The Unlikely Mistress (London's Most Eligible Playboys #01) Read online

  Sabrina thought that his grey eyes looked soft, soft as the cream silk shirt he wore. ‘No, I didn’t know that. But Truman Capote said that Venice was like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.’

  ‘Oh, did he?’ He liked the quickness of her mind, the way her thoughts matched his own. Liked the fact that she’d researched the place so thoroughly. He felt his heart begin to pick up its beat as he stared down at her, at the strawberry-blonde hair which gleamed like bright gold in the midday sun and the slim, pale column of her neck. There was a fragility about her which was rare in a modern woman, he thought, and wondered what it would be like to take her in his arms. Take her to his bed. Whether she would bend or break…

  He realised that they had spent the best part of two hours together and she hadn’t asked him a single question about his life back in England. And he noticed that she’d been quietly evasive on the subject of her own life.

  But why not? he thought with a sudden sense of liberation. Wasn’t anonymity a kind of freedom in itself? Didn’t he live the kind of life where people judged him before they had even met him, depending on what they’d heard about him?

  The bell of San Marco rang out twice, and Guy looked at his watch. ‘We’d better try and find a table for lunch while there’s still time.’

  Sabrina stared up into dark grey eyes and felt her skin prickle in heated reaction. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Is that why you’re so thin?’ he demanded. ‘Because you skip lunch?’

  ‘Thanks very much!’

  ‘Oh, I’m not complaining,’ he murmured, as his eyes drifted over her. ‘Your cheekbones are quite exquisitely pronounced and your legs are just the right side of slender. I suppose you have to work at it, the same as every other woman.’

  Sabrina let her gaze fall from his face, staring instead at the pink-tipped toes which peeped through her strappy sandals, remembering how she’d forced herself to paint them, telling herself that out of such small, unimportant rituals some kind of normal life would be resumed.

  ‘Sabrina,’ he said softly. ‘What’s the matter? It was supposed to be a compliment. Have I insulted you? Embarrassed you?’

  She looked up again. Now would be the perfect time to tell him that the weight had simply fallen away after Michael’s death. But tell him that and she would be back playing the unwanted role of the bereaved fiancée. Was it selfish of her to want to play a different part? To want to feel the sun warm and alive on her cheeks and see the unmistakable glint of appreciation in the eyes of the man who stood looking down at her? To feel alive again, instead of half-dead herself?

  She shook herself out of her reverie and forced a smile which, to her suprise, felt as if it wanted to stay on her mouth. ‘By telling me I’m thin? Come on, Guy—did you ever hear of a woman who was offended by that?’

  Her smile was like the sun nudging out from behind a cloud, he thought. ‘I guess not.’ Come to think of it, he didn’t have much appetite himself, and certainly not for conventional fare.

  Instead, he found himself wondering how her lips would taste and what the scent of her breath would be like against his. He shook his head to dispel the sensual imagery. ‘Why don’t we have coffee and a pastry at one of these cafés in the square?’ he suggested steadily. ‘It’s warm enough to sit outside in the sunshine.’

  They found a vacant table and ordered pastries with their coffee, the lightest and most beautiful cakes imaginable, and Guy thought that they tasted like sawdust in his mouth. And saw that Sabrina had taken exactly two mouthfuls herself.

  ‘It must be the heat.’ She shrugged in response to the mocking question in his eyes.

  ‘So it must.’ He echoed the lie, knowing that their lack of hunger had nothing to do with the temperature.

  He marched her through the city like a professional tour guide, as if determined that he should show her everything. Sabrina wondered what had provoked this sudden, relentless pace, but she was too bewitched by him to care.

  They stood side by side on the Bridge of Sighs and stared into the dark waters beneath.

  ‘Look down there,’ said Sabrina suddenly. ‘And think of the thousands of tourists who have stood here like this and been affected by this amazing city.’

  His heart missed a beat as enchantment washed over him. ‘You mean the way it’s affecting us now?’

  ‘Yes.’ She told herself it wasn’t that remarkable for him to have echoed her thoughts, but still her voice trembled. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

  He wanted her, he thought. And she wanted him. ‘Are you going to have dinner with me tonight, Sabrina?’ he asked suddenly.

  She didn’t even stop to think about it, or bother to wonder whether she’d made it too easy for him. ‘You know I am.’

  He nodded, the thrill of anticipation making his heart pick up speed. ‘Tell me where you’re staying and I’ll pick you up at eight.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that.’

  Her reluctance sharpened an appetite already keenly honed. ‘Oh, but I insist,’ he contradicted softly.

  But pride made her match his determination. He must be some kind of hot-shot to be staying at that hotel. She didn’t want him seeing her humble little pensione, emphasising how great the differences between them. Just now they were as close to equal as they would ever be and she wanted to hold onto that. ‘I’ll meet you in the square. Honestly, Guy, I’m an independent woman, you know!’

  ‘Well, sometimes a man doesn’t want an independent woman,’ he ground out. He couldn’t believe he’d just said that, but he had. Or that he’d caught her by the arm to feel the soft tremble of flesh where his fingers burnt so delectably against her bare skin. ‘Are you always this damned stubborn?’

  Something in the heated frustration of his question made Sabrina’s blood sing with a glorious inevitability, and she had the sense of being led towards something which defied all logic. It was liberation at its most intense and powerful, and she was no longer heartbroken, bereaved Sabrina. For one enchanted moment she stood poised on the brink of something magical.

  She smiled. ‘Only if I need to be.’

  There was a long and dangerous pause. ‘But I’m used to getting my own way,’ he told her steadily.

  ‘I know you are. It shows.’

  She looked down at his tanned fingers which still lay against her white skin, and he let his hand fall, perplexed by his own actions. He was a man whose reputation hinged on being in control—so why was he acting as if he were auditioning for the leading role in a Western movie?

  ‘Was I being unbearably high-handed?’ he asked her, missing the satin feel of her skin beneath his fingertips.

  She took one last look at him as she stepped into the water-taxi which had slid to a halt beside them. Not unbearably anything, she thought. You wouldn’t know how to be. ‘Only a little.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ll see you tonight at eight.’

  And Guy was left staring at the back of her bright blonde head, his heart thundering with a mixture of admiration and frustration.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SABRINA was twenty minutes late. Guy had never had a woman keep him waiting in his life and he couldn’t decide whether to be irritated or intrigued. He glanced down at his watch for the umpteenth time and actually began to wonder whether he’d been stood up.

  But then he saw her crossing the square, wearing some slinky little silver-grey dress with a filmy silver stole around her pale shoulders, her legs looking deliciously long in spindly, high-heeled shoes.

  Sabrina spotted his tall, brooding figure straight away, as if he had been programmed to dominate her whole horizon. He was wearing a pale grey unstructured suit which did nothing to disguise the hard, muscular body beneath. And, outwardly at least, he looked completely relaxed, but as she grew closer she could see a coiled kind of tension, which gave him the dark, irresistible shimmer of danger. He looked completely relaxed, but there was no mistaking the watchful quality which made his grey eyes gleam with subdu
ed promise.

  She had very nearly not come tonight, lifting the telephone to ring Guy’s hotel more than once, telling herself that this was fast turning into something she hadn’t planned. Something she wasn’t sure if she could handle.

  Or stop.

  But something had prevented her cancelling—something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Maybe it was the memory of that first, glorious sight of him. Leaving behind the knowledge that if she were never to see him again, then the world would never seem quite the same place.

  His smile widened as she approached, but he made no move towards her. Let her come to me, he thought. He wanted to watch the way she moved—her hips unconsciously thrusting forward, the fluid sway of her bottom. He imagined those hips crushed beneath the hard contours of his own, and swallowed. Come to me, baby, he thought silently. Come.

  ‘Hello,’ Sabrina said breathlessly, but something in the darkening of his eyes seemed to have robbed her of the ability to suck air into her lungs.

  ‘Hello.’ So. No blurted little excuses for being late. No shrugged or coy reasons. Her carelessness sharpened his desire for her even more intensely and he felt his senses clamour into life. ‘Where would you like to eat?’

  There was a new, dangerous quality about Guy tonight, Sabrina thought. A danger which should have frightened her, but instead filled her with a sense of almost unendurable excitement. And inevitability. ‘You know the city far better than I do,’ she said huskily. ‘You choose.’

  ‘OK,’ he said easily, and for a moment felt the penitent shimmer of guilt. As if he hadn’t just spent an hour under the hammering power of the shower, deciding exactly where he wanted to take her. He had opened his mouth to the torrent of water which had beaten down on him, his body growing hard with frustration as he remembered that Sabrina had stood naked beneath these same icy jets.

  Except that he doubted whether she had needed an ice-cold shower to ward off a desire which was stronger than any desire he could remember.

  The restaurant was close by and its menu was famous. It was private and discreet but not in the least bit stuffy; he wondered whether she would comment on its proximity to his hotel, but she didn’t.

  And it wasn’t until they were seated in the darkened alcove he had expressly requested that he relaxed enough to expel a long, relieved breath. She was here, he thought exultantly. Sabrina was here. Her hair was all caught back in a smooth pleat at the back of her head and he wanted to reach out and tumble it all the way down her back.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ he said slowly.

  The way he was looking at her made her feel beautiful. She savoured the compliment, held onto it and tried it out in her mind. ‘Why, thank you,’ she said demurely.

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’ He couldn’t believe he’d just said that either. Hadn’t the hard lessons of his childhood meant that he’d spent his whole life striving for some kind of invulnerability?

  ‘I nearly didn’t.’ Oh, God, she thought, please don’t ask me why. Because I might just have to tell you that I knew, if I came, where I might end up spending the night.

  ‘What changed your mind?’

  ‘I was hungry.’

  He laughed as the waiter came over with the menus, and Sabrina took hers with hands which had begun to tremble. She wondered whether Guy had noticed.

  He had. But he hadn’t needed to see her fingers shaking to know that she was working herself up to a fever pitch of sexual excitement which almost matched his own. That was evident enough from the soft line of colour which suffused the high curve of her cheekbones and the hectic glitter of her eyes. The way her lips looked all swollen and pouting, parting moistly of their own volition, the rosy pink tip of her tongue peeping through. And the way the buds of her tiny breasts pushed like metal studs against the silvery silk of her gown.

  His grey eyes glittered into hers as she stared unseeingly at the menu. ‘Want me to order for you?’

  Strange she should be so grateful for a question which would normally have left her open-mouthed with indignation. ‘Yes, please.’

  His eyes scanned the menu uninterestedly. About the only things he felt like eating right now were oysters, followed by a great big dish of dark, juicy cherries—and it didn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to work out why that was.

  Guy shifted his chair a little, relieved that the heavy white damask of the tablecloth concealed the first heavy throbbing of desire. Another first, he thought wryly, unable to remember a time when he’d been so exquisitely aroused by a woman without any touch being involved.

  He ordered Brodetto di pesce followed by moleche. Dessert he would take an option on. He had his own ideas for dessert…

  The waiter brought over a bottle of the bone-dry Breganze bianco, but Sabrina felt intoxicated just by the lazy promise of his smile.

  ‘I don’t know if I need any wine,’ she admitted.

  ‘Me neither.’ He shrugged, but he poured them half a glass each and signalled for some water.

  Sabrina sipped at her drink, feeling suddenly shy, not daring to look up, afraid of what she would see in the grey dazzle of his eyes. Or what he might read in hers…

  ‘You know, we’ve spent nearly the whole day together—and I don’t know a single thing about you,’ he observed softly. ‘I’m not used to women being quite so mysterious.’

  Sabrina put her glass down. Here it came. The getting-to-know-you talk. A talk she most emphatically did not want to have. She’d been touched by a tragedy which had left her tainted, simply by association. People treated you differently once they found out and she didn’t want Guy to treat her differently. She wanted him to carry on exactly as he was.

  She forced a lightness into her voice. ‘What exactly do you want to know?’

  Guy narrowed his eyes. Women usually loved talking about themselves. Give them an opener like that and you couldn’t shut them up for hours. ‘It isn’t supposed to be an interrogation session,’ he informed her softly, and then he leaned across the table, dark mischief dancing in his eyes. ‘Why? Have you got some dark, guilty secret you’re keeping from me, Sabrina? Don’t tell me—in real life you’re a lap-dancer?’

  His outrageous question lifted some of the tension, and Sabrina found herself smiling back. ‘Much more exciting than that! I work in a bookshop, actually,’ she confided, and waited for his reaction.

  ‘A bookshop?’ he repeated slowly.

  ‘That’s right.’ Now it was her turn for mischief. ‘You know. They sell those things consisting of pages glued together along one side and bound—’

  ‘And why,’ he said, with a smile playing at the corners of his lips, ‘do you work in a bookshop?’

  She took a sip of her wine. ‘Oh, all the usual reasons—I love books. I’m a romantic. I have a great desire to exist on low wages. Do you want me to go on?’

  ‘All night,’ he murmured. ‘All night.’ But then their fish soup arrived and Guy stared at his darkly, wishing that he had known her longer. Wishing that she was already his lover so that he could have suggested that they leave the food untouched and just go straight home to bed. ‘And where exactly is this bookshop?’

  Sabrina nibbled at a piece of bread. ‘In Salisbury. Right next to the Cathedral. Do you know it?’

  ‘Nope. I’ve never been there,’ he said thoughtfully.

  She studied the curved dip at the centre of his upper lip and shamelessly found herself wanting to run her tongue along its perfect outline. ‘How about you? Where do you live? What kind of work do you do?’ She thought of the man she had first seen, in jeans and T-shirt. ‘It must be something pretty high-powered for your company to pay for a hotel like that.’

  Guy hesitated. When people said that money talked, they didn’t realise that it also swore. It sounded ridiculous to consider yourself as being too highly paid, but he’d long ago realised that wealth had drawbacks all of its own. And when you were deemed rich—in a world where money was worshipped more than any of th
e more traditional gods—then lots of people wanted to know you for all the wrong reasons.

  Not that he would have put Sabrina into that category. But he liked the sweet, unaffected way she was with him. He hadn’t been treated as an equal for a very long time. And if he started hinting at just how much he was really worth, might she not be slightly overawed?

  ‘Oh, I’m just a wheeler-dealer,’ he shrugged.

  ‘And what does a wheeler-dealer do?’

  He smiled. ‘A bit of everything. I buy and sell. Property. Art. Sometimes even cars. Houses occasionally.’ But there was no disguising the dismissiveness in his voice as he topped her wine up. ‘All pretty boring stuff. Finish your soup.’

  ‘I have finished.’

  She’d barely touched it, he noticed as the waiter removed their plates—but, then, neither had he. And he was still aroused. So aroused that…

  Sabrina saw the dark colour which had flared over his cheekbones and suddenly she felt weak. Across the table they stared at one another, and the sounds of the other diners retreated so that they might have been alone in the crowded room.

  ‘G-Guy,’ she stumbled, through the ragged movement of her breathing.

  ‘What is it?’ he murmured.

  ‘The waiter is w-waiting to give us our main course.’

  Guy looked up to find the waiter standing beside the table, holding two plates containing crayfish and barely able to contain his smile.

  ‘Grazie,’ said Guy tightly.

  ‘Prego.’ The waiter grinned.

  Sabrina smoothed her fingers over her flushed cheeks. She didn’t speak until the waiter was out of earshot. ‘Did you see his face?’ she whispered.

  ‘We’re in Italy,’ he remarked, with a shrug. ‘They’re used to couples displaying…’ he lingered over a wholly inappropriate word ‘…affection. Now eat your crayfish,’ he urged softly.

  Like two condemned prisoners eating a last meal, they both silently spooned the crayfish into their mouths. It was fine food, meant to be savoured and enjoyed, but they both ate it quickly, without tasting it. In fact, Guy only just refrained from shovelling it down as if he were on a ten-minute lunch-break.