by Penny Jordan
A small, dark-haired woman with twinkling eyes was standing in the inner hallway, waiting for them.
'Ah, Dolores. You got my message about Ms Carlisle?'
'Yes, and I have prepared a guest suite for her. You had a good journey, I hope, Ms Carlisle?'
'Yes, indeed—and do please call me Carly.'
'You go with Dolores; she will show you to your suite,' Ricardo told Carly, before continuing, 'What time is dinner planned for, Dolores?'
'Eight-thirty, if that is okay with you? And Rafael— he said that you will want an early lunch tomorrow, before you fly to the Hamptons?'
'Yes, that's right. I'd better warn you that Ms Carlisle may not make it to the dinner table tonight. It may be three in the afternoon here, but for her it's eight in the evening.'
'Oh, my goodness! You would perhaps like some thing to eat now, then?' Dolores asked Carly.
'No, I'm fine,' Carly assured her.
She would have to make contact with the New York agency who were sharing the organization of the Hamptons event with them, and she had hoped to have time to fit in a bit of sightseeing. She was also planning to ask Dolores if she could recommend somewhere Carly might find clothes that would be within her budget. Jeans might be the universal uniform, accept able everywhere, but she could hardly turn up at the glitzy events she was overseeing wearing them. And unfortunately Mariella's cast-offs—designer label or not—were simply not the kind of clothes she would ever feel comfortable wearing.
'So, you will sleep here, in this guest suite, and you will have a lovely view over the park. Come and see, please.'
Dutifully Carly followed Dolores through the door she had just opened.
The room she walked into was huge, its windows, as Dolores had stated, overlooking the greenery of the park.
'Here there is a desk, and you can plug in your computer,' Dolores told her. Carly nodded her head.
'And here there is a television.' She folded back what Carly had assumed was wall paneling to reveal a large flatscreen TV hidden behind it, along with shelves of DVDs and books. 'See—the TV, it pulls out so you can watch it from your bed,' Dolores told Carly, proudly displaying this extra function. 'The dressing room and your bathroom are through here. Mr Salvatore, he have everything ripped out when he moved in here, and it's all new. Even in our rooms as well.'
The dressing room was lined with mirror-fronted wardrobes and contained a small sofa, whilst the bathroom was almost a luxury mini-spa. Carly was unable to stop herself from comparing it with the rather more basic bathroom in the lat she shared with Jules.
'It's all wonderful,' she told Dolores truthfully.
'Yes. Mr Salvatore, he is a very good man. Very kind—especially to the children. When he hear that there is an orphanage in our old home town that has no money, he goes there to see it and then he writes one big cheque!' Dolores beamed.
Carly phoned Lucy and then the New York event organizer who was co-running the event. Everything seemed to be in hand, she thought as she stifled a yawn.
The bed looked very tempting, and she was tired. Perhaps an hour's sleep might do her good. It was only five o'clock New York time—more than three hours yet before dinner.
She was too tired to shower, and so, after removing her shoes and folding back the bedspread, she simply lay on top of the bed. Sleep claimed her the moment she closed her eyes.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was the small sound of a door clicking closed that woke her. At first she struggled to remember exactly where she was, reluctant to be dragged out of her sleeping fantasy of lying naked in Ricardo's arms whist he caressed her.
She sat up and then swung her feet onto the floor, all too aware of the pulsing ache in her lower body. She could hear someone moving about in the dressing room.
Ricardo? Her heart bumped against her ribs, excitement spiked with anticipation heating her body. If it was—if he wasn't going to give her the chance to say that she wanted him but intended instead to simply overwhelm her with the reality of her desire for him— there was no way she was going to be able to reject him, she admitted to herself, and she hurried across the room, pushing open the dressing room door.
Dolores was just closing one of the wardrobe doors. She turned towards Carly with a warm smile.
The deep-rooted sensual ache she had begun to learn to live with turned into a fierce pang of anguished need. How could just a few hours in his company have turned her body into this sexually eager collection of erotically aroused nerve endings and hotly responsive flesh? Her whole body ached, hungering for his touch and his pos session. It was being consumed by a fever of longing and arousal. Virtually all she could think about was how long she would have to wait. The question driving her thoughts now wasn't 'if but 'when'.
'I have hung everything up for you, so that they don't get too crushed. I can pack them again before you leave tomorrow. So you have any laundry you want me to do?'
Everything? What everything? What did Dolores mean?
There was an unfamiliar case on the dressing room floor—a Louis Vuitton case, Carly realized with horrified fascination—and a matching vanity case placed right next to it. And there was a mound of neatly folded tissue paper on the pretty daybed-cum-sofa, and some shoeboxes placed beneath it.
'Dolores, I think there must be some mistake,' she began faintly. 'Those cases aren't mine.'
Dolores looked confused.
'But, yes, they are. Rafael fetched them from the jet himself. Just as Mr Salvatore instructed him to do. So that they will not be lost.'
A horrible sense of disbelief mixed with anger was filling Carly. Unsteadily she went over to the nearest wardrobe and pulled back the door.
The clothes hanging in it were totally unfamiliar. She lifted down one of the skirts and checked the label, her hands trembling.
It was certainly her size, and her color.
She put the skirt back and went over the sofa, kneeling on the floor as she opened one of the shoeboxes.
The delicate strappy sandals inside were her size too.
'There is something wrong?' Dolores asked her worriedly
Carly replaced the sandal in its box and stood up. 'No, Dolores. Everything is fine,' she told her. But of course she was lying.
She went slowly through all the clothes hanging in the wardrobes. Expensive, elegant, beautiful designer clothes, in wonderful fabrics and a palette of her favorite colors: creams, chocolate-browns, black. She touched the fringed hem of a jacket in Chanel's signature pastel tweed—warm cream threaded with tiny silky strands of brilliant jewel colors. She had seen exactly the same jacket in Chanel's Sloane Street store and had stood mutely gazing at it, almost transfixed by its beauty. It would go perfectly with the toning heavy silk satin trousers hanging next to it. She knew exactly how much the jacket would have cost because she had been foolish enough to go into the store and ask. More than she would ever spend on clothes in a whole year, never mind on one single item. She stepped back from the wardrobe and closed the door firmly.
Did he really think she would allow him to do this to her? After what he had said to her? After what he had thought of her? Oh, yes, he had claimed it was a mistake and he had apologized, but...
Inside her head, from another lifetime, she could hear a flustered nervous voice insisting, 'Say thank you to the nice lady for the lovely clothes she's bought for you, Carly. Aren't you a lucky, lucky girl? And such a very pretty dress. I'm sure she'll be ever so grateful once she realizes how lucky she is...won't you, Carly?'
Grateful? She had sworn on her eighteenth birthday that never, ever again was she going to have to be grateful for someone else's charity. That she would support herself, by herself, and that was exactly what she had done.
She had financed her own way through university via a variety of low-paid, physically hard jobs—bar work, cleaning, working as a nursing aide in an old people's home—determinedly ignoring the allowance being paid into her bank account. The first thing she had done
when her adoptive parents had broken the news to her of their financial ruin had been to give that money back to them.
'Dolores, I need to speak with Ricardo. Can you tell me where I will find him, please?'
'He is in his office. But he does not like to be disturbed when he is in there.'
He didn't like being disturbed? Well, he was about to discover that neither did she. And what he had done had disturbed her. It had disturbed her...and it had infuriated her—a very great deal!
Dolores didn't want to give her directions for the office, but Carly insisted. She knocked briefly on the door and then, without waiting, turned the handle and went in.
Ricardo was seated behind a desk on the opposite side of the room from the door. The evening sunlight coming in from the two high windows behind dazzled her whilst leaving his face cloaked in shadow.
'Dolores has filled the wardrobes in my room with clothes which she believes are mine.'
'Ah. Yes, I'm glad you reminded me; I had almost forgotten. I've spoken to the manager at Barneys and arranged a temporary account there for you so that you can get something suitable for the French do. I didn't want to risk picking out something myself. You'll have time to go over there tomorrow morning. It's right be hind the Pierre Hotel—'
'No!' Carly stopped him angrily.
'No what?' Ricardo demanded, pushing back his chair and standing up.
Carly had to take a steadying breath. Every sinuous movement of his body reminded her of how it had felt against her own, of how much she wanted it, ached for it, longed for it.
Ricardo had changed his own clothes at some stage, and was wearing a tee shirt and a pair of jeans. Some men could wear jeans and some could not. Ricardo was quite definitely one of the ones who could. Longing shot through her—pure, wanton, female liquid need.
'No. I won't wear clothes that you have paid for.'
'Why not?' he demanded. 'You eat food bought with my money, sleep in a bed paid for with it. Why should you refuse to wear clothes it has bought?'
'You know why. You accused me yourself of trying to force you to—'
'I was wrong about that and I apologized.'
His voice was terse, and Carly could see he did not like being reminded that he had been at fault.
'Yes, I know that,' Carly agreed reluctantly 'But—'
'But what? You object to the colors I chose? The styles?'
'You chose?' she breathed in disbelief. 'How could you have done that? You couldn't possibly have had time!'
He gave a small shrug.
'I made time.'
'How?' Carly challenged him.
'I went into St Tropez this morning, before we left.'
Carly stared at him. Was he making it up...making fun of her, perhaps?
'How did you know my size?'
'I'm a man,' he told her dryly. 'I've touched your body. Held it close to my own. You have full breasts, but a very narrow ribcage. I can span your waist with my hands, your hips curve as woman's hips should do—shall I continue?'
'No,' Carly told him in a choked voice. 'I won't wear them,' she added in the next breath. 'I won't take charity.'
'Charity!' Ricardo frowned, sharply aware of the anguish in her voice, and wondering about her use of the word charity. 'And I will not take a woman out with me who has nothing to wear other than a pair of jeans!'
'You are not taking me out with you. I am here to work.'
'Maybe, but it is not out of the question that we could be photographed together by someone who does not know the real situation.'
'You're a snob,' Carly accused him wildly.
'No. I am a realist! I believed that you were entirely professional in your attitude towards your work, but it seems that I was wrong.'
'What do you mean?'
'I should have thought it was obvious. Were you the professional I believed you to be you would accept the necessity of dressing suitably for your role instead of behaving like an outraged virgin. Especially since we both know that is something you most definitely are not!'
He might think he knew that, but she knew something very different indeed, Carly reflected. 'And that is the only reason you bought the clothes?'
'What other reason could there be?' he challenged her.
'You've already made it clear to me that you think sex is something you can buy,' she pointed out. 'But I won't and can't be bought, Ricardo.'
He was very angry, she recognized, his pride no doubt stinging in much the same way as hers had when she had opened those wardrobe doors. Good!
'You're making a mountain out of a molehill. I have simply provided you with the kind of clothes I expect the women I am seen with in public to wear. That is all. Had you not had your case stolen it would not have been necessary, but it was and it is. If it makes you feel any better, then perhaps you should think of the clothes merely as being on loan to you, to wear as a necessary uniform. As for paying for sex—I think I am capable of recognizing when a woman wants me, Carly.'
There was nothing she could say to that.
'It's almost dinnertime. I hope you are hungry. Dolores is very proud of her cooking,' he announced coolly, changing the subject.
Carly looked down at her jeans.
'I'm really not hungry.'
Not for food, perhaps—but for him? Ah, that was a different story. She was hungry for him—starving for him, in fact. Starving for the feel and the scent of him, for the taste of him, the reality of him. She could feel her body aching heavily with the weight of that hunger.
A sense of desolation and pain filled her. She hadn't asked to feel like this. She didn't want to feel like this. Not for any man, and least of all for a man such as this one.
Ricardo studied her down bent head. She looked tired, somehow vulnerable, and he could feel a reluctant and unwanted compassion—a desire to protect her—stirring inside him.
His only interest in her—aside from the fact that he wanted her like hell—was because of her role in Prêt a Party, Ricardo reminded himself fiercely. Emotional entanglements and complications just weren't something he had any intention of factoring into his life. He was prepared to accept that one day he might want a child— a son, an heir—but when that day came he intended to satisfy that need not via marriage, with all its potential financial risks, but instead by paying a carefully selected woman to have a child for him and then to hand over all rights to it to him. With modern medical procedures he wouldn't even need to meet her.
'If you wish, I am sure Dolores will be happy to serve you dinner in your room,' he told her brusquely.
Carly veiled her eyes with her lashes, not wanting him to see what she was feeling.
If last night she had not stopped him, tonight—this night—they would have been together, and food would have been the last thing on either of their minds. It could still happen. All she had to do was go to him and touch him, show him, give way to what she was feeling. Other women had no qualms about showing men that they wanted them, so why should she?
She gave a small shiver, already knowing the answer to her own question.
CHAPTER NINE
She was used to the motion of the helicopter now, and did not feel as apprehensive as she had done before. They had already left New York behind them. The traffic on the highway beneath them looked like a child's toys.
She was alone with Ricardo in the helicopter this time, but he wasn't giving her a running commentary on their surroundings as he had done before. She told herself that she was glad of his businesslike attitude towards her, and the distance it had put between them.
Had he come to any decision yet as to whether or not he intended to use Prêt a Party's services? If so, she hoped that he had decided in their favor. They certainly needed the business.
She had received the e-mailed copies of the cheques she had requested and her inspection of them had con firmed what she'd already suspected. All the cheques bore—as legally they had to, according to the terms of the business—two signatures.
Her own and Nick's. Only she knew that she had not signed the cheques her self. Which meant that someone had forged her signature. Someone? It could only have been Nick. Lucy was the only other person beside herself who had keys for the cupboard in which she kept the chequebooks.
Even without checking her forward costings for the year Carly knew that, because of the huge amount Nick had withdrawn from the business, by the time they reached their year-end they would be showing a loss of nearly half a million pounds.
The terms of their bank account were that Lucy would personally make up any overdraft from her trust fund. They had been in business for three years so far, and Carly had taken great pride in the fact that she had managed the financial affairs of the company so well that the bank had not had to invoke this condition. Until now.
Half a million pounds. She had no idea how much money there was in Lucy's trust fund, but she suspected that Nick would know. And she suspected too that he had made a deliberate and cold-blooded decision to help himself to money from it via the business, because he knew that Marcus would never agree to hand so much money over to him.
But understanding the situation was one thing. Knowing what to do about it was another. By rights she should tell Lucy what she had discovered, because she was sure that the carte blanche Lucy had given Nick to draw money from the business did not include forging Carly's signature in order to get even more. But Nick was Lucy's husband. Lucy would be bound to feel humiliated and hurt if Carly told her that he had been stealing from her. And what if Lucy refused to believe her and Nick insisted that he had not signed Carly's name? Would it be better if she got in touch with Marcus and alerted him to what was happening? Carly felt torn between her loyalty to Lucy and her fear for her.
Mentally shelving the problem, she focused instead on more immediate issues. She had spoken to her opposite number at the New York event organizers earlier, and she had assured Carly that everything was going according to plan.