by Penny Jordan
Now, pressed up against him in the airless atmosphere of the hotel lobby, she was terrifyingly aware of how readily her senses responded to him, of how great the temptation was not to move away from him but to move closer.
‘I could ring my cousins from your room,’ Alex was telling her persuasively. ‘I promise you you won’t be disappointed, Beth.’
Was it just her imagination, or was he subtly implying that her expectations of pleasure would not merely be satisfied by the quality of his cousins’ glass? Beth could feel her face starting to burn with hectic hormone-driven colour.
The warmth of his breath as he spoke to her was so tantalisingly like a caress that she had to grit her teeth to stop herself from moving closer to it, to stop herself from imagining how it would feel to have the soft caress of his mouth moving against the tender, vulnerable pleasure spot just behind her ear, to move from there to...
Beneath her clothes Beth could feel her nipples peaking and thrusting eagerly against their protective covering, flaunting their availability and their need.
Frantically Beth decided that she had to do something, anything, to put a stop to what was happening.
‘From the way you’re talking, anyone would think that your cousins are the only manufacturers who produce high-quality reproduction antique glass,’ she told Alex challengingly, gritting her teeth as she deliberately pushed herself away from him and looked into his face.
‘Well, they aren’t the only ones, but they do have a reputation for being the best. Of the only other two I know, one has order books going right into the millennium—mainly from its American customers—and the other is presently in negotiation with an Italian company that wants to go into partnership with them.’
‘How very convenient,’ Beth told him sarcastically. ‘But as it happens I’ve actually found my own source...’
‘You have?’ Alex was frowning slightly. ‘May I ask where? None of the factories you’ve got listed...’
‘It isn’t somewhere on my list,’ Beth told him, too infuriated by his patronising manner to be guarded or cautious. ‘I’ve been told by one of the gypsy stall holders in Wenceslas Square that she can supply me with an introduction to a factory that makes the quality of glass I want.’
‘A stall holder in the Square?’ Alex looked patently unimpressed. ‘And you believed her?’ he derided, before asking her hardily, ‘You didn’t give her any money, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t. Not that it’s any of your business,’ Beth defended herself sharply. She felt like a naughty child, called up before her head teacher to explain herself, and it wasn’t a sensation she was enjoying. What right, after all, did Alex have to question any of her decisions? And as for his comment about her not parting with any money...!
‘She’s going to get some samples of the glass for me to look at...’
‘You’ve told her where you’re staying?’
If anything he was looking even more disapproving, and a belated sense of caution warned Beth not to tell him that she had actually arranged to go down to the Square to meet with the stall holder that evening.
‘She knows how to get in touch with me,’ was all she permitted herself to say.
‘You do know the reputations some of these gypsies have, don’t you?’ Alex demanded. ‘You must have been warned. A lot of them are illegal immigrants into the country. They are well known to be in the pay of organised criminals...’
‘What, all of them?’ Beth derided him, parodying his tone of voice to her minutes earlier.
‘This is not a situation you should take lightly,’ Alex told her sternly. ‘These are potentially very dangerous people.’
Beth couldn’t help herself. Childish though she knew it was, she gave a heavy, theatrically bored sigh that stopped Alex speaking immediately and caused his mouth to harden into an implacably tight line.
‘Very well,’ he told her curtly. ‘If you won’t listen to my advice then at least, for your own safety and my peace of mind, let me be there when you see these people.’
Let him be there... Knowing what she did, and knowing now just how determined he was to push her in the direction of his family’s business—no way.
The crowd which had thronged the lobby was thinning out now. The girl behind the reception desk, catching sight of Alex, signalled to him.
‘Excuse me,’ he said to Beth quickly, walking towards the desk. Beth could hear the girl saying something to him in Czech—telling him what? she wondered, her curiosity aroused by the girl’s unexpectedly respectful manner towards him, rather as though she considered Alex to be someone important.
From what she had seen of them, Beth knew that the Czechs were a very polite and courteous nation, treating one another with courtly good manners which seemed to have gone rather out of fashion in other Western countries, but the clerk behind the desk wasn’t merely treating Alex courteously; whilst her behaviour wasn’t exactly obsequious, it was very definitely deferential.
Frowning a little over this perplexing insight into someone else’s opinion of Alex, Beth quickly warned herself against encouraging herself to see hitherto unnoticed good points about him. She had made that mistake with Julian Cox, determinedly supporting him and even defending him to her closest friends when they had tried gently to warn her what kind of man he was.
She had even ignored the fact that her own best friend, Kelly, had had to reject his advances at the same time that she was actually seeing him, letting Julian persuade her that Kelly was just jealous.
Beth could hardly bear now to reflect on her own wilful foolishness. She knew that Kelly and her friends, most especially those closest to her—Anna and Dee—all believed that Julian’s perfidy had broken her heart. And it was true that she had believed that he loved her, that she had allowed herself to be carried away by the fantasy he had created around them both, the romantic deception he had woven. She was, as Beth was the first to admit, someone who was inclined to be a little over-idealistic, to believe that all her geese were potential swans, so to speak. However, even whilst Julian had been pressuring her to make plans for an elaborate engagement party, even whilst he had been swearing undying love to her, a tiny part of her had been just that little bit concerned, just that little bit wary that he was rushing things too much, that she wasn’t being given time to assimilate her own feelings properly.
All her life there had been fond, loving people there to make her most important decisions for her, to relieve her of the burden of having to do so for herself. Her parents, her grandparents, even her friends, all of them loving and caring, all of them protective, all of them acting from the best possible motives. But Beth could see now that their love and their protection had taken from her the right to make her own decisions and her own mistakes. It wasn’t their fault. It was her own. She ought to have been more assertive, less passive, less eager to be the beloved, adored child and more eager to be the respected woman. Well, all that was behind her now. For practical reasons she needed the services of an interpreter and a guide, but that was all. There was no way she needed anyone else’s support or anyone else’s advice in deciding what she wanted to buy for her shop.
Alex was still speaking with the girl behind the reception desk. Beth came to a quick decision. Whilst he was busy she had the perfect opportunity to get away from him. Quickly she headed towards the lift, only realising how anxious she had been that he would come after her once she was safely inside it and it was moving.
She had the lift to herself. Briefly she closed her eyes, her face burning as, without meaning to, she suddenly found herself remembering what Alex had said to her about being in a lift with her the previous day.
Angry with herself for the wayward and highly personal nature of her thoughts, she told herself determinedly that she had far better and more important things to think about than Alex Andrews.
Once inside her room, she rang down to the reception desk and informed them that she didn’t want to be disturbed—under any circumstances or by anyone.
She doubted that Alex would genuinely be concerned at not being able to make contact with her. After all, she wasn’t his only woman ‘client’, was she?
Beth frowned as she tried to analyse the feelings tensing her body when she recalled the very elegant, if undeniably older woman she had seen him with the previous evening—the evening he had told her he intended to spend with his family. She hadn’t looked the sort of person who would be taken in by the attentions of a flirtatious interpreter, but then perhaps, like her, she’d recognised Alex for exactly what he was and had decided to... There had certainly been a good deal of intimacy in the closeness of their bodies as they had stood together.
Beth wrapped her arms protectively around her own body. The distasteful suspicions flooding her mind should surely have the effect of totally destroying the physical desire she had begun to feel for Alex, not feeding the unexpected jealousy she could actually feel.
Annoyed with herself, she paced the floor of her room. It was too early for her to go back to the Square, where she had seen the gypsy, and she felt too restless to remain here in her room—as well as much too aware of the growing danger of wanting to remain alone with her own seriously undermining, intimate thoughts.
Perhaps a guided tour of the city would help to pass some of the time. Besides which, she genuinely wanted to see more of the place which had such a wonderful reputation.
* * *
Three hours later, at the end of her chosen tour, Beth had to acknowledge that she hadn’t realised the breadth of Prague’s varied history. She had been shown the Jewish Cemetery, and had marvelled at its antiquity. She had stood on the hillside and looked down at Prague’s pretty rooftops, admiring their copper cupolas and the soft warm reds of its tiles and bricks. She had seen the castle, with its many courtyards, and wandered with the other eager members of her group along the narrow streets lined with tiny, fascinating gift shops.
Having thanked her guide for her stimulating talk, Beth excused herself, slowly making her way back towards Wenceslas Square, stopping at one point to order a sandwich and a pot of coffee at a small attractive café where she could sit outside and watch the world go by.
If anything the Square was even more crowded this evening than it had been the evening before when she had first visited it, Beth decided as she made her way through the groups of other sightseers thronging the large cobbled area. The armour-making stall, the fire-eater and the acrobats were all there, and familiar to her, barely meriting more than a second interested look as she hurried to the stall where she had met the gypsy. Not only was the Square more crowded with tourists, there also seemed to be more stalls as well, Beth recognised, and at first she thought that her stall wasn’t there.
Anxiously she searched for it, her attention momentarily caught by the pathetic sight of two young children huddled in a doorway clutching a grey-faced, ominously quiet baby. She had heard that sometimes the gypsy mothers, in order to pursue their begging more easily, sedated their children by whatever means they could, including the use of drink and—appallingly, to Beth’s mind—drugs.
Poor child, and poor mother too, Beth’s tender heart couldn’t help feeling. Whatever the rights and wrongs of their political situation—and Beth was the first to admit that she was in no position to be any judge of that—she couldn’t help but feel sad for the plight of her fellow humans.
Even though she knew she was probably doing the wrong thing, she couldn’t stop herself from giving the grubby child who approached her a handful of small change.
As she firmly shooed the children away, shaking her head to show that there was no more money, she saw the stall she had been looking for tucked away to one side of a larger one. Relieved, she hurried towards it.
The woman she had seen the previous evening recognised her immediately, beckoning her over with a wide smile.
‘I have here the glass for you to see,’ she told Beth in a conspiratorial whisper, drawing her into the canvas-covered rear of her stall.
Its canvas covering obscured the light and smelt strongly, causing Beth’s throat to close up uncomfortably. There was a heavy odor in the air that might have been incense, or perhaps something a little less innocuous. Beth really didn’t want to know.
‘See...here it is...’ the woman was telling Beth, touching her on the arm as she directed her attention to several pieces of glass she had placed on a makeshift table formed from an old box. Beth had to kneel down to see the glass properly, but once she did so she caught her breath in awed delight, instinctively reaching out to take hold of the beautifully crafted items the woman was showing her.
Only now, in the relief of having her judgement vindicated, was she able to admit to herself how very, very important it was to her to be able to tell Alex Andrews that she had managed to find her glassware without his help.
‘Oh, but these are wonderful, perfect,’ she told the woman huskily.
As she inspected them and held them, examining them carefully and holding them up to the light, despite the gypsy woman’s fierce protest and the way she shielded them from the sight of anyone else by standing in front of them, Beth found it hard to believe that they were not actually genuine antiques.
But of course they couldn’t possibly be. Glassware such as this, had it been antique, would have been locked away in a museum somewhere. To have owned glass like this in the seventeenth century one would have had to have been a very wealthy person indeed. It was, no doubt, something in the traditional manufacturing process that gave the gloss an ‘antique’ look.
The more she studied the pieces the gypsy woman was showing her, the more Beth’s excitement grew. To be able to display glassware such as this in her shop would indeed be a wonderful coup. So far as she knew, no one had ever seen anything like it, other than in private collections or locked away behind glass doors in a handful of very expensive and up-market specialist stores. The gilding alone...
In all, the gypsy woman had brought half a dozen pieces for Beth to examine, in three slightly different styles of stemware, in cranberry, the deepest, richest blue Beth had ever seen, gold and emerald. There was a very ornate pedestal bowl, with an intricately faceted stem that caught the light as brilliantly as a flawless diamond, a breathtakingly beautiful water jug, with flowers cut into its handle and lavishly embellished with gilt, two wine glasses and, last of all, a pair of lustres even more beautiful than the ones Beth had seen in the gift shop. She wanted it all, knew she could sell it all if, and it was a very big if, the price was right.
There were, here and there in Europe, she knew, small factories with dedicated craftsmen that still made such articles, but at a cost that put them way, way out of the means of most people. A wealthy oil sheikh, a millionaire pop star, royal houses—they might be able to afford whole suites of such stemware, but her customers, even the most comfortably off of them, could not.
All Beth’s original plans to purchase good-quality but relatively inexpensive plain glass crystal stemware, perhaps embellished with a discreet amount of gold, flew out of her head—and her heart—as she studied the pieces the gypsy woman displayed to her.
Her budget was relatively small, and she had no doubt that these pieces would be expensive, but Beth knew she just had to have them. Already she could see them displayed in the shop. Already she could hear the delighted gasps of their customers, the flood of sales. Her excited thoughts ran on and on whilst Beth tried as sedately as she could to elicit from the gypsy what exactly the factory did manufacture.
‘Do these come in suites of stemware?’ she asked her, picking up one of the glasses. ‘A full set, or just these wine glasses?’
‘A full set could be made if that was what you wanted,’ the gypsy told Beth, her eyes narrowing as
she added shrewdly, ‘Of course, that would mean you would have to give the factory a substantial order.’
Beth’s heart sank. How much exactly was a substantial order? When the gypsy told her her heart sank even further. One hundred suites of glassware in the same pattern was far more than she could ever hope to sell, unless...
‘If I have so many could I have a mix of colours? Say twenty-five suites of each of the four colourways?’ she asked.
The gypsy pursed her lips.
‘I am not sure. I would have to check with the factory first about that.’
‘And the cost?’ Beth asked her quickly. ‘How much is the glass? Do you have a price list?’ she added.
The gypsy shook her head, her smile revealing the gap in her teeth.
‘How much can you afford?’ she challenged Beth.
Beth paused. Haggling had never been one of her strong points—that was far more Kelly’s forte than hers—but, driven by her desire to order the glassware, she named a figure per suite of glassware that allowed her some margin to bargain with.
The gypsy laughed.
‘So little, and for such glass.’ She shook her head. ‘No,’ she denied, and then she named a figure that made Beth blanch a little as she quickly worked out the cost of a total order at such figures.
‘No, that is far too much,’ she told the gypsy firmly, and then added, ‘Perhaps I could visit the factory and speak with the manager there...’
The gypsy’s eyes narrowed. Beth had the most uncomfortable impression that something she had said had amused her.