His frown was so tight across his forehead it gave him an intimidating look. ‘That’s terrible. How could she not believe her own daughter?’
Clem shrugged. ‘It happens.’
There was a telling silence.
‘Did it ever happen to you?’ he asked.
‘You mean one of my mother’s boyfriends trying it on with me?’ Clem gave a self-deprecating laugh. ‘Why would they even glance at me when they could have my mother? You’ve seen how good she looks. She could have been a model if she hadn’t got pregnant with me, a fact she likes to remind me of whenever she gets the chance.’
‘Are you close to her?’
‘Not particularly. We don’t have a lot in common other than a bit of DNA.’
‘I know the feeling.’
Clem looked at his frowning expression. ‘But you were close to your mum, weren’t you?’
‘Very. She was a good woman. A loving mother and a great person. I miss her every single day.’ There was a cloud of sadness on his face, as if the very act of remembering his mother still caused him great pain.
‘I’m sorry it was so awful for you with my mother taking over your parents’ house and all,’ Clem said. ‘I didn’t make things any easier, being such a pain in the neck.’
‘It was a long time ago.’
Another silence went past.
Clem toyed with the straw in her glass of mineral water. Since one truth had come out, maybe it was time for another. ‘There’s something I’d like to explain...about that time in your room...’ She could feel her cheeks heating but soldiered on regardless. ‘I wasn’t waiting for—’
‘You’re not the one who needs to apologise. I was wrong to speak to you like that. I was feeling a little raw after seeing my mother in hospital that day. Not that it’s any excuse.’
Clem chewed at her lip again. ‘Please...let me explain. I’ve never told anyone about that day before now.’
‘Go on.’
She couldn’t look at him so kept her gaze focussed on the bubbles rising in little chains in her glass. ‘I went on a date to a party that turned a little sour. I was upset and went to use your bathroom because it was the only one in the house that no one used. I came out of the shower and curled up on your bed... I was too upset to go to my room because I didn’t want to run into my mother or Jamie—particularly Jamie.’
She heard him lean forward in his chair. Sensed the tension in his body. ‘What happened on your date?’
Clem sneaked a glance at him. He was frowning hard, his expression grave, as if he had some intuition about what she was about to day. ‘I didn’t realise I was being set up. I wasn’t used to guys making a play for me. The attention went to my head. Turned out he was only interested in winning a dare—“who’s the first to sleep with the fat chick?” Needless to say, he won.’
Alistair’s face flinched, his eyes blinking rapidly a couple of times, as if trying to process what she’d told him. ‘That’s despicable. But what I did was even more so, bawling you out like that, jumping to conclusions without giving thought to what other explanation there could be. Can you forgive me? For I sure as hell wouldn’t if I were in your position.’
Clem sent him a wry smile. ‘I can’t see you being taken advantage of by anyone. You’re too sure of yourself, too confident.’
His look was still pained. Agonised. He reached for her hand lying on the table and took it carefully in his, as if frightened he might crush it. His touch sent a warm wave of longing through her body, every nerve tingling where his flesh touched hers. ‘I can see why you struggle with confidence given what happened back then. But you have no need to feel unattractive, Clem. No need at all.’
Clem slipped her hand back into her lap. They were served their meals and they fell into a silence, not exactly companionable, but close to it. She was glad he had insisted on ordering her something a little more substantial than a salad. The fish in a creamy white wine sauce was delectable, so too the vegetable layer-cake that accompanied it. It would be worth the weight gain even if she had to do three hundred of her nightly sit-ups instead of her two hundred.
Unlike her, Alistair didn’t seem to be enjoying his meal. He pushed it around his plate with his fork, only occasionally taking a mouthful. His expression had a perpetual frown, like he was deep in self-recriminating thought. It was weird, but twenty-four hours ago Clem would have been pleased to know he was feeling the rub of his conscience. It would have delighted her no end to think he felt guilty about his blistering tirade.
But now...now she wondered what would have happened back then if she had told him about the humiliating date instead of putting on her game face. He could have been an ally, a protector who would have stood up for her. Stood up to the mocking bully who had degraded her and pulverised her self-esteem.
But instead she had let Alistair think the worst and got a perverse sense of satisfaction for the last ten years that he had so badly misjudged her.
Funny, but she didn’t feel that sense of satisfaction now.
The waiter brought them the bill. Alistair took out his wallet and placed his credit card on the little tray.
‘Aren’t we supposed to be going Dutch?’ Clem asked.
He met her gaze with his inscrutable one. ‘My treat. For past sins.’
It wasn’t the past sins Clem was worried about. It was the future ones.
Ones she felt very tempted to commit.
CHAPTER FIVE
ALISTAIR WAITED WHILE Clem was in the bathroom once they got back to their room. His head was still reeling from being slammed with the truth—the truth that had always been there if only he hadn’t been too stubborn, too blind, too damned one-eyed to see it. How could she forgive him for how he’d treated her? He’d misjudged her without giving her a chance. How could he have got it so wrong? Or had he seen what he’d wanted to see? He had made his mind up about her and hadn’t been open to seeing the conflicting evidence.
Yet it had been there right from the start. Clem was nothing like her mother. She didn’t look like her, she didn’t act like her, she didn’t think like her. Clem had class and social intelligence, and a love for her brother that took precedence over her own reputation. She had taken a bullet for Jamie, so to speak, and would have gladly bled out for him. That showed what an honourable young woman she was: not selfish and self-serving but self-sacrificing and self-effacing.
Alistair hated thinking about how Clem had been humiliated by that jerk of a boy who had used and shamed her. If only he hadn’t jumped to conclusions that day he might have been able to help her. Instead he had contributed to the annihilation of her already fragile self-esteem. How could an apology a decade overdue change anything? It was a wonder she even spoke to him. But, not only did she speak to him, she looked at him with those big, brown eyes of hers with the same look of hunger he knew was in his own. The attraction they felt for each other was simmering in the air whenever they were together. He could try and deny it all he liked but he wanted her. It was a pull so strong he could feel it in every fibre of his being. Drawing him closer and closer, his body aching to feel hers against his.
Why her?
Why was he so obsessed with her? Or was it because she was the one woman he couldn’t control his response to? He couldn’t switch on and switch off his attraction. It wasn’t a casual interest; it was a connection that went beyond the circumstances of their past. He had felt that stirring deep in his body when she was an awkward teenager. His body had recognised the latent feminine power that was waiting for a chance to bloom. It was in full blossom now and his body was intoxicated by it, his senses going haywire every time she was near him.
Alistair checked his messages and emails in an effort to distract himself from thinking about Clem and her beautiful body behind that bathroom door. She was taking an inordinate time. How long did it take to have a shower? Just as he was about to knock on the door to see if she was all right, she came out dressed in one of the hotel bathrobes. Her fa
ce was flushed a bright pink and her hair was in damp corkscrew curls about her shoulders. ‘All yours.’ She flushed a shade darker. ‘The bathroom, I mean.’
He rose from the sofa and she clutched the edges of her bathrobe even closer to her chest. Did she feel unsafe with him? The thought was unsettling. He couldn’t deny he was attracted to her but he wasn’t planning to act on it. The kiss had been a mistake. A big mistake. It would not be repeated. He would make sure of it even if it took every ounce of willpower he possessed.
When he came out of the bathroom he found her on the sitting room floor dressed in a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, doing sit-ups like she was training for the Olympics. ‘That looks like fun.’
‘It’s not.’
‘Then why are you doing it?’
She kept going but each sit-up looked painful. ‘No pain, no gain—or loss, in my case.’
‘You’re got a lovely figure. You don’t need to punish yourself.’
She clambered to her feet and swiped her still damp hair away from her face. ‘Try telling my cellulite that.’
Alistair’s gaze swept over her lush figure. She had curves that made his blood heat to boiling. He could feel the surge of it now in his veins, the red-hot race of it to his groin. Her breasts were pert against her tracksuit top, a hint of her delectable cleavage showing just enough to make his eyes ache to see more. ‘I don’t see any cellulite. I see a beautiful young woman in the prime of her life.’
Her cheeks took on a rosy glow as if she wasn’t used to compliments. ‘What do you think we should do about Harriet and Jamie? Are you still determined to take her home with you?’
Alistair had been mulling it over while he had a shower. If the kids had regular work and decent accommodation then there could be worse things than spending the summer in Monte Carlo. Far worse. Besides, he wasn’t looking forward to having a sulky teenager living with him, if he forced her to come home. He could hardly leave her with his father and, while her mother was unwilling to be a proper mother, what else could he do? ‘I’d be willing to discuss it with them. But I want Harriet at school come the start of term.’
Clem nodded as if that made sense. ‘Maybe I can have a chat to her about it. Woman to woman. I wish someone had offered to send me to boarding school. It would’ve been better than being dragged around the country every couple of months when my mother took up with a new partner.’
Apart from the loss of his young brother, Alistair had mostly had a secure and stable childhood. He couldn’t imagine how he would have coped being shunted around during those formative years. ‘It must have been very unsettling for you.’
‘It was.’
He watched as she moved about the room, stopping to pick up objects as if she was uncertain what to do with her hands. His hands were aching to reach out for her, to hold her, to feel her young womanly body pressed against his. ‘Look, about the expense of this trip—’
‘It’s fine.’ She straightened the cushions on the sofa until they were all perfectly aligned. ‘I can pay my own way.’
In amongst the glint of pride, he caught the worried shadow in her tawny-brown eyes. ‘I dragged you here. I’ll pay. That’s the end of it, okay?’
She pursed her lips, making him want to kiss them open. ‘You really have no sense of the word compromise, do you?’
He came over to her and took her hands in his, turning them over to inspect the marks that had now faded. Her wrists were slender, her fingers small and neat except for her bitten fingernails. He stroked the middle of her palm with his thumb, watching as her pupils widened. The tip of her tongue came out to leave a glistening layer of moisture over her lips. Her throat rose and fell over a swallow. Her fingers trembled in the cage of his hand like a captured bird. He knew he should step back. Let her go. Not look into those big gorgeous eyes and lose himself to the temptation of the flesh. But she drew him like an irresistible drug. He couldn’t get that kiss out of his mind. How she had felt. How she had tasted. How she had responded. He brought his head down to within a breath of her mouth, allowing their breaths to mingle.
‘I know I shouldn’t be doing this.’ He nudged her lower lip and then her top one.
‘Then why are you doing it?’ Her voice was barely more than a whisper, her breath a soft caress on his chin.
He spread his hands in her hair, her wild curls bouncing around his fingers like sprigs of headily scented jasmine. ‘Not sure.’
‘I thought you were sure about everything you do.’
He nudged her top lip again and then stroked his tongue over its cupid-bow curve, feeling her tremble against him. ‘Not always.’
She shifted against him, a subtle movement that made his blood head south when her hips came into contact with his. Her curves melded to his body as if tailor-made for him. His hands cupped the swell of her bottom, drawing her closer so she could feel what she was doing to him. Her hands came up to rest on his chest; her eyes were focussed on his mouth as if she found it the most fascinating thing in the world. He lowered his mouth to hers, the zing of contact sending a shockwave of sexual energy through his entire body. He massaged her lips with his, taking his time to enter her mouth with a stroke of his tongue. She opened to him like a flower, her lips as soft as magnolia petals, her taste as sweet as nectar. She made little mewling sounds when he plundered her mouth, her hands snaking up to loop around his neck, bringing her body in closer, deliciously closer, contact with his.
He moved from her mouth to the side of her neck where the skin was soft and fragrant. She moaned softly as he trailed her lips and tongue over the sensitive slope to her cleavage. He pushed her breasts up from beneath so the curves rose to his mouth. He tasted the upper curve of her left breast and then her right one, delighting in the way she shivered all over, as if his touch awakened her flesh like no other. He pulled down the front of her cotton top to access her nipple, circling it with his tongue, and then taking it into his mouth and drawing on it. He did the same to her other breast, breathing in the scent of her womanly body, feeling her arousal as keenly as he felt his own.
It was a freight train in his blood. A surging force that was gathering speed and momentum. If he didn’t stop soon he wouldn’t be able to stop at all. A tiny voice at the back of his mind alerted him to the danger of allowing this to go too far. But his body wasn’t listening. His body wanted. Craved. Ached.
Clem suddenly pulled back from him and straightened her clothes, her colour still high and her mouth red and swollen from his kisses. But the spark of pride was back in her gaze, sharper and brighter than ever. ‘I didn’t realise that was why you were offering to pay my way. Thanks, but no thanks.’
Alistair frowned. ‘I’m not doing any such thing, I was just—’
‘Making the most of the situation.’ Her eyes flashed at him. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t turn the lights off first so you could forget who it was you were kissing.’
‘What the hell are you—?’
She glared at him with such heat he thought his clothes would be singed right off his body. ‘You said you weren’t going to kiss me again.’
‘I know, but—’
‘I think it’s best if we keep our distance.’ She folded her arms across her body. ‘No touching.’
‘Fine.’ Alistair pushed a hand through his hair. He could keep his hands off her. Sure he could. It would be a challenge but he would do it. ‘No touching.’
‘I’m going to bed. Goodnight.’
* * *
Clem couldn’t sleep no matter how many sheep, cows or pigs she counted. Knowing Alistair was going to be in that king-sized bedroom on the other side of the suite was nothing short of torture. She kept listening for him but so far he hadn’t come back to the suite since he’d left earlier. Her body was still buzzing with the aftershock of his kisses and caresses. Her breasts still tingled with the feel of his tongue tracing over them. Her inner core was still moist and aching with the need he had stirred into life. Why had he kissed her? Why
had he touched her as if he was desperate to make love to her? And why the heck had she done the same? Her body had overridden her mind. It had run to its own agenda—a hot and urgent agenda where lust had taken over. One kiss and she became a wanton. One kiss!
She threw off the covers and slipped on the bathrobe to cover her nightgown. The lights of Monaco were like a fairyland at night. The castle on the hill, the ridiculously expensive yachts moored at the marina and the crescent of the beach with the strings of cafés were a world away from her quiet life amongst dusty books back in London.
Her quiet, boring life.
Her life without any fun.
Her life without sex.
Clem glanced at the bedside clock. It was three in the morning. Why hadn’t Alistair come back to the suite? She tightened the ties around her waist and padded out to the sitting room. The room was in darkness except for the faint glow of the night lights coming in from outside. Her gaze went to the sofa but it was empty, the scatter cushions still neatly arranged as if no one had sat there for hours. Where was he?
Clem sat on the sofa and hugged a cushion against her stomach. Maybe he was out having a good time with some gorgeous model type, a woman who wouldn’t say no to a bit of casual sex to pass the time. Maybe he’d booked another suite and was in there right now making mad, passionate love to some beautiful model-thin woman, kissing her, caressing her the way he had Clem. Grrh. Clem tossed the cushion aside and got to her feet, pacing the floor like a tethered dog on too short a chain. Back and forth. Back and forth. Her anger went up another notch with every step. At this rate she would leave a knee-deep trench in the carpet.
The door of the suite suddenly opened and Alistair came in.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ Clem hated that she sounded like a nagging wife and the raising of his eyebrows only intensified her shame.
‘I didn’t realise I was accountable to you for my movements.’
She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. ‘It would’ve been polite to let me know you were going out. I’ve been lying awake for hours.’
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