by Penny Jordan
‘Charity!’ Ricardo frowned, sharply aware of the anguish in her voice, and wondering about her use of the word charity. ‘And I will not take a woman out with me who has nothing to wear other than a pair of jeans!’
‘You are not taking me out with you. I am here to work.’
‘Maybe, but it is not out of the question that we could be photographed together by someone who does not know the real situation.’
‘You’re a snob,’ Carly accused him wildly.
‘No. I am a realist! I believed that you were entirely professional in your attitude towards your work, but it seems that I was wrong.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I should have thought it was obvious. Were you the professional I believed you to be you would accept the necessity of dressing suitably for your role instead of behaving like an outraged virgin. Especially since we both know that is something you most definitely are not!’
He might think he knew that, but she knew something very different indeed, Carly reflected. ‘And that is the only reason you bought the clothes?’
‘What other reason could there be?’ he challenged her.
‘You’ve already made it clear to me that you think sex is something you can buy,’ she pointed out. ‘But I won’t and can’t be bought, Ricardo.’
He was very angry, she recognised, his pride no doubt stinging in much the same way as hers had when she had opened those wardrobe doors. Good!
‘You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. I have simply provided you with the kind of clothes I expect the women I am seen with in public to wear. That is all. Had you not had your case stolen it would not have been necessary, but it was and it is. If it makes you feel any better, then perhaps you should think of the clothes merely as being on loan to you, to wear as a necessary uniform. As for paying for sex—I think I am capable of recognising when a woman wants me, Carly.’
There was nothing she could say to that.
‘It’s almost dinnertime. I hope you are hungry. Dolores is very proud of her cooking,’ he announced coolly, changing the subject.
Carly looked down at her jeans.
‘I’m really not hungry.’
Not for food, perhaps—but for him? Ah, that was a different story. She was hungry for him—starving for him, in fact. Starving for the feel and the scent of him, for the taste of him, the reality of him. She could feel her body aching heavily with the weight of that hunger.
A sense of desolation and pain filled her. She hadn’t asked to feel like this. She didn’t want to feel like this. Not for any man, and least of all for a man such as this one.
Ricardo studied her downbent head. She looked tired, somehow vulnerable, and he could feel a reluctant and unwanted compassion—a desire to protect her—stirring inside him.
His only interest in her—aside from the fact that he wanted her like hell—was because of her role in Prêt a Party, Ricardo reminded himself fiercely. Emotional entanglements and complications just weren’t something he had any intention of factoring into his life. He was prepared to accept that one day he might want a child—a son, an heir—but when that day came he intended to satisfy that need not via marriage, with all its potential financial risks, but instead by paying a carefully selected woman to have a child for him and then to hand over all rights to it to him. With modern medical procedures he wouldn’t even need to meet her.
‘If you wish, I am sure Dolores will be happy to serve you dinner in your room,’ he told her brusquely.
Carly veiled her eyes with her lashes, not wanting him to see what she was feeling.
If last night she had not stopped him, tonight—this night—they would have been together, and food would have been the last thing on either of their minds. It could still happen. All she had to do was go to him and touch him, show him, give way to what she was feeling. Other women had no qualms about showing men that they wanted them, so why should she?
She gave a small shiver, already knowing the answer to her own question.
CHAPTER NINE
SHE was used to the motion of the helicopter now, and did not feel as apprehensive as she had done before. They had already left New York behind them. The traffic on the highway beneath them looked like a child’s toys.
She was alone with Ricardo in the helicopter this time, but he wasn’t giving her a running commentary on their surroundings as he had done before. She told herself that she was glad of his businesslike attitude towards her, and the distance it had put between them.
Had he come to any decision yet as to whether or not he intended to use Prêt a Party’s services? If so, she hoped that he had decided in their favour. They certainly needed the business.
She had received the e-mailed copies of the cheques she had requested and her inspection of them had confirmed what she’d already suspected. All the cheques bore—as legally they had to, according to the terms of the business—two signatures. Her own and Nick’s. Only she knew that she had not signed the cheques herself. Which meant that someone had forged her signature. Someone? It could only have been Nick. Lucy was the only other person beside herself who had keys for the cupboard in which she kept the chequebooks.
Even without checking her forward costings for the year Carly knew that, because of the huge amount Nick had withdrawn from the business, by the time they reached their year-end they would be showing a loss of nearly half a million pounds.
The terms of their bank account were that Lucy would personally make up any overdraft from her trust fund. They had been in business for three years so far, and Carly had taken great pride in the fact that she had managed the financial affairs of the company so well that the bank had not had to invoke this condition. Until now.
Half a million pounds. She had no idea how much money there was in Lucy’s trust fund, but she suspected that Nick would know. And she suspected too that he had made a deliberate and cold-blooded decision to help himself to money from it via the business, because he knew that Marcus would never agree to hand so much money over to him.
But understanding the situation was one thing. Knowing what to do about it was another. By rights she should tell Lucy what she had discovered, because she was sure that the carte blanche Lucy had given Nick to draw money from the business did not include forging Carly’s signature in order to get even more. But Nick was Lucy’s husband. Lucy would be bound to feel humiliated and hurt if Carly told her that he had been stealing from her. And what if Lucy refused to believe her and Nick insisted that he had not signed Carly’s name? Would it be better if she got in touch with Marcus and alerted him to what was happening? Carly felt torn between her loyalty to Lucy and her fear for her.
Mentally shelving the problem, she focused instead on more immediate issues. She had spoken to her opposite number at the New York event organisers earlier, and she had assured Carly that everything was going according to plan.
‘It looked like there was going to be a problem with the caterers at one stage. The magazine told us they wanted only colour-co-ordinated vegan food, in their house colours, but then they rang up saying that they’d heard that a certain glossy magazine editor only ate Beluga caviar and they had to have some.’
Carly had sympathised with her. Everyone knew how that particular British editor dictated and directed what was ‘in’ in certain important New York fashion circles. Just having her attend the event would be a major achievement. Of course she’d agreed gravely with her counterpart—it was essential that the caviar was provided, even though it meant breaking the colour-co-ordinated theme.
‘We’re serving champagne cocktails on arrival—peach and rhubarb with pepper. We’re using this new chef who’s into mixing together different textures and tastes. He’s very avant garde. Virginia wants everything exclusive but statement-making simple. That’s why she’s chosen the Hamptons as the venue.’
Carly had continued to listen sympathetically.
Only the very richest of the rich could afford to live the ‘sim
ple’ life Hamptons-style. She had read up on the area and knew that it was the preserve of those with old money—or at least it had been, until the media and fashion set had discovered it.
The magazine had been insistent that they wanted a very stylish and upmarket event—which was, Carly suspected, why they had been commissioned.
Lucy might not be the type to boast that her great-grandfather had been a duke, but the fact remained that she was very well connected socially.
‘We’ve got the silverware on loan from Cristoffle, and the stemware is Baccarat—but very plain, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Carly had agreed, mentally praying that everything was well insured.
She had thought she knew what luxury was, but she had been wrong, she now admitted. As her visit to Barneys this morning had shown her. The exclusive store far surpassed anything she had ever seen, and had made her wonder who on earth could afford to shop there.
An elegant sales assistant had offered to help her, and Carly had suffered being shown a variety of stunning but impossibly expensive gowns—they could not be called anything else—before finally escaping by announcing that she had run out of time.
Any one of the dresses she had been shown would have been perfect for the French château birthday ball, but one in particular had stood out from the rest—a column of palest green silk, layer after delicately fine layer of it, the fabric floating magically with every movement of the air.
Carly had hardly dared to try it on, but the sales assistant had insisted and she had had no option other than to give way.
‘It is perfect for you,’ she had told Carly, and Carly had mentally agreed with her. But she had shaken her head and taken it off.
The Hamptons event was due to commence at four in the afternoon and go on until eight in the evening. A private house had been hired for the occasion, with large lawns and its own beach, and Carly had dressed—she hoped—appropriately—both for the occasion and the fact that she was part of the ‘hired help’, plus the fact that she was representing Lucy.
To do so she had had to give in and wear one of the outfits Ricardo had paid for. A pair of plain white Chloe linen pants teamed with an almost but not quite off the shoulder knit in navy and white. She had teamed the trousers with simple but oh, so expensive beige leather flats, and in order to accommodate all the paperwork she had to carry around with her she had splashed out this morning in New York before leaving and bought herself a large and stylish dark red straw bag—not from Barneys, where she had sighed over the unbelievable display of bags, but from a regular department store, and a marked-down sale item at that.
A couple of ‘of the moment’ trendy Perspex bangles, her own small gold earrings, and her good (although several years old) Oliver Peoples sunglasses completed her outfit.
She had been curious to see what Ricardo would wear. She had heard that there was an unofficial casual ‘uniform’ for visitors to the island—a variation on the traditional faded red jeans which had become a Hamptons visitors trademark—and had been unexpectedly touched and impressed to see that he was wearing classic Italian casual—almost as though he wanted to underline his own nationality. It was a mix of white and beige in cotton and linen, and he managed to wear it without looking either crumpled or over-groomed—which was quite an achievement.
Bare brown feet thrust into soft leather open shoes were a raw and masculine touch that certainly made her very much aware of the fact that he was dangerously male—and very much aware of him as well, she admitted, as she ignored the temptation to turn her head and look at him.
The more time she spent with him, the more she was being forced to accept how much he aroused her physically.
Even now, just sitting here beside him in silence, she could feel the tormenting ache of her own need growing stronger with every pulse of her body.
She was out of her depth. Why didn’t she admit it? If he were to turn to her now and tell her that tonight he wanted to take her to bed and make love to her until morning there was no way she would refuse.
And why should she? She could go through the rest of her life without ever again meeting a man who could make her feel like this.
And sex without love was surely like…Like what? Like whisky without water? Undiminished? Its strength and flavour heightened by the fact that it was not touched by anything else? Why shouldn’t sex be like that? Why shouldn’t it? Why couldn’t it be a pure, intense, once-in-a-lifetime experience just as it was?
What she had to ask herself was, if she didn’t have sex with Ricardo, in later years would she praise herself or would she berate herself? Would she feel that she had gained or lost? Would she yearn to have the opportunity back again or…?
What was she trying to do? Persuade herself into bed with him? Wasn’t that Ricardo’s role? Nothing about him suggested to her that he was the kind of man who wasn’t capable of going in all-out pursuit of anything and everything he wanted, be it a woman or a business. Ricardo played to win. If he truly wanted her he would be the one doing the persuading—and he would surely have persuaded her into his bed by now! As if she actually needed persuading, she admitted wryly.
But why did she want him so much? It definitely wasn’t because of his money! And equally definitely it wasn’t because of love. Loving someone meant risking being hurt.
So it was the man himself, then? The tightening sensation within her own body told her she had found the truth.
All these years of believing she wasn’t interested in sex—she had told herself that nothing would ever induce her to adopt the casual attitude towards sex of so many women she knew, which she found repugnant—had been washed away by the ferocity of her own desire, like a dam bursting its banks to flood a hitherto dried-out gully.
She had a terrible and terrifying urge to turn to Ricardo and ask him to turn the helicopter around. To take her back to New York and his apartment, his bed, so that she could discover for herself which was the more powerfully sensual and erotic—her fantasies or Ricardo’s reality.
When had the balance, the scales themselves tipped? Ricardo wondered savagely as he tried to fight against the message his body’s fierce hunger was sending him.
When had his hunger for Carly started to occupy his thoughts more than acquiring Prêt a Party? When had he somehow given way and abandoned the rule he’d thought he had set in stone never to allow himself to want any woman so much that the wanting overpowered him?
He didn’t know! What he did know, though, was that he had looked at her earlier, when she had walked towards him in his apartment, and had had to fight against the madness of an overwhelming need to take hold of her and kiss her until he could feel in her the same passionate response he had felt in her before—until her body was pliant and eagerly, erotically desirous of his touch, and her breathing was signalling an arousal that matched his own.
They had almost reached their destination; he could see the helipad up ahead of him. It was too late to turn back now.
East Hampton. New money and lots of it—or at least that was what she had read, Carly thought as a uniformed hunk, wearing eye-wateringly canary-yellow cut-offs and a bright blue logoed polo shirt—all muscles and too-white teeth—tenderly handed her down from the helicopter. What was it about such movie-perfect men that was so antiseptic and unsexy? Carly mused as she was asked for her name. And was it her imagination or did the bright smile fade just a little once its owner realised she was here as part of the workforce?
To the side of her, though, Ricardo was being greeted almost effusively by a stunningly pretty girl also wearing a greeter’s uniform.
So this was corporate entertaining New York style! Certainly everything was well organised, very slick and professional—right down to the small packs they were being handed which she already knew included a map of the layout of the house and its gardens, a timetable of the afternoon’s events, and a ticketed voucher so that guests could collect their goodie bags as they left—no cluttering the tables or,
even worse, disgruntled guests leaving rejected and unwanted gifts behind them.
Ricardo was certainly receiving the de luxe treatment, Carly decided, as a further glance in his direction informed her that his greeter was still making him the focus of her attention whilst her own had mysteriously disappeared. He was nursing a half-empty glass of red wine, glancing away from his companion to stare down into its depths.
If Ricardo were a glass of full-bodied, richly flavoured red wine, Carly thought fancifully, she would want to drink deeply of him, not sip delicately at him. She would want to roll the glorious velvety texture of him around her tongue before allowing him to turn the whole of her body to liquid pleasure. She would want to breathe in the richness of him and savour his unique musky flavour. She would want to fill her senses with the richness of him and then…
Hot-faced, Carly struggled to call her thoughts to order. Ricardo wasn’t a wine, he was a man. And just seeing the way he was smiling back at the girl who was so obviously flirting with him filled Carly with a fierce, painful surge of jealousy.
She was here to work, she reminded herself starkly, and she turned her back on Ricardo and made her way towards the main hospitality area.
They were, of course, virtually the first arrivals, and Carly wanted to check in with both the New York event organiser and the clients to make sure that everything was going to plan. Waiters and waitresses—their uniforms comprising retro Hawaiian-style shirts with a brilliantly patterned design made up of front covers of the magazine—were already circulating with trays of drinks, presumably serving the clients themselves.
When Carly reached the main pavilion a security guard on the door stopped her, and she showed him both her pass and her identity badge. Once inside, she found the magazine’s PR team and Luella Klein, her opposite number from the New York event organiser, standing together, engaged in conversation.
‘Lurve the shirts those guys out there are wearing!’ Luella announced dramatically as soon as the introductions were over.