by Penny Jordan
‘I wasn’t going to say that.’
‘Liar!’ Ricardo told her, adding coolly,
‘Besides, there are always several components to sexual desire, surely? For instance there are those which relate to our senses—sight, scent, taste…touch…’
Carly could feel herself beginning to respond to each word that rolled off his tongue.
Yes, the sight of him aroused her, and his scent certainly did, and as for his taste…She pulled in her stomach muscles to try and control the ache spreading through her. And touch…She pulled them in tighter, but it was already too late to halt what she was feeling. And, yes, the sound of his voice as well…
‘And then there are those that relate to personality, status…lifestyle. For instance—’ He broke off as the steward emerged from the crew’s quarters and came towards them.
Carly could feel herself shaking slightly inside—the sensual effect on her body from just listening to him.
‘We’ll be landing in half an hour. Would you like another drink before we do? Or something to eat?’
Carly shook her head, unable to trust herself to speak. Ricardo had dragged from her confidences and admissions she would normally never have made to anyone, and right now emotional reaction was beginning to set in—much the same way as physical reaction would have set in if she had just had a tooth pulled without anaesthetic. She felt slightly sick, more than slightly shaky, and very much in shock.
Perhaps Ricardo was right, and the only way to overcome her physical ache for him was to satisfy it instead of trying to avoid it.
Ricardo watched her, shielding his scrutiny with a pretended concentration on his own papers. Over and over again she broke out of the stereotyped image he wanted to impose on her. No other woman had shown him—given him—shared with him—such an intensity of sexual desire. And no other woman had ever aroused him to such a point of compelling compulsive hunger either.
They were coming in to land, the jet descending through the thin cloud-cover.
Carly packed away her papers and fastened her seatbelt. She had always been the sort of person who took every precaution she could to protect herself. But she had not been able to protect herself from what was happening to her now—and wasn’t it true that a part of her didn’t want to be protected from it?
‘Ah, Rafael, there you are…this is Ms Carlisle.’
The young Mexican gave Carly a grave smile.
‘Carly, please,’ she corrected Ricardo as she shook Rafael’s hand.
‘Rafael and his wife Dolores run my New York apartment. How is Dolores, Rafael?’
‘She is very well, and she said to tell you that she is making a special meal for you tonight. It is Italian. She also said to tell you that the orphanage is very happy and the children think you should be called Saint Salvatore.’
Saint Salvatore? Carly questioned mentally, watching the way Ricardo frowned.
‘You want me to fly the chopper to the apartment block?’ Rafael asked.
Ricardo shook his head.
‘No, I’ll fly it myself.’
Ricardo had a pilot’s licence? Carly tried not to look either awed or impressed as Rafael urged her to climb on board the golf-buggy-type vehicle he had waiting for them.
She’d never flown in a helicopter before, and she acknowledged that she felt slightly daunted at the prospect of doing so. But she had no intention of saying so to Ricardo.
‘I’ll go and fetch the luggage,’ Rafael announced, once he had helped Carly out of the buggy.
‘We’ll use the chopper tomorrow to get to the Hamptons,’ Ricardo said as he guided Carly towards it. ‘It will be much quicker and easier. You will have an excellent overview of New York City if you sit beside me. Technically Rafael should take that seat, since he is my co-pilot, but—’
‘Oh, then he must sit there,’ Carly insisted quickly.
‘You sound apprehensive. Don’t you trust me?’
‘I…’
‘I can assure you, I take a keen interest in my own continued existence!’
Ricardo had been right about the view of New York, Carly acknowledged, and she held her breath instinctively as he flew them between two huge tower blocks.
Via the headphones she was wearing she could hear his running commentary on the city below them—the straight lines of the modern streets, and then the curve in Broadway where the new merged with the old.
‘That’s Wall Street down there,’ Ricardo told her, and she looked, bemused to see how quaintly narrow and small it seemed. He turned the helicopter and announced, ‘We’ll be flying over Central Park soon. My apartment’s way up on the east side.’
The streets on either side of the park were lined with what looked like nineteenth-century buildings, and Carly held her breath as Ricardo headed for one of them, not releasing it until she saw the helicopter landing area marked out on its roof.
‘You don’t leave the helicopter here, do you?’ Carly asked once he had helped her out.
Ricardo shook his head. ‘No. Rafael will fly it back to the airport and then drive back. I dare say he will take Dolores with him, and they will call on their family on the way back.’
He was obviously a fair and well-liked employer, Carly reflected as he guided her towards the building and in through a doorway to a small foyer and lift. Once they were inside Ricardo punched a code into the panel and the doors closed, enclosing them in what—for Carly—was a far too intimate bubble of seclusion. Immediately the thought filled her mind that if he should turn to her now and take her in his arms she would not want to resist him.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Ricardo warned her softly, so easily and immediately reading her thoughts that she could only gape at him. ‘I can’t—not in here. That’s a camera up there,’ he told her, pointing upwards towards the ceiling.
The lift stopped silently and smoothly and the doors opened onto another foyer. It was a large, coolly spacious one this time, with only one door opening off it, its walls painted a flat matt cream to highlight the paintings hanging on them.
‘Lucien Freud?’ Carly questioned, recognising the style immediately.
‘Yes. His work has a raw feel to it that I like.’
The posed nudes were compelling, Carly admitted.
The foyer’s single door opened and Ricardo stood back to allow her to precede him.
He had excellent manners, and they seemed to be a natural part of him rather than something carefully learned. But from the brief description she’d had of his early life she doubted if standing back to allow others to precede him was something he’d learned on the streets of Naples.
A small, dark-haired woman with twinkling eyes was standing in the inner hallway, waiting for them.
‘Ah, Dolores. You got my message about Ms Carlisle?’
‘Yes, and I have prepared a guest suite for her. You had a good journey, I hope, Ms Carlisle?’
‘Yes, indeed—and do please call me Carly.’
‘You go with Dolores; she will show you to your suite,’ Ricardo told Carly, before continuing, ‘What time is dinner planned for, Dolores?’
‘Eight-thirty, if that is okay with you? And Rafael—he said that you will want an early lunch tomorrow, before you fly to the Hamptons?’
‘Yes, that’s right. I’d better warn you that Ms Carlisle may not make it to the dinner table tonight. It may be three in the afternoon here, but for her it’s eight in the evening.’
‘Oh, my goodness! You would perhaps like something to eat now, then?’ Dolores asked Carly.
‘No, I’m fine,’ Carly assured her.
She would have to make contact with the New York agency who were sharing the organisation of the Hamptons event with them, and she had hoped to have time to fit in a bit of sightseeing. She was also planning to ask Dolores if she could recommend somewhere Carly might find clothes that would be within her budget. Jeans might be the universal uniform, acceptable everywhere, but she could hardly turn up at the glitzy e
vents she was overseeing wearing them. And unfortunately Mariella’s cast-offs—designer label or not—were simply not the kind of clothes she would ever feel comfortable wearing.
‘So, you will sleep here, in this guest suite, and you will have a lovely view over the park. Come and see, please.’
Dutifully Carly followed Dolores through the door she had just opened.
The room she walked into was huge, its windows, as Dolores had stated, overlooking the greenery of the park.
‘Here there is a desk, and you can plug in your computer,’ Dolores told her.
Carly nodded her head.
‘And here there is a television.’ She folded back what Carly had assumed was wall panelling to reveal a large flatscreen TV hidden behind it, along with shelves of DVDs and books. ‘See—the TV, it pulls out so you can watch it from your bed,’ Dolores told Carly, proudly displaying this extra function. ‘The dressing room and your bathroom are through here. Mr Salvatore, he have everything ripped out when he moved in here, and it’s all new. Even in our rooms as well.’
The dressing room was lined with mirror-fronted wardrobes and contained a small sofa, whilst the bathroom was almost a luxury mini-spa. Carly was unable to stop herself from comparing it with the rather more basic bathroom in the flat she shared with Jules.
‘It’s all wonderful,’ she told Dolores truthfully.
‘Yes. Mr Salvatore, he is a very good man. Very kind—especially to the children. When he hear that there is an orphanage in our old home town that has no money, he goes there to see it and then he writes one big cheque!’ Dolores beamed.
Carly phoned Lucy and then the New York event organiser who was co-running the event. Everything seemed to be in hand, she thought as she stifled a yawn.
The bed looked very tempting, and she was tired. Perhaps an hour’s sleep might do her good. It was only five o’clock New York time—more than three hours yet before dinner.
She was too tired to shower, and so, after removing her shoes and folding back the bedspread, she simply lay on top of the bed. Sleep claimed her the moment she closed her eyes.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS the small sound of a door clicking closed that woke her. At first she struggled to remember exactly where she was, reluctant to be dragged out of her sleeping fantasy of lying naked in Ricardo’s arms whist he caressed her.
She sat up and then swung her feet onto the floor, all too aware of the pulsing ache in her lower body. She could hear someone moving about in the dressing room.
Ricardo? Her heart bumped against her ribs, excitement spiked with anticipation heating her body. If it was—if he wasn’t going to give her the chance to say that she wanted him but intended instead to simply overwhelm her with the reality of her desire for him—there was no way she was going to be able to reject him, she admitted to herself, and she hurried across the room, pushing open the dressing room door.
Dolores was just closing one of the wardrobe doors. She turned towards Carly with a warm smile.
The deep-rooted sensual ache she had begun to learn to live with turned into a fierce pang of anguished need. How could just a few hours in his company have turned her body into this sexually eager collection of erotically aroused nerve endings and hotly responsive flesh? Her whole body ached, hungering for his touch and his possession. It was being consumed by a fever of longing and arousal. Virtually all she could think about was how long she would have to wait. The question driving her thoughts now wasn’t ‘if’ but ‘when’.
‘I have hung everything up for you, so that they don’t get too crushed. I can pack them again before you leave tomorrow. So you have any laundry you want me to do?’
Everything? What everything? What did Dolores mean?
There was an unfamiliar case on the dressing room floor—a Louis Vuitton case, Carly realised with horrified fascination—and a matching vanity case placed right next to it. And there was a mound of neatly folded tissue paper on the pretty daybed-cum-sofa, and some shoe boxes placed beneath it.
‘Dolores, I think there must be some mistake,’ she began faintly. ‘Those cases aren’t mine.’
Dolores looked confused.
‘But, yes, they are. Rafael fetched them from the jet himself. Just as Mr Salvatore instructed him to do. So that they will not be lost.’
A horrible sense of disbelief mixed with anger was filling Carly. Unsteadily she went over to the nearest wardrobe and pulled back the door.
The clothes hanging in it were totally unfamiliar. She lifted down one of the skirts and checked the label, her hands trembling.
It was certainly her size, and her colour.
She put the skirt back and went over the sofa, kneeling on the floor as she opened one of the shoeboxes.
The delicate strappy sandals inside were her size too.
‘There is something wrong?’ Dolores asked her worriedly
Carly replaced the sandal in its box and stood up. ‘No, Dolores. Everything is fine,’ she told her.
But of course she was lying.
She went slowly through all the clothes hanging in the wardrobes. Expensive, elegant, beautiful designer clothes, in wonderful fabrics and a palette of her favourite colours: creams, chocolate-browns, black. She touched the fringed hem of a jacket in Chanel’s signature pastel tweed—warm cream threaded with tiny silky strands of brilliant jewel colours. She had seen exactly the same jacket in Chanel’s Sloane Street store and had stood mutely gazing at it, almost transfixed by its beauty. It would go perfectly with the toning heavy silk satin trousers hanging next to it. She knew exactly how much the jacket would have cost because she had been foolish enough to go into the store and ask. More than she would ever spend on clothes in a whole year, never mind on one single item. She stepped back from the wardrobe and closed the door firmly.
Did he really think she would allow him to do this to her? After what he had said to her? After what he had thought of her? Oh, yes, he had claimed it was a mistake and he had apologised, but…
Inside her head, from another lifetime, she could hear a flustered nervous voice insisting, ‘Say thank you to the nice lady for the lovely clothes she’s bought for you, Carly. Aren’t you a lucky, lucky girl? And such a very pretty dress. I’m sure she’ll be ever so grateful once she realises how lucky she is…won’t you, Carly?’
Grateful? She had sworn on her eighteenth birthday that never, ever again was she going to have to be grateful for someone else’s charity. That she would support herself, by herself, and that was exactly what she had done.
She had financed her own way through university via a variety of low-paid, physically hard jobs—bar work, cleaning, working as a nursing aide in an old people’s home—determinedly ignoring the allowance being paid into her bank account. The first thing she had done when her adoptive parents had broken the news to her of their financial ruin had been to give that money back to them.
‘Dolores, I need to speak with Ricardo. Can you tell me where I will find him, please?’
‘He is in his office. But he does not like to be disturbed when he is in there.’
He didn’t like being disturbed? Well, he was about to discover that neither did she. And what he had done had disturbed her. It had disturbed her…and it had infuriated her—a very great deal!
Dolores didn’t want to give her directions for the office, but Carly insisted. She knocked briefly on the door and then, without waiting, turned the handle and went in.
Ricardo was seated behind a desk on the opposite side of the room from the door. The evening sun light coming in from the two high windows behind dazzled her whilst leaving his face cloaked in shadow.
‘Dolores has filled the wardrobes in my room with clothes which she believes are mine.’
‘Ah. Yes, I’m glad you reminded me; I had almost forgotten. I’ve spoken to the manager at Barneys and arranged a temporary account there for you so that you can get something suitable for the French do. I didn’t want to risk picking out something
myself. You’ll have time to go over there tomorrow morning. It’s right behind the Pierre Hotel—’
‘No!’ Carly stopped him angrily.
‘No what?’ Ricardo demanded, pushing back his chair and standing up.
Carly had to take a steadying breath. Every sinuous movement of his body reminded her of how it had felt against her own, of how much she wanted it, ached for it, longed for it.
Ricardo had changed his own clothes at some stage, and was wearing a tee shirt and a pair of jeans. Some men could wear jeans and some could not. Ricardo was quite definitely one of the ones who could. Longing shot through her—pure, wanton, female liquid need.
‘No. I won’t wear clothes that you have paid for.’
‘Why not?’ he demanded. ‘You eat food bought with my money, sleep in a bed paid for with it. Why should you refuse to wear clothes it has bought?’
‘You know why. You accused me yourself of trying to force you to—’
‘I was wrong about that and I apologised.’
His voice was terse, and Carly could see he did not like being reminded that he had been at fault.
‘Yes, I know that,’ Carly agreed reluctantly ‘But—’
‘But what? You object to the colours I chose? The styles?’
‘You chose?’ she breathed in disbelief. ‘How could you have done that? You couldn’t possibly have had time!’
He gave a small shrug.
‘I made time.’
‘How?’ Carly challenged him.
‘I went into St Tropez this morning, before we left.’
Carly stared at him. Was he making it up…making fun of her, perhaps?
‘How did you know my size?’
‘I’m a man,’ he told her dryly. ‘I’ve touched your body. Held it close to my own. You have full breasts, but a very narrow ribcage. I can span your waist with my hands, your hips curve as woman’s hips should do—shall I continue?’
‘No,’ Carly told him in a choked voice. ‘I won’t wear them,’ she added in the next breath. ‘I won’t take charity.’