by Penny Jordan
‘Well, you’ve done as much as you can do for the moment. If I were you I’d simply put it out of your mind until we get back to London.’
Strange how that one small word ‘we’ could mean so very much, Carly thought, as Ricardo drew her back down into his arms.
Ricardo felt the tight coiling of his own stomach muscles as Carly’s nipple responded to the slow stroke of his thumb-pad. He could already see the betraying tightening of the muscles in her belly, and the now familiar way in which that threw into relief the mound of her sex.
Carly closed her eyes and gave in to what she was feeling, hoarding the pleasure to her like a child trying to hold a rainbow. She raised her head and kissed the column of Ricardo’s throat, running the tip of her tongue along it, right up to his ear, then slowly and luxuriously exploring the hard whorls of flesh.
They had already made love once, but once wasn’t going to be enough. She whispered to Ricardo what she wanted, her voice blurred with pleasure and longing, her body shuddering with expectation. The moment he placed his hand on her mound she spread her legs in eager anticipation and invitation, then murmured her appreciation when Ricardo parted the still-swollen lips of her sex with his fingers and started to caress her.
‘What about this?’ he asked thickly, rolling her over on top of him and holding her just off his own body, his mouth at the juncture of her thighs.
Carly’s heart thumped excitedly against her ribs. She had wondered…been tempted…but hadn’t liked to suggest such intimacy.
But now, with him holding her arched over him, his fingers exploring her wetness and then holding her open, so that his tongue could sweep the full length of her eager arousal, she could only shudder in mindless, wanton pleasure. His tongue pressed against her clitoris, caressing it into swollen heat, whilst his fingers stroked into her, finding a new pleasure spot she hadn’t known existed.
Unable to stop herself she reached for him, circling the head with her own tongue, whilst her fingers worked busily on the shaft. Daringly, the fingers of her free hand moved a little lower.
She heard him groan, his whole body stiffening, and his response increased her own arousal. She could feel him lapping fiercely at her, the intimate stroke of his fingers bringing her so quickly to orgasm that she cried out in the immediacy and intensity of it.
Her body was still tingling, still quivering intensely, when he turned her over and entered her.
Immediately her muscles fastened around him, the small shallow ripples growing into violent shuddering contractions of almost unbearable pleasure.
‘I love you so much,’ Carly whispered, as she lay held fast in Ricardo’s arms. ‘I never, ever thought I could feel like this. So loved and loving, and so very, very happy.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
A SMALL tender smile curled Carly’s mouth as she let herself into the house. It was lunchtime, and with the birthday ball taking place in a few hours’ time by rights she should have been at the château, just in case she was needed, but instead she had given in to Ricardo’s whispered suggestion that they snatch a couple of hours alone together.
Ricardo had dropped her off outside before going to park the car, promising her that he wouldn’t be very long.
Any time spent apart from him right now was far, far too long, she reflected as she put the fresh bread they had stopped off to buy on the kitchen table and then, unable to stop herself, walked into the room Ricardo was using to work in.
What was it about loving someone that caused this compulsion to share their personal space, even when they weren’t in it? She had become so sensitive to everything about him that she was sure she could actually feel his body warmth in the air. Half laughing at herself for her foolishness, she paused to smooth her fingers over the chair in which he normally sat. There were some papers on the desk. She glanced absently at them, and then more hungrily as she saw his handwriting.
And then, as she realised what she was looking at, she stiffened, picking up the papers so that she could study them more closely whilst her heart thudded out an uneven, anguished death knell to her love.
Ricardo frowned as the empty silence of the house surrounded him.
Carly heard him call her name, and then come down the hallway, but she waited until he had walked into the small room before she confronted him. The papers were still in her hand, and she held on to them as she might have done a shield as she accused him bitterly, ‘You lied about wanting to give Prêt a Party your business. You don’t want to give us anything. You want to take us over.’
‘I was considering it, yes,’ Ricardo agreed levelly.
‘You used me! You deliberately tricked me with all those questions you asked!’ Her voice was strained and accusatory, her eyes huge in the pale shape of her face.
‘The only questions I asked you were exactly the same ones I, or anyone else, would have asked if they had been intending to give Prêt a Party their business.’
‘You pretended to want me…to love me…because—’
‘No! Carly, no—you mustn’t think that.’ As he stepped towards her she moved back from him. ‘Yes, I had originally planned to find out from you as much as I could about the way the business is run—that’s simple defensive business practice—but—’
‘You accused me of being a gold-digger. But what you are, Ricardo, is far, far worse. You used me. You let me believe that you cared about me, that you loved me, when all the time what you really wanted was the business.’
‘Carly, that is not true. My potential acquisition of Prêt a Party and my love for you are two completely separate issues. Yes, originally I did think I might get an insight into any vulnerabilities the business might have through you, but I promise you that was the last thing on my mind when we became lovers. In fact because of that—because of us—I—’
‘I don’t believe you.’ Carly cut him off flatly. ‘I thought I could trust you. Otherwise I would never have told you what I did about Lucy and Nick. I’ve made it all so easy for you, haven’t I? Because of my stupidity Lucy will lose the company. All the time I was letting myself believe that you were genuine, that you cared about me, what you really wanted was Pret a Party.’
‘It isn’t like that. When you confided in me you were confiding in me as your lover, and I can assure you can trust me—’
‘Trust you? Carly interrupted him furiously. ‘What with? You’ve taken all the trust I had, Ricardo, and you’ve destroyed it. You knew how hard it was for me to allow myself to admit that I loved you—but you didn’t care what you were doing to me, did you? Not so long as it got you what you wanted. And you wanted me vulnerable to you, didn’t you? The only thing that matters to you is making your next billion, nothing else and no one else. I hate you for what you’ve done to me, and I hate you even more for what you’re going to do to Lucy.’
‘Carly, you’ve got it all wrong. I did think about acquiring Prêt a Party, but once I’d met you the only acquisition I cared about was the acquisition of your love.’
Her muscles ached from the tension inside her body, and even though she knew he was lying to her, incredibly she actually wanted to believe him. No wonder she had been so afraid of love if this was what it did to her. How could she still ache for him, knowing what she did?
‘You’re lying, Ricardo,’ she told him. ‘If you weren’t planning to go ahead with the acquisition why were the papers on your desk?
‘I was considering the best way to stop you worrying about Lucy and her trust fund,’ he told her quietly.
Carly gave him a mirthless smile. ‘Of course. And no doubt you’d decided that the best way was for you to acquire the business. You may have taken me for a fool, Ricardo, but that doesn’t mean I intend to go on being one.’
‘You’re getting this all wrong. I can see that right now you’re too upset to listen to reason—’
‘Reason? More lies, you mean! I trusted you, and you betrayed that trust!’ Carly could feel the anguish of her pain leaking into her
voice, betraying to him how badly he had hurt her and how much she loved him.
‘Trust works both ways, Carly. I could say to you that I trusted you, to have faith in me and my love for you. Those papers were on my desk because I was trying to come up with a way of helping Lucy without benefiting that wretched husband of hers, and the reason I was doing that was because of you. Because I love you, and I knew how upset and worried you were.’
Carly stared at him in disbelief.
‘You can’t really expect me to believe that,’ she told him contemptuously.
‘Why not? It’s the truth. And if you loved me you would trust me and accept it as such.’
Tears were burning the backs of her eyes and her throat had gone tight with pain. This was the worst kind of emotional blackmail and cold-blooded cynicism, and she wasn’t going to fall for it a second time.
‘Then obviously I don’t love you,’ she told him, too brightly. ‘Because I don’t trust you and I don’t accept it. Why should any woman accept anything a man tells her? Look at the way Nick is cheating Lucy. It’s over, Ricardo, and it would have been better for me if it had never started in the first place.’
Carly stared bleakly into the mirror. She hated the fact that the only suitable outfit she had to wear for the party was a dress that came from Barneys, which Ricardo had paid for. Well, after tonight he could keep it—and everything else as well.
Including her heart?
She was perilously close to losing control, she warned herself, and no way could she afford to do that. She still had a job to do, after all.
It had been a very long day. Fortunately she had finally managed to get Angelina’s approval for the flowers, even if the florist had initially been furious at the change of plan.
Guests who had arrived early and were staying locally had started to appear at the château, wanting to look at the marquee and demanding to see the seating plan.
Privately Carly felt that Angelina, or one at least one of her PAs, should have been on hand to deal with them, but it seemed that several other members of the Famous Rock Star’s original band had already arrived, with their entourages, and this had led to an impromptu pre-party party taking place.
‘I bet it’s all sex, drugs and rock and roll up there,’ one of the entertainers had said to Carly dryly, nodding his head in the direction of the château.
Discreetly, Carly had not made any response. But she did know that some seriously businesslike heavies had been hired by the celeb magazine with exclusive rights to reporting the event to protect the guests and the event from any unwanted intrusion by rival members of the press.
Outwardly she was conducting herself professionally and calmly; inwardly she was in emotional turmoil.
Ricardo had lied to her and deceived her, used her, and yet unbelievably, despite all that, and despite what she knew she had to do for the sake of her own self-respect, she still ached for him. Given the choice, if she could have turned back time and not seen those damning papers she knew she would have chosen to do so. How could she still love him? She didn’t know how she could; she just knew that she did.
She had removed her things to a spare bedroom, and would have moved out of the house itself if it had been practical to do so. As it was, she was going to have to travel to the château with Ricardo, because it had proved impossible to book a taxi. She didn’t know how she was going to endure it, but somehow she must.
And she hadn’t even thought properly yet about what she was going to say to Lucy.
Ricardo was waiting for Carly to come downstairs. Did she have any idea how he felt about what she had said to him? Did she really think all the vulnerability and pain was on her side? It tore him apart to think that he had hurt her in any kind of way, and he cursed the fact that he had left those papers on his desk. He also cursed the fact that she had stubbornly refused to accept his explanation.
He heard a door open upstairs and watched as Carly came down the stairs towards him. She looked so beautiful that the sight of her threatened to close his throat. Carly’s face was pale and set, and she looked very much as though she had been crying. He wanted to go to her, take her in his arms and never let her go, but he knew if he did she would reject him.
The guests had finished eating, and the magicians had cleverly kept them entertained whilst the tables were cleared. Any minute now the dancing would start.
Carly’s head ached, and she longed for the evening to be over. She couldn’t bear to look at Ricardo. They were seated at a small table tucked away next to the entrance used by the waiting staff. She would not be able to dance, of course; she wasn’t here as a guest. Not that she wanted to risk dancing with Ricardo—not in her present vulnerable state.
Her feelings were just the last dying throes of her love for him, she tried to reassure herself. She was only feeling like this because she knew that after tonight she would never see him again. She was going to miss having sex with him, that was all.
She got up and told Ricardo stiffly, ‘I’d better go and check that the bar staff have everything they need.’
He inclined his head in acknowledgement, but didn’t make any response. She delayed going back for as long as she could, hoping that when she returned to the table Ricardo might have gone, and yet as she approached the first thing she did was look anxiously for his familiar dark head, as though she dreaded him not being there rather than the opposite. How was she going to get through the rest of her life without him, lying alone in her bed at night longing for him?
‘The fireworks are about to start,’ Ricardo warned her before she could sit down.
As a special finale to the evening a firework display had been choreographed and timed to go with music from the Famous Rock Star’s biggest hit, and to judge from the enthusiastic reception the display received from the assembled guests it had been well worth the time spent on its organisation.
Carly, though, watched the display through a haze of tears, standing stiffly at Ricardo’s side, aching to reach out and touch him, but refusing to allow herself to do so.
Despite what he had done she still loved him, and because of that she was hurting herself just as much as he had hurt her.
It was almost four o’clock in the morning before she was finally able to leave. She wasn’t returning to the house she had shared with Ricardo though; she had arranged with one of their suppliers to return direct with them to Paris, and from there she intended to fly home. She had her passport with her, and her clothes—her own clothes, paid for with her own money—were already stowed in the supplier’s four-wheel drive.
A cowardly way to leave, perhaps, but she didn’t trust herself to spend another night with him. She had some pride left still, she told herself fiercely, even if he had taken everything else from her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SHE had been back in London for three days now, and still hadn’t been able to persuade herself to go into the office. Officially at least, so far as Lucy was concerned, she was taking a few days’ leave. The reality was that she had felt too sick with loss and misery to do anything other than retreat into herself and stay in her bedroom. Fortunately Jules was away, so she had the flat to herself, but today she had to go out—because today she had an appointment to see Marcus.
No matter how much she was suffering because of Ricardo’s deceit and betrayal, she reminded herself that she still owed a duty to Lucy, both as a friend and an employee, and so she had screwed up her courage and got in touch with Marcus to tell him she had some concerns about the financial affairs of the business that she did not at this stage want to discuss with Lucy. Fortunately she’d had his e-mail address, and virtually immediately he had e-mailed her back to ask her to go and see him.
The first thing she noticed when she abandoned the comfort of her ‘at home’ joggers and top was how loosely her jeans fitted her. It was true that she had not felt much like eating, but the sight of her pale, drawn face and grief-shadowed eyes when she looked at herself in the mirr
or told her that it wasn’t just lack of food that was responsible for her altered appearance. But there was nothing she could take to alleviate the devastating effect of lack of Ricardo, was there? At least only she knew how humiliatingly she longed for him, despite what he had done.
Love knew no sense of moral outrage, as she had now discovered. And, equally, once it had been given life it could not be easily destroyed. She had tried focusing on all the reasons she should not love Ricardo, but rebelliously her thoughts had lingered longingly instead on the happiness she had felt before she had discovered the truth. It might have been a false happiness, but her heart would not let go of it. Her heart longed and yearned to be back in that place of happiness, just as her body yearned to be back in Ricardo’s embrace.
She took a taxi to the address Marcus had given her, and was surprised to discover that she had been set down not outside an office building, but outside an elegant house just off one of London’s private garden squares.
Even more surprisingly it was Marcus himself who opened the door for her and showed her in to the comfort of a book-lined library-cum-study.
‘You must think it rather odd that I’ve got in touch with you privately,’ Carly began awkwardly, having refused his offer of a cup of coffee. She was so on edge that for once she did not feel the need for her regular caffeine fix.
‘Not at all,’ Marcus reassured her. ‘In fact…’ He paused, and then looked thoughtfully at her.
‘I think I have a fair idea of why you want to see me, Carly.’
‘You do?’
‘Ricardo has been in touch with me. He told me that you would probably wish to talk to me.’
Carly could feel her face burning with the heat of her emotions.
She couldn’t understand why Ricardo should have been in touch with Marcus, but just hearing Marcus say his name made her long for him so much she could hardly think, never mind speak. But of course she had to. She took a deep breath to steady herself, and began.