Читать книгу The Jet-Set Seduction - Sandra Field - Страница 7

THE Genoese Bar on a cool damp evening in November should have been a welcome destination. Slade had walked from his hotel, with its magnificent view of the Port of Monaco and the choppy Mediterranean, past the obsessively groomed gardens of the casino to a curving side street near the water where a discreetly lit sign announced the Genoese. It was exactly seven-thirty.

The bar, he saw with a sinking heart, was underground, down a flight of narrow, winding stairs.

His nightmare, once again.

He was thirty-five years old now. Not eleven. He should be able to walk down a flight of stairs and spend six hours in a windowless room without hyperventilating.

Yeah, right.

Clea, he was almost sure, wouldn’t arrive until Friday. If this was some sort of test, why would she meet him any sooner? Unless she thought he wouldn’t bother turning up until Friday, and in consequence came tonight.

It was useless trying to second-guess her. Taking a deep breath of the salt-laden air, Slade walked slowly down the stairs and pushed open the heavy, black-painted door.

The noise hit him like a blow. Rap, played as loud as the sound equipment could handle it. He’d never been a fan of rap.

He let the door shut behind him, his heart thudding in his chest. The room was vast, tables all around its circumference, a small dance floor in the center under flickering strobes that instantly disoriented him. A big room, he thought crazily. Not cupboard-size, like the one he’d never been able to forget.

Come on, buddy, you can do this.

Leaning against the wall, he let his gaze travel from face to face, wishing with all his heart that Clea’s would be among them. It was a young crowd, in expensive leather and designer jeans, the women’s silky hair gleaming like shampoo ads, the energy level frenetic.

Clea was nowhere to be seen.

Slade claimed an empty table near the door, where he could see anyone who entered or left. Shucking off his trench coat, he sat down and ordered a bottle of Merlot and a dish of nuts. Automatically he located the Exit signs, wishing the ceiling didn’t feel so low, wishing they’d turn off the strobe lights. Wishing that he’d never met Clea Chardin.

His hormones were ruling his life, he thought savagely. How he resented the hold she had on him, with her slender body and exquisite face! But no matter how fiercely he’d fought the strength of that hold, he couldn’t dislodge it. God knows he’d tried hard enough the last three weeks.

She, in all fairness, had no idea how arduous a test she’d devised for him by making him wait in an underground bar.

As the array of bottles at the mirrored bar splintered and flashed in the strobes, dancers writhed to the primitive, undoubtedly hostile music. The little underground room had been quiet. Dead quiet. Frighteningly, maddeningly quiet.

All these years later, Slade still did his best never to think about the kidnapping that had so altered his life. At age eleven, he’d been snatched from the sidewalk near his school, drugged and kept in darkness in a small room below the ground, for a total of fifteen days and fourteen nights.

The kidnappers, he’d learned later, had been demanding ransom. The FBI, working with admirable flair and efficiency, had tracked down the hiding place, taken the kidnappers into custody and rescued him. Apart from the drugs, aimed at keeping him quiet and administered from a syringe by a masked man who never spoke to him, he was unharmed.

He’d never forgotten his mother’s silent tears when she’d been brought face-to-face with him at the police station, or the deeply carved lines in his father’s face.

The lasting aftereffect had been a phobia for dark, underground spaces. Right now, to his mortification, his palms were damp, his throat tight and his heart bouncing around in his chest. Just like when he was eleven.

A woman in a black leather jerkin and miniskirt sidled up to his table. Pouting her red lips, she said over the thud of the bass, “Want to dance?”

So she’d picked him out as an American. “No, thanks,” he said.

She leaned forward, presenting him with an impressive cleavage. “You didn’t come here to be alone.”

“I’m waiting for someone,” he said in a clipped voice. “I’d prefer to do that alone. Sorry.”

Smoothing the leather over her hips, she shrugged. “Change your mind, I’m over by the bar.”

By 2:00 a.m., when the bouncer closed the bar, Slade had been propositioned six times, felt permanently deafened and was heartily tired of Merlot and peanuts. His claustrophobia had not noticeably abated.

He climbed the stairs and emerged onto the sidewalk. Thrusting his hands in his pockets, he strode east along the waterfront, where buildings crowded down the hillside to a pale curve of sand. Useless to think of sleeping until he’d walked off those agonizingly long hours.

He should leave Monaco. Forget this whole ridiculous venture. Was any woman worth two more evenings in the Genoese Bar? After all, what did he really know about Clea? Sure, she’d given her word. But was it worth anything? What if she didn’t show up? What if she’d spent the evening in Milan with one of the many men she’d mentioned, laughing to herself at the thought of Slade sitting in a crowded bar on the Riviera in November?

She was making a fool of him. He hated that as much as he hated being confronted by the demons of his past.

And how could he lust after a woman whose sexual standards, to put it mildly, were by no means exacting? Promiscuous, he thought heavily, and knew it was a word he’d been repressing for the last three weeks.

She looked so angelic, yet she’d slept with men the length and breadth of Europe. The clippings and her own admission proved it.

He should fly back to New York in the morning and forget the redhead with the vivid eyes, dancing intelligence and lax morals. Hadn’t she done her best from the beginning to discourage him? The Genoese Bar was the final touch. After three nights of his life wasted in a futile vigil, he wouldn’t be in any hurry to search her out.

Which meant, of course, that she’d won.

At three-thirty Slade’s head hit the pillow; at five-forty-two he was jerked awake from a nightmare of a syringe impaling him to a dirty mattress; and at eight that evening, he was again descending the stairs of the Genoese Bar. Clea didn’t show up that night, either. Nor had she appeared by one-thirty the following night.

By Friday Slade’s vigil in the bar had become as much a test of his courage and endurance as anything to do with Clea. He was intent on proving to himself that he could stick it out for one more night; that the low ceiling and dark corners weren’t able to drive him up the stairs in defeat.

That night he was drinking Cabernet Sauvignon. He had a headache, he was sleep-deprived, he was in a foul mood. He sure didn’t feel the slightest bit romantic.

At one-forty, Clea walked down the stairs into the bar.

Slade eased well back into the shadows as she stood on the stairs looking around, her red hair in its usual wild swirl. Her jade-green evening suit boasted a silk camisole that clung to her breasts. He fought down a jolt of lust that infuriated him.

Be damned if he was going to fall at her feet in abject gratitude because she’d finally shown up.

From his stance against the wall he watched her search the room from end to end, checking out the men at the bar, the dancers, the seated, noisy crowd. On her face settled a look compounded of satisfaction, as though she’d proved her point, along with a sharp, and very real, regret.

The regret interested him rather more than he cared for.

Clea took the last of the stairs into the bar and wormed her way across the dance floor, her eyes darting this way and that. She couldn’t see Slade anywhere. So he’d failed The Test. Given up. If indeed, he’d ever been here at all.

I’ll wait, he’d said. But he’d lied.

A cold lump had settled in her chest. Hadn’t she believed him when he’d said he’d wait for her? So, once again, her low opinion of the male of the species had been confirmed, rather more painfully than usual. She straightened her shoulders and tried to relax the tension in her jaw; when she reached the bar she ordered a glass of white wine and gave the room one more sweep.

Two men and a woman were edging toward her, old friends from Cannes; she hugged each of them, tossed back her wine and, with a defiant lift of her chin, walked out onto the dance floor with the taller of the two men.

Slade, watching, saw how the man’s arm encompassed her waist, how his fingers were splayed over her hip. His anger rose another notch. Playing the field…her specialty.

He put his glass down on the table and strode across the room. Tapping the man on the shoulder, he said loudly, over the pounding rhythms of drums and bass guitars, “She’s mine. Get lost.”

Clea gave a shocked gasp. “Slade!”

“Did you think I wouldn’t be here?” he said with disdain. “Tell your friend to vamoose. If he values living.”

“I’ll talk to you later, Stefan,” she said, her heartbeat competing with the drums. “It’s okay, I know Slade.”

“On, no, you don’t,” Slade said, standing so close to her he could see a tiny fleck of mascara on her lower eyelid. “If you knew me, we wouldn’t have had to indulge in this stupid charade.”

“You agreed to it.”

“You know what I want to do right now? Throw you over my shoulder, haul you out of this god-awful bar and carry you to the nearest bed.”

He looked entirely capable of doing so. She said faintly, “Bouncers don’t like it when you do things like that.”

“It’d make me feel a whole lot better.”

“I suggest we have a drink, instead.”

“Scared of me, Clea?”

“Of a six foot two, one hundred ninety pound, extremely angry male? Why would I be scared?”

“I like you,” he said.

She blinked. “Five seconds ago you looked as though you wanted to throttle me.”

“Five minutes ago you looked extremely disappointed when you thought I wasn’t here.”

“You exaggerate!”

“I don’t think so. Let’s dance, Clea.”

“Dance? With you? No way.”

“I’ve sat in this bar for three long nights,” he grated. “I’ve been propositioned, I’ve drunk inferior wine and I’ve been bored out of my skull. The least you can do is dance with me.”

He’d waited for her. He’d passed The Test. Now what was she supposed to do? “You asked for it,” she said recklessly.

The floor was crowded and the music raucous. Her eyes blazing with an emotion Slade couldn’t possibly have named, Clea raised her arms above her head and threw back her mane of hair as movement rippled down her body. Lust stabbed his loins, hot and imperative. Holding her gaze with his, he matched her, move for move, and deliberately refrained from laying as much as a finger on her.

He didn’t need to. Pagan as an ancient goddess, hips swaying, nipples thrusting against the thin silk of her camisole, Clea danced. Danced for him alone. Danced as though they were alone. Danced until he thought he might die of unfulfilled desire.

The music ended abruptly. Into the ringing silence, the barkeeper said, “Closing time, ladies and gentlemen.”

Clea bit her lip, her breasts heaving. “You did it again,” she whispered. “Made me forget who I am.”

Slade dropped his hands to her shoulders and kissed her full on the mouth. “Good,” he said. Dancing with her had also, for the space of four or five minutes, blanked out the fact that he was underground in a dark room.

Quite a woman, this Clea Chardin.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “I need some fresh air.”

So did he. Slade took her firmly by the hand and led the way up the narrow stairs.

Outside, under a star-spattered sky, Clea took a long, steadying breath, trying to forget how wantonly she’d swayed and writhed on the dance floor. “I’m hungry,” she said in faint surprise. “I forgot to eat dinner.”

He’d been gulping air obsessively, hoping his enormous relief at being in the open air wouldn’t show. But Clea said, puzzled, “What’s the matter? Are you all right?”

He spoke the literal truth. “I spent far too long cooped up in that bar—not sure I’ve got any eardrums left.” Tucking her hand in the crook of his elbow, he added, “Food—that’ll help.”

He set off at a killing pace along the brick sidewalk, which was lit by lamps atop curving iron posts. Distantly he could hear the soft shush of waves against the breakwater. A breeze rustled the tall cypresses, while palm fronds rattled and chattered edgily. Clea said breathlessly, “I said I was hungry, not starving. You could slow down.”

“Sorry,” he said, and moderated his pace. “How do you know Stefan?”

“I met him in Nice last year. He designs yachts for the very, very rich.”

“Have you slept with him?”

“No.”

“Do you own a yacht?”

She grinned. “I get seasick on a sheltered lagoon.”

“But if you didn’t, you could afford one of Stefan’s yachts.”

“My grandfather left me the bulk of his fortune. Payton Steel, have you heard of it?”

“Very, very rich,” Slade said, tucking the name away in his mind. So her parents must be dead: a loss contributing to what he was beginning to suspect was a deep, underlying loneliness. Or was he way out to lunch? “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”