Читать книгу The Tycoon's Virgin - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 5

‘MMM.’ Jodi could not resist sneaking a second appreciative look at the man crossing the hotel lobby.

Tall, well over six feet, somewhere in his mid-thirties, dark-suited and even darker-haired, he had an unmistakable air about him of male sexuality. Jodi had been aware of it the minute she saw him walking towards the hotel exit. His effect on her was strong enough to make her pulse race and her body react to him in a most unusual and un-Jodi-like manner, and just for a second she allowed her thoughts to wander dreamily in a dangerous and sensual direction.

He turned his head and for a shocking breath of time it was almost as though he was looking straight at her; as though some kind of highly intense, personal communication was taking place!

What was happening to her?

Jodi’s heart, and with it her whole world, rocked precariously on its oh-so-sturdy axis; an axis constructed of things such as common sense and practicality and doing things by the book, which had suddenly flung her into an alien world. A world where traitorous words such as ‘love at first sight’ had taken on a meaning.

Love at first sight? Her? Never. Stalwartly, Jodi dragged her world and her emotions back to where they belonged.

It must be the stress she was under that was causing her to somehow emotionally hallucinate!

‘Haven’t you got enough to worry about?’ Jodi scolded herself, far more firmly than she would ever have scolded one of her small pupils. Not that she was given to scolding them very much. No, Jodi loved her job as the headmistress and senior teacher of the area’s small junior school with a passion that some of her friends felt ought more properly to be given to her own love life—or rather the lack of it.

And it was because of the school and her small pupils that she was here this evening, waiting anxiously in the foyer of the area’s most luxurious hotel for the arrival of her cousin and co-conspirator.

‘Jodi.’

She gave a small sigh of relief as she finally saw her cousin Nigel hurrying towards her. Nigel worked several miles away in the local county-council offices and it had been through him that she had first learned of the threat to her precious school.

When he had told her that the largest employer in the area, a factory producing electronic components, had been taken over by one of its competitors and could be closed down her initial reaction had been one of disbelief.

The village where Jodi taught had worked desperately hard to attract new business, and to prevent itself from becoming yet another small, dying community. When the factory had opened some years earlier it had brought not just new wealth to the area, but also an influx of younger people. It was the children of these people who now filled Jodi’s classrooms. Without them, the small village school would have to close. Jodi felt passionately about the benefits her kind of school could give young children. But the local authority had to take a wider view; if the school’s pupils fell below a certain number then the school would be closed.

Having already had to work hard to persuade parents to support the school, Jodi was simply not prepared to sit back whilst some arrogant, uncaring asset-stripper of a manufacturing megalomaniac closed the factory in the name of profit and ripped the heart out of their community!

Which was why she was here with Nigel.

‘What have you found out?’ she asked her cousin anxiously, shaking her head as he asked her if she wanted anything to drink. Jodi was not a drinker; in fact she was, as her friends were very fond of telling her, a little bit old-fashioned for someone who had gone through several years at university and teacher-training college. She had even worked abroad, before deciding that the place she really wanted to be was the quiet rural heart of her own country.

‘Well, I know that he’s booked into the hotel. The best suite, no less, although apparently he isn’t in it at the moment.’

When Jodi exhaled in relief Nigel gave her a wry look. ‘You were the one who wanted to see him,’ he reminded her. ‘If you’ve changed your mind…?’

‘No,’ Jodi denied. ‘I have to do something. It’s all over the village that he intends to close down the factory. I’ve already had parents coming to see me to say that they’re probably going to have to move away, and asking me to recommend good local schools for them when they do. I’m already only just over the acceptable pupil number as it is, Nigel. If I were to lose even five per cent of my pupils…’ She gave a small groan. ‘And the worst of it is that if we can only hang on for a couple more years I’ve got a new influx due that will take us well into a good safety margin, providing, that is, the factory is still operational. That’s why I’ve got to see this…this…’

‘Leo Jefferson,’ Nigel supplied for her. ‘I’ve managed to talk the receptionist into letting me have a key to his suite.’ He grinned when he saw Jodi’s expression. ‘It’s OK, I know her, and I’ve explained that you’ve got an appointment with him but that you’ve arrived early. So I reckon the best thing is for you to get up there and lie in wait to pounce on him when he gets back.’

‘I shall be doing no such thing,’ Jodi told him indignantly. ‘What I want to do is make sure he understands just how much damage he will be doing to this village if he goes ahead and closes the factory. And try to persuade him to change his mind.’

Nigel watched her ruefully as she spoke. Her high-minded ideals were all very well, but totally out of step with the mindset of a man with Leo Jefferson’s reputation. Nigel was tempted to suggest to Jodi that a warm smile and a generous helping of feminine flirtation might do more good than the kind of discussion she was obviously bent on having, but he knew just how that kind of suggestion would be received by her. It would be totally against her principles.

Which was rather a shame in Nigel’s opinion, because Jodi certainly had the assets to bemuse and beguile any red-blooded man. She was stunningly attractive, with the kind of lushly curved body that made men ache just to look at her, even if she did tend to cover its sexy female shape with dull, practical clothes.

Her hair was thick and glossily curly, her eyes a deep, deliciously dark-fringed, vibrant blue above her delicately high cheekbones. If she hadn’t been his cousin and if they hadn’t known one another since they had been in their prams he would have found her very fanciable himself. Except that Nigel liked his girlfriends to treat flirtation and sex as an enjoyable game. And Jodi was far too serious for that.

At twenty-seven, she hadn’t, so far as Nigel knew, ever had a serious relationship, preferring to dedicate herself to her work. Nigel knew that there were more than a handful of men who considered that dedication to be a total waste.

As she took the key card her cousin was handing her Jodi hoped that she was doing the right thing.

Her throat suddenly felt nervously dry, and when she admitted as much to Nigel he told her that he’d arrange to have something sent up to the suite for her to drink.

‘Can’t have you driven so mad by thirst that you raid the mini-bar, can we?’ he teased her, chuckling at his own joke.

‘That’s not funny,’ Jodi immediately reproved him.

She still felt guilty about the underhanded means by which she was gaining access to Leo Jefferson’s presence, but according to Nigel this was the only way to get the opportunity to speak personally with him.

She had originally hoped to be able to make an appointment, but Nigel had quickly disabused her of this idea, telling her wryly that a corporate mogul such as Leo Jefferson would never deign to meet a humble village schoolteacher.

And that was why this unpleasant subterfuge was necessary.

Ten minutes later, as she let herself into his hotel suite, Jodi hoped that it wouldn’t be too long before Leo Jefferson returned. She had been up at six that morning, working on a project for her older pupils, who would be moving on to ‘big’ school at the end of their current year.

It was almost seven o’clock, past Jodi’s normal evening-meal time, and she felt both tired and hungry. She stiffened nervously as she heard the suite door opening, but it was only a waiter bringing her the drink Nigel had promised her. She eyed the large jug of brightly coloured fruit juice he had put down on the coffee-table in front of her a little ruefully as the door closed behind the departing waiter. Good old plain water would have been fine. Her mouth felt dry with nervous tension and she poured herself a glass, drinking it quickly. It had an unfamiliar but not unpleasant taste, which for some odd reason seemed to make her feel that she wanted some more. Her hand wobbled slightly as she poured herself a second glass.

She read the newspaper she had found on the coffee-table, and rehearsed her speech several times. Where was Leo Jefferson? Tiredly she started to yawn, gasping with shock as she stood up and swayed dizzily.

Heavens, but she felt so light-headed! Suspiciously she focused on the jug of fruit juice. That unfamiliar taste couldn’t possibly have been alcohol, could it? Nigel knew that she wasn’t a drinker.

Muzzily she looked round the suite for the bathroom. Leo Jefferson was bound to arrive soon, and she wanted to be looking neat and tidy and strictly businesslike when he did. First impressions, especially in a situation like this, were very important!

The bathroom was obviously off the bedroom. Which she could see through the half-open door that connected it to the suite’s sitting room.

A little unsteadily she made her way towards it. What on earth had been in that drink?

In the suite’s huge all-white bathroom, Jodi washed her hands, dabbing cold water on her pulse points as she gazed uncertainly at her flushed face in the mirror above the basin before turning to leave.

In the bedroom she stopped to stare longingly at the huge, comfortable-looking bed. She just felt so tired. How much longer was this wretched man going to be?

Another yawn started to overwhelm her. Her eyelids felt heavy. She just had to lie down. Just for a little while. Just until she felt less light-headed.

But first…

With the careful concentration of the inebriated, Jodi removed her clothes with meticulous movements and folded them neatly before sliding into the heavenly bliss of the waiting bed.

As Leo Jefferson unlocked the door to his hotel suite he looked grimly at his watch. It was half-past ten in the evening and he had just returned to the hotel, having been to inspect one of the two factories he had just acquired. Prior to that, earlier in the day, he had spent most of the afternoon locked in a furious argument with the now ex-owner of his latest acquisition, or rather the ex-owner’s unbelievably idiotic son-in-law, who had done everything he could at first to bully and then bribe Leo into releasing them from their contract.

‘Look, my father-in-law made a mistake. We all make them,’ he had told Leo with fake affability. ‘We’ve changed our minds and we no longer want to sell the business.’

‘It’s a bit late for that,’ Leo had replied crisply. ‘The deal has already gone through; the contract’s been signed.’

But Jeremy Driscoll continued to try to browbeat Leo into changing his mind.

‘I’m sure we can find some way to persuade you,’ he told Leo, giving him a knowing leer as he added, ‘One of those new lap-dancing clubs has opened up in town, and I’ve heard they cater really well for the needs of lonely businessmen. How about we pay it a visit? My treat, we can talk later, when we’re both feeling more relaxed.’

‘No way,’ was Leo’s grim rejection.

The gossip he had heard on the business grapevine about Jeremy Driscoll had suggested that he was a seedy character—apparently it wasn’t unknown for him to try to get his own way by underhanded means. At first Leo had been prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt—until he met him and recognised that Jeremy Driscoll’s detractors had erred on the side of generosity.

A more thoroughly unpleasant person Leo had yet to meet, and his obvious air of false bonhomie offended Leo almost as much as his totally unwarranted and unwanted offer of bought sex.

The kind of place, any kind of place, where human beings had to sell themselves for other people’s pleasure had no appeal for Leo, and he made little attempt to conceal his contempt for the other man’s suggestion.

Jeremy Driscoll, though, it seemed, had a skin of impenetrable thickness. Refusing to take a hint, he continued jovially, ‘No? You prefer to have your fun in private on a one-to-one basis, perhaps? Well, I’m sure that something can be arranged—’

Leo’s cold, ‘Forget it,’ brought an ugly look of dislike to Jeremy’s too pale blue eyes.

‘There’s a lot of antagonism around here about the fact that you’re planning to close down one or other of the factories. A man with your reputation…’

‘Oh, I think my reputation can stand the heat,’ Leo replied grittily.

He could see that his confidence had increased Jeremy’s dislike of him, just as he had seen the envy in the other man’s eyes when he had driven up in his top-of-the-range Mercedes.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of the newspaper that Jeremy had rudely continued to read after Leo’s arrival. There was an article on the page that was open detailing the downfall of a politician who had tried unsuccessfully to sue those who had exposed certain tawdry aspects of his private life, including his visits to a massage parlour. The fact that the politician had claimed that he had been set up had not convinced the jury who had found against him.

‘I wouldn’t be so sure about your reputation if I were you,’ Jeremy warned Leo nastily, glancing towards the paper as he spoke.

Giving him a dismissive look, Leo left.

Leo frowned as he walked into his suite. There was no way in a thousand years he was going to change his plans. He had worked too hard and for too long, building up his business from nothing…less than nothing, slowly, painstakingly clawing his way up from his own one-man band, first overtaking and then taking over his competition as he grew more and more successful.

The Driscoll family company was in direct competition to Leo’s. Since their business duplicated his own, it was only natural that he should have to close down some of their four factories. As yet Leo had not decided which out of the four. But as for Jeremy Driscoll’s attempt to get him to back out of the deal…!

Tired, Leo strode into the suite without bothering to switch on the lights. At this time on a June evening there was still enough light in the sky for him not to need to do so, even without the additional glow of the almost full moon.

The bedroom wasn’t quite as well-lit; someone—the maid, he imagined—had closed the curtains, but the bathroom light was on and the door open. Frowning over such sloppiness, he headed towards the bathroom, closing the door behind him once he was inside.

Giving his own reflection a brief glance in the mirror, he paused to rub a lean hand over his stubble-darkened jaw before reaching for his razor.

Jeremy Driscoll’s bombastic arrogance had irritated him to an extent that warned him that those amongst his family and friends who cautioned that he was driving himself too hard might have something of a point.

Narrowing the silver-grey eyes that were an inheritance from his father’s side, and for whose piercingly analytical and defence-stripping qualities they were rightly feared by anyone who sought to deceive him, he grimaced slightly. He badly needed a haircut; his dark hair curled over the collar of his shirt. Taking time out for anything in his life that wasn’t work right now simply wasn’t an option.

His parents professed not to understand just where he got his single-minded determination to succeed from. They had been happy with their small newsagent’s business.

His parents were retired now, and living in his mother’s family’s native Italy. He had bought them a villa outside Florence as a ruby-wedding present.

Leo had visited them, very briefly, early in May for his mother’s birthday.

He put down his razor, remembering the look he had seen them exchange when his mother had asked wistfully if there was yet ‘anyone special’ in his life.

He had told her with dry humour that not only did his negative response to her maternal question relate to his present, but that it could also be applied indefinitely to his future.

With unusual asperity she had returned that if that was the case then it was perhaps time she paid a visit to the village’s local wise woman and herbalist, who, according to rumour, had an absolutely foolproof recipe for a love potion!

Leo had laughed outright at that. After all, it was not that he couldn’t have a partner, a lover, if he so wished. Any number of stunningly attractive young women had made it plain to him both discreetly and rather more obviously that they would like to share his life and his bed, and, of course, his bank account…But Leo could still remember how at the upmarket public school he had won a scholarship to the female pupils had been scornfully dismissive of the boy whose school uniform was so obviously bought secondhand and whose only source of money came from helping out in his parents’ small business.

That experience had taught Leo a lesson he was determined never to forget. Yes, there had been women in his life, but no doubt rather idiotically by some people’s standards, he had discovered that he possessed an unexpected aversion to the idea of casual sex. Which meant…

Unwantedly Leo remembered his body’s sharply explicit reaction to the woman he had seen in the hotel foyer as he had crossed it on his way to his meeting earlier.

Small and curvy, or so he had suspected, beneath the abominable clothes she had been wearing.

Leo’s mother did not have Italian blood for nothing, and, like all her countrywomen, she possessed a strong sense of personal style, which made it impossible for Leo not to recognise when a woman was dressing to maximum effect. This woman had most certainly not been doing that at all. She had not even really been his type. If he was prepared to admit to a preference it was for cool, elegant blondes. Most definitely not for delectably sexy, tousled and touchable types of women, who turned his loins to hotly savage lust and even distracted his mind to the extent that he had almost found himself deviating from his set course and thinking about walking towards her.

Leo never deviated from any course he set himself—ever—especially not on account of a woman.

With an indrawn breath of self-disgust, Leo stripped off his clothes and stepped into the shower.

As a teenager he had played sports for his school, which, ironically, had done wonders to increase his ‘pulling power’ with his female schoolmates, and he still had the powerful muscle structure of a natural athlete. Impatiently he lathered his body and then rinsed off the foam before reaching for a towel.

Once dry, he opened the bathroom door and headed for the bed. It was darker now, but still light enough, thanks to the moonlight glinting through the curtains, for him not to need to switch on the light.

Flipping back the bedclothes, Leo got into the bed, reaching automatically for the duvet, and then froze as he realised that the bed—his bed—was already occupied.

Switching on the bedside lamp, he stared in angry disbelief at the tousled head of curly hair on the pillow next to his own—a decidedly female head, he recognised, just like the slender naked arm and softly rounded shoulder he could now see in the lamplight.

The nostrils of the proudly aquiline nose he had inherited from his mother’s Italian forebears flared fastidiously as they picked up the smell of alcohol on the softly exhaled breath of the oblivious sleeping form.

Another scent—a mixture of warm fresh air, lavender and a certain shockingly earthy sensuality that was Jodi’s alone—his senses reacted to in a very different way.

It was the girl from the foyer. Leo would have recognised her anywhere, or, rather, his body would.

Automatically his brain passed him another piece of information. Jeremy Driscoll’s oily-voiced suggestiveness as he had tried to persuade Leo to go back on their contract. Was this…this girl the inducement he’d had in mind? She had to be. Leo could not think of any other reason for her presence here in his bed!

Well, if Jeremy Driscoll dared to think that he, Leo, was the kind of man who…

Angrily he reached out to grasp Jodi’s bare arm in strong fingers as he leaned across her to shake her into wakefulness.

Jodi was fathoms-deep asleep, sleeping the sleep of the pure of heart—and the alcohol-assisted—and she was having the most delicious dream in which she was, by some means her sleeping state wasn’t inclined to question, wrapped in the embrace of the most gorgeous, sexy man. He was tall, dark-haired and silver-eyed, with features reassuringly familiar to Jodi, but his body, his touch, were wonderfully and excitingly new.

They were lying together, body to body, on a huge bed in a room with a panoramic view of a private tropical beach, and as he leaned towards her and stroked strong fingers along her forearm he whispered to her, ‘What the hell are you doing in my bed?’

Her brain still under the influence of her ‘fruit cocktail’ Jodi opened bemused, adoring eyes.

Why was her wonderful lover looking so angry? Smiling sleepily up at him, she was about to ask him, but somehow her attention became focused on how downright desirable he actually was.

That wonderful naked golden-brown body. Naked. Yummy! More than yummy! Jodi closed her eyes on a sigh of female appreciation and then quickly opened them again, anxious not to miss anything. She watched the way the muscles in his neck corded as he leaned over her, and the sinewy strength of his solid forearms, so very male that she just had to reach out and run an explorative fingertip down the one nearest to her, marvelling at the difference between it and her own so much softer female flesh.

Leo couldn’t believe his eyes—or his body. She, the uninvited interloper in his bed, was brazenly ignoring his angry question and was actually daring to touch him. No, not just touch, he acknowledged as his body reacted to her with a teeth-clenching jerk that gave an immediate lie to his previous mental use of the word ‘unwanted’. What she was doing—dammit—was outright stroking him, caressing him!

Torn between a cerebral desire to reject what was happening and a visceral surge of agonisingly intense desire to embrace it, and with it the woman who was tormenting him with such devastating effectiveness, Leo made a valiant struggle to cling to the tenets of discipline and self-control that were the twin bastions of his life. To his shock, he lost. And not just the campaign but the whole war!

Jodi, though, fuelled now by something far more subtle than alcohol, and far stronger, was totally oblivious to everything but the delicious dream she had found her way into.

Imagine. When she touched him, like so, the most extraordinary tremors ran right through his whole body—and not just his, she acknowledged as she considered the awesome fact that her own body was so highly responsive, so reactive to every movement of his.

She was so lucky to be here with him on this wonderful private island of love and pleasure. Tenderly she leaned forward and flicked her tongue-tip delicately against the hollow at the base of his throat, revelling in the sensation of his damp skin against her tongue, its texture, its taste, the way that fierce male pulse thudded to life at her touch.

Leo couldn’t believe what was happening. What she was doing; what he was letting her do. He found himself lying back against the pillow as she was the one to arch provocatively over him, whilst her tongue busily and far too erotically laved his skin.

Even in the less than half-light of the shadowy bedroom he could see the naked outline of her body with its narrow waist and softly flaring hips; her legs were delectably shaped, her ankles tiny and delicate, the shadowy triangle of hair between her thighs so soft and tempting that…

His throat dry with angry tension and gut-wrenching longing, Leo felt his whole body shudder.

He could see her breasts, soft, rounded, creamy-skinned, with darkly tender crests and tormentingly erect nipples.

Unable to stop himself, he lifted his hands carefully, cupping them. He could feel their warm weight, and he could feel, too, the tight hardness of those wanton peaks, tauntingly challenging him to…

Jodi gasped and then shivered in delight as she felt the rough pressure of her lover’s tongue against her nipple.

‘Oh, it feels so good,’ she whispered to him, closing her eyes as she gave herself up to the sensations he was arousing. Her hand slipped distractedly from his arm to her own body, flattening betrayingly against her belly as she drew in a juddering breath of delirious pleasure.

Leo could scarcely believe the sheer wantonness of her reaction to his touch. He tried to remind himself that she was there for a purpose, doing the job she had been hired for, but his senses were too drugged to allow him to think rationally.

He had known then, in that fleeting second he had seen her in the hotel foyer, that she could affect him like this; that he would want her like this, no matter what the stern voice of his conscience was trying to tell him.

His hand slid to the curve of her waist and flared possessively over her hip, which fitted as perfectly into his grip as though they had been made for each other.

Her hands were on his body, their touch somehow innocently explorative, as though he was the first man she had ever been so intimate with—which was a ludicrous thought!

The soft whispers of female praise she was giving him had to be deliberately calculated to have the maximum effect on a man’s ego—any man’s ego—he tried to remind himself. But somehow he couldn’t stop touching her—couldn’t stop wanting her!

Jodi sighed blissfully in a sensual heaven. He seemed to know instinctively just how and where to caress her, how to arouse and please her. Her body soared and melted with each wonderful wave of erotic pleasure. Voluptuously she snuggled closer to him shivering in heady excitement as she let her hands wander at will over his body—so excitingly different from her own.

The bedclothes, which she had pushed away an aeon ago so that she could look at the powerful nakedness of the male body she was now so hungry for, lay in a tangled heap at the bottom of the bed. Moonlight silvered her own body, whilst it turned the larger and more muscular shape of her lover’s into a dark-hued steel.

She ached so much for him. Her hands moved downwards over him, her gaze drawn to his taut, powerful magnificence.

Deliberately she drew her fingertips along the hard length of his erection, closing her eyes and shuddering as a deep thrill twisted through her.

Leo couldn’t understand how he was letting this happen! It went totally against everything he believed in! Never before in his life had he experienced such intense and overwhelmingly mindless desire, nor been so driven by the fierce pulse of it to take what he was being so openly offered.

Every single one of his senses was responding to her with an uncheckable urgency that left his brain floundering.

The scent, the sight, the feel of her, her touch against his body, even the soft, increasingly incoherent sound of her husky, pleading moans, seemed to strike at a vulnerability inside him that he had never dreamed existed.

He reached out for her, giving in to the need burning through him to kiss every delicious woman-scented inch of her, and then to do so all over again, slowly and thoroughly, until the unsteadiness of her breathing was a torment to his senses. He finally allowed himself the pleasure of sliding his fingers through the soft, warm tangle of curls concealing her sex, stroking the flesh that lay beneath and slowly parting the outer covering of her to caress her with full intimacy.

She felt soft, hot, moist and so unbelievably delicate that, ignoring the agonised urging of her voice against his ear, he forced himself to love her slowly and carefully.

He could feel her body rising up to reach his touch as she writhed frantically against him, telling him in broken words of open pleasure that jolted like electricity through his senses just what she wanted from him and how. She somehow managed to manoeuvre both of them so that he was pushing urgently against her and then inside her, as though the intimacy was beyond his own physical control.

She felt. She felt…

Jodi heard the low, visceral male sound he made as he entered her, filled her, and sharp spirals of intense pleasure flooded her body.

Just hearing that sound, knowing his need, was almost as erotically exciting as feeling him move inside her. Long, slow, powerful thrusts lifted and carried her and caused her to reach out for him, drawing him deep inside her. The pleasure of feeling her body expand to accommodate him was so indescribably precious that she cried out aloud her joy in it and in him. She loved this feeling of being wrapped around him, embracing him, holding him, somehow nurturing and protecting his essential male essence.

Somewhere on the periphery of his awareness, Leo recognised that there was something that his mind should be aware of, something important his body was trying to tell him, something about both the intensity of what he was experiencing and the special, close-fitting intimacy of the tender female body wrapped around his own. But the age-old urgency of the need now driving him was short-circuiting his ability to question anything.

All he knew was how good she felt, how right, how essential it was that he reciprocate the wonderful gift she was giving him by taking them both to that special place that lay so tantalisingly almost within reach…another second, another stroke, another heartbeat.

He felt her orgasm gripping her; spasm after spasm of such vibrant intensity that its sheer strength brought him to his own completion.

As she lay in his arms, her body trembling in the aftershock of her pleasure, her damp curls a wild tangle of soft silk against his chest, he heard her gasping shakily, ‘That was wonderful, my wonderful, wonderful lover.’

And then as he looked down into her eyes she closed them and fell asleep, with all the speed and innocence of a child.

Broodingly Leo studied her. There was no doubt in his mind that she was a plant, bought and paid for with Jeremy Driscoll’s money.

And he, idiotic fool that he was, had fallen straight into the trap that had been set for him. And he suspected, now that he had time to think things through properly, that this was something more than Jeremy Driscoll supplying him with a bedmate for the night.

Jeremy was simply not that altruistic. Not altruistic in any way, shape or form, and Leo knew that he had not mistaken the dislike and envy in the other man’s eyes earlier in the day. Jeremy knew that he, Leo, was not about to change his mind. Not unless Jeremy Driscoll believed he had some means of forcing him to do so.

Now, when it was too late, Leo remembered the newspaper article Jeremy Driscoll had been reading,

For a man in his position, an unmarried man, the effect of a public exposé, a woman selling her kiss-and-tell story to one of the national newspapers, would not be devastating. But Leo would be pilloried as a laughing stock for being so gullible and, as a result, would lose respect in the business world. If that happened he would not be able to count on the support and belief he was used to. No businessman, not even one as successful as Leo, wanted that.

He got out of bed, giving Jodi a bitter look as he did so. How could she lie there sleeping so peacefully? As though…as though…Unable to stop himself, Leo felt his glance slide to her mouth, still curved in a warmly satisfied smile. Even in her sleep she was somehow managing to maintain the fiction that what had happened between them was something special. But then no doubt she was a skilled actress. She would have to be.

The reality of what he had done pushed relentlessly through his thoughts. His behaviour had been so totally alien that even now he couldn’t imagine what had possessed him. Or, at least, he could, but he couldn’t understand how he had allowed it to get so out of control.

Or why he was standing beside the bed and continuing to look at her, when surely his strongest urge ought to be to go and have a shower as hot and strong as he could stand until he had washed the feel, the scent, the taste of her off his body and out of his senses. But for some incomprehensible reason that was the last thing he wanted to do…

Just in time he managed to stop himself from reaching out to touch her, to stroke a gentle fingertip along that tender cheekbone and touch those unbelievably long, dark lashes, that small, straight nose, those soft, full lips.

As though somehow she sensed what he was thinking, her lips parted on a sweetly sensual sigh, her mouth curling back into another smile of remembered pleasure.

What the hell was he doing, letting her sleep there like that? By rights he ought to wake her up and throw her out. He glanced at the alarm clock supplied by the hotel. It was two o’clock in the morning, and he told himself that it was because of his inbred sense of responsibility that he could not bring himself to do so.

It just wasn’t safe for a woman—any woman, even a woman like her—to wander about on her own so late at night; anything could happen to her!

But he wasn’t going to get back in that bed with her. No way!

Going into the bathroom, he pulled on the complimentary robe provided by the hotel and then made his way into the sitting room, closing the bedroom door behind him as he did so and snapping on the light.

The first thing he saw was the almost empty cocktail jug and the glass Jodi had drunk from.

Grimacing, he pushed it to one side. She had even had the audacity to order a drink on Room Service. Because she had needed the courage it would give her to go to bed with him?

He warned himself against falling into the trap of feeling sorry for her, making excuses for her. She had known exactly what she was doing…Exactly…He frowned as he moved a little uncomfortably in his chair.

He was wide awake now and he had some work he could be doing. When his would-be seducer woke up they were going to need to have a short, sharp talk.

There was no way he was going to allow Jeremy Driscoll to blackmail him into backing out of the contract he had made with his father-in-law.

Still frowning, he reached for his briefcase.