by Penny Jordan
It had told him that he could have yanked down her jeans and explored and enjoyed her and she would not have said a single word in denial.
And then in the morning she would no doubt expect to receive her payment—a piece of jewellery, a telephone call from an exclusive shop inviting her to choose herself something expensive…
That was the way things were done in her world.
He was wasting too much time on her, he warned himself. His primary reason for what he was doing was the potential acquisition of Prêt a Party, not the inevitable sexual acquisition of Carly Carlisle who, although she did not know it yet, would be one of the first in line to lose her job.
Carly frowned as the large, elegant steel-grey car drew up alongside her.
A limo, Lucy had said, and she had pictured a huge, shiny black ostentatious vehicle, not something so supremely understated. But the rear door was opening and Ricardo was getting out.
‘Is this all your luggage?’
She gaped at him as he reached for her case, and then looked uncertainly towards the chauffeur.
‘Charles is driving. I am perfectly capable of picking up a case,’ Ricardo told her dryly, following her uncertain look.
‘The…my case is heavy,’ she told him, but he ignored her, picked it up and put it in to the boot of the car as if it was as light as a feather pillow.
He was wearing a black tee shirt and a pair of tan-coloured casual trousers, and the muscles in his arms were hardening as he lifted her case. He looked more like a man who worked outdoors than one who sat at a desk, she acknowledged, unwilling to admit to the response that the sight of him was eliciting from her own body.
After what had happened when she had given her imagination its head, she was now keeping it on a controlling diet of bread and water, and that meant no thinking about the effect Ricardo could have on her! So he had a good enough body to carry off the macho male thing—so what? she told herself dispassionately.
But the sight of his black-clad back, bent over the open boot, suddenly transformed by her rebellious thoughts into a totally naked back bent over her equally naked body, evoked such a powerful sensual image that she felt as though she were transfixed to the spot.
So it was true. You could go weak at the knees, Carly reflected several minutes later as she sat primly straight in the back seat of the powerful car, dizzily aware that her private thoughts were anything but prim. All those enforced deportment classes at school had definitely left her with an automatic ‘sit up straight’ reflex.
She was accomplished, Ricardo admitted to himself. That cool, remote pose she had adopted, that said Pursue me would certainly work with most men. Unfortunately for her, he was not most men. He opened his briefcase and extracted some papers.
As soon as they were free of the city traffic the powerful car picked up speed. Carly was pleased that Ricardo was engrossed in his work, because that left her free to think about hers, instead of having to make polite conversation with him.
Since their clients were using their own yacht as the venue for their party there was no construction work in the shape of marquees on the like for her to oversee. The client’s chef and kitchen staff were being augmented by a chef from the upmarket caterers she had sourced. They were already on the yacht. Menus had been agreed, floral arrangements decided on—she would be meeting with the florists, who had also been flown in from London.
The arrival and deployment of the hostess’s hairdresser, make-up artist, and a dresser from the couture house she favoured were also Carly’s responsibility, plus a hundred or more other small but vitally important arrangements.
She had an inch-thick pile of assorted coloured and coded lists in her briefcase, most of which she had actually memorised.
‘You’re so much better at this than me,’ Lucy had told her ruefully before she left.
Carly had smiled, but she knew that it was true.
Carly shifted her body against the leather upholstery. It was ridiculous that she should be so acutely conscious of Ricardo’s presence in the car with her—and even more ridiculous that she should be so acutely aware of the impact he was having on her physically. So much for the ‘bread and water’ regime, then!
The grand slam of his raw sensuality had sliced through her defences, leaving an alarming trail of female awareness in its wake. Her jeans, normally a comfortable easy fit, suddenly seemed to be uncomfortably tight, clinging to her flesh in a way she could only mentally describe as erotic, as though somehow she were being caressed by the lean, powerful male hands she couldn’t resist looking towards.
She could feel the heat expanding inside her, dangerous little languorous curls of it thrusting against her sensitive flesh. She crossed her legs and then uncrossed them. Her arm accidentally brushed against her own breast and immediately she was aware of the hot pulsing of her nipples.
This was crazy. It felt as though somehow or other an unfamiliar and certainly unwanted very sexual alter ego had been released inside her. And, what was more, it seemed to be attempting to take her over! Or had it always been there and it had simply taken meeting Ricardo Salvatore to make her aware of it, just as her own senses were making her aware of him?
This was definitely crazy.
She realised with relief that they had reached the airport. The car slowed down and turned into an entrance marked ‘Strictly Private’.
A uniformed customs officer stepped out of a nearby office and came over to the car.
‘Your passport, please,’ Ricardo demanded, turning to Carly.
Foolishly, she had not been ready for this formality, and it took her several seconds to open her bag, find her passport, and then hand it over to Ricardo.
As he took it from her, her open bag slipped from her hand, showering the immaculate leather and the car’s floor with coins, her lipstick, her purse and several other small personal items.
Her face hot, she undid her seatbelt and tried to pick them up as fast as she could, but the lipstick rolled away out of her reach with the movement of the car as the driver set it in motion again.
To her dismay the lipstick had rolled along the leather and come to rest right next to Ricardo’s thigh.
She couldn’t retrieve it without touching him.
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.
‘Could I have my lipstick, please? It’s…You’re sitting on it,’ she told Ricardo.
‘What?’
The look he gave her was totally male and uncomprehending.
‘My lipstick!’ Carly repeated. ‘It fell out of my bag and now it’s…’
She looked meaningfully at the leather seat, somehow managing at the same time to keep her gaze off his thigh.
His sigh was definitely exasperated as he reached down and picked up the small slim tube.
It was a relief to release her own pent-up breath as he handed the lipstick to her. She reached out for it, too focused on what she was doing to be aware of a deep pothole in the tarmac, which the driver couldn’t avoid because of an oncoming vehicle.
The violent movement of the car flung her bodily against Ricardo, sending her slamming into his side. The air was driven out of her lungs by the force of the impact, leaving her half lying against him, her face buried in his tee shirt, her hand ignominiously clutching at his arm.
A shock of unfamiliar sensation hit her all at once, like a hail of sharp-pointed arrows. His personal man-scent, the texture of his tee shirt, the hardness of his chest beneath her cheek, the softness of something that she realised must be his body hair. The slow, heavy thud of his heartbeat…
Somewhere inside her head unwanted images were forming. A man—Ricardo—carrying her in his arms, his torso bare, his flesh warm beneath her fingertips. She could feel the heat of her own desire for him. Her fingers tightened automatically on his arm, her nails digging into his flesh.
Abruptly Carly snapped back to reality, and to the humiliating awareness of what she was doing. Her face burning, she rel
eased Ricardo’s arm and pulled away for him, refusing to look at him.
As she retreated to her side of the car Ricardo shifted his own position and turned away from her, to conceal the telltale thick ridge of flesh pressing against the fabric of his trousers.
He was beginning to realise that he had badly underestimated the effect Carly was going to have on him. It was one thing for him to acknowledge to himself that he was happy to have sex with her, but it was quite another to have to admit that his desire for her was far more urgent than he had planned for—and, even worse, that it was threatening to overwhelm his self-control. He simply did not want this fierce, thrusting surge of need, this urgent, compelling hunger to take hold of her and fill himself with the scent and the feel of her; the taste of her, to fill her with himself and to…
The ache in his body was intensifying instead of fading, and he had to resort to the subterfuge of opening his newspaper and busying himself re-reading it in order to conceal that fact.
‘Thank you, Charles.’
Carly had no time to do more than smile her own gratitude at Ricardo’s chauffeur before a smartly uniformed flight steward was escorting her up the steps to the waiting private jet, whilst Ricardo paused to speak with its captain—his captain, Carly realised.
She had often heard Lucy marvelling about the luxury of travelling in the private jets owned by some of their more wealthy clients, but this would be the first time she had experienced it for herself.
The interior of the jet had more resemblance to a modern apartment than to any aeroplane Carly had flown in. A colour scheme of off-white and cool grey set off the black leather upholstery of the sofas, and the steward discreetly indicated to her that both a bedroom and a separate shower room lay to the rear of the sitting area.
‘The galley is behind the cockpit, and there is another lavatory there as well—’ He broke off from his explanations, to say formally, ‘Good morning, sir.’
Carly turned round to see Ricardo standing in the open doorway.
‘Morning, Eddie. How are Sally and the new baby?’
There was a genuine warmth in his voice that touched a painful nerve within Carly’s heart.
‘They’re both fine. Sally was over the moon that you flew her folks here for the birth. She was resigned to them not being able to be there.’
Ricardo shrugged, and changed the subject. ‘Phil says that we’re going to have a good flight, both to Nice and on to New York.’ He turned to Carly. ‘I’ve got some work I need to attend to, but feel free to ask Eddie for anything you need.’
‘If you would like to sit down here, madam, until we’ve taken off?’ Eddie suggested politely to her, indicating a space on one of the sofas.
Obediently, Carly went and sat down.
‘Perhaps I could get you a glass of champagne?’ the steward said, once he had shown Carly how to use her seatbelt, and explained to her how to access the power and telephone lines for her laptop should she wish to use it. ‘We’ve got a very nice Cristal.’
Carly couldn’t help it. She gave a small shudder. ‘Water will be fine,’ she told him emphatically.
From his own seat at a desk on the other side of the cabin, Ricardo frowned. Why had she refused champagne? She certainly hadn’t been having any qualms about drinking it the night he had seen her in CoralPink.
Thanking Eddie for her water, Carly unzipped her own laptop. Ricardo wasn’t the only one who had work to do. Five minutes later, as the jet taxied down the runway, Carly was deeply engrossed in reading her e-mails—but not so deeply that she wasn’t acutely aware of Ricardo’s presence.
She couldn’t forget the disturbing effect those fleeting seconds of physical intimacy in the car had had on her. Her stomach muscles clenched immediately, as though in rejection of the response she had felt, her mouth going dry.
Eddie had said the jet had a fully equipped bedroom…The ache inside her sharpened and tightened and then started to spread.
The jet lifted off the tarmac and Carly held her breath, willing herself not to think about Ricardo.
‘I’d like to ask you a few questions about certain aspects of the way Prêt a Party’s business works.’
Dutifully Carly put aside the list she was studying. Ricardo was, after all, a potential client.
‘Were I to commission Prêt a Party to organise an event for me, who would be responsible for establishing the cost of everything involved?’
‘I would,’ Carly answered him promptly.
‘And would you do that by sourcing suppliers yourself? Or does someone else—Lucy, for instance—source suppliers?’
‘Normally I would source them. We’ve been in business for long enough now to have established a core of suppliers we use on a regular basis. However, sometimes a client will specify that they want to use a specific caterer, or florist, or musician. When that happens we either negotiate with them on the client’s behalf or, if the client prefers, they negotiate with them themselves. If they opt to do that then we ask that the clients also make themselves responsible for paying the supplier’s bill. When we’re in charge of suppliers’ estimates and invoices we know exactly what their charges will be—that isn’t always the case if the client has commissioned a supplier.’
‘Presumably you obtain good discounts from your regular suppliers?’
‘Of course, and we pass them on to our clients via our costings for their events. But discount isn’t the main criteria we apply when selecting suppliers. Quality, reliability, exclusivity are often more important to our clients than cut-price deals.’
‘What do you do when potential suppliers offer to make it worth your while to select them?’
Carly couldn’t look at him, and she could feel her face starting to burn. Since Nick had joined the business she had received several such approaches from suppliers, who had insisted that Nick had promised them work. Nick himself had tried to pressure her into using them, but Carly had refused to do so. She knew that Lucy would never have authorised such dishonest business practices, but she hadn’t felt able to tell her friend what her husband was doing because she didn’t want to hurt her. And she certainly couldn’t tell Ricardo—a potential client—about them.
‘We…I…I make it plain to them that that we don’t take bribes and that they are wasting their time,’ she hedged, uncomfortably aware that she was not being totally honest.
Ricardo looked at her, but she was refusing to look back at him, her body language reflecting both her guilt and the lie she had just told him.
Backhanders from suppliers would add a very sizeable ‘bonus’ to Carly’s salary, Ricardo thought grimly.
It surprised him that she wasn’t making more use of the fact that they were alone and in the intimate surroundings of the jet in order to let him know that she was available. And did that disappoint him? He shrugged the thought aside. Hardly. He had simply assumed that she would want to showcase her skills for his benefit.
He recognised the discreet little come-ons that women like her were so adept at giving, such as leaning close to him whilst pretending to show him something, so that he could breathe in her perfume—which he had not as yet been able to identify other than to be aware that it suited her. A good quality signature perfume? Custom blended? Expensive! Blended exclusively for her? Very expensive! By one of the top three perfum-iers? Very expensive—and paid for by a very rich and very doting man!
At least she had not had a boob job. He had been aware of that the moment she’d fallen against him. But she was wearing a bra, a plain, seamless, no-nonsense tee shirt bra. Unusual for a woman out to snare a man, surely? And unnecessary, in view of the excellence of the shape and firmness Mother Nature had generously given her.
Had she leaned over him now, he would have lifted his hand to caress her breast and even, had he felt so inclined, pushed aside her tee shirt and bra and explored the shape and texture of her naked breast, both with his fingers and his lips.
He found himself wondering idly if
her grooming regime went as far as a Brazilian wax. He personally wasn’t enamoured of the look, although he knew of men who insisted not just on a Brazilian but that their lovers go for the full Hollywood ‘everything-off’ wax. He personally preferred something a bit more natural, a bit more sensual. And she had such thick, luxuriant, clean and shiny hair—the kind that made him want to reach out and touch it. He moved uncomfortably as he tried to change the direction of his thoughts.
‘We’ll be landing in a few minutes.’
Carly smiled at the steward and put away her papers. She would be rather glad to get off the plane, although not because she was afraid of flying—at least not in the non-sexual sense. There she was again! Thinking about sex.
And all because…Because what? Because secretly she wanted to have sex with Ricardo? Chance would be a fine thing, she mocked herself. But if she were to be given the chance…
The first thing Carly noticed as they came out of the airport was the small group of beggars—children, not adults—clustered pathetically together whilst people ignored them. Thin and dirty, wearing shabby torn clothes, they stood out amongst the seething mass of people to-ing and fro-ing, and yet everyone was acting as though they simply did not exist. The smallest of them was barely old enough to walk.
Ricardo had gone to collect his valet parked rental car, telling her to wait where she was.
She had noticed a sandwich shop on her way out of the airport, and now, impetuously, she came to a swift decision. Wasn’t the golden rule to give food rather than money because money might be taken from them? Dragging her case behind her, she hurried back to the sandwich bar.
The children watched her approach without interest. Their pinched faces and emotionally dead eyes wrenched at her heart. When she handed them the food, small claw-like hands snatched it from her.
‘Euros,’ the older children demanded sullenly, but she shook her head.
She could see people looking disapprovingly at her, no doubt thinking she was encouraging them to beg.
Her mobile was ringing. Carly felt a familiar sense of anxiety and despair twist her stomach when she saw that the caller was her adoptive mother—she could never think of her as anything other than that, and she was, she knew, bound to her adoptive parents by guilt and duty rather than love. Guilt because she did not love them, and because she was alive whilst their own flesh and blood daughter was dead.