk. The office was easily big enough to accommodate half a dozen executive offices, and yet somehow—by sheer force of will, Thia suspected—Lucien Steele still managed to dominate, to possess, all the space around him.
As he did Thia?
Maybe she should have power-dressed for this meeting rather than deciding to go casual? She did have one slim black skirt and a white blouse with her—they would certainly have blended in with the stark black, white and chrome décor of his office. Much more so than her shockingly pink cropped top.
Oh, well, it was too late to worry about that now. She would have to work with what she had.
‘Say what you have to say, Cyn, and then go,’ Lucien Steele bit out coldly. ‘I have to leave for another appointment in five minutes.’
Her breath caught in her throat as she looked at Lucien. A Lucien who was just as knee-tremblingly gorgeous this morning as the previous night. Thia had convinced herself during her restless night of half-sleep that no one could possibly be that magnetically handsome, that she must have drunk too much of the Carews’ champagne and imagined all that leashed sexual power.
She had been wrong. Lucien Steele was even more overpoweringly attractive in the clear light of day, with the sun shining in through the floor-to-ceiling windows turning his hair that amazing blue-black, his bronzed face dominated by those silver eyes, and his features so hard and chiselled an artist would weep over his male beauty. And as for the width of those muscled shoulders—!
Time for her to stop drooling! ‘Nice to see that you’re still living up to my previous description of you as being arrogant and rude,’ she greeted with saccharine sweetness.
He continued to look at her coldly with those steel-grey eyes. ‘I doubt you want to hear my opinion of you after the stunt you pulled last night.’
She felt the colour warm her cheeks and knew he had to be referring to the hotel in which she had spent the night, which Dex would no doubt have described to his employer in graphic detail. ‘I didn’t have the funds to stay anywhere else.’
‘You wouldn’t have needed any funds if you had just accepted the room I offered you at Steele Towers,’ Lucien reminded her harshly.
‘Accepting the room you offered me at Steele Towers would have put me under obligation to you,’ she came back, just as forcefully.
Lucien stilled, eyes narrowing to steely slits. ‘Are you telling me,’ he asked softly, ‘that the reason you refused my offer last night was because you believed I would expect to share that bedroom with you for the night as payment?’
‘Well, you can’t blame me for thinking that after the way you came on to me outside on the balcony and then again in the lift!’
Lucien raised dark brows. ‘I can’t blame you for thinking that?’
‘Well...no...’ Cyn eyed him, obviously slightly nervous of his quiet tone and the calmness of his expression.
And she was wise to be! Because inwardly Lucien was seething, furious—more furious than he remembered being for a very long time, if ever. Even during the visit he had paid to Jonathan Miller’s apartment earlier this morning he had remained totally in control—coldly and dangerously so. But just a few minutes spent in the infuriating Cynthia Hammond’s company and Lucien was ready to put his hands about her throat and throttle her!
If it weren’t for the fact that he knew he would much rather put his hands on another part of her anatomy, starting with that tantalisingly bare and silky midriff, and stroke her instead...
* * *
Thia took a step back as Lucien Steele stood up and moved round to the front of his desk. His proximity, and the flat canvas shoes she was wearing, meant she had to tilt her head back in order to be able to look him in the face. A face that made her wish she were an artist. What joy, what satisfaction, to commit those hard and mesmerising features to canvas. Especially if Lucien could be persuaded into posing in traditional Apache clout cloth, with oil rubbed into the bare bronzed skin of his chest and arms, emphasising all the dips and hollows of those sleek muscles—
‘What are you thinking about, Cyn?’
She looked up guiltily as she realised her appreciative gaze had actually wandered down to that muscled chest as she imagined him bare from the waist up—. ‘I—you—nice suit.’ She gave him a falsely bright smile.
Lucien Steele’s mouth tilted sceptically, as if he knew exactly what she had been thinking. ‘Thanks,’ he drawled derisively. ‘But I believe we were discussing your reckless behaviour last night and your reasons for it?’ His voice hardened and all humour left his expression. ‘Do you have any idea what could have happened to you if Dex hadn’t stayed outside your room all night?’
She had a pretty good idea, yes. ‘It was stupid of me. I accept that.’
‘Do you?’ he bit out harshly.
She nodded. ‘That’s why I’m here, actually. I wanted to thank you.’ She grimaced. ‘For allowing Dex to stand guard last night. For having my things delivered to the hotel this morning. And for sending that keycard, in the envelope Dex gave me, for a suite at Steele Heights.’
For all her expectations of what Lucien Steele might have put in that vellum envelope Dex had handed her this morning, there had been nothing in it but a keycard for a suite at Steele Heights, which he had obviously booked for her.
Thia had wrestled with her pride over accepting, of course, along with that old adage about accepting sweets from strangers. This was a different sort of suite, of course, but she told herself it was still sensible to be wary. But pride and wariness weren’t going to put a roof over her head tonight, and she couldn’t possibly go back to Jonathan’s.
Lucien leant back against his desk and seemed to guess some of her thoughts. ‘I trust you’ve overcome your scruples and moved in there now?’
‘Yes.’ Thia grimaced. Just the thought of that luxurious suite—the sitting room, bedroom and equally beautiful adjoining bathroom—was enough for her to know she had done the right thing. It might take her a while, but she fully intended to reimburse Lucien for his generosity.
He quirked one dark brow. ‘Does that mean you no longer mind feeling under obligation to me?’
Thia looked up at him sharply, unable to read anything from his mocking expression. ‘I think the question should be do you believe I’m under any obligation to you?’
‘Let me see...’ He crossed his elegantly clad legs at the ankles as he studied her consideringly. ‘I left a perfectly good party last night because I thought we were going on somewhere to have a drink together. A drink that never happened. You flounced off in a snit after I offered to drive you somewhere, which greatly inconvenienced me as Dex was then forced to stand guard over your room all night. And I was put to the trouble this morning of asking your ex-boyfriend to pack up your belongings in that hideous lime-green suitcase before having my driver deliver it to that seedy hotel.’ He gave a glance at the slender gold watch on his wrist. ‘Your unexpected visit here this morning means I am now already three minutes late leaving for my next appointment. So what do you think, Cyn? Are you obligated to me?’
Well, when he put it like that... ‘Maybe,’ Thia allowed with a pained wince.
‘I would say there’s no maybe about it.’ He slowly straightened to his full height of several inches over six feet, that silver gaze fixed on her unblinkingly as he took a step forward.
Thia took a step back as she was once again overwhelmed by the unique lemon and musk scent of Lucien Steele. ‘What are you doing?’
‘What does it look as if I’m doing?’
He was standing so close now she could feel the warmth he exuded from his body against the bareness of her midriff and arms. His face—mouth—only was inches away from her own as he lowered his head slightly.
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘It looks to me as if you’re trying to intimidate me!’
He gave a slow and mocking smile as he regarded her through narrowed lids. ‘Am I succeeding?’
‘You must know that you intimidate everyone.’
‘I’m not interested in everyone, Cyn, just you.’
Thia’s heart was beating such a loud tattoo in her chest that she thought Lucien must be able to hear it. Or at least see the way her breasts were quickly rising and falling as she tried to drag air into her starved lungs. ‘You’re standing far too close to me,’ she protested weakly.
He tilted his head, bringing those chiselled lips even closer to hers. ‘I like standing close to you.’
She realised she liked standing close to Lucien too. That she liked him. That she wanted to do so much more than stand close to him. She wanted Lucien to pull her into his arms and kiss her. To make love to her.
Which was strange when she had never felt the least inclination to make love with any man before now. But Lucien wasn’t just any man. He was dark and dangerous and overpoweringly, mesmerisingly, sexually attractive—a combination Thia had never come across before now. She knew her breasts had swelled, the nipples hard nubs, pressing against her cropped top, and between her thighs she was damp, aching. For Lucien Steele’s touch!
As if he was able to read that hunger in her face, Lucien’s pupils dilated and his head slowly lowered, until those beautiful sculptured lips laid gentle but hungry siege to hers.
Thia felt as if she had been jolted with several thousand volts of electricity. And heat. Such burning heat coursing through her. She stepped in closer to that hard, unyielding body and her arms moved up and over Lucien’s wide shoulders as if of their own volition. The warmth of his strong hands spanned the slenderness of her bare waist as her fingers became entangled in that silky black hair at his nape, her lips parting as she lost herself in the heat of his kiss.
* * *
Trouble...
Oh, yes, Cyn Hammond, with her black hair, electric-blue eyes, beautiful face and deliciously enticing body, was definitely Trouble with a capital T...
But at this moment, with the softness of her responsive lips parted beneath his, his hands caressing, enjoying the feel of the soft perfection of her bare midriff, Lucien didn’t give a damn about that.
Nothing had changed since last night. If anything he wanted her more than he had then.
Again. Right here.
And right now!
Lucien deepened the kiss even as he moulded her slender curves against his own much harder ones, intoxicated, lost in Cyn’s taste as he ran his tongue along the pouting softness of her bottom lip. Groaning low in his throat, he let his tongue caress past those addictive lips and into the heat beneath, plunging, possessing that heat as his hands moved restlessly, caressingly, down the length of her spine. Soon Lucien was able to cup that shapely bottom and pull her snugly into and against the pulsing length of his arousal.
The softness of her thighs felt so good against his, so hot and welcoming. He shifted, the hardness of his shaft now cupped and cushioned in that softness, and moved one of his hands to cup her breast through her T-shirt. It was a perfect fit into the palm of his hand, the nipple hard as an unripe berry as Lucien brushed the soft pad of his thumb across it and heard Cyn’s gasp of pleasure, felt her back arching, pressing her breast harder into his cupping hand in a silent plea.
Her skin felt as smooth as silk beneath Lucien’s fingertips as he slipped his hand beneath the bottom of her top to cup her bare breast—
* * *
Thia wrenched her mouth from Lucien’s and pulled out of his arms before taking a stumbling step backwards—as if those few inches in any way nullified Lucien’s sexual potency, or the devastation wrought upon her senses by that hungry kiss and those caressing hands!
‘No...’ she breathed shakily, her cheeks ablaze with embarrassed colour as she attempted to straighten her top over breasts that pulsed and ached for the pleasure she had just denied them.
Lucien’s gaze was hooded. There was a flush across those high cheekbones, a nerve pulsing in his clenched jaw. ‘No?’
‘No,’ Thia repeated more firmly. ‘This is—I don’t do this.’
‘“This” being...?’
‘Seduction in a zillionaire’s office!’
He arched one dark brow. ‘How many zillionaires do you know?’
Her cheeks warmed. ‘Just the one.’
He nodded. ‘That’s what I thought.’ He crossed his arms in front of his chest and he looked at her from between narrowed lids. ‘Just what did you think was going to happen, Cyn, when you came to my office dressed—or rather undressed—like that?’ That glittering silver gaze swept appreciatively over her breasts, naked beneath the crop top, her bare midriff and hip-hugging denims.
She hadn’t allowed herself to think before coming here—had just acted on impulse, knowing she had to thank Lucien Steele for his help some time today and just wanting to get it over with. But, yes, now that he mentioned it she wasn’t exactly dressed for repelling advances. Deliberately if subconsciously so? Lord, she hoped not!
‘Stop calling me Cyn,’ she snapped defensively.
‘But that’s what you are to me... Sin and all that word implies.’ He all but purred. ‘You have all the temptation of a candy bar in that shocking pink top. One that I want to lick all over.’
Thia felt heat in her already blushing cheeks at the provocative imagines that statement conjured in her mind. ‘You—I don’t—didn’t—’ She gave a shake of her head. ‘Could we get back to our earlier conversation?’ Please, she added silently, knowing she would have plenty of time later today to think about and to remember with embarrassment the touch of Lucien’s lips and hands on her body. ‘For one thing, Jonathan was only ever my friend,’ she continued determinedly.
‘Not any more he isn’t.’ Lucien nodded with grim satisfaction. ‘He made it clear before I left his apartment earlier this morning that he was feeling decidedly less than charitable towards you,’ he explained dryly.
Thia’s eyes widened. ‘What did you say to him?’
‘About you?’ He shrugged. ‘As you have neither a father nor brother to protect you, I thought it necessary that someone should warn Miller against laying so much as a finger on you with the intention of hurting you ever again.’
She gasped. ‘I can look after myself!’
‘Is that why you spent the night at a less-than-reputable hotel? Why you have bruises on your arm?’ Lucien’s expression darkened with displeasure as his glittering silver gaze moved to the purple-black smudges at the top of her left arm. ‘If I had known the extent of your bruising I would have inflicted a few of my own on him this morning, rather than just firing his ass!’
Thia gasped even as she looked up searchingly into that ruthlessly handsome face, totally unnerved by the dangerous glitter in Lucien’s eyes as he continued to glower at the bruises on her arms. ‘You fired Jonathan from Network?’
He looked up into her face as he gave a humourless smile of satisfaction. ‘Oh, yes.’
Oh, good grief...
