Читать книгу London's Eligible Bachelors - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 13

THE old-fashioned bell on the bookshop door clanged loudly as Sabrina stepped in out of the rain. The shop was empty save for a mild-looking man with glasses who glanced up, his face brightening into a smile of welcome.

‘Sabrina!’ he said in delight. ‘Welcome back!’

Sabrina tried to match his smile, and wondered if it looked as lopsided as it felt. ‘Thanks, Paul,’ she said, and slowly began to unbutton her raincoat, brushing off the drops of rain as she did so. ‘It’s great to be back!’

‘So, how was Venice?’

Sabrina quickly turned to hang the dripping garment on the peg, hoping that he wouldn’t see the sudden defensive set of her shoulders. Or the swift shiver of memory which had her biting her lip in consternation. How could you ache so badly for a man you barely knew? she wondered. A man who had given you his body, but not his honesty?

But by the time she turned round again she had managed to compose her face into the kind of dreamy post-holiday smile which Paul would be expecting.

‘Venice? Oh, it was…’ She swallowed as recollections of mocking grey eyes and a hard, lean body swam unwillingly into her mind. ‘It was lovely!’ she finished lamely.

‘Lovely?’ echoed Paul, pulling a face. ‘This is the place that you wanted to visit more than anywhere else on earth and you describe it as “lovely”? What happened in Venice, Sabrina?’ He laughed. ‘Did you leave your descriptive powers behind?’

‘I’m a bit tired after all the travelling, that’s all. I went to see my aunt in Scotland as soon as I got back.’ She sat down at the desk and began to flick through the morning’s post.

‘Yes.’ Paul frowned. ‘You look a little pale. Like some coffee?’

‘I’d love some. I’ll make it.’

But Paul Bailey shook his head. ‘No, you won’t. I’ll do it. You look bushed. Sit down and I’ll bring you something hot and restorative.’

‘Thanks, Paul,’ said Sabrina gratefully. She dropped a discarded envelope into the bin and looked around.

It was hard to believe that she was back. That everything was just as she’d left it. And nothing had changed.

She bit her lip again and stared down at the pile of manila envelopes on her lap.

Except her. She had changed. In the course of those few days in Venice she had discovered some unbelievable things about herself—things she wasn’t sure she liked at all.

And now she was having to come to terms with the knowledge that she was the kind of woman who was able to have a passionate fling with a man who was little more than a stranger to her. A stranger who had left her heart breaking for him.

Paul came back into the room, carrying a tray with two steaming mugs of coffee, one of which he deposited in front of her, together with a chocolate bar.

She shook her head. ‘You can have the biscuit. I’m not hungry.’

Paul tutted, sounding torn between concern and impatience. ‘I thought that one of the reasons behind you going to Italy was to try and tempt yourself back into eating.’ His voice softened, along with his eyes. ‘Come on—you can’t keep pining for Michael for ever, you know, Sabrina. He wouldn’t want that.’

Sabrina quickly put down the coffee, terrified that she might drop it. For what would the decent and honourable Paul say if he knew how little she had been pining for Michael? She tried to imagine his reaction if she told him the truth about her holiday, and paled at the thought of how his opinion of her would be reversed if only he knew.

‘In fact,’ said Paul gently, ‘I thought you were going to come back from Venice a new woman—wasn’t that the plan?’

She lifted her head. ‘And I haven’t?’ she teased him. ‘Is that what you mean?’

He shrugged awkwardly. ‘Just as slim and even paler—what did you do out there?’

‘What does everyone do in Venice?’ she asked lightly, as she tried not to remember.

Paul grinned. ‘You travelled in a gondola, right?’

Sabrina forced a smile in response. ‘You bet I did!’ And that was how the whole damned thing had started—blinded by a man with night-dark hair and a body which had stirred a deep, primitive response in her. And she couldn’t blame Guy for that. She had set the wheels for that in motion herself. Unless she was planning to blame him for his physical beauty and impact. ‘Anyway, that’s enough about me, Paul. How has business been?’

Paul shrugged. ‘So-so. March is slow, as you know, but it’ll be Easter soon. Interestingly enough, I had a phone call yesterday from a man trying to track down a rare first edition.’

Sabrina sipped her coffee. ‘Oh?’

‘That’s right. You must have served him. He asked for you. I told him you weren’t due in until today.’

‘Really?’ she questioned absently.

Once she had drunk her coffee, Sabrina forced herself to get back into the slow and rhythmical pattern of her working day and found it comforting. She would put the whole affair down to experience and not let it get out of hand in her imagination. After all, lots of people had holiday romances which ended badly.

If only Guy Masters wasn’t such an unforgettable man. If only she hadn’t lost her head. But ‘if onlys’ wouldn’t change a thing—they never did.

Fortunately, work soon took over. Maybe that was because she had become an expert in pushing away disturbing thoughts. She settled down to some long-overdue ordering and soon became immersed in that.

She heard the sound of the shop door clanging open and flourished her signature in the order book before looking up and blinking, her polite smile freezing into disbelief on her lips.

It couldn’t be him, she thought, even as her heart responded with an instinctive surge of excitement. But the delight ebbed away as quickly as it had come, to be replaced by a sudden wariness when she saw the dark, forbidding expression on his face.

It couldn’t be him. But it was.

She was aware of the fact that Paul was working in the storeroom, and composed her face accordingly.

‘Hello, Guy,’ she said, her voice sounding astonishingly calm considering that the thundering of her heart was threatening to deafen her. ‘This is a surprise.’

‘Is it?’ He leaned over the desk and the male scent of him reached out to her senses, sending them spinning out of control as she registered his closeness. ‘So you do remember me?’ he drawled silkily. ‘Wow—that’s a relief.’

Sabrina blushed at the implication behind his insulting question. ‘Of course I remember you! I…We…’

‘Had a night of no-holds-barred sex before you did a runner in the morning?’ he remarked insolently.

‘You were the one who did a runner, and will you keep your voice down?’ she hissed furiously.

‘Or what?’

‘Or I’ll have you thrown out of the shop!’

Guy’s gaze swivelled to where Paul was busy flicking through a card index, and he raised a laconic eyebrow. ‘Oh, really?’

She knew just what he was implying. For a man of similar age to Guy, Paul was no weakling, but comparing him to the angry specimen of manhood who stood just inches away from her would be like comparing a child’s chugchug train to a high-speed express. But even so…

Sabrina raised a stubborn chin to him. No matter what had happened between the two of them, he couldn’t just march in here like some autocratic dictator and start jeopardising her very livelihood. Not when he’d already taken out her heart and smashed it into smithereens…

‘Yes, really!’

He cocked an arrogant eyebrow at her. ‘Going to start talking, then, are we, Sabrina?’

‘I can’t talk to you now,’ she stated levelly. ‘I’m working.’

‘Then when?’

‘I don’t know,’ she prevaricated.

The grey eyes narrowed. ‘What time is your lunch-hour?’

‘I don’t usually take lunch.’

‘House rules?’ he drawled.

‘No, my rules,’ she answered stiffly.

‘Then change the rules, baby,’ he commanded, with a cool arrogance which infuriated her almost as much as it reminded her of his consummate mastery in bed. ‘And change them now.’

Sabrina tried to imagine the worst-case scenario. What if she agreed to meet him for lunch—in a city where she had lived all her life and where she was known? She wasn’t the same woman here as he had met in Venice. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But what if he managed to reduce her to that same mindless being who just cried out for his touch?

And it wasn’t difficult to work out how he might go about that. Surely he would only have to take her in his arms again. Just as he’d done before. She couldn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t succumb, and how could she possibly come back in here after that and spend the afternoon working, as if nothing had happened?

‘I eat my lunch here,’ she told him resolutely.

He rubbed a thoughtful forefinger over his chin, and the movement was accompanied by the unconscious thrust of his hips. ‘Then I guess I’ll just wait here until you’ve finished,’ he told her softly, and then deliberately raised his voice. ‘Perhaps you could point me to the section on erotic literature?’

‘Don’t you dare—’

‘Is something wrong, Sabrina?’ Paul came through from the storeroom, pushing his spectacles to the back of his nose, looking with distrust at the tall, dark man who was towering over his assistant’s desk.

Sabrina sent a look of appeal up at Guy but was met with nothing but an uncompromising glitter. She knew then that he wouldn’t be going anywhere until he got what he’d come for. And that there was no way she could get out of this meeting. She swallowed down her reservations and forced a brittle smile.

‘Guy is a friend…’ She hesitated on the inappropriate word before continuing, seeing the brief, hard twist of his mouth as he registered it, too. ‘A friend of mine. Who has dropped into town unexpectedly—’

Guy fixed Paul with a bland smile. ‘And I was hoping to persuade her to come to lunch with me, but—’

‘Well, we usually eat a sandwich here—but you go to lunch if you want, Sabrina!’ said Paul immediately. ‘It’ll make a nice change.’

Sabrina shook her head and sent Guy a furious look. How dared he be so manipulative in order to get his own way? ‘No, thanks, Paul. I’ve agreed to meet Guy…after work.’ She managed to get the words out—even though they almost choked her in the process.

‘Yes, she has. I can hardly wait.’ Guy gave her another wintry smile, but the hungry look of intent which had darkened his eyes told its own story. ‘I’m taking you out for dinner, Sabrina.’

That was what he thought! ‘Just a drink will be fine,’ she said stiffly. ‘My mother will be expecting me home for supper.’

‘Your mother?’ A frown of disbelief criss-crossed his forehead. Surely she didn’t still live with her mother?

Sabrina read the disappointment in his eyes, and pride and fury warred inside her like a bubbling cauldron. What had he expected? A reenactment of that night in Venice? A half-finished meal and she would fall back into bed with him?

‘Yes,’ she said, with a demure flutter of her eyelashes. ‘I live with my mother.’

‘And what time do you finish?’

‘Five-thirty.’

‘I’ll be here,’ he promised, on a note of silky threat. ‘Waiting.’

‘I’ll look forward to it,’ she responded furiously.

Guy forced himself to give his cool, polite smile as he left the shop. But inside he was raging. Raging.

He should have just forgotten all about her. That was what he had told himself over and over on the plane coming back from Italy. He didn’t know what had possessed him to track her down like some kind of amateur sleuth. Because, yes, there were a few questions he would like a few honest answers to—but common sense had told him just to cut his losses and run. She was trouble, and he couldn’t for the life of him work out why.

He should have just posted her the chain and the ring with a cynical note attached saying, ‘Thanks for the memory.’

And left it at that.

But he had been driven by a compulsion to see her again and to challenge her—a compulsion he was certain was driven by nothing more than the fact that she had given him the best sex of his life.

But maybe that had been because she’d been a stranger, not in spite of that fact. Because she’d had no expectations of him. Or any knowledge. She’d judged him as a man—a well-paid employee, true, but not as a man with megabucks. She had responded to him in the most fundamental way possible, and he to her. It had left him shaken, seeking some kind of explanation which would enable him to let the memory go.

She had been honest and open and giving in his bed—so why the secrets? The hidden chain and a ring which was almost certainly an engagement ring. Why the sudden and dramatic exit—like something out of a bad movie?

Guy walked around Salisbury dodging the showers—but not dodging them accurately enough. So that by the time he arrived at Wells Bookstore at twenty-five minutes past five his thick, ruffled hair was sprinkled with raindrops which glittered like tears amidst the ebony waves.

Sabrina glanced up from her desk and her heart caught in her throat at the sight of his rain-soaked frame. He would, she thought, be all too easy to fall in love with. Women must fall in love with him all the time. Leave me alone, Guy Masters, she urged him silently. Go away and leave me alone.

Paul, who was standing a little space away, followed the troubled direction of her eyes.

‘Your friend is waiting,’ he said carefully. ‘You’d better go.’

Sabrina turned to him, her eyes beseeching him. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

Paul shrugged. ‘It’s not my place to say anything about your private life, Sabrina—but it is very soon after Michael, isn’t it? Just take it easy, that’s all.’

Guilt smote at her with a giant hand. ‘He’s just a friend.’

Paul gave her an awkward smile. ‘Sure he is,’ he said, as though he didn’t quite believe her. ‘Look, it’s none of my business.’

‘No.’ She picked up her coat from the hook. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Paul. Goodnight.’

Through the window Guy watched her shrugging her raincoat on, unable to stop himself from marvelling at the innate grace of her movements. She moved like a dream, he thought—all long, slender limbs and that bright, shiny hair shimmering like sunlight in the grey of the rainy afternoon.

He remembered the way she had straddled him, her pale, naked thighs on either side of his waist, and he felt the first uncomfortable stirrings of desire—until he reminded himself that that was not why he was here.

Sabrina pushed the door open and thought how chilly Guy’s grey eyes looked, and how unsmiling his mouth. She told herself that this would be one short evening to get through and then she need never see him again. He had lied to her, she told herself bitterly.

‘Where would you like to go?’ she questioned.

‘You live here.’ He shrugged. ‘How the hell should I know?’

‘I meant do you just want coffee—or a drink?’

He remembered that night in Venice and the lack of interest with which he’d greeted the wine. Yet tonight he could have willingly sunk a bucketful of liquor. ‘A drink,’ he said abruptly.

Me, too, she thought as she led the way across a cobbled courtyard to one of the city’s oldest pubs.

Inside, a log fire blazed at each end of the bar and the warmth hit her like a blanket.

‘Go and find a seat,’ he instructed tersely. ‘What do you want to drink?’

‘B-brandy.’ She shivered violently, despite the heat of the room.

She found a table far away from the others. She suspected that their conversation wouldn’t be for general consumption. Then she slipped her coat off and sat there waiting for him, her knees glued primly together—like a girl who had just been to deportment lessons.

He brought two large brandies over to the table and sat down opposite her, aware of the way that she shrank back when their knees brushed.

‘Oh? So shy, Sabrina? Don’t like me touching you?’ He held his glass up in a mocking toast. ‘Isn’t that a little like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted? You weren’t so shy in my bed, were you, my beauty?’

She gulped down some brandy, the liquid burning welcome fire down her throat, and her cheeks flushed with indignant heat. ‘Did you bring me here just so you could insult me?’ she demanded. ‘Is that what you’d like, Guy?’

He shook his dark head and sipped his own drink more sparingly, surveying her over the rim of his glass with eyes which gave nothing away. ‘Not at all.’ But he bit back the unexpectedly explicit comment about what he would like.

She put the glass down, feeling slightly dizzy with the impact of the burning liquor on an empty stomach. ‘What, then?’

He dipped his hand deep into his trouser pocket, aware that her eyes instinctively followed the movement. Aware, too, that she certainly wasn’t immune to him either. He watched with fascination as her eyes darkened and he could sense that she was resisting the desire to run her tongue over her lips.

‘Recognise this?’ he asked casually, as he withdrew the thin gold chain with the pretty little ring and dropped it on the polished surface of the table in front of her.

Sabrina’s heart pounded with guilt and shame. ‘Don’t insult me even more by asking me questions like that!’ she said bitterly. ‘Of course I recognise it! It’s mine—you know it’s mine! I left it in your bedroom!’

It lay like an omen before them.

‘Then why hide it from me?’

She opened her mouth to deny it, but could not. He knew. He was an intelligent man. She was cornered, and she reacted in the same way that all trapped creatures reacted. She attacked. ‘You lied to me, too!’ she accused.

His eyes narrowed. ‘When?’

‘You implied that you were employed by the company—you didn’t tell me you owned it!’

He nodded and his eyes took on a hard, bright glitter. ‘Yes, I heard about your discussion with Prince Raschid’s emissary.’

‘She insulted me!’

‘So I believe.’ His lips flattened into a forbidding line.

‘She was jealous,’ said Sabrina slowly, as she recognised now the emotion which had made the woman’s voice so brittle. ‘Jealous that I was in your bedroom.’

‘Yes.’ His gaze didn’t waver.

‘Have you slept with her, too?’

‘That’s none of your business!’ he snapped, but something about the dark horror written in her eyes made him relent. ‘Of course I haven’t slept with her! She’s a business acquaintance I’ve met on barely half a dozen occasions!’

‘And you met me once,’ said Sabrina hollowly.

‘That’s different!’ But he didn’t pause to ask himself why.

‘So why did you lie to me about owning the company?’

He paused deliberately and met her eyes with a bitter challenge. ‘I wanted to be sure that it was me you were turned on by, and not all the trappings.’

‘As though I’m some kind of cheap little gold-digger, you mean?’ Sabrina glared at him. ‘And you lied to me about when you were leaving Venice, too!’ she accused.

He raised a dark, arrogant eyebrow. ‘Did I?’

‘You know you did! You told me you were staying for a few days, yet the airport said you had a flight booked out that afternoon!’

He gave her a look of barely concealed impatience. ‘Oh, that!’ he said dismissively. ‘So what? Flights can usually be changed.’

‘And if they can’t?’ she challenged.

‘Then you buy another ticket.’ His eyes glittered. ‘A small price to pay under the circumstances.’

The cool, arrogant statement told her in no uncertain terms his true opinion of her, and Sabrina stared at him with hurt and anger in her eyes. ‘These particular circumstances being sex with a stranger, you mean?’

He smiled. He certainly preferred her fighting and spitting to that lost look of despair she’d worn when they’d first walked in here. ‘You were there, too, Sabrina. That’s what we did—had sex.’

‘Yes,’ she said bitterly, thinking that he didn’t even respect her enough to dress up what had happened by calling it lovemaking.

‘And you still haven’t answered my question,’ he observed coolly. ‘About the ring.’

Shakily, she grabbed her glass from the table and drank from it.

He wondered whether she was aware that her tiny breasts moved with such sweetness beneath the fine sweater she wore. A pulse began to beat insistently at his temple and he jabbed an angry finger at the chain. ‘So why hide it from me, Sabrina?’

She stared down into the trickle of brandy left in her glass and started to feel nervous. ‘Can I have another drink, please?’

‘No, you bloody well can’t!’ He didn’t take his gaze from her downcast head. ‘Sabrina? I’ll ask you again. Why hide it from me?’

‘I d-don’t know.’

‘Oh, yes, you do.’ He sucked in a deep, painful breath. ‘Is it an engagement ring?’

Well, now he would know what type of woman she really was. ‘Yes. Yes, it is. You know it is!’

He nodded, unprepared for the jerking pain of jealousy. And a bright, burning anger—as fierce as anything he had ever experienced. It pierced like an arrow through his heart. He tried to stay calm, but it took every shred of self-restraint he possessed. ‘I see.’

There was something so wounding about the way he said those two empty words that Sabrina looked at him with a question in her eyes.

‘Now I understand,’ Guy said heavily. He pushed the chain across the table towards her and gave a hollow, humourless laugh. ‘You must have had a lot of explaining to do.’

She stared back at him in genuine confusion. ‘Explaining?’

He leaned back in his chair a little, as if close proximity to her might taint him. Or tempt him. ‘Well, yes. Hell, I know you’re a liberal woman, Sabrina—you certainly proved that—but surely your fiancé would be a little jealous if he found out about your little lapse?’ His mouth curved. ‘Though maybe not. Maybe you’re the kind of couple who play away.’ He lowered his voice into a sexy, insulting whisper. ‘Then get turned on by telling each other all about it. There are couples like that, or so I believe.’

The blood left Sabrina’s face and she stared at him in horror, scarcely able to make any sense of his words. She would have risen to her feet and walked out there and then, except that her legs felt so unsteady she didn’t think she would be able to stand properly. ‘How d-dare you insult me?’ she whispered.

‘You’re honestly asking how I dare?’ His eyebrows disappeared into the still damp strands of his ebony hair. But now it was his turn to look outraged as he leaned forward, his voice little more than a harsh, accusing whisper. ‘Quite easily, actually. When you meet a woman and she does what you did to me that night, it’s kind of disappointing to discover that she’s got some poor sucker of a fiancé waiting on the sidelines.’

His mouth twisted as his anger drove him on remorselessly. ‘Maybe you were bored with him, huh? Or were on the lookout for someone a little more…loaded.’

He deliberately gave the taunt two meanings, and his dark gaze flickered insultingly in the direction of his lap, seeing her flinch as her eyes followed his. And then he shifted in his seat, angry and uncomfortable, realising that he was starting to get turned on. What the hell did she do to him? ‘Was that it?’ he snarled. ‘Were you looking for someone with a little more to offer than your home-spun boy?’

Sabrina felt sick and she shook her head, unable to speak. But he didn’t seem to be expecting an answer because he ploughed on, a hard, clipped edge of rage to his voice.

‘So what did you tell him? Did you describe in full and graphic detail the things I did to you? The things you did to me? Just what did you tell him, Sabrina?’

The unwitting inappropriateness of his question brought her a new kind of strength, and she wanted to reach out and to wound him, just as he had wounded her.

‘Nothing!’ she choked out. ‘I didn’t tell him anything! I couldn’t, could I? Because he’s dead, you see, Guy! Dead, dead, dead!’

And the spots which danced before her eyes dissolved into rainbows, and then, thankfully, into darkness.