‘I’ll be back when I’m back,’ Julia informed him. She was beginning to enjoy the sensation of watching him squirm in his own discomfort and had absolutely no inclination to disabuse him of the illusion that she was going out with a man. Not that she was strictly telling a lie, she thought. There would be men at the party, although probably all of the safely married variety. ‘In other words,’ she added sweetly, ‘don’t wait up for me. You could try watching a little telly. There’s a very good period drama on you might enjoy. You’ll be able to identify with some of the men. They’re overbearing and unreasonable as well.’
‘With a tongue like yours,’ Riccardo told her, flushing darkly as the accuracy of her remark hit home, ‘you’ll be back within the hour. Men don’t appreciate sarcasm in their women.’
‘You mean you don’t appreciate sarcasm in your women,’ she amended, pausing with her hand on the door and looking up at him. The beautiful, tearful Helen certainly had not seemed to be the sort of woman who spoke back, and Caroline had been as meek as a lamb. No wonder she had spent her marriage in a state of nervous tension.
‘And you’re telling me that the man you’re going to be seeing does?’ Riccardo gave a crack of derisory laughter that set her teeth on edge. If he hadn’t been so damned unreasonable she thought that she might just have told him the truth, but his remarks about her appearance had hurt. Not once had he said that she looked good. He had insulted her from the very minute he had walked through the door.
‘I’ll have to wait and see, won’t I?’
‘I thought you were only interested in nice men,’ Riccardo sneered. ‘You’ll send your nice man running for cover within minutes!’
‘I’m going now.’ Julia turned the door knob and offered him a bright smile.
He ignored her. His dark brows met in a thunderous frown and Julia responded by gazing serenely back at him. He could have killed her. Men were men, he thought savagely, and it would be easy for any nice man to turn into a wolf, given the goods on offer. God, he could see every curve of her body under what she was wearing and the exposure of her legs was positively indecent.
‘Before you go,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘I’ll just give you something to think about, shall I? You’ll want to know how your nice little man holds up to the competition.’ And he pulled her towards him, his mouth descending to crush against hers. It was a hot, brutal kiss that made every nerve in her body leap. For the most fleeting of seconds, she responded. She had to. Then she struggled against him and he released her immediately, but not without affording her a look of pure triumph.
‘I’ll see you soon,’ he drawled mockingly.
Julia turned away and let herself out of the house in a blind rush. How could he manage to do that? How could he manage to overwhelm her when he hadn’t even been pleasant? The minute his mouth had touched hers she had felt herself falling and it had taken all the strength she could muster to pull her back. How could she have fallen in love with a man whose arrogance knew no bounds and who could be ruthless and charming in equal measure? Love should be gentle, a soothing meeting of minds, not this mad, roller-coaster ride that left her spending half her time in a state of anguished giddiness!
And he had been right. The memory of his kiss had ruined her enjoyment of the evening because she found that she could hardly focus on what was going on around her. She was dimly aware of compliments being lavished on her and of several men who left her in no doubt that they liked what they saw. One in particular was so bowled over that he pressed his name and telephone number into her hand as she was leaving.
‘Call me,’ he urged, while her friend made funny faces behind his back and gave her the thumbs-up sign. ‘I work in the City. It would be no problem meeting up after work, or even meeting for lunch. I can easily arrange to come to you.’ He was fair, good-looking and undeniably nice. Just the sort of man Julia knew she should be cultivating. In her old get-up of plain skirts and concealing tops, it was doubtful whether he would have given her a second look, but his blue eyes had been on stalks every time he had looked at her during the course of the evening.
‘Perhaps,’ Julia answered vaguely, backing away from the eagerness in his expression.
‘What about next week? Give me your phone number and I can call you; see if we can touch base.’ He was so insistent, and Julia was so desperate to wriggle out of being forced into committing herself to anything, that she hurriedly rattled off her home number, hoping that his memory would fail him. Not that he couldn’t find out where she was and her telephone number if he wanted. Elizabeth would be more than obliging. She had spent half the evening telling Julia about his eligibility! Brilliant job, no messy divorce behind him, kind to children and animals, thoroughly nice guy.
Unfortunately, Julia’s mouth was still burning from the kiss of a thoroughly un-nice guy!
But it was lovely being the object of flattery, and she returned home at a little after midnight, far more cheerful than when she had set out.
The house, when she arrived, was in darkness, which surprised her. She hadn’t thought that Riccardo was the sort of man who retired early to bed. Which left her in the uncomfortable position of knowing that if he was asleep she would either have to wake him up or else let him carry on sleeping, and if she allowed him to carry on sleeping she would spend the rest of the night tossing and turning in bed, knowing that he was under the same roof.
She threw her little clutch bag on the table in the hall, clicking her teeth in frustration, and went through the downstairs rooms, checking them one by one to make sure that he wasn’t in any of them.
The last was the small sitting room where the television was, which, like the rest of the rooms, was in complete darkness. Julia was about to shut the door when his dark, velvety voice addressed her from the direction of one of the chairs.
‘Don’t do that!’ she said, still shaking from the fright he had given her.
‘Don’t do what?’
‘You made me jump. What are you doing sitting here in the dark, anyway?’ She switched on the light and saw him sprawled comfortably on one of the deep chairs, his long legs extended in front of him.
Riccardo could have told her that he had found it suited his mood but he didn’t. Anyway, he was in quite good humour now. In fact, feeling amazingly contented. So instead, he pointedly looked at his watch and then at her face.
‘Has Nicola been all right?’ Julia hovered in the doorway, not too sure what she should do. Throw him out? Hint that it was time to go? Chat politely and wait for him to leave of his own accord? Maybe, she considered, she should offer him the going rate for babysitting and see what he did. The thought made her grin.
‘Nicola’s been fine, and what’s so funny? Care to share the joke with me?’
‘Oh, I was just thinking about this evening…’
‘Had a good time, did you?’
‘I had a brilliant time.’ She looked at him, giving him the opportunity to stand up and leave, and when he remained sitting she reluctantly enquired politely, ‘What did you do?’
Riccardo shrugged and threw her a lazy smile. A lazy, genuine smile, which made her narrow her eyes suspiciously at him. He looked a little too much like the cat that had got the cream for her liking.
‘Oh, watched a little television. Didn’t think much of that period drama you recommended. Not enough action. There was a much better film on another channel so I looked at that. On and off.’
Julia remained standing, arms folded, taking full advantage of her one-off situation of looking down at him instead of the other way around.
‘Oh, and I grabbed something to eat. Hope you don’t mind. Just a sandwich.’
‘That’s fine.’
He gave her a dazzling smile and relaxed a little deeper into his chair, resting his head back against his clasped hands, seeming unperturbed by the wariness stamped on her face. On her eminently kissable face, he thought, not that she was aware of that. Her superficial change of plumage would ne
ver be able to eradicate her innate modesty, however much she tried to camouflage it.
‘So…’ he said, raising his eyebrows, ‘where did you go…?’
‘Oh, nowhere out of the ordinary. The company is what counts,’ she added meaningfully, and he gave her another brilliant smile, nodding in agreement. ‘Anyway, I guess you must be tired…so, if you don’t mind…’
‘Oh, I’m not tired. It’s only twelve-thirty. I have a body clock that relishes the minimum amount of sleep.’
‘Well, bully for you. I don’t.’
‘And I thought we might have a cosy little chat.’
‘A cosy little chat? What about?’
‘About where you really were tonight, of course.’ Riccardo almost wanted to purr with satisfaction. The thought of her being with another man had driven him almost mad with rage. Male pride, he assumed. No one liked to be walked out on, least of all a man like him. Deplorable, but at least, he thought, he had had the honesty to admit to the trait. Rage over nothing, as it had turned out.
‘Get to the point, Riccardo.’
‘In between the action movie, the sandwich and two glasses of wine—I hope you don’t mind my raiding your fridge—I found some time to call your mother…’
‘You found some time to do what?’ So much for her provocative subterfuge, intended to leave him in no doubt that he was dismissible at the click of her fingers because she had another man waiting in the wings. She sat down and looked at him, her cheeks pink with guilt at what she knew was coming.
‘Oh, to telephone your mother. I couldn’t remember where I had put that piece of paper with your mobile-phone number on it and, naturally, I had to find out how I could contact you just in case…’ He threw her a pious smile. ‘Your mother was most obliging. In fact, we had a pleasant little chat. Seems that your hot date with a mystery man was in fact a birthday party at your girlfriend’s house…’
‘I never said I was going on a hot date with anyone…’ Julia denied hotly. ‘You jumped to the conclusion that I was and—’
‘You let me go along with the misapprehension…the burning question is why…’
‘It’s time you left.’ Julia sat forward, flicked open her little bag and extracted her bundle of keys. Her skin felt as though it was on fire, a tingling sensation induced by the fact that she felt cornered, and was all too aware of what further conclusions he might be leaping towards in answer to his own question.
She could see it written all over that smug, breathtakingly handsome face of his. He thought that she had deliberately lied to make him jealous, and why would she want to make him jealous? Because she was violently attracted to him. She dangled the keys from her fingers and stood up.
‘It’s late, Riccardo, and I’m tired. I don’t need to sit here and answer any of your questions!’
‘Scared?’
‘Scared of what? Of you? You don’t intimidate me in the slightest, Riccardo Fabbrini!’
‘What about scared of owning up to the truth?’
Julia didn’t dare ask him to clarify his remark. She had a sinking feeling that she wasn’t going to like what else he had to say on the subject and she could already feel her own arguments ringing hollowly in the room as she tried to convince him otherwise.
‘Now, why don’t you go and get us both a cup of coffee and we can discuss this?’
‘There’s nothing to discuss!’
Riccardo shot her a politely incredulous smile and Julia feverishly wondered what the punishment was for manslaughter. ‘Of course there is,’ he said calmly. ‘Now, shall I tell you the way I see it?’
Julia sat back down, heaved a huge sigh and rolled her eyes heavenwards. ‘I would rather you didn’t, but I don’t suppose that will stop you.’
‘Quite true.’ He appeared to give the matter careful consideration. ‘Well, the way I see it is like this. You want me. That much is obvious, and don’t look at me as though you haven’t got the faintest idea what I’m talking about. You know exactly what I’m talking about, although if you like I can always remind you of the last evening we spent together…? In the space of one week—in fact, since you met that last girlfriend of mine—you’ve undergone a few radical changes. Not, I might add, that you didn’t turn me on before—’
‘I never turned you on, Riccardo Fabbrini! You used me!’
Riccardo shook his head sadly, as if despairing of a child being wilfully obtuse. ‘Men don’t work like that. You can think what you like about my motives, but no man can pretend passion. Oh, I wanted you all right. You felt it.’ His voice was a low, sexy murmur that had the blood rushing to her cheeks. ‘I was big and hard for you and that’s not something a man can summon to order…’
‘Riccardo…’ Julia heard the weak desperation in her voice and wanted to groan at her own lack of will power in the face of this fascinating, unbearably sexy man.
‘You don’t have to feel that you’re in competition with Helen or any of the other blonde airheads I’ve dated in the past.’
‘I don’t feel anything of the sort!’ Her eyes flashed at him. Water off a duck’s back.
‘Or that you have to pretend to be going out with another man so that you can fire me up…’
‘You…You are so…’
‘I know, I know. Arrogant, conceited et cetera, et cetera. But accurate, no? So, what do we do with this…shall we say…passion of ours…?’
Julia stared at him, open-mouthed. This must be how it felt to toss a boomerang into the air, only for it to return and hit you straight on the face. At the party she had been the essence of poise and self-control. She had been able to have conversations with men without even paying them the slightest bit of attention. Fifteen minutes in this man’s company and it was all blown to smithereens! Could this really be love?
The only clear thought running through her chaotic brain now was not to let him see just how much she felt and how powerless she was to resist him. For all his talk about passion and wanting and whether he had used her for his own purposes or not, he was a man incapable of giving with his soul. He could give magnificently with his body, but in her heart Julia knew that that would never be enough for her.
‘I don’t want to talk about any of this,’ she breathed.
‘You mean talk about us sleeping together? Giving in to this craving we have to touch each other’s bodies?’ Just talking about this and looking at her as she sat forward, pink-faced and rapt, wanting so badly to run but held captive by his voice, was enough to make him go hard.
She stared at him in silence. Every exit seemed to be blocked. She hadn’t been trying to rouse his jealousy…had she? she wondered wildly. She had been trying to build up her own confidence in herself, to prove to him that she was not the pushover she must have seemed to be when she had swooned in his arms like a mindless Victorian maiden. She had changed her image because, obscurely, she had wanted to change the disastrous direction her life appeared to have been taking. Straight into his bed! Leaving her heart in tattered pieces when he was through with her! That was what she had been trying to do, except pointing all that out to him would be like running in circles.
‘Look,’ he said with sudden fierceness, sitting forward and filling the spaces around her with his overpowering masculinity, ‘do you imagine I want to feel this way too? You detonated a bombshell in my life; you’re the last person in the world I should be wanting to take to my bed, but I feel the same thing that you do!’
‘You’re mistaken,’ Julia said in a shaky voice, standing up. Her legs didn’t feel as though they could support her suddenly leaden body, but she had to get out of the room. ‘I just thought that the time had come for me to take control of my life, that’s all.’
‘Make us both some coffee and you can tell me all about it. You’ll find that I am a very good listener.’
Any excuse. She scurried out of the room and into the kitchen, where she leaned against the counter and closed her eyes. Everything inside her was pounding, her heart, her bra
in, her whole body felt as though it could burst through its skin.
Want, want, want. He wanted her, wanted to sleep with her, make love. It was all that mattered to him. But it wasn’t enough. She wearily put the kettle to boil, her movements automatic as she piled a teaspoon of instant coffee into each mug, poured the water over, but her hands were shaking when she went to lift the mugs and she had to set them down again while she caught herself and took a few deep breaths. She might deter him for the moment, but he was like a shark that had suddenly discovered a source of blood. Hers!
And now that Nicola knew who he was, he was under no obligation to hang around. He would take what he wanted and then he would be gone, with his daughter.
She was leaning against the counter, thinking madly of how she could extricate herself from the situation in one piece, how she could resist the temptation to cave in to both their needs because caving in would be the fatal step towards heartbreak. She barely heard his approaching steps.
When he spoke his voice was deadly icy and her eyes flickered open to see him standing in front of her, a piece of paper in his hand.
‘What is this?’ He held the paper out to her, and without thinking Julia asked him whether he had finally discovered the whereabouts of the missing mobile-phone number. Not that she had believed for one minute that he had really misplaced it.
‘Look at it.’ He thrust the paper at her and Julia was dimly aware that he had found the piece of paper with Roger’s telephone number on it. At the time, she had barely glanced at it, but now she could see that he had inscribed a rough heart under the phone number.
‘Where did you find this?’
‘Does it matter?’ He folded his arms and waited. Waited till her eyes had finished scanning the paper for a second time. ‘I found it.’
‘You had no right to go prying in my bag,’ she said quietly.
‘The damn bag was open from when you got your keys out! I saw the edge of paper sticking out and yes, I took it out and now I want to know who the hell this Roger person is and why his telephone number is in your bag!’
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