by Penny Jordan
Someone pushed past and he reached out a protective arm to shield her. Unexpectedly Carly suddenly felt very femininely weak and vulnerable. She wasn't used to men behaving protectively towards her.
'I'm with the event planning organization,' she explained.
'Ah, so you are responsible for this magnificent party we are enjoying?'
He was flattering as well as charming, Carly recognized.
'In part,' she agreed.
'And you are staying here, on board the yacht?'
'No, I'm—' Carly broke off as she saw both Sarah and the maître d' edging towards her. 'Please excuse me,' she apologized to him. 'But I must get back to work.'
'Mmm, I see Igor was chatting you up. Mariella won't like that,' Sarah warned Carly, when she joined her, having dealt with the maître d'. 'She's already got him marked down as husband number four. Mind you, she'll have her work cut out, because she certainly isn't the only woman who's hoping for a legal right to his billions. God, I hate these dos,' Sarah complained. 'Sometimes I wonder why the hell I don't just give in my notice and go home.'
'Why don't you?' Carly asked her
'Let's just say there's a man there who I can't have,' Sarah told her bleakly. 'I need another drink. I'll be back in a minute... '
Carly was standing with her back to him, watching Sarah hurry away from her, when Ricardo finally man aged to reach her.
'Lost your new admirer?'
Carly stiffened, and then turned round reluctantly to face him.
Before she could defend herself, he continued savagely, 'what the hell possessed you to let him buy you that? You look like a tart,' he told her mercilessly. 'Or was that the idea? It certainly looked as though he was doing a brisk business in selling you on to his friends.'
Carly's face burned. 'You are despicable,' she told him. 'And for your information—'
'Ricardo, darling—there you are!'
Although she was delighted to have Ricardo's attention removed from her, Carly couldn't help wishing that the woman claiming it was not Mariella—especially when she saw the way Mariella was staring at her outfit.
Fortunately, though, before she could say anything Sarah returned. Equally fortunately, she immediately realized what was happening and adroitly came to Carly's rescue, exclaiming, 'Mariella! Carly hasn't been able to stop singing your praises for being so kind to her and saving her so much embarrassment. I told her that it is typical of you to be so generous, and that you'd understand immediately how she felt about having her suitcase stolen. I knew you wouldn't mind if I let her borrow those old things you told me to put to one side for the charity shop. Remember? You said they were too big for you... '
Was it the weight of false sentiment and sugar in Sarah's paean of praise that miraculously squashed the hostility in Mariella's gaze? Carly wondered cynically. Suddenly she became all gracious smiles.
'Of course. I love helping other people—everyone knows that. Although I must say you are rather too big to fit into my things, my dear. Of course I am very slim,' she added smugly, before ignoring Carly to turn to Ricardo and say prettily, 'Ricardo, why don't I intro duce you to a few more people...?'
As Mariella drew Ricardo away Sarah exhaled and apologized to Carly.
'I hope you didn't mind me saying that—only she looked as though she was about to create a bit of a scene... '
'No, I didn't mind at all,' Carly assured her truthfully. But she would have loved to see Ricardo's face if Mariella had claimed ownership of her outfit when he had been in the middle of insulting it. Although he hadn't merely insulted the outfit, had he? He'd insulted her as well.
She didn't care what he thought about her, Carly assured herself. After all, she knew the truth and she knew that he was wrong. At least this way, even if she couldn't deny or ignore the physical, sexual effect he had on her, she knew she would be safe from any risk of becoming emotionally attracted to him.
Not, of course, that she had been in any danger of that.
It seemed as if the evening was never going to end, Carly thought wearily. The last of the guests had finally gone, but she and the others were still cleaning up.
'Look, why don't you go? There's nothing more for you to do here,' Jeff the florist said in a kind voice.
'It's my responsibility to stay until everything is packed up,' Carly told him.
'You don't think that anyone else would stay around this long, do you?' He grinned at her and shook his head. 'We're perfectly capable of sorting what's left, and besides...' He was looking past her and she turned her head to see what he was looking at.
Her heart gave a sudden heavy thud as the door of the car which had drawn up a few yards away opened and Ricardo got out.
The last time she'd seen him he had been deep in conversation with a stunning redhead whom she was sure she had heard murmuring something about going back to her hotel suite with her. So what was he doing back here now?
Why should the fact that he was striding so purpose fully towards her make her legs and her will-power quiver with weakness? He had insulted her in the most offensive way possible, and yet here she was letting his sexuality and, even worse, her own reaction to it, get to her.
Maybe she should adopt a different and more modern attitude. After all, she had heard plenty of women say openly and unashamedly that they were up for having sex with a man without wanting or needing any kind of emotional connection with him. Surely that kind of relationship was exactly what would suit her best?
'It's gone three a.m. and we leave for New York in the morning,' he told her curtly.
'You go, Carly,' Jeff repeated. 'We can easily finish up here now.'
It seemed that she didn't have any choice. Turning aside, Carly went to retrieve the canvas holdall she had bought earlier to hold her modest new purchases.
She watched with a certain sense of grim satisfaction as Ricardo frowned and took it from her.
'Before you say anything,' she warned him coolly, when they were out of Jeff's hearing, 'I didn't have to sell my body to buy either the bag or its contents. What happened to the redhead, by the way?' she asked unkindly as they walked back to the car. The fact that Ricardo was a potential client had been overwhelmed by her still smarting pride. 'Didn't she come up to your expectations—or was it you who didn't come up to hers?'
'Neither. She left with the man with whom she arrived—and even if she hadn't I don't take those kinds of risks with my health,' Ricardo answered pointedly.
He was opening the car door for her, but Carly paused to turn round and demand angrily, 'Meaning what? That I do? Isn't the discovery that you've already made one offensive and insulting error of judgment about me enough?'
Without waiting for his response she got into the car, ignoring him as she reached for the seatbelt, and continuing to ignore him when he walked round the car, climbed into the driver's seat and started the car engine.
They reached the villa. Carly opened the car door and got out without waiting for Ricardo to help her.
The pink-washed building was bathed in a soft rose glow from the artfully placed nightscape lighting, which illuminated both the villa and its gardens. Rose pink— the color of romance. A small, painful smile twisted her lips.
'Carly.'
She stopped walking and turned to look as Ricardo caught up with her.
'Why didn't you tell me that the outfit you were wearing belonged to Mariella?'
'Perhaps I didn't want to spoil your fun. You were obviously enjoying thinking the worst of me,' she answered sharply.
'You can't blame me for making entirely logical assumptions. You're a woman in her twenties with a career, therefore logically you must have a bank account. Having a bank account means that you have access to credit cards, bank loans, a wide variety of different ways of borrowing money in an emergency—as this—' he indicated the bag he was now carrying '—proves. And yet you chose to ask me for a loan.'
'Logical assumptions? You've already as good as admitted that
the assumptions you've made about me, far from being logical, are based entirely on your own pre conceived ideas and personal hang-ups. The truth is that you know nothing whatsoever about my life or my circumstances. If the women you mix with are the type who are happy to exchange sex for a few gaudy trinkets and a wardrobe of designer clothes, then I'm afraid that so far as I'm concerned it says just as much about your judgment and morals as it does about theirs.'
'Really? Well, my judgment told me that you were more than ready to have sex with me until you found out that sex was all you would be getting. Miraculously, now that you know that, suddenly you have all the money you need to replace your stolen clothes. Oh, and a word of warning. That gang are notorious for wanting value for their money. They'll pass you round from hand to hand and have all they want of you. You may not find it worth the pay.'
No one had ever made her feel so furiously angry. She was so angry, in fact, that for once she forgot her normal caution and instead burst out, 'you are so wrong. The only reason I was ready to have sex with you was because I wanted you—but, luckily for me, I wanted to retain my self-respect more. And as for my bank account and my new clothes—I asked you for a loan because I have had to empty my bank account to...to make my parents a... a loan. I do not own a credit card, since I disapprove of their punitively high rates of interest, and there wasn't time for me to realize any of my assets.'
Ricardo frowned. Surely no one could manufacture the level of fury Carly was showing? But he wasn't simply going to give in.
'But obviously somehow you managed to find some money?'
'Yes, but not by selling my body, as you so obviously would like to think.'
'No? How, then?' The cynical disbelief in his voice infuriated her.
'If you must know—not that it is any of your business—I pawned my watch,' she told him flatly.
Ricardo discovered that a sensation akin to the slow, measured drip of ice being fed straight into his blood stream was creeping up over him—a mental awareness that somehow he had got something very important spectacularly wrong.
He couldn't remember the last time anyone had wrong footed him, and the knowledge that it should be Carly who had done so sparked off inside him a very dangerous cocktail of emotions. He looked down at her bare wrist and then back at her face.
'You said your parents needed a loan? Surely you could—'
'I don't want to talk about it.' Carly cut him off quickly.
Ricardo frowned. Surely the kind of woman he had assumed her to be would have been only too eager to make much of the glow of virtue accruing to her from such selflessness. But Carly was turning away from him, quite plainly agitated and anxious to change the subject.
Why? Ricardo wondered. What on earth could there be about something as generous as lending money to one's parents to spark off the hostility and fear he could see so plainly in her eyes?
She was starting to walk away from him. He looked down at her wrist again, and then back at her face.
He had always trusted his instincts, and right now those instincts were insisting that Carly had been telling him the truth. Therefore he was guilty of seriously misjudging her. And his body was telling him that, no matter what she was or what she had done or not done, he wanted her.
He strode towards her, catching hold of her arm.
Immediately her whole body tensed, and she demanded fiercely, 'Let go of me.'
'Not yet. You aren't the only one who takes their moral responsibilities seriously. I obviously owe you an apology.'
Ricardo was actually apologizing to her? He certainly needed to, she reminded herself angrily. And she needed to apologize to herself, for being so stupid as to actually still want him.
'Yes, you do,' she agreed coolly. 'But I don't want it.'
She watched his stunned disbelief give way to male anger.
'No? But you do want me, don't you?' he taunted softly.
'No,' she began, but it was already too late. He pulled her hard against him and bent his head to take her mouth in a savagely intimate kiss before she could object. And, of course, the moment his mouth touched hers, her own helpless response betrayed her. She tried to pull away but he held on to her, and her eyes widened as she saw in his eyes the same hunger she knew was in her own.
She made a small helpless sound of denial and need, and then she gave in. His mouth moved urgently on hers and her lips parted eagerly, greedily for its possession, her nails digging into the hard muscles of his arms as her need roared through her.
It was last night all over again—only this time they were impeded by two sets of clothes. She had changed back into her own things before supervising the clearing up after the party. Now she was being driven wild by her longing to be as naked and open to him now as she had been the previous evening.
Her fingers clenched spasmodically on his arm, her body gripped by savage shudders of dark pleasure.
She wanted his hands on her breasts, on all of her— his fingers finding her, touching her as they had done last night. Just wanting him to touch her in that way made her go hot and limp with the desire she could feel pulsing inside her. She wanted him there...there—deep, deep inside her, thrusting hard and fast against the possessive hold of her muscles, taking her, satisfying her quickly and mercilessly.
She could feel the open heat of his mouth against her throat as he tipped her back over his arm, moonlight gleaming whitely on her skin as he tugged off her top to reveal her breast, darkly crowned in the night light.
His thumb-tip rubbed against the deep dark pink of her nipple and she cried out—a sharp, agonised sound of primitive female mating hunger.
She wanted him to take her now, here. As quickly and completely, as fiercely and thoroughly as a panting she-creature on heat. She wanted him to fill her, flood her with his own release, and to go on doing so until she was sated and complete.
She reached for the hardness she knew was waiting for her, running her fingers over and over the jutting ridge of his erection, quivering with anticipation. The head would be swollen and hot, the body thick and darkly veined, the flesh tightly drawn over the hard muscle, but still fluid and slick when she touched it.
In her imagination she could already feel the first rub of that engorged head between the lips of her sex, and then against the sensitive pleasure-pulse of her clitoris over and over again, faster and faster, until she was wet and hot with her pleasure. Until she could endure no more and Ricardo finally plunged deep inside her.
As though she had cried her desire out loud to him, she felt Ricardo tugging at her clothes, his hands hard and firm against her naked skin. His mouth found her nipple and drew fiercely on it. She cried out again in a mewling sound of intense arousal.
His mouth returned to hers. She felt as though she had been starving for it, for him, as though she had been waiting all their life to be with him. She felt...
Immediately she tensed, pushing him away, her voice tight with rejection and self-loathing as she told him fiercely, 'I don't want this.'
'Yes, you do. You want this and you want me, and you can't deny it!' Ricardo challenged her whilst he fought to control his breathing. And to rationalize what had happened—if he could rationalize it. It was some thing he had had no intention of allowing to happen at all. But from the moment he had touched her he had been out of control, unable to stop what was happening to him.
Carly drew in a deep, shaky breath. 'We mustn't.'
'We must not what?' Ricardo demanded. 'We must not want one another?'
Carly turned her head away from him and shook it in bewilderment. 'This can't happen again,' she told him quickly.
Baffled and frustrated, Ricardo reluctantly let her go. She wanted him, and he certainly damned well wanted her, so why was she behaving like this? One thing he did know was that he was determined that he would have her, sooner or later—and he would prefer it to be sooner.
Thank heavens Ricardo hadn't followed her to her room. Because if he had she knew that
she would not have been able to resist him. And she had to resist him, because she wanted him far more than it was safe for her to do.
Why, though, did she feel like this about him? Why did she want him when she had never wanted any of the other men she had met?
Was it because subconsciously she knew he was different from them? Because the most intimate part of her recognized that, at some primal level, she felt a deep-rooted kinship with him?
Because, like him, she too had known and suffered childhood poverty and the withdrawal, the denial of the love and nurturing, the protection every child should be given as of right?
The wretched squalor and unhappiness of her own early childhood had marked her forever, as she knew his must have marked him.
Not even Julia and Lucy, who thought they knew everything about her, knew the full truth of the beginning of her life—how she had been found dressed in rags, abandoned in the street beside some rubbish, her pitiful cries alerting a loitering tramp to her existence.
She had been a piece of unwanted humanity, left there to die. Unwanted and unloved, even by her own birth mother. No wonder, then, that her adopted mother had never been able to love her either.
CHAPTER SEVEN
'You mentioned last night that you didn't have any money in your bank account because you'd had to help your parents?'
Carly almost dropped the glass of water she had been drinking. A little unsteadily, she put it down. They had boarded Ricardo's jet several hours later than Ricardo had originally planned, although he had not give her any reason for the delay, and would soon be landing at JFK airport for their onward journey to the Hamptons.
She looked out of the window, telling herself that it was pointless now to berate herself for letting anger lead her into admitting that she had needed to help them. shouldn't have said that,' she admitted uncomfortably. 'And I wouldn't have done if you hadn't made me so angry.'
'I misjudged you, and I've apologized for that. A man in my position becomes very cynical about other people's motives. Why did you have to give your parents money? Are you an only child?' had a sister...'