Читать книгу Sharon Kendrick Collection - Шэрон Кендрик, Sharon Kendrick - Страница 11

CHAPTER THREE

‘SO WHAT are you going to wear for this date of the century?’ Mamie yelled.

Lola made an ugly face at herself in the mirror. ‘That’s the trouble—I don’t know!’ She pulled the belt of her towelling robe even tighter and walked out of the bathroom into the rather luxurious room which Atalanta Airlines had assigned to her. Situated slap bang in the middle of the city centre, the New Rome Hotel commanded a magnificent view over the ancient capital.

Lola and Mamie had checked in just over an hour ago, and now Marnie was sitting on Lola’s bed, drinking a very large gin and tonic and ploughing through the bowl of courtesy nuts with the dedicated air of an animal preparing for hibernation.

She looked up as Lola strolled into the bedroom, and winced. ‘Haven’t you overdone the scent a bit?’

Lola, who had used enough bath oil to fill the hotel swimming pool, wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh, it’ll fade,’ she said confidently.

Mamie shook her head as Lola began to rub vigorously at her hair with a towel. ‘And I can’t believe you washed your hair. You know how thick it is—you’ll never get it dry in time!’

‘Gee, thanks! You’re supposed to be here to encourage me, not to add to my nerves!’ said Lola. She pulled on a pair of white cotton knickers, turning to look in another mirror and automatically sucking her stomach in as she did so. Still podgy, she thought in despair. ‘Should I wear my scarlet dress, do you think? Or the black? Which makes me look thinner?’

Mamie raised her eyes heavenwards. ‘Do you want to fall into bed with him in the first ten minutes?’

‘Of course I don’t!’

Mamie shrugged. ‘There’s no need to look so outraged.’

‘Oh, isn’t there?’ Lola glared at her friend indignantly. ‘Do you think I always hop into bed with men on the first date?’

Mamie smiled. ‘Of course I don’t! But then you don’t go out on dates with men who look like Geraint Howell-Williams very often.’

‘And what’s so special about Geraint Howell-Williams?’ demanded Lola hotly. ‘He just happens to be richer and better-looking than most men, that’s all.’

‘No!’ Marnie shook her head with all the wisdom of her two years’ seniority over Lola. ‘That’s not all. It’s much more than that—and you’ve got to be careful, Lola!’

‘Careful?’

Marnie nodded. ‘How can I put it? I know! If all men are tadpoles—’

‘I like the comparison!’ quipped Lola immediately.

Marnie silenced her with a look. ‘Then Geraint Howell-Williams is the killer shark!’ she finished dramatically. ‘Dangerous. Experienced. Downright gorgeous. Irresistible. Do you see what I mean, Lola?’

‘I wasn’t aware that sharks were gorgeous and irresistible,’ joked Lola. ‘Perhaps I should take up marine science!’

‘Stop it—I’m serious! I don’t trust him! He’s too hunky for his own good!’

‘I asked for advice on my choice of gown, not a character assassination of my escort,’ answered Lola airily.

‘All right—I’ll give you my advice! Don’t wear the black or the scarlet—’

‘But—’

‘Wear nothing but sackcloth—and if you don’t have sackcloth then reach for the dullest, most uninspiring outfit in your suitcase. Whatever you would choose to wear to tea with your most shockable maiden aunt, add an all-enveloping cardigan to it! Put on thick stockings and flat shoes for good measure. Oh, and don’t wear any make-up! That way Geraint Howell-Williams will not look at you with lust in his eyes, and you will not be tempted into gaining carnal knowledge of him!’

‘Thanks for nothing!’ groaned Lola as she flicked through the contents of her wardrobe. ‘I don’t want to look as though I’m trying too hard—but then again I do want to look my best. A woman has her pride to think about,’ she defended herself staunchly as she saw Marnie’s eyes narrow suspiciously.

In the end, she simply wore her hair loose to give it a chance to dry properly, and chose a trouser suit in butter-cream silk, with wide pyjama-style trousers which fastened tightly at her ankles, and a jacket fashioned like a frock-coat.

Like most of her silk clothes, she had had it made up for her on a trip to Hong Kong, but she had only worn it once before, for the simple reason that it attracted dirt like a seven-year-old schoolboy!

She did a twirl in the centre of the room. ‘What do you think?’

Marnie was uncharacteristically silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘You look stunning, Lola,’ and added in a worried voice, ‘You will be careful, won’t you?’

‘Of course I’ll be careful! Stop sounding as though we’re bit-players in a spy movie!’

‘Where’s he taking you?’

Lola tried and failed to keep the glee out of her voice. ‘The Mimosa.’

Marnie scowled. ‘I don’t want to be impressed—but I am! You lucky, lucky thing—I’ve always wanted to eat there but it costs more than a year’s salary! And Rob says that even if he was loaded he wouldn’t spend that kind of money on a meal, on principle. What time is he collecting you?’

Lola glanced down at the watch which gleamed discreetly on her wrist. ‘Oh, my goodness!’ she squeaked. ‘Right now!’

Marnie held her hand up authoritatively. ‘Then let him wait! It would do a man like that good to be kept waiting!’ she added darkly.

So Lola made herself wait for five minutes which seemed to tick away like five hours before she set off downstairs to find him. He was easily located in the hotel lobby and her eyes were drawn instantly to his dark, elegant body.

He was lounging in one of the squashy leather sofas with his long legs stretched out in front of him, his head resting back on his hands so that those narrowed slate-grey eyes missed nothing.

He saw her immediately and stood up with a kind of unconscious animal grace which had more than one female head swivelling eagerly in his direction.

He was wearing an unstructured suit in a won-derful shade of pale grey, and the loose-fitting cut of the jacket and trousers was somehow the sexiest thing that Lola had ever seen.

Geraint’s appeal was all subtlety and understatement, she realised, as opposed to the glaringly obvious. She could certainly never imagine him in skin-tight jeans. Well, on second thoughts perhaps she could! Only too well. . .

His expression was difficult to define as he followed her movements through the foyer, but he was frowning slightly, as though something about her puzzled him. But when Lola gave him a questioning look the watchfulness was replaced by a bland, social smile of greeting.

‘You look quite—exotic,’ he commented slowly.

‘D-do I?’ Even as she was speaking the words, Lola was shuddering inwardly at how absolutely wet she sounded. And hadn’t he sounded rather doubtful about her outfit? Had exotic been the effect she had been searching for?

He ran a finger slowly over one silken butter-cream cuff and just that one innocuous little touch made Lola shiver like a cat that had been left out in the rain all night.

‘I had it made in Hong Kong,’ she added rather breathlessly, more to fill in the rather awkward silence which had fallen than because she seriously thought he might be interested in her dressmaking tips!

He gave a lazy smile. ‘Really?’

Lola swallowed. Was he going to persist in making her feel uncomfortable all evening with his sardonic comments? More importantly, was she going to let him?

‘Why did you ask me to have dinner with you tonight, Geraint?’ she demanded.

‘Let’s discuss it in the taxi, shall we?’ he said, putting his hand firmly underneath her elbow and guiding her out of the door—with Lola acutely and embarrassingly aware of all the incredulous looks she was getting from the other women.

He must have felt her stiffen as the plate-glass doors closed behind them, for he looked down at her. ‘What is it?’ he demanded quietly. ‘What’s the matter?’

Lola tried to make a joke of it—for he must have noticed the reactions of the people in the foyer, too—but she knew that her voice only ended up sounding wistful. ‘All those beautiful women in there—they’re wondering what on earth you’re doing with someone who looks like me!’

He gave her a thoughtful glance as he opened the door of the taxi which had materialised as if by magic, and helped her inside.

‘Beautiful?’ he echoed wryly, then shook his dark head. ‘I don’t find stick-like bodies coupled with all-revealing clothes in the least bit beautiful. Whereas that silk suit you’re wearing. . .’

His eyes roved almost reluctantly over her, observing how the butter-cream silk clung faintly to every undulation of her body. ‘It hints rather than broadcasts, tantalises rather than emblazons,’ he murmured. ‘I find that infinitely more attractive than the kind of dress which threatens the wearer with being hauled up on an indecency charge.’

‘Oh,’ said Lola rather indistinctly, feeling ridiculously cheered by his obvious approval.

She was then rather nonplussed to see him lean forward and start speaking to the driver in rapid Italian. ‘You’re fluent!’ she observed in surprise.

He gave a half-smile. ‘You find that so remarkable?’

‘Yes, I do. Most Englishmen—’

‘Ah! But I’m not English, Lola—I’m Welsh.’

‘Oh, I see.’ So that explained the faint, almost musical lilt which made the deep voice so distinctive. And the tar-black tousled hair—its wildness only contained by the superb way he had had it cut.

She shot a covert glance at his impressive frame, at the broad shoulders and the rock-hard muscle of his thighs, visualising him on a ploughed-up field, blocking the other players’ every attempt to pass him. ‘And d-did you play rugby?’ she managed as she made a feeble attempt to squash the lustful vision of Geraint in a pair of mud-spattered shorts.

‘So you’re stereotyping me now, are you?’ he mocked her softly. “The man is Welsh, therefore he must play rugby and sing in an all-male choir! Right?’

‘No! I’m not stereotyping you!’ she protested, but she saw the hint of dark humour in his eyes and shrugged helplessly. ‘I’m only trying to be pleasant!’

‘Pleasant is fine,’ he teased. ‘But a little dull, surely, Lola?’

Lola sighed. If only he didn’t have the ability to make her tremble just by the seductive way he pronounced her name! ‘I don’t see how we can have a halfway decent evening if you block my every attempt at conversation with some smart remark like that!’ she objected.

‘You don’t have to make conversation with me, you know, sweetheart,’ he told her with an air of lazy containment.

‘Really?’ she enquired archly. ‘Then what else do you propose I do? And please don’t come out with something crass and obvious!’

He gave a low laugh. ‘I have no intention of being either of those.’

‘Good.’ She looked at him questioningly, her heart thumping very loudly in her ears.

He smiled. ‘Well, I rather like the way you look at me, when you’re trying your best not to. So why don’t you carry on gazing at me adoringly for now and we can save the life-stories for during dinner?’

Lola was outraged. What arrogance! Carry on gazing at him, indeed! And adoringly, too! Had she been? Oh, if only she had the strength of character to force him to turn the cab round and take her straight back to the hotel where she could spend the evening with Marnie.

Except that by now Marnie would have decamped with the rest of the crew to one of Rome’s noisiest discos and Lola would either have to eat a solitary meal in the hotel dining room or have something delivered up to her room.

And she didn’t want to. She wanted to be here. And with him. That was the trouble.

Surreptitiously sliding along the seat as far away from him as possible, Lola stared fixedly out of the window at the passing city with the sinking realisation that it didn’t seem to matter what kind of outrageous statements he came out with. Or how much he put her back up. Because she wanted him with all the fierce intensity of a woman who had just discovered desire for the first time in her life.

And because it hadn’t happened until she had reached the comparatively ripe old age of twenty-five it seemed to have hit her with the most overwhelming force.

She found herself at the mercy of new and rather frightening feelings, found that she wanted to do all those things she had previously thought were the province of the emotionally unstable—to tremble, and to weep, to reach out and touch him. . .

And didn’t all those things sound suspiciously like the symptoms of love?

She gave her head a tiny shake of denial—you simply did not fall in love with people you hardly knew!

‘Stop sulking,’ he urged softly.

‘I am not sulking. I’m enjoying the view.’

The Mimosa was easily recognisable with its hundreds of tiny white lights threaded into the still bare branches of the trees outside. Lola spotted people queuing around the block in an attempt to secure a table.

‘We’re here!’ she exclaimed, inadvertently tugging the sleeve of Geraint’s jacket in her excitement. ‘And just look at all the fairy lights—it’s absolutely beautiful!’

Her enthusiasm produced a look from Geraint which was half-indulgent and half-perplexed, as if he wasn’t used to such exuberant behaviour. But he said nothing before they were led through the restaurant and seated at what was, quite simply, the best table in the room.

‘So how did you manage to swing this?’ Lola asked as she broke a bread stick in half and crunched on it.

‘What? A date with you?’

‘The table,’ she told him.

‘Oh, that bit wasn’t difficult. Certainly not as difficult as securing the date.’

‘No?’ She studied him in disbelief. ‘That’s why all those people outside are virtually trying to break the door down to get in, is it?’

He shrugged. ‘I speak Italian. I do a lot of business here. I adore the country—the food, the wine and the culture. Given all those things, finding a table in a good restaurant doesn’t pose much of a problem.’

He made it sound as easy as ABC! Lola finished chomping on her bread stick and picked up another, to find him looking at her with reluctant approval. He obviously did like women who enjoyed their food, she thought in amazement, but that did not mean that she had to go over the top and completely pig out!

She put the bread stick carefully back down in front of her. ‘I don’t want to spoil my appetite,’ she explained.

‘Maybe we’d better order?’ he suggested with a smile, and he must have elevated an eyebrow or moved a broad shoulder or something, Lola decided, since the waiter appeared as if on cue.

The next couple of minutes were spent discussing the wine list and the recommended dishes and Lola tried to appear interested in her choices, but she might as well have ordered bread and sawdust—for the normal pleasure she took in anticipating her meal had been totally eclipsed by Geraint’s presence.

She felt as gauche as a teenager out on a first date, which was absolutely ridiculous! She had enjoyed lots of dates, and what she had thought was going to be a fairly heavy love-affair with a pilot, not long after she had started at Atalanta Airlines. But she had been far too young to cope with a smooth operator who seemed to be out of the country more often than he was in it.

The memory of that relationship still had the power to make her ask herself incredulously how she could have been such a fool.

The affair had ended before it had even begun—very painfully—with Lola’s shocked discovery that the pilot she had been planning to spend a romantic weekend with already had a fiancée tucked away.

Lola had had her fingers badly burned by the experience. She would never forget the misery she had experienced afterwards—because of his callous deceit more than anything else. And it had managed to put her off serious involvement, though that had been easy to avoid—there hadn’t been anyone else she had remotely fancied enough to contemplate plunging headlong into an affair with them.

Until now.

‘You promised me your life-story,’ she said hastily, and was slightly nonplussed by his reaction.

His shoulders had tensed as if he was suddenly under stress. ‘Did I?’ he queried coolly.

Lola sensed his reluctance, and wondered what had caused it. ‘You know you did!’

His expression was guarded. ‘And what if I told you that I don’t particularly care for talking about myself?’ he questioned.

‘I would say that either you’re repressed or you’ve something to hide!’

‘Touché!’ he laughed. ‘What would you like to know?’

Lola sat back in her seat. ‘Oh, I’m sure that an intelligent man like yourself doesn’t need any help from me,’ she told him sweetly.

His grey eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Are you teasing me again, Lola Hennessy?’

‘Why?’ she laughed, enjoying herself hugely. ‘Can’t you take it?’

‘Oh, I can take anything you care to throw at me,’ he challenged in a sultry murmur. ‘Anything at all.’

The atmosphere began to crackle with an eroticism which was almost tangible, and Lola found herself unable to look him in the eye. She began fiddling unnecessarily with the thick linen napkin on her lap, and was indescribably pleased when she decided to let his mocking invitation go unanswered and started to speak.

‘I come from Wales,’ he told her, and his musical accent deepened as he went on to describe the country of his birth. ‘Beautiful West Wales—which is wild and dark and thoroughly magnificent!’

Yes, thought Lola at once. Wild and dark and magnificent—just like you. . .

He looked at her keenly. ‘I’m afraid that it’s the classic, corny tale of rags to riches—sure you’re ready for it?’

Beneath the flippant tone and the throw-away statement Lola was convinced that she detected a chink in his steely armour and she found herself intrigued by this apparent streak of vulnerability. For surely it added an extra dimension to the man’s character, rather than detracting from it?

‘Quite ready,’ she told him truthfully, and something in her quiet, almost respectful tone made him grow still for a moment.

‘My father was a coal-miner,’ he began, and his grey eyes darkened with pain. ‘But he suffered a lot of ill health when he was still quite young—along with many others, of course.’ He ran a hand distractedly through his thick, tar-black hair. ‘When I was eight he was finally laid off and given an invalidity pension.’ His voice grew harsh. ‘But it wasn’t enough to feed a family of sparrows—let alone me and Mam and my sister, Catrin.’

He gazed down at the small centrepiece on the table, a glass bowl filled with yellow mimosa, and his features hardened with the memories. ‘So my mother went out to work—doing the only things which an early marriage had qualified her for. She cleaned houses, took in sewing—did whatever she could do which fitted in around Catrin and me. Mostly she was what I suppose you’d call a drudge.’

He shot her a bleak, almost defiant look and Lola suddenly caught a glimpse of the boy behind the man. The boy who had longed to protect his mother from hard work and penury, but because of his tender years and inexperience had been unable to do either.

Which must have been a heavy cross for a proud man like Geraint Howell-Williams to carry, Lola recognised instinctively. ‘And?’ she prompted gently.

‘Oh, it wore her down eventually. And him. His pride baulked at having to let a woman support him. The two of them used to go without to give us children fresh, wholesome food, and ultimately they suffered for it. When the flu epidemic swept Wales, they both succumbed to it. I was ten,’ he added as an afterthought, as if that fact were somehow unimportant.

Lola was no stranger to childhood pain, and she winced in distress as she tried to imagine his anguish at being left an orphan at such a tender age. ‘Oh, Geraint,’ she said softly. ‘How on earth did you manage?’

She saw the sudden deep lines of pain that scored his face, but they were gone again almost immediately—as though over many years he had schooled his expression so as never to betray them.

‘My sister brought me up,’ he told her, smiling for the first time, but the smile was laced with something bitter which Lola could not, for the life of her, work out. ‘She sacrificed her place at university in order to give me mine, years later—and for that I shall forever be in her debt.’ He turned to catch the eye of a waiter, and in profile his proud, craggy features might have been hewn from stone.

But by the time a bottle of mineral water had been placed on the table he seemed to have recovered his usual self-assurance and a frosty light which glittered in the depths of his grey eyes warned Lola that he would not tolerate her sympathy—however well-intentioned.

‘So you’ve heard all my secrets, Lola,’ he told her silkily. ‘Now I think it’s your turn, don’t you?’

Lola felt squirmingly uncomfortable at the way he was looking at her. Because it was no longer desire that she read in his grey eyes, nor even a benign interest. Instead, there was an air of detachment about him, a sudden air of almost icy curiosity which made Lola’s throat clam up nervously, and it took several mouthfuls of the gin and tonic he had ordered for her before the courage of her convictions returned, and she was able to face him with a resolute air.

‘What do you want to hear?’ she asked quietly.

‘Oh, the usual stuff.’

His voice was so brittle, Lola thought. It was almost as if he had decided that, having confided in her, he now needed to step back, become a cold and untouchable stranger. Was he always so unpredictable? she wondered. ‘How jaded you sound!’ she told him honestly.

‘Do I?’

‘But then I suppose you have women pouring their hearts out to you all the time.’

He gave an odd smile. ‘I’m not giving any secrets away, sweetheart—if that’s what you’re getting at.’

Did that mean he was discreet?

Lola wondered sightly hysterically just how many other women had paraded their upbringing in front of him like this, on request. Had some of them perhaps embellished their early years, in order to impress him—moulded them to a degree, by means of oversight or exaggeration, so as to measure up to what they thought he wanted of them?

Well, not Lola! Hers had been an unremarkable, isolated and often lonely childhood, but she had always refused to sentimentalise it.

‘I spent my early life in a small village called Taverton, in Cornwall,’ she told him starkly. ‘My mother still lives there.’

‘And your father?’

‘He died when I was eleven.’ Lola took a quick gulp of her drink and then regretted it as the tonic fizzed its way uncomfortably down her throat.

‘That’s something we have in common, then,’ he said quietly. His voice sounded strained—as though the fact was a shock to him, and an unwelcome one at that.

‘Yes.’ Lola looked up as once again the understanding flowed between them like a warm current, as it had done last night at the tennis club, and she suddenly realised how easy it would be to fall for him. To really fall for him.

He narrowed his grey eyes consideringly. ‘So you haven’t lived at home for—how long?’

‘Seven years. I’m twenty-five.’ She tried to inject a little enthusiasm into her voice, to act as if this was a gentle getting-to-know-you chat, instead of an interrogation by a master inquisitor—which was how it felt!

He put his glass down on the table and smiled, as if he had resolved to lighten the mood by changing the subject. ‘And have you always wanted to fly?’ he asked, his eyes never leaving her face.

Lola nodded. Flying had been her whole life, really—and her enthusiasm for it had never waned. ‘Always!’ she told him. ‘I had never even been on an aeroplane before—and yet I knew that I wanted to be an air stewardess right from the word go. I got the job with Atalanta at eighteen, and I’ve been with them ever since.’

He leaned back in his chair and watched as the waiter placed a plate of tossed green salad in front of her.

‘So what is life like,’ he asked casually, ‘as an air stewardess?’

Lola plunged her fork into a buttery wedge of avocado and scowled. ‘You don’t have to go through the motions of asking me these questions, you know,’ she told him defensively. ‘I mean, you must have dated stewardesses before—I’d hate to think that I was forcing you to sit through yet another rendition of “what I love about my job”!’

‘Now who’s being the cynic?’ he responded coolly. Some indefinable emotion hardened the gorgeous mouth. ‘I can assure you, Lola, that I have never been forced to do anything in my life.’

No, she couldn’t really imagine anyone having the strength of character to be able to browbeat Geraint Howell-Williams into doing something he didn’t want to!

She started on the predictably delicious wine he had ordered for her and allowed herself the luxury of looking directly into the black-fringed, stormy eyes. ‘Life as a stewardess is terrific,’ she told him. ‘I would recommend it to anyone for all the obvious reasons—namely the opportunity to see the world and meet lots of people.’

‘And in the long term?’

Lola blinked. ‘The long term?’ forty?’

‘Is it a job you can see yourself doing at forty?’

Lola looked at him blankly, trying to imagine herself trundling the drinks trolley up the aisle fifteen years on, and shuddered. ‘Well, no. Not really.’

‘So what do you see yourself doing at forty?’

Lola clammed up. For some reason it would be acutely embarrassing to tell him that at forty she would have hoped to have settled down with some wonderful man she had yet to meet, and be rearing lots of children! ‘I—er—haven’t given it a lot of thought,’ she answered weakly.

He threw her a hard, disbelieving look. ‘Really? Not planning to be safely tucked up in the marital bed by then? Don’t you want to be married, Lola?’

The fact that he had so accurately echoed her thoughts threw Lola completely. ‘Perhaps,’ she admitted proudly, refusing to be cowed by his rather patronising attitude. He was managing to make a desire to settle down and get married sound as bizarre as a wish to fly to the moon in a hot-air balloon! ‘Why not?’

‘Why not indeed?’ he responded faintly. ‘But so far no one has been able to tempt you away from your single, exciting, globe-trotting life?’ he probed.

‘No so far, no.’

‘But I imagine that there must have been some candidates along the way,’ he drawled suggestively.

It was not quite an insult, but it was as near as dammit, and Lola glared at him, her narrowed eyes sparking hot blue fire as she dared him to continue.

‘Candidates for what?’ she questioned slowly.

‘Marriage. Relationships. You must have known a good few men over the years—isn’t that one of the perks of the job?’

Lola put her wineglass down with a thud. ‘Are you trying to offend me, Geraint?’

‘By asking about your men-friends?’ He regarded her levelly, the flame from the flickering candle casting fascinating shadows over the chiselled bones of his face. ‘Now what could be offensive about that?’

She placed her knife and fork neatly on the plate, much of her salad untasted. ‘The implication being that I sleep around?’

He gave her a long, steady look and Lola curled her nails hard into the palms of her hands in a deliberate attempt to distract herself from the power of that gaze.

‘Well, that is what you were implying, isn’t it?’ she demanded.

‘You’re being very defensive,’ he murmured, and poured her some mineral water.

‘So what if I am?’ she retorted, drinking some of the water thirstily. And who wouldn’t be defensive, she thought wryly, when they’d had to cope with as many snide innuendos as she had that evening? ‘Anyway, I’ve talked far too much. Tell me some more about you.’

‘What else could you possibly want to know?’ he drawled.

‘You haven’t even told me what you do for a living!’ she realised aloud. ‘Or how you know the mysterious Dominic Dashwood.’

‘I deal in money,’ he told her curtly, his grey eyes as cold as an arctic sea. ‘Dominic I met during my time at Oxford.’

She remembered the small but significant pause after he had introduced himself at the tennis club. ‘And should I have heard of you?’

‘Not necessarily.’ He shrugged. ‘Only if you happen to read the financial pages—and then I’ve been in New York for the past ten years so it’s unlikely you’d have heard of me anyway. I’ve only just come back.’

‘And what brought you back?’

Another pause. ‘Family business,’ he said finally, his face hardening forbiddingly.

Lola took no notice. ‘So what does someone who deals in money actually do?’ she persisted.

His face grew even colder. ‘I buy and sell,’ he told her tersely. ‘That’s all.’

Lola registered the superb quality of the suit he wore. Clearly buying and selling, as he put it, was very lucrative indeed! ‘You make it sound so simple,’ she said slowly.

There wasn’t a flicker of emotion on his face as he watched her unconscious assessment of him. ‘I prefer not to make it sound anything at all,’ he told her flatly. ‘But you asked the question, as women inevitably do—’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Lola glared at him. ‘You asked me exactly what you wanted; what did I do that was so different?’

‘You homed straight in on the money side of it, didn’t you, sweetheart? Sometimes I really think it would save time if I produced a bank statement for women to peruse at their leisure!’

‘Oh, sor-ry!’ said Lola furiously. ‘I didn’t realise you were so touchy about money!’

‘When you’ve met as many women with dollar signs flashing in their eyes as I have,’ he mused with distaste, ‘then being touchy about it is inevitable.’ He gave a self-deprecating shrug of his shoulders, before he said, ‘Were your parents very rich, Lola?’

The deep, velvet undertone of his voice sent new shivers skating down Lola’s spine, but she could not quite decide whether it was excitement or fear which had caused them. ‘Why do you ask that?’ she queried.

His eyes glittered. ‘Isn’t it rather obvious? Your house on St Fiacre’s for one thing. How did you happen to come by a house like that on your salary?’

‘How do you think I came by it?’ she retaliated as she encountered the oh, so familiar judgemental expression on his face.

‘A man, I suppose?’

Lola met his gaze and read the condemnation there and didn’t care. How dared he judge her without even knowing her? ‘That’s right,’ she said steadily.

‘A rich man?’

She saw the censorious look which soured his expression and decided that she would like to sour it even more! ‘You’ve got it in one!’ She smiled and noticed his knuckles whiten as the bread stick he had picked up was reduced to dust by the inadvertent clenching of that strong fist.

‘A ve-ry rich man,’ she purred deliberately, and saw a muscle begin to work violently in his cheek. ‘Much richer than you, probably. Why, I expect he could buy you out a hundred times over, Geraint!’

He let the bread dust trickle out of his hand into the large, cut-glass ashtray, so that it looked like sand running through an egg-timer. His eyes were full of mocking amusement as they caught her in their cool gaze. ‘I doubt it,’ he contradicted her with soft confidence.

And Lola doubted it too; that was the trouble. She found herself wondering why she hadn’t stormed out of the restaurant, but one look at the lean, autocratic face in front of her reminded her that it was not easy to walk out on someone this gorgeous. She drank more wine in an effort to calm herself.

‘So what was it between you and your generous benefactor?’ he asked eventually. ‘The love-affair to rival all love-affairs?’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ she answered flatly, then sighed, wondering just how much to tell him. The trouble was that there was nothing much to tell—but nobody ever believed her! Lola had grown used to people who didn’t really know her drawing their own tacky conclusions! But for some reason that cold look of disapproval on the face of Geraint Howell-Williams was more than she could bear.

She leaned her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands to look at him earnestly. ‘I don’t really like talking about it,’ she admitted.

‘Oh?’

Lola glared at him. ‘Because nobody believes me, and because people tend to pre-judge me—they all seem to think that I’m some kind of amateur hooker who played for very high stakes—and won! A horrible, critical look comes over their faces—a bit like the expression you’re wearing now!’

‘Am I? Sorry.’ He lifted his shoulders in a gesture of appeal which had something of the little boy about it, and it stabbed at Lola’s soft heart.

‘Of course the other reason I don’t talk about it,’ she explained, her blue eyes glinting with mischief, ‘is because now that I own a prime piece of real estate I’m very wary of would-be fortune hunters.’

‘And do you put me in that category?’ he asked her softly.

She looked at him with a wry expression. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she snorted. ‘Fortune hunters don’t usually come kitted out in handmade Italian suits!’

‘Thank you,’ he said gravely, though Lola thought she detected a reciprocal glitter of humour lurking in the depths of his stormy eyes. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, shall I?’

Lola went pink. ‘If you want.’

‘So why don’t you tell me all about the house?’ he suggested. ‘And let me judge for myself.’

What harm would the truth bring? Lola thought. Anything would be better than him believing that she had been Peter Featherstone’s lover. She began to pleat her napkin with fidgety fingers. ‘About three years ago, I first met Peter Featherstone on a flight to. Brussels—’

‘Did he have a woman with him?’ he demanded quickly.

Lola frowned at the interruption. ‘No.’

He nodded. ‘And so you got chatting—naturally?’

Lola gave him a long-suffering look. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, with sardonic emphasis. ‘We aren’t discouraged from chatting to passengers, you know. Do you have a problem with that, Geraint?’

His face was expressionless. ‘I guess not.’

‘Peter used to travel all over Europe quite regularly, and often I was among the cabin crew. And then one day, while we were chatting, quite by coincidence I discovered that he was on the board of a charity I’m involved with—’

‘Charity?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘You’re involved with a charity?’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ exploded Lola. ‘Now who’s talking stereotypes? What’s the matter, Geraint—don’t I fit into your idea of the kind of person who does things for charity?’ She looked at him, and her mouth twitched. ‘No, on second thoughts don’t answer that!’

‘Which charity?’ He frowned.

‘Dream-makers,’ Lola told him, still gratified by the rather dazed expression which had not left his face since the mention of the word ‘charity’! ‘It’s for very sick children. We find out where they’d most like to go, or who they would most like to meet, and we try and arrange it for them. Peter owned a number of toy shops and factories in the south of England and he was a very generous benefactor.’

‘So what happened?’ he asked carefully. ‘Between you and Peter.’

‘Well, nothing—that’s the odd thing.’

‘No romance?’ he barked.

‘He was years older than me, for heaven’s sake! Over sixty—’

‘But an attractive man, all the same?’

Lola afforded him an icy look. ‘I honestly never thought of him in those terms. I only had dinner with him once or twice, after which for some inexplicable reason, he must have changed his will—leaving me the house. And then he died. Perhaps he knew just how sick he had become. Anyway, he suffered a fatal heart attack about a year ago.’ ‘That’s terrible,’ he said automatically.

It was strange, and Lola couldn’t quite put her finger on why, but she definitely got the feeling that her first impression of him this evening had been the right one, and that Geraint was only going through the motions of responding to what she was saying. It was as though his answers were conditioned, rather than genuine. Almost as if he was asking questions to which he already knew the answers . . . But how could he? They had only met for the first time last night.

‘Yes, it was terrible,’ she agreed slowly, but more out of respect than out of sorrow—she had not known Peter Featherstone either long enough or well enough to feel any deep grief at his passing.

There was silence for a moment while he studied her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually, but there was a strained, indefinable note to his voice. ‘That he died, I mean.’

‘You don’t sound particularly sorry.’

‘Don’t I? Maybe that’s because I’m jealous.’

Jealous?

Lola despised herself for the longing that his flippant little remark produced. Even after all the nasty slurs he had directed at her, too! Would nothing keep her from coming back for more? She put on her most bemused voice. ‘But you barely know me, Geraint. So why on earth would you be jealous?’

He lowered his voice to a sultry whisper. ‘Because I’d like to know what spells you could possibly weave and cast on a sixty-year-old man to make him leave you a house worth a million pounds. You must be pure dynamite in bed, Lola.’

For a moment, she thought that she had not heard him correctly, and then the full horror of his words hit her like a kick in the teeth. Lola slammed her glass down on the table and stared at him.

‘What right,’ she whispered incredulously, ‘what right do you think you have to say a thing like that to me? And after all I’ve said! And after convincing myself that you were the kind of person who could be trusted to hear the whole story! Well, more fool me!’ She leaned across the table, and her eyes spat sapphire fire at him. ‘Do you think that buying a woman dinner gives you carte blanche to make boorish remarks?’ She pushed her chair back and got to her feet. ‘Well? Do you?’ she repeated shrilly.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he asked her calmly.

Lola nearly exploded with rage. ‘I don’t think I’m going anywhere! I am going! Back to my hotel! Where else? Because if you imagine that I would spend another minute in your company after what you’ve just said to me, then you haven’t an ounce of perception in your body!’

‘And if I happen to apologise for my boorish remarks—as you so sweetly put it?’

‘Oh!’ Lola exclaimed exasperatedly, not caring that the diners around them were steadily growing silent as they observed a very un-English display of public passion. ‘Isn’t that just like a man?’

‘It is?’

‘Yes, it damn well is! You think you can come out with all kinds of inconsiderate, brutish comments, and then all you need to do is to bat your eyelashes and mumble “I’m sorry” and suddenly that makes everything better! Well, take it from me, Geraint Howell-Williams—it doesn’t!’

‘Obviously not.’ He gave her a small, tight smile. ‘I can see that I am going to get lots of insight into what motivates male behaviour, if I stick around!’

‘Oh!’

‘And now you have two choices,’ he said challengingly, without giving her a chance to say anything else. ‘You can either sit down and we can start all over again—especially since I have apologised . . .’ He looked up to meet her stony eyes.

‘Or?’

‘You can make a scene in the middle of the restaurant.’ He spoke with the lazy assurance of someone who was certain that, once challenged, Lola would back down.

‘And you think I wouldn’t?’ she queried, hardly noticing the waiter who had removed their salads to deposit two delicious plates of pasta in front of them.

‘I think you’re far too sensible.’

Lola stared at him as if he were completely mad. She leaned across the table again, her hair spilling in mahogany disarray over her pale, silk-covered shoulders. ‘There’s no need to make it sound as if this whole disastrous evening is my fault!’ she declared hotly. ‘You were the one who interrogated and then insulted me and you are the one who is going to have to learn a lesson, Mr Howell-Williams!’

‘From whom?’

‘You’re looking at her!’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes, really!’

He looked amused. ‘And what might that lesson be?’

It was the final straw for Lola. Oh, not the mocking tone of his question nor even the teasing smile which curved the corners of that delectably sensual mouth. It was her response to him that did it. He had been just about as rude as any man could be, and yet still she wanted him to kiss her!

‘It’s a lesson in taking responsibility for your actions,’ Lola told him coolly, and tipped her glass of mineral water into his lap.

He recoiled only momentarily, his reactions razor-sharp as he picked up her thick linen napkin and used it to blot up the liquid.

He gave her a long, thoughtful look as he dabbed at the mark on the unmistakable part of his anatomy and Lola glowered as he said, loudly enough for anyone who happened to speak English to hear, ‘I suppose that you want to do this for me, don’t you, darling? After all, it is your weak spot!’

Someone two tables back must have heard and understood because they gave a raucous laugh and a cheer and Lola blushed with embarrassment.

Geraint smiled at her reaction, and gave a gentle shake of his head as he said, ‘Darling, please don’t sublimate your sexual desires any longer. I give in.’ And he held his palms up in a gesture of surrender as he rose to his feet to tower rather intimidatingly over Lola. ‘I’ll miss the rest of my dinner and let you take me home to bed since that’s what you so obviously want.’

Lola’s fingers twitched. ‘Why, you no-good, conniving—’

‘Oh, dear,’ he interrupted with a dramatic sigh, playing to the crowd like mad. ‘You just can’t wait, can you, sweetheart?’ And in full view of the restaurant he pulled her unprotestingly into his arms.

The crowd went wild as Geraint began to kiss her, but Lola was deaf to the sounds of clapping and cheering and blind to the sight of diners peering unashamedly over at them, their forgotten meals growing cold.

And what had started out, presumably, as Geraint’s attempt to silence her and subdue her and to re-assert his mastery after having the contents of her glass tipped into his lap turned into something quite different.

She tried to hold back at first, keeping her lips pressed tightly together, but just the warmth of his breath was enough to coax them apart. He slowly let his tongue curl into the warm, moist cavern of her mouth and the intimacy of this small gesture made her grow positively weak with need.

She gave a tiny moan of submission, her hands winding themselves luxuriously around his neck as she allowed him to press her even closer, so that she could feel the thundering of his heart against the softness of her breasts.

She could feel the tips of her nipples tingling with the need to have him touch them, could feel the honeyed ache begin to tug deep at the heart of her, and she must have moved her hips restlessly against him in some silent, unconscious plea for she felt him stiffen with tension.

‘Oh, Lola,’ he breathed indistinctly against her mouth. ‘I want you. Dear God, how I want you.’

The bald words ripped into the falsely romantic little saga which Lola had been busy constructing for herself, and she forced herself to tear her lips away from his, pulling herself out of his arms and staring at him in accusation.

‘And you think that’s all it takes?’

He frowned. ‘What?’

‘You know what!’

‘I do?’

‘Yes, you do! Or rather you think you do!’ Lola glared at him. ‘You want to go to bed with me—but you start leaping on me before we’ve even eaten our main course or our pudding! Why, of all the cheap behaviour!’ she stormed, as angry with herself as she was with him. Talk about behaving like a complete walkover!

‘I think we should go and find somewhere quieter to discuss this,’ he murmured, with a swift sideways glance at the rapt diners who were still watching them. ‘Don’t you?’

‘I’ll bet you do! And let me guess where you’re about to suggest! Your bedroom? Or mine?’

He gave her a look of outraged mockery. ‘Do keep your voice down, Lola—I have my reputation to think of!’

The remark was enough to bring her crashing back to her senses. As if the whole room had suddenly shifted into sharp focus, Lola became aware of the silence in the restaurant, of the knowing smirks as people watched them.

She noted the direction of Geraint’s dark gaze as his eyes drifted to then lingered insolently on the swell of her breasts against the thin, butter-coloured silk, and she wondered whether the other diners could see the blatant thrust of her nipples as desire hardened them into painfully sensitive nubs.

She lifted her palms to her flaming cheeks for one agonised and distracted moment, then something of her normal spirit returned and she rounded on him briefly, her eyes spitting angry, cold, sapphire sparks at him.

‘Next time you ask a woman out to dinner,’ she drawled sarcastically, before lifting her hand to summon the maître d’ who had been hovering rather anxiously in the background, but who sprang forward at her command, ‘might I suggest that you consult an etiquette book first? I’m afraid that your manners are really much too brutish for modern tastes, Geraint!’

He looked mildly amused rather than seriously perturbed. ‘You think so?’ he queried softly, and the velvet whisper of his voice made Lola start having second thoughts about walking out on him.

She had to get out of here! And fast!

‘Please find me a taxi immediately!’ she said to the maitre d’ in flawless Italian as she marched with determination towards the door, her chin held high.

‘Sí, signorina,’ breathed the maitre d’, but it was Geraint’s murmured comment behind her which lingered temptingly in her ears.

‘You can run all you like, Lola, because we both know it won’t make any difference in the end. . .’

Lola didn’t answer, just ran out of the restaurant and leapt into the waiting taxi, asking the driver to go quickly to the hotel, which he did as best he could, considering that it was a Saturday evening in one of the busiest cities in the world.

She was still fuming when she reached her room, shaking from all the emotion of rowing with Geraint and then being kissed by him!

And all in public!

Lola groaned as she stripped off her silk suit and carefully hung it up, then cleaned off her make-up and dived into the shower, remembering how she had soaked him. And just where she had soaked him! What must he think of her now?

No worse than she thought of herself, quite honestly, she decided. Her body was racked by an unconscious little shudder as she lathered soap over one of her acutely aching breasts and remembered how understanding he had seemed, as though he was really interested in hearing what she had to say.

Well, more fool her! That so-called understanding had been shallow and superficial—there was only one thing that Geraint was interested in where she was concerned, and she was just going to have to make sure he didn’t get it!

But what if he came to find her? What if she let him into her room and he started exercising that irresistible sorcery of his and she ended up falling into his arms and letting him make love to her—just as Marnie had predicted earlier?

Lola drew herself up short. Was she really so weak and pathetic and untrusting of her own actions that she was afraid to risk being alone with Geraint Howell-Williams in case he kissed all her doubts away? What was she—a woman or a wimp?

Let him come, she thought with determination as she boiled the hotel kettle then added water to an ancient-looking teabag. Let him try his damndest and beat the door down.

And then let him see how strong she could be!

Feeling much more resolute, Lola felt her appetite return and she hunted around in the mini-bar. She had done nothing but pick at her green salad in the restaurant.

But a quick search revealed that Marnie had eaten just about everything there was to eat and Lola couldn’t face waiting for Room Service to arrive. So she was forced to go to bed with her stomach rumbling, having consumed nothing more than a cup of black tea of uncertain age.

Foolishly, and hating herself for doing it, Lola lay awake for ages, listening to the sounds of other hotel guests returning from their evenings out, but Geraint did not come.

Even when her eyelids began to drift down, she was aware that her senses remained half-alert to the possibility of his appearance.

But still he did not come.

Poised on the dreamy edge of sleep, Lola was immensely irritated to realise that her last waking thought was to be one of profound disappointment!