by Penny Jordan
The author of the article had propounded the theory that women found the abrasion of male body hair unwelcome against their own flesh. Carly's tongue-tip touched her lips. A fine mist of sensual heat had broken out on her skin. Beneath her tee shirt her bra-covered breasts suddenly ached, her nipples pushing against the restraining fabric.
How could she be having such intensely sexual thoughts about a man she had only just met? It must be because she had been talking about sex to Lucy and Jules. Yes, that was it; her mind was obviously more focused on sex than usual.
He was still studying the list she had given him, plainly oblivious to what she was experiencing, and of course she was glad about that—wasn't she? After all, she had never been the kind of woman who felt piqued because a man didn't show any interest in her.
Because until now she had not met the right kind of man?
'Perhaps if you were to tell me what kind of event you are thinking of having I might be able to pick out the best events for you to attend,' she suggested hastily.
'I haven't made up my mind as yet.'
Carly looked blankly at him. She had naturally assumed that, like their existing clients, he must have a specific event in mind.
Ricardo permitted himself a small cynical smile. If his plans went ahead as he expected, the first event Prêt à Party would be organizing for him would be a party to celebrate his acquisition. But of course he wasn't going to tell Carly that. She, he had already decided, would be one of the irst surplus-to-requirements 'as sets' of the business to be offloaded.
'I understand you are responsible for the administration and accounts of the business?'
'Er, yes...'
'You must be very well organized if you can carry out those duties and still have time to accompany clients to their events.'
'I don't normally. That is, I stand in for the others sometimes.'
She was making it sound as though she had to be coerced into doing so, Ricardo thought cynically. Of course he knew better.
'Carly, your mother's telephoned. She wants you to ring her—Oh, I'm sorry.' The young girl who had burst into the office came to an abrupt halt, her face pink, as she realized that Carly wasn't on her own.
'It's all right, Izzie, I'll ring her later. Thank you.'
But as she thanked the younger girl Carly's heart was sinking beneath her professional smile. She already knew what her adoptive mother would want. More money.
Carly did her best, but the truth was that the woman had no real understanding of how to manage money. The fortune her adoptive father had once had was gone, swallowed up in lavish living and unwise investments. A stroke had made it impossible for him to do any kind of work, and so Carly found herself in the position of having to support them as best she could. But it wasn't easy. Her adoptive mother ran up bills and then wept because she couldn't pay them—like a small child rather than an adult. Their anguished unhappiness and despair made her feel so guilty—especially when...
She was so lucky to have friends like Lucy and Jules, Carly reflected emotionally. She might get on reason ably well with her adopted parents now, but that had not always been the case. Without Lucy and Jules what might she have done to escape from the misery and the wretchedness that had been her own childhood? Taken her own life? She had certainly thought about it.
Where had she gone? Ricardo wondered curiously, watching anxiety momentarily shadow her eyes before she blinked it away. He cleared his throat.
'Right. Here are the events I wish to attend.'
Pushing back her private thoughts, Carly leaned over the desk to study the list he had tossed towards her.
He had selected three events: a private party in St Tropez on board a newly acquired private yacht, to celebrate its acquisition; a media event in the Hamptons to launch a new glossy magazine, to which old money, new names and anyone who was anyone in the fashion world had been invited and a world-famous senior rock star's birthday bash at his French chateau. Carly started to frown.
'What's wrong?'
'The St Tropez yacht party is next weekend, and only four days before the Hamptons do. It might be difficult co-coordinating fights and all the other travel arrangements.'
She kept a tight rein on expenses—or at least she had done until Nick had started to interfere. They always booked cheap, no frills fights to overseas events if they weren't being flown out by the clients.
Ricardo raised an eyebrow.
'That won't be a problem. We'll be using my private jet.' He gave a dismissive shrug of those powerful shoulders. 'One of my PAs can sort out all the details. Oh, and they'll need your passport, ASAP. I understand from Nick that your normal practice is to be in situ a day ahead of the actual event. That suits me, because that way I shall be able to see how things are organized.'
Too right he would, Ricardo decided.
He was standing up, and Carly followed suit. He was so tall—so big! She was suddenly aware of her reluctance to go through the doorway, because it would bring her too close to him. Too close to him? Get a grip, she mentally advised herself unsympathetically.
'My PA will be in touch with you regarding fight times.'
She walked determinedly towards the door. She was almost level with him now. In another few seconds she would be through the door and safe. Safe? From what? Him pouncing on her? No way would he do that, she told herself scornfully.
And then she made the mistake of looking up at him.
It was like stepping through a door into a previously unknown world.
Her heart whipped round inside her chest like a spinning barrel. Against her will her head turned, her lips parting as her gaze fastened on his mouth. His top lip was well shaped and firmly cut, his teeth white and just slightly uneven, and his bottom lip...
His bottom lip. A smoky sensuality darkened her normally crystal-clear grey eyes as she fed visually on the promise of its fullness. How would it feel to catch that fullness between her own lips? To nibble at it with small biting kisses, to...
'A word of warning—' Ricardo began.
She could feel guilty colour staining her skin as her mind grappled with inexplicable thoughts.
'It is imperative that full confidentiality as to the purpose of my attendance at these occasions is maintained at all times.'
He was cautioning her about the events—that was all! Carly exhaled in shaky relief.
'Yes—yes, of course,' she agreed quickly, as she finally made it through the doorway on legs that had developed a very suspicious weakness.
But she was unnervingly aware of him behind her.
'And one more thing.'
'Yes?' she offered politely, automatically turning round to face him.
'The next time you look at my mouth like that...' he said softly, with a mocking smile.
'Like what? I didn't look at it like anything!' Carly knew that her face was burning with guilt, but she had to defend herself.
'Liar. You looked at it, at me, as though you couldn't wait to feel it against your own. As though there was nothing you wanted more than for me to push you up against that doorframe and take you right here and now. As though you could already feel my hands on your skin, touching you intimately, and you were loving it. As though—'
'No!' Carly denied fiercely. And her denial was the truth—she hadn't got as far as thinking anything so intimate as that!
To her relief she could see Lucy hurrying towards them to introduce herself to him.
It was over an hour since Ricardo had gone, and Carly was still thinking about him. But a woman would surely have to be totally devoid of any kind of hormones to remain unaware of Ricardo as a fully functioning man.
And that was her sole excuse, was it? She pushed back her keyboard and stood up. She was shaking slightly. Her face was burning and her body ached. She felt shocked. Guilty. Horrified, in fact, by the door she had unwittingly opened in her own head, and—even worse—was uncomfortably aware that she was physically aroused. Physically, but of course not
emotion ally—that was impossible. After all, she had sworn never to fall in love, hadn't she? Never to fall in love; never to give herself emotionally to anyone; never to risk the emotional security she had given to herself.
She started to pace the small office. Her childhood had taught her all there was to know about the pain that came with being emotionally rejected. She had fought hard to give herself the protective air of calm self-confidence she projected to others, and for the right to claim their respect. The pathetic, needy child she had once been, desperate for approval and love, had been totally banished, and that was the way Carly intended it to stay.
So why was she thinking like this? No one was threatening her self-reliance, after all—least of all Ricardo Salvatore, who probably had the same loathing of emotional bondage as she did herself, if for very different reasons.
CHAPTER THREE
Carly checked her watch—Lucy had given both Carly and Jules smart Cartier Tank Francaise watches for Christmas in the first year the business had made a profit—and then bent down and grabbed the handle of her case.
The car Ricardo Salvatore was sending to pick her up was due to arrive in exactly two minutes' time. It was time for her to leave.
She heaved her suitcase off the floor, grimacing a little ruefully as she did so, remembering how Lucy had burst into the office the previous Thursday morning announcing, 'Oh, my God, Carly—I've just realized! There won't be anything in the Wardrobe that will fit you!'
The 'Wardrobe' was a standing joke between them all, and was in actual fact a small room in Lucy's parents' London home which housed the glamorous outfits Lucy and Jules, who were very much the same height and build, wore when they were 'on duty' at events.
The clothes—all designer models—were second hand, surreptitiously trawled from a variety of sources, and the subject of amused speculation between them.
'Just look at this!' Lucy had marvelled after their last expedition, as she held up what looked like a sequin-covered handkerchief with halter neck straps. 'Who on earth would buy this?'
'You did,' Carly had pointed out, laughing.
'Yes, but I only paid fifty pounds for it—it cost over a thousand brand-new.'
'It's very sexy,' Jules had pronounced.
'It's repulsive,' Carly had criticized. 'Vulgar and tarty.'
'Mmm... Well, Nick spotted it.'
But the Wardrobe contained nothing that would it Carly, and so, that Thursday, Lucy had announced firmly, 'Come on, Carly. We've got to go out on a trawl!'
Carly had tried to protest and resist, but Jules and Lucy had been insistent.
The result of their foray into the second-hand shops and market stalls of Lucy's favorite haunts—which had emptied the clothes budget Carly had so carefully worked out—had been collected from the dry cleaners this morning and were now packed in Carly's case, along with her own clothes.
Mentally Carly reviewed them—a white silk trouser suit which Lucy had cooed over, enraptured, pronouncing, 'Oh, this is so retro—Seventies rock wife! And you've got the boobs for it, Carly.'
Maybe she had, but she certainly wouldn't be wearing the jacket over bare skin and half open! There were also a couple of evening dresses, both of which were potentially so revealing that Carly had already decided she would be wearing a silk jacket over them.
She hadn't been very keen on the designer swimsuit Lucy had found either. It was cut away in so many places that Carly feared it threatened to reveal more of her than the skimpiest of bikinis, but at least it had matching culottes pants and a jacket.
Her own classic casuals—the simple linen separates she favoured for summer and some up-to-the-minute accessories they had found in the likes of Zara—had all passed Lucy's inspection and been declared perfect for the events she would be attending.
Dragging her suitcase behind her, Carly pushed open the door onto the street and stepped out into the late-morning sunshine.
Ricardo watched her from his vantage point in the back seat of the limo, as the driver moved the car out of the parking bay he had found further up the street.
Oh, yes, she was a typical example of her upmarket, 'no expense spared but someone else pays' lifestyle, Ricardo decided cynically as he watched her. Immaculate white tee shirt, perfectly fitting blue jeans, long shiny hair, minimal make-up, sunglasses, discreetly 'good' watch, penny loafers. The too-thin girl in de signer clutter who was tottering past her on spindly heels, clutching a weird-looking handbag, couldn't hold a candle to her. Because Carly had class.
What would she be like in bed?
He didn't intend to let too much time elapse before he found out.
He thought of another society woman from his youth, one whom he had met when he was growing cynical but not yet completely hardened. Initially he had thought her pretty, but she hadn't looked very pretty at all when he had flatly refused to meet her escalating demands—especially when he'd discovered they included a wedding ring in exchange for the supposed benefit of marrying into a higher social bracket. He'd told her that he preferred an honest whore.
Women like her, like Carly, might not openly demand money in return for sex, but what they were looking for was the richest and highest status man they could find—their bodies in exchange for his name.
It was a trade-off that nauseated him, as did those who participated in it.
He had no illusions about women or sex. He had lived too long and seen too much for that. His wealth could buy him any woman he wanted, and that included Carly. She had made that plain enough already, with the way she had looked at his mouth.
She hadn't even tried to be subtle about it! She had stared openly and brazenly at him. If they hadn't been in her office it would have been an open invitation to him to push her tee shirt out of the way and free her breasts to spill into his hands so that he could accept their flaunting invitation.
It had told him that he could have yanked down her jeans and explored and enjoyed her and she would not have said a single word in denial.
And then in the morning she would no doubt expect to receive her payment—a piece of jewellery, a telephone call from an exclusive shop inviting her to choose herself something expensive...
That was the way things were done in her world.
He was wasting too much time on her, he warned himself. His primary reason for what he was doing was the potential acquisition of Prêt à Party, not the inevitable sexual acquisition of Carly Carlisle who, although she did not know it yet, would be one of the first in line to lose her job.
Carly frowned as the large, elegant steel-grey car drew up alongside her.
A limo, Lucy had said, and she had pictured a huge, shiny black ostentatious vehicle, not something so supremely understated. But the rear door was opening and Ricardo was getting out.
'Is this all your luggage?'
She gaped at him as he reached for her case, and then looked uncertainly towards the chauffeur.
'Charles is driving. I am perfectly capable of picking up a case,' Ricardo told her dryly, following her uncertain look.
'The...my case is heavy,' she told him, but he ignored her, picked it up and put it in to the boot of the car as if it was as light as a feather pillow.
He was wearing a black tee shirt and a pair of tan coloured casual trousers, and the muscles in his arms were hardening as he lifted her case. He looked more like a man who worked outdoors than one who sat at a desk, she acknowledged, unwilling to admit to the response that the sight of him was eliciting from her own body.
After what had happened when she had given her imagination its head, she was now keeping it on a con trolling diet of bread and water, and that meant no thinking about the effect Ricardo could have on her! So he had a good enough body to carry off the macho male thing—so what? she told herself dispassionately.
But the sight of his black-clad back, bent over the open boot, suddenly transformed by her rebellious thoughts into a totally naked back bent over her equally naked body, evoked such a
powerful sensual image that she felt as though she were transfixed to the spot.
So it was true. You could go weak at the knees, Carly reflected several minutes later as she sat primly straight in the back seat of the powerful car, dizzily aware that her private thoughts were anything but prim. All those enforced deportment classes at school had definitely left her with an automatic 'sit up straight' reflex.
She was accomplished, Ricardo admitted to himself. That cool, remote pose she had adopted, that said Pursue me would certainly work with most men. Unfortunately for her, he was not most men. He opened his briefcase and extracted some papers.
As soon as they were free of the city traffic the powerful car picked up speed. Carly was pleased that Ricardo was engrossed in his work, because that left her free to think about hers, instead of having to make polite conversation with him.
Since their clients were using their own yacht as the venue for their party there was no construction work in the shape of marquees on the like for her to oversee. The client's chef and kitchen staff were being augmented by a chef from the upmarket caterers she had sourced. They were already on the yacht. Menus had been agreed, floral arrangements decided on—she would be meeting with the florists, who had also been flown in from London.
The arrival and deployment of the hostess's hair dresser, make-up artist, and a dresser from the couture house she favored were also Carly's responsibility, plus a hundred or more other small but vitally important arrangements.
She had an inch-thick pile of assorted colored and coded lists in her briefcase, most of which she had actually memorized.
'You're so much better at this than me,' Lucy had told her ruefully before she left.
Carly had smiled, but she knew that it was true.
Carly shifted her body against the leather upholstery. It was ridiculous that she should be so acutely conscious of Ricardo's presence in the car with her—and even more ridiculous that she should be so acutely aware of the impact he was having on her physically. So much for the 'bread and water' regime, then!