by Penny Jordan
‘You know what I mean! Paying Signor Bartoli an extra twenty thousand euros on top of the bill to change his mind and let Mr. and Mrs. Silverwood have the dining room after all.’ She gave a small disbelieving shake of her head.
‘What went wrong?’ Silas asked her.
‘I don’t know,’ Julia admitted. ‘Our system is that our clients pay all the bills we incur on their behalf themselves, via us. That way we keep our own overheads down and they get to see exactly what the costs are. All we charge them for is our professional services as organisers.’
‘Surely when you received those e-mails it must have alerted you to a potential problem.’
‘Well, yes, it would have done if I had seen them, but I didn’t—’ She broke off to smile at the waiter as he brought their first course.
Her stomach was still churning with anxiety-induced adrenalin. The scene in the hotel manager’s office had left her feeling so physically and emotionally on edge that the last thing she wanted to do was eat. She didn’t want to tell Silas that, though.
It was bad enough that he had witnessed her humiliation and been obliged to rescue her from it, without letting him see how stupidly upset and shaken she still felt.
Silas had scant tolerance of other people’s emotional vulnerability, and that was an aspect of his personality that had always made her feel defensive and wary. He always seemed so invulnerable, which highlighted her awareness of her own weaknesses. He seemed to think that in paying the hotel manager to change his mind he had solved the whole problem, but Julia was now sick with worry about how on earth she was going to repay him. The business certainly could not do so. Lucy had confided worriedly to her that they were barely breaking even, never mind making any profit. Julia had no money of her own, and whilst her stepfather was a relatively wealthy man Julia could not imagine asking him to give her twenty thousand euros.
Silas watched her pushing her soup round and not drinking it for several seconds before demanding, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. I’m just not hungry.’
‘It’s over twelve hours since you last ate. How can you not be hungry?’
‘I’m just not. But I am tired. In fact, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll go up to…to bed.’
Silas gave a small shrug.
‘If that’s what you want to do, go ahead.’
It was his dinner he wanted, not her company, he assured himself, as Julia pushed back her chair and stood up. And that sharp little knife-twist he could feel, of something that was almost pain, wasn’t a pain at all. It was just a pang of irritation caused by Julia being Julia.
Julia stared at the figures she had written down on the piece of paper in front of her. Her head was beginning to ache and she felt sick. No matter how much she juggled with the figures, there was just no way she was going to be able to find twenty thousand euros. She didn’t like to go into debt and didn’t even possess a credit card—but nor did she in the way of savings, either (she bought too many shoes!). Her family was wealthy but their money was all tied up in property—such as the Estate at Amberley and the London flat where she lived—assets that were supposed to be preserved for future Earls and so weren’t hers to sell. Perhaps she would have to try and raise a loan—but it was not as if she had any property to borrow against.
Silas picked up his wine glass and looked sombrely at the contents. It held a robust, energetic rioja, with a good parentage, that should have tasted warm and well rounded instead of slightly sour. Or was it his mood that had turned sour and not the wine? Why should that be? Not, surely, because Julia had left him to eat alone? Silas often ate alone. In fact he preferred to. He glanced down at his plate. His steak was cooked just as he liked, but he might just as well have been eating sawdust, he realised, as he pushed his plate away from himself and signalled for the waiter.
As the hotel lift took him up to the suite, he wondered what the hell was happening to him? Why hadn’t he simply stayed where he was and finished his meal? Why had both it and the evening lost their flavour and become flat and unappealing without Julia’s presence?
Engrossed in the figures in front of her, Julia did not hear the outer door open, or see Silas walk in until he was virtually standing in front of her.
‘What’s this?’ he demanded, picking up the piece of paper and studying it.
‘Nothing,’ Julia fibbed, but Silas wasn’t listening to her. He stared at the small, worried little sums, written down over and over again, and something inside him that he hadn’t known was there moved a painful little notch, like the cranking of some long-unused mechanism, its movement all the more agonising because of that.
‘You don’t seriously think that I expect you to repay me, do you?’ he demanded sharply.
‘Why not? Someone has to,’ Julia told him. ‘And I know that Lucy can’t. The business is barely breaking even, and if the business can’t repay you, then naturally I feel morally obliged to do so myself. Because I dealt with the Silverwoods’ event.’
Her eyes widened as Silas suddenly screwed up the piece of paper with an almost violent movement of his hand and threw it into the wastepaper bin.
He had no real idea quite why Julia’s comment should affect him so strongly, nor why he should feel so enraged because she didn’t realise that he didn’t want to be repaid.
‘You’re my fiancée, remember? The money I gave to the hotel manager I gave because I did not wish to see my fiancée being harassed and distressed. Therefore it was for my benefit as much as anyone else’s. There is no reason for Lucy to know about it and even less for her to pay me back,’ he told her grimly.
‘But our engagement isn’t real,’ Julia pointed out. ‘And even if it were I’d still want to repay you.’
Silas looked at her. ‘Why?’
‘Because I would. Because I don’t like what it does to a relationship when one person uses the other—financially or in any kind of way. How could you respect me? How could I respect myself if I let you carry me financially? I can’t match you for money, Silas, but if we were really a couple I would want to match you in respect and…and…all sorts of other ways…’
Silently Silas digested what she was saying. She had surprised him he admitted. How could this young woman who had admitted openly to a constant need to buy shoes also manifest such a deeply ingrained sense of responsibility and pride? And how could he not have known that she did?
‘Since your clients insist they sent you a cheque, and moreover the cheque has been cashed, it seems to me there must have been some kind of accounting mistake. The money must be in Prêt a Party’s accounts somewhere. Who deals with the day-to-day finances of the business?’
Julia exhaled slowly, and then told him reluctantly, ‘Nick.’
‘Blayne?’ Silas demanded sharply.
Julia looked away, reluctant to admit to Silas that she was beginning to remember some odd and very worried comments Carly had made before she had left Prêt a Party to marry Ricardo.
Could it be that Nick was doing something fraudulent with the company’s money?
Julia was reluctant to speak openly to Silas about her burgeoning suspicions in case she was wrong. Nick might have threatened to punish her for refusing his sexual advances, but there was no way he could have carried out that threat by allowing the booking to be cancelled. The timing simply wasn’t right. Unless he had somehow or other tampered with her e-mails…But that would mean that Nick was stealing from his own wife, and why on earth would he do that?
And then she remembered that Nick had wanted to come to Positano with her.
‘Now what’s wrong?’ Silas queried, as he watched the way her expression changed and anxiety shadowed her eyes.
‘I was just thinking about Nick,’ Julia said.
CHAPTER SIX
JUST thinking about Nick? Hardly. No, what she really meant was that she wanted Blayne, despite having insisted previously that she didn’t. And despite, too, having responded physically to him.
Silas wasn’t used to hearing a woman express desire for another man when she was with him. And he certainly wasn’t used to the feelings he was now experiencing. Anger, pain—jealousy? What on earth was happening to him?
Oblivious to the interpretation Silas had put on her words, Julia took a deep breath and then asked uncomfortably, ‘Silas, you don’t think that Nick could be—?’
‘I don’t think he could be what? So unhappy in his marriage that he should leave Lucy for you?’ Silas demanded savagely.
‘Leave Lucy for me? I’ve already told you that I don’t want him!’
‘But you can’t stop thinking about him?’
‘What? No! I’m not thinking about him like that,’ Julia protested. ‘It’s Lucy I’m concerned about.’
When Silas continued to look unconvinced, she told him, ‘Nick deals with the financial side of the business, and I can’t help wondering…’
It was hard to come out and say what she was actually thinking, but she could see from Silas’s expression that she was going to have to—unless she wanted him to continue to think she wanted Nick. Although quite why it suddenly seemed so very important to convince him that she didn’t, and that there was no one else in her life, she wasn’t prepared to analyse too much.
Instead she took a deep breath and said uncomfortably, ‘I’m probably being stupid about this, but I can’t help worrying that Nick might be…’ This was so difficult! ‘Silas, you don’t think he could be doing anything wrong, do you?’ she appealed anxiously.
‘Wrong? What kind of wrong?’
When she began to chew anxiously on her bottom lip and looked uneasy, Silas suddenly realised what she was trying to say.
‘You think that Blayne might be defrauding the business?’
Relief replaced Julia’s earlier discomfort. ‘Yes! Well, no. I don’t know. I mean, why should he, when he’s married to Lucy? But I know that I never saw those e-mails from the hotel. I know that I passed the cheque on to Nick, along with the invoices it was supposed to cover.’
‘You said yourself that the business was struggling to make money—maybe the situation is worse than you know and Blayne simply couldn’t pay out the deposits because there wasn’t enough money?’
‘In that case why didn’t he say something to me? Warn me? He was very angry that he wasn’t going to be coming to Positano with me. I thought it was because I’d told him I wasn’t going to have sex with him, but if he knew that there was going to be a problem here…Oh, Silas, I just don’t know what to think or do. Lucy is one of my two closest friends. Prêt a Party is her business. The last thing I want is to do something that might hurt her.’
It was only natural that he should be relieved to discover that Julia had not lied to him, Silas assured himself. But a taunting inner voice told him mockingly, Relieved, yes. But surely not almost euphoric?
‘Would you like me to make some discreet enquiries?’
‘I don’t know,’ Julia admitted. ‘Maybe if you left it until I’ve been able to speak to Lucy and…and check everything.’
‘You’re worried that Lucy might be implicated as well?’ Silas guessed.
‘No! Lucy would never do anything dishonest.’
‘But you think that Blayne could have involved her in something he has done that is dishonest?’
‘I don’t know, Silas…and, like I just said, I don’t want to do anything that could hurt her. I feel so sorry for her, and I feel a bit guilty as well. If it hadn’t been for me she would never have met Nick in the first place.’
‘You can’t say that. She might still have met him without you.’
She looked so distressed that Silas immediately found he wanted to comfort her. And not just verbally, he realised, and he discovered that somehow or other he had moved closer to her.
‘I am grateful to you for what you did at the hotel, Silas,’ Julia told him huskily. Silas was being so very kind and understanding.
‘I just wish…’ She stopped speaking as Silas reached out and drew her purposefully into his arms.
‘Why don’t we forget about Prêt a Party and focus on this instead?’
So much had happened that she had almost forgotten the thrill of anticipation and excitement she had felt earlier. Almost, but not entirely. And now immediately it was back, her pleasure even hotter and sweeter this time as Silas kissed her with deliberate thoroughness.
‘Mmm.’ Julia slipped her arms round his neck to hold him closer as she savoured the deepening passion of his kiss, and then shivered in voluptuous pleasure as his hands sculpted the curves of her body before taking possession of her breasts.
Her own arousal was hot and fiery and immediate. Behind her closed eyelids she could see erotic images of them together—Silas’s hands and mouth on her naked body, possessing it and her. She could see herself writhing in eager urgency whilst his lips played erotically with the tight, hot jut of her nipples, his hand slipping between her legs to open her to his sensual exploration.
But who needed to imagine when what he was already doing to her was so effective? She loved the way his fingertips stroked her breast, so slowly and tantalisingly, and then drew erotically on her waiting nipple, savouring its hardness through the layers of fabric.
He lifted his mouth from hers and started to kiss her jaw, causing her to arch back her head so that he could plunder the soft, sweet flesh of her throat, and then move lower to that special secret place where her neck ran into her shoulder and where just the warmth of his breath was enough to make her shudder in wanton need.
Being held, and touched and kissed like this, with nothing to do other than let Silas build her arousal, was the most deliciously sensual and self-indulgent pleasure. She exhaled slowly on a luxuriant sigh of delight and stroked her fingertips through the thick hair at the back of his neck. His flesh felt warm and firm, and oh, so wonderfully male. A feeling of harmony and happiness, of rightfulness, stroked slowly through her like a delicious extra layer of physical pleasure. She traced the curve of his neck and then the rigid hardness of his collarbone with delicate fingertips, savouring his male difference.
‘Mmm. Lovely strong muscles.’
The approving, almost purring pleasure in her voice caused Silas to tug urgently on her nipple and then bite gently at her earlobe before whispering thickly, ‘Why don’t we get rid of some of these clothes?’
Beneath his hands her body arched fiercely in eager response.
‘I thought you were never going to ask,’ Julia admitted huskily.
Silas had switched off the electric lights, but the doors to the balcony were open and uncurtained. The sky was so bright with stars and a full moon that more than enough silver light was shining down on them for him to see her clearly. Her eyes shone with liquid desire, her lips slightly swollen and flushed with colour from his kisses. Not even the fact that she was fully dressed could conceal her arousal: the stiff thrust of her nipples was plainly visible. He reached out and traced a slow circle with his fingertip around the one he had been caressing, watching with totally male satisfaction as her whole body tightened and she exhaled fiercely. Inside his head he could already see the naked flesh of her breast, creamy pale against the puckered darkness of her nipple; he could feel the way her body would shudder as he teased the tight peak with the tip of his tongue before taking it fully into his mouth. He could even hear her wild cry of erotic pleasure as she called out to him to satisfy her.
What was Silas waiting for? Julia looked up at him questioningly, and then reached out to touch the hard ridge of his erection, stroking its fabric-covered heat with delicate fingertips, seeking and finding the sensitive place where its head bulged thickly from his foreskin.
Silas discovered that he could scarcely bear to so much as breathe as he stood stiff and still whilst her fingertip mapped and teased him, in case somehow he missed a fraction of the almost unbearable pleasure of her touch.
It wasn’t very often that Silas felt any need to give thanks for the gifts life
had given him—he was, after all, a man who dealt in practicalities, not emotions—but suddenly he recognised that unexpectedly he had received a very special life-enhancing bonus. He wanted Julia and she wanted him, and the desire between them was so hot and so fierce, so immediate and so damned right, that it almost made their marriage a necessity in its own right.
Whatever he had envisaged when he had thought about marriage to Julia, it had not been that he would feel like this. But now that he did feel like this…Silas gave a low, tormented moan of raw male pleasure as her fingertips slowly and rhythmically worked his foreskin over the pulsing head of his penis, whilst she used her free hand to unzip his trousers and then unfasten his belt.
She wanted them to get naked? Well, so did he.
Silas could be both ruthless and inventive when he wanted to be, Julia decided happily only seconds later, as her clothes were removed so speedily and determinedly that it seemed to her that one minute she was fully dressed and the next she was standing in the moonlight wearing only her very brief lace thong, with Silas kneeling on the floor in front of her. Or rather she was almost wearing it. Because Silas had slid his hands beneath the thin lace-covered elastic that had been resting on her hips and was circling her belly button with his tongue-tip.
His hands moved to her bottom, kneading the rounded flesh whilst his tongue teased a line of fire just above the triangle of lace fabric covering the firm, mound of her pubic bone.
He had loved one hand from her bottom and was sliding it between her legs, stroking the sensitive flesh on the inside of her thighs, his touch making her sigh with soft pleasure.
Somehow the warmth of his lips teasing the sensual spot just above the soft dark curls that covered her mound, the slow, explorative stroke of his fingers as they moved up her thigh and under the lacy barrier between them, and the eager swelling of the soft fleshy lips concealing her sex seemed to link the two parts of her body together via an almost electric invisible arc of sizzlingly erotic pleasure. It made her want to push deeper into his touch. It made her want to wantonly demand that he give her more, so very much more. It made her want to urge him to make those tiny flutters of sensation she could feel pulsing deep inside her wet heat become much stronger and fiercer. In short, it made her want…