Читать книгу Bedding His Virgin Mistress - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 7

CARLY checked her watch—Lucy had given both Carly and Jules smart Cartier Tank Francaise watches for Christmas in the first year the business had made a profit—and then bent down and grabbed the handle of her case.

The car Ricardo Salvatore was sending to pick her up was due to arrive in exactly two minutes’ time. It was time for her to leave.

She heaved her suitcase off the floor, grimacing a little ruefully as she did so, remembering how Lucy had burst into the office the previous Thursday morning announcing, ‘Oh, my God, Carly—I’ve just realised! There won’t be anything in the Wardrobe that will fit you!’

The ‘Wardrobe’ was a standing joke between them all, and was in actual fact a small room in Lucy’s parents’ London home which housed the glamorous outfits Lucy and Jules, who were very much the same height and build, wore when they were ‘on duty’ at events.

The clothes—all designer models—were second hand, surreptitiously trawled from a variety of sources, and the subject of amused speculation between them.

‘Just look at this!’ Lucy had marvelled after their last expedition, as she held up what looked like a sequin-covered handkerchief with halter neck straps. ‘Who on earth would buy this?’

‘You did,’ Carly had pointed out, laughing.

‘Yes, but I only paid fifty pounds for it—it cost over a thousand brand-new.’

‘It’s very sexy,’ Jules had pronounced.

‘It’s repulsive,’ Carly had criticised. ‘Vulgar and tarty.’

‘Mmm…Well, Nick spotted it.’

But the Wardrobe contained nothing that would fit Carly, and so, that Thursday, Lucy had announced firmly, ‘Come on, Carly. We’ve got to go out on a trawl!’

Carly had tried to protest and resist, but Jules and Lucy had been insistent.

The result of their foray into the second-hand shops and market stalls of Lucy’s favourite haunts—which had emptied the clothes budget Carly had so carefully worked out—had been collected from the dry cleaners this morning and were now packed in Carly’s case, along with her own clothes.

Mentally Carly reviewed them—a white silk trouser suit which Lucy had cooed over, enraptured, pronouncing, ‘Oh, this is so retro—Seventies rock wife! And you’ve got the boobs for it, Carly.’

Maybe she had, but she certainly wouldn’t be wearing the jacket over bare skin and half open! There were also a couple of evening dresses, both of which were potentially so revealing that Carly had already decided she would be wearing a silk jacket over them.

She hadn’t been very keen on the designer swimsuit Lucy had found either. It was cut away in so many places that Carly feared it threatened to reveal more of her than the skimpiest of bikinis, but at least it had matching culotte pants and a jacket.

Her own classic casuals—the simple linen separates she favoured for summer and some up-to-the-minute accessories they had found in the likes of Zara—had all passed Lucy’s inspection and been declared perfect for the events she would be attending.

Dragging her suitcase behind her, Carly pushed open the door onto the street and stepped out into the late-morning sunshine.

Ricardo watched her from his vantage point in the back seat of the limo, as the driver moved the car out of the parking bay he had found further up the street.

Oh, yes, she was a typical example of her upmarket, ‘no expense spared but someone else pays’ lifestyle, Ricardo decided cynically as he watched her. Immaculate white tee shirt, perfectly fitting blue jeans, long shiny hair, minimal make-up, sunglasses, discreetly ‘good’ watch, penny loafers. The too-thin girl in designer clutter who was tottering past her on spindly heels, clutching a weird-looking handbag, couldn’t hold a candle to her. Because Carly had class.

What would she be like in bed?

He didn’t intend to let too much time elapse before he found out.

He thought of another society woman from his youth, one whom he had met when he was growing cynical but not yet completely hardened. Initially he had thought her pretty, but she hadn’t looked very pretty at all when he had flatly refused to meet her escalating demands—especially when he’d discovered they included a wedding ring in exchange for the supposed benefit of marrying into a higher social bracket. He’d told her that he preferred an honest whore.

Women like her, like Carly, might not openly demand money in return for sex, but what they were looking for was the richest and highest status man they could find—their bodies in exchange for his name.

It was a trade-off that nauseated him, as did those who participated in it.

He had no illusions about women or sex. He had lived too long and seen too much for that. His wealth could buy him any woman he wanted, and that included Carly. She had made that plain enough already, with the way she had looked at his mouth.

She hadn’t even tried to be subtle about it! She had stared openly and brazenly at him. If they hadn’t been in her office it would have been an open invitation to him to push her tee shirt out of the way and free her breasts to spill into his hands so that he could accept their flaunting invitation.

It had told him that he could have yanked down her jeans and explored and enjoyed her and she would not have said a single word in denial.

And then in the morning she would no doubt expect to receive her payment—a piece of jewellery, a telephone call from an exclusive shop inviting her to choose herself something expensive…

That was the way things were done in her world.

He was wasting too much time on her, he warned himself. His primary reason for what he was doing was the potential acquisition of Prêt a Party, not the inevitable sexual acquisition of Carly Carlisle who, although she did not know it yet, would be one of the first in line to lose her job.

Carly frowned as the large, elegant steel-grey car drew up alongside her.

A limo, Lucy had said, and she had pictured a huge, shiny black ostentatious vehicle, not something so supremely understated. But the rear door was opening and Ricardo was getting out.

‘Is this all your luggage?’

She gaped at him as he reached for her case, and then looked uncertainly towards the chauffeur.

‘Charles is driving. I am perfectly capable of picking up a case,’ Ricardo told her dryly, following her uncertain look.

‘The…my case is heavy,’ she told him, but he ignored her, picked it up and put it in to the boot of the car as if it was as light as a feather pillow.

He was wearing a black tee shirt and a pair of tan-coloured casual trousers, and the muscles in his arms were hardening as he lifted her case. He looked more like a man who worked outdoors than one who sat at a desk, she acknowledged, unwilling to admit to the response that the sight of him was eliciting from her own body.

After what had happened when she had given her imagination its head, she was now keeping it on a controlling diet of bread and water, and that meant no thinking about the effect Ricardo could have on her! So he had a good enough body to carry off the macho male thing—so what? she told herself dispassionately.

But the sight of his black-clad back, bent over the open boot, suddenly transformed by her rebellious thoughts into a totally naked back bent over her equally naked body, evoked such a powerful sensual image that she felt as though she were transfixed to the spot.

So it was true. You could go weak at the knees, Carly reflected several minutes later as she sat primly straight in the back seat of the powerful car, dizzily aware that her private thoughts were anything but prim. All those enforced deportment classes at school had definitely left her with an automatic ‘sit up straight’ reflex.

She was accomplished, Ricardo admitted to himself. That cool, remote pose she had adopted, that said Pursue me would certainly work with most men. Unfortunately for her, he was not most men. He opened his briefcase and extracted some papers.

As soon as they were free of the city traffic the powerful car picked up speed. Carly was pleased that Ricardo was engrossed in his work, because that left her free to think about hers, instead of having to make polite conversation with him.

Since their clients were using their own yacht as the venue for their party there was no construction work in the shape of marquees on the like for her to oversee. The client’s chef and kitchen staff were being augmented by a chef from the upmarket caterers she had sourced. They were already on the yacht. Menus had been agreed, floral arrangements decided on—she would be meeting with the florists, who had also been flown in from London.

The arrival and deployment of the hostess’s hairdresser, make-up artist, and a dresser from the couture house she favoured were also Carly’s responsibility, plus a hundred or more other small but vitally important arrangements.

She had an inch-thick pile of assorted coloured and coded lists in her briefcase, most of which she had actually memorised.

‘You’re so much better at this than me,’ Lucy had told her ruefully before she left.

Carly had smiled, but she knew that it was true.

Carly shifted her body against the leather upholstery. It was ridiculous that she should be so acutely conscious of Ricardo’s presence in the car with her—and even more ridiculous that she should be so acutely aware of the impact he was having on her physically. So much for the ‘bread and water’ regime, then!

The grand slam of his raw sensuality had sliced through her defences, leaving an alarming trail of female awareness in its wake. Her jeans, normally a comfortable easy fit, suddenly seemed to be uncomfortably tight, clinging to her flesh in a way she could only mentally describe as erotic, as though somehow she were being caressed by the lean, powerful male hands she couldn’t resist looking towards.

She could feel the heat expanding inside her, dangerous little languorous curls of it thrusting against her sensitive flesh. She crossed her legs and then uncrossed them. Her arm accidentally brushed against her own breast and immediately she was aware of the hot pulsing of her nipples.

This was crazy. It felt as though somehow or other an unfamiliar and certainly unwanted very sexual alter ego had been released inside her. And, what was more, it seemed to be attempting to take her over! Or had it always been there and it had simply taken meeting Ricardo Salvatore to make her aware of it, just as her own senses were making her aware of him?

This was definitely crazy.

She realised with relief that they had reached the airport. The car slowed down and turned into an entrance marked ‘Strictly Private’.

A uniformed customs officer stepped out of a nearby office and came over to the car.

‘Your passport, please,’ Ricardo demanded, turning to Carly.

Foolishly, she had not been ready for this formality, and it took her several seconds to open her bag, find her passport, and then hand it over to Ricardo.

As he took it from her, her open bag slipped from her hand, showering the immaculate leather and the car’s floor with coins, her lipstick, her purse and several other small personal items.

Her face hot, she undid her seatbelt and tried to pick them up as fast as she could, but the lipstick rolled away out of her reach with the movement of the car as the driver set it in motion again.

To her dismay the lipstick had rolled along the leather and come to rest right next to Ricardo’s thigh.

She couldn’t retrieve it without touching him.

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.

‘Could I have my lipstick, please? It’s…You’re sitting on it,’ she told Ricardo.

‘What?’

The look he gave her was totally male and uncomprehending.

‘My lipstick!’ Carly repeated. ‘It fell out of my bag and now it’s…’

She looked meaningfully at the leather seat, somehow managing at the same time to keep her gaze off his thigh.

His sigh was definitely exasperated as he reached down and picked up the small slim tube.

It was a relief to release her own pent-up breath as he handed the lipstick to her. She reached out for it, too focused on what she was doing to be aware of a deep pothole in the tarmac, which the driver couldn’t avoid because of an oncoming vehicle.

The violent movement of the car flung her bodily against Ricardo, sending her slamming into his side. The air was driven out of her lungs by the force of the impact, leaving her half lying against him, her face buried in his tee shirt, her hand ignominiously clutching at his arm.

A shock of unfamiliar sensation hit her all at once, like a hail of sharp-pointed arrows. His personal man-scent, the texture of his tee shirt, the hardness of his chest beneath her cheek, the softness of something that she realised must be his body hair. The slow, heavy thud of his heartbeat…

Somewhere inside her head unwanted images were forming. A man—Ricardo—carrying her in his arms, his torso bare, his flesh warm beneath her fingertips. She could feel the heat of her own desire for him. Her fingers tightened automatically on his arm, her nails digging into his flesh.

Abruptly Carly snapped back to reality, and to the humiliating awareness of what she was doing. Her face burning, she released Ricardo’s arm and pulled away for him, refusing to look at him.

As she retreated to her side of the car Ricardo shifted his own position and turned away from her, to conceal the telltale thick ridge of flesh pressing against the fabric of his trousers.

He was beginning to realise that he had badly underestimated the effect Carly was going to have on him. It was one thing for him to acknowledge to himself that he was happy to have sex with her, but it was quite another to have to admit that his desire for her was far more urgent than he had planned for—and, even worse, that it was threatening to overwhelm his self-control. He simply did not want this fierce, thrusting surge of need, this urgent, compelling hunger to take hold of her and fill himself with the scent and the feel of her; the taste of her, to fill her with himself and to…

The ache in his body was intensifying instead of fading, and he had to resort to the subterfuge of opening his newspaper and busying himself re-reading it in order to conceal that fact.

‘Thank you, Charles.’

Carly had no time to do more than smile her own gratitude at Ricardo’s chauffeur before a smartly uniformed flight steward was escorting her up the steps to the waiting private jet, whilst Ricardo paused to speak with its captain—his captain, Carly realised.

She had often heard Lucy marvelling about the luxury of travelling in the private jets owned by some of their more wealthy clients, but this would be the first time she had experienced it for herself.

The interior of the jet had more resemblance to a modern apartment than to any aeroplane Carly had flown in. A colour scheme of off-white and cool grey set off the black leather upholstery of the sofas, and the steward discreetly indicated to her that both a bedroom and a separate shower room lay to the rear of the sitting area.

‘The galley is behind the cockpit, and there is another lavatory there as well—’ He broke off from his explanations, to say formally, ‘Good morning, sir.’

Carly turned round to see Ricardo standing in the open doorway.

‘Morning, Eddie. How are Sally and the new baby?’

There was a genuine warmth in his voice that touched a painful nerve within Carly’s heart.

‘They’re both fine. Sally was over the moon that you flew her folks here for the birth. She was resigned to them not being able to be there.’

Ricardo shrugged, and changed the subject. ‘Phil says that we’re going to have a good flight, both to Nice and on to New York.’ He turned to Carly. ‘I’ve got some work I need to attend to, but feel free to ask Eddie for anything you need.’

‘If you would like to sit down here, madam, until we’ve taken off?’ Eddie suggested politely to her, indicating a space on one of the sofas.

Obediently, Carly went and sat down.

‘Perhaps I could get you a glass of champagne?’ the steward said, once he had shown Carly how to use her seatbelt, and explained to her how to access the power and telephone lines for her laptop should she wish to use it. ‘We’ve got a very nice Cristal.’

Carly couldn’t help it. She gave a small shudder. ‘Water will be fine,’ she told him emphatically.

From his own seat at a desk on the other side of the cabin, Ricardo frowned. Why had she refused champagne? She certainly hadn’t been having any qualms about drinking it the night he had seen her in CoralPink.

Thanking Eddie for her water, Carly unzipped her own laptop. Ricardo wasn’t the only one who had work to do. Five minutes later, as the jet taxied down the runway, Carly was deeply engrossed in reading her e-mails—but not so deeply that she wasn’t acutely aware of Ricardo’s presence.

She couldn’t forget the disturbing effect those fleeting seconds of physical intimacy in the car had had on her. Her stomach muscles clenched immediately, as though in rejection of the response she had felt, her mouth going dry.

Eddie had said the jet had a fully equipped bedroom…The ache inside her sharpened and tightened and then started to spread.

The jet lifted off the tarmac and Carly held her breath, willing herself not to think about Ricardo.

‘I’d like to ask you a few questions about certain aspects of the way Prêt a Party’s business works.’

Dutifully Carly put aside the list she was studying. Ricardo was, after all, a potential client.