The Colorado Countess

by Stephanie Howard

  ‘Actually, it’s you who should forgive me.’ He held out his hand to her. ‘Here I am in your home and I haven’t even introduced myself. I’m Leone,’ he told her. ‘Leone Montecrespi.’

  Carrie continued to look at him with steady hazel eyes. ‘Yes, I know who you are.’ Reluctantly, she took his hand, for she remembered all too vividly the effect of his handshake at the restaurant.

  And it happened again, that jolt of sensation, that sense that suddenly her flesh was burning. Though she managed to control her reaction this time as she added, ‘Last time we met, I confess, I didn’t recognise you.’ She dropped her hand away, ignoring the fierce tingling. ‘The light in the restaurant wasn’t very good.’

  Carrie wondered as she said it if that confession was good enough. Perhaps he would expect her to apologise more profusely, possibly even grovel a bit? But grovelling was out. She just wasn’t a groveller. And anyway, she reflected, she’d been perfectly entitled to make the comments she’d made the other night at the restaurant. He and his friends had behaved in a thoroughly arrogant manner.

  ‘Yes, the light was rather poor.’ Leone’s reaction was simply to smile. Then he let his eyes drift over her for a moment. ‘Now that I can see you properly I realise you’re twice as beautiful as I’d thought.’

  ‘Really?’ Carrie’s tone was flat and dismissive. Flattery will get you nowhere, it candidly told him. Whatever he’d come for, he wouldn’t butter her up that way—though privately she had to confess that she’d been having similar thoughts about him!

  In the warm light of day he looked even more gorgeous, and he was immeasurably more attractive, though she would hardly have thought this possible, than in the photographs she had seen of him in various glossy magazines.

  There was a wonderful raw vitality to him that, along with the wild black hair and the eyes that she could see now were the pefect blue of lapis lazuli, projected an aura of shimmering excitement. She felt a rush inside her and quickly suppressed it.

  She said, turning away, waving at the group of cane chairs behind her, ‘Would you care to take a seat?’

  Beware, she was thinking as a bell rang in her head. It had struck her in the restaurant that he was clearly a bit of a Romeo, but now that she knew who he was she knew also that she’d been right.

  In those photographs one saw of him in the glossy magazines he was invariably accompanied by some pouting bimbette—always head-turningly beautiful and never the same one twice. And, though it seemed unlikely—what would he see in a girl like her who, after all, was definitely no bimbette, a very far cry from the type he went for?—it was possible that he had come here with seduction on his mind.

  She darted a glance into the smoky blue eyes. Who could tell? Maybe His Highness felt like a change. Maybe he had grown a little bored with his habitual diet and fancied a working American girl instead. Perhaps he had come here to invite her to share the royal bed.

  At that thought, to Carrie’s dismay, she felt another rush inside her, as though all her insides had turned to liquid honey. Shame on you, she told herself, and quickly suppressed it. No matter how gorgeous he was, he would have no luck with her. She wasn’t here to provide entertainment for any playboy count!

  He was accepting her invitation and crossing the veranda to seat himself in the cane chair where she had been sitting earlier, the one next to the little table with the bowl of peaches. He stretched out his long legs. ‘You asked what I’m doing here.’ Then he held her eyes and smiled. ‘We have unfinished business.’

  ‘Unfinished business?’

  What on earth did he mean by that? Carrie crossed to seat herself on one of the chairs opposite him, careful to arrange her legs at a safe distance from his, her feet crossed neatly at the ankles.

  She looked him straight in the eye and raised one questioning eyebrow. ‘I wasn’t aware that you and I had any business to finish.’

  ‘Perhaps not, strictly speaking, business.’ He simply smiled at her reaction. I’m going to enjoy this, he was thinking. This one’s definitely no pushover. It would make a pleasant change from the easy victories he was used to.

  He stretched his legs a little further and leaned back in his seat and watched her. ‘The other evening, you may remember, as I was leaving the restaurant, you came running after me, rather anxious to tell me something. I couldn’t stop at the time, but perhaps you’d like to tell me about it now?’

  ‘Is that why you’ve come here?’ Carrie frowned as she looked back at him. ‘Just to find out why I came running after you?’

  She wasn’t sure if she believed him. At the time, she’d been quite certain that he’d heard perfectly well her angry protests about the bill.

  But perhaps not, after all, and perhaps that really was why he’d come—to find out what she’d been saying and, possibly, to chastise her for her rudeness. Perhaps she’d been totally wrong about the seduction bit. Oh, well, she thought, thank heavens for that.

  Another thought struck her. He must have gone to a fair bit of trouble in order to track her down like this. She delivered him a dry look. ‘How extraordinarily fastidious of you.’

  ‘I’m an extraordinarily fastidious chap.’ He smiled a lazy smile and cast a glance at the bowl of peaches at his elbow. ‘What lovely-looking peaches. Do you mind if I have one?’

  Then, as she nodded and said, ‘Help yourself,’ he reached out and took one.

  Carrie found herself watching his every move with fascination. He had the most beautiful tanned hands, with shapely, sensuous fingers, and there was something about the way he took hold of the peach and held it in the palm of his hand for a moment that made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. Somehow, it was all too easy to imagine how it would feel to have those sensuous fingers caressing your naked flesh.

  With a flash of horror at herself—what the devil was coming over her?—she pushed that thought away as he returned to their interrupted discourse and elaborated, ‘I like conclusions. I hate to leave things hanging in the air.’

  Carrie took a deep breath. ‘Then I’ll tell you why I came running after you.’ Suddenly, she too was rather keen to reach a conclusion, and preferably one that involved him exiting with some rapidity. His presence was doing the most peculiar things to her brain!

  Squaring her shoulders, she told him, ‘I was objecting to you paying my bill. There was no need for that. I’m capable of paying my own bills.’

  Leone narrowed his eyes. ‘I thought that’s what you were saying. But you seemed so het up I wondered if I was mistaken.’

  ‘Of course I was het up. You had no business paying my bill for me.’

  ‘It was a gesture of reparation. Because you lost your table.’

  ‘Well, it was a gesture I didn’t appreciate. It simply added insult to injury.’ Carrie flushed in remembrance as she said it. For it really was true. She really had felt insulted. ‘I came after you to complain and to insist on paying you back.’

  As she spoke she sat forward, intending to stand up. ‘In fact, I’ll take the opportunity to pay you back now.’ Over the past couple of days, the incident had continued to trouble her. How did you pay back a debt to the heir to the throne? Did you just stick some money in an envelope and send it off to the palace? How could you be certain he’d actually received it? She’d been planning on asking someone at the bank what she should do, but now the problem could be easily resolved.

  She told him, ‘I’ll go and get the money right this minute.’

  But Leone was waving to her to sit down. ‘You can give it to me before I leave.’ He took a bite of his peach. ‘That is, if you insist, which I’d rather you didn’t.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid I definitely do.’

  Carrie was half out of her chair and half in it. It went against the grain to obey that imperious little wave, for he was clearly far too used to people obeying him, but she had suddenly realised that to go indoors for her purse she would have to step over his outstretched legs. Unless, of course, h
e moved them, but she couldn’t bank on that.

  Feeling a little cowardly, she sat back stiffly in her seat again. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I’ll pay you before you leave.’ That surely shouldn’t be long now, she was silently praying. And there was definitely no danger that she might forget.

  There was silence for a moment as Leone sat back and looked at her. The more he discovered about this girl, the more intriguing she became to him. She was different, a type he came across rarely.

  ‘You’re the independent sort, I see.’ His tone was light as he challenged her. ‘Is this how they teach you to be over in Colorado?’

  ‘I suppose it must be. It’s certainly how I was taught.’

  Carrie wondered if he was laughing at her and decided he probably was. The sort of personal integrity her parents had instilled in her ever since she was very little was something he would find petty and bourgeois and boring. People of his social rank operated differently. They were the sort of people, after all, who went through life thinking nothing of commandeering other people’s restaurant tables!

  She tilted her chin at him. ‘I was brought up to respect people, to respect their rights, not to take advantage.’ And as she looked into his eyes she could see quite clearly that he had understood the unspoken message. ‘I was also taught to pay my way and to honour my debts. In short, not to take anything that wasn’t my due.’

  Leone regarded her with interest. ‘So, what do you consider to be your due?’

  ‘What I work for. What I earn by my own efforts.’

  She paused and dropped her eyes to her lap for a moment. Was she overdoing it just a little? she wondered, suddenly guilty. She was talking, after all, to one of the idle aristocracy and she had also been taught never to give gratuitous offence.

  But Leone did not appear to be offended in the slightest. Instead, he took another bite of his peach and commented, ‘An extremely worthy philosophy of life.’

  Not that he meant it, of course, and he could afford to smile indulgently and not care a damn what people like her thought of him. This thought went through Carrie’s head as she looked into the blue eyes, observing to herself what different worlds they came from. Surely neither could ever truly understand the other?

  She said, ‘It’s what I was taught and it’s what I believe.’

  Leone continued to watch her, the blue eyes oddly unsettling. They had this quality of seeming to pierce beneath her skin. At times he seemed to be laughing at her, at others studying her closely, and somehow the two just didn’t add up.

  What was going on in his head and why had he come? For she still wasn’t convinced by the reason he’d given her. But the thing that was making her most uncomfortable of all was the fact that there seemed to be no sign of him leaving!

  He crossed his feet at the ankles and tilted his head as he looked at her. ‘So, what are you doing here in decadent old Europe rubbing shoulders with the sort of people I’d have thought you’d run a mile from?’

  He was definitely laughing at her now. The blue eyes sparked with devilment. ‘Wouldn’t you have been better off choosing a different subject for your book? Something that kept you safe among the high principles of Colorado?’

  Arrogant pig. Carrie looked back at him levelly. ‘Actually, I don’t live in Colorado any more.’

  That was just for the record. He didn’t know everything, after all!

  ‘For the past three years,’ she continued, ‘I’ve lived in New York. So, you see, I have actually ventured out of the safe haven of my home state.’

  ‘That must have been quite a jolt.’ Leone was still smiling at her amusedly. ‘How on earth do you manage to survive among the sharks of New York?’

  ‘I just basically put my head down and get on with my job, just as millions of other New Yorkers do. I’ve never had any trouble surviving, as you put it.’ And it was true—she’d made the shift to the Big Apple with no problem. ‘Most New Yorkers, like me, believe in the ethos of hard work.’

  ‘Back to that old subject again.’ Leone lifted one dark eyebrow. ‘I get the feeling that with you everything comes back to work.’

  ‘I suppose it does, more or less. Work is a large part of my life.’ And she couldn’t resist adding, whether it offended him or not, ‘No doubt that’s a totally alien concept to you?’

  ‘Totally.’ Leone took another bite of his peach. ‘I consider my life to be for living.’

  Well, she knew what he meant by that! For ‘living’ substitute ‘loving’. In the pursuit of sexual adventures was how Leone Montecrespi spent his time!

  She threw him a condescending look. ‘Each to his own, of course. Personally, I prefer a little more substance to my existence.’

  ‘And who says my life lacks substance? I would say it had substance to spare.’

  ‘Well, there’s substance and substance, I suppose.’ Carrie shrugged an expressive shrug. ‘As I said before, each to his own.’

  ‘Each to his own indeed.’ Leone continued to watch her. And though he was smiling there was a dark, probing look in his eyes. ‘Is it really true, then?’ he asked, finishing off his peach and tossing the stone down on the table. ‘Is work the only thing that turns you on?’

  Those were not the precise words Carrie herself would have chosen, though she was not at all surprised that he had opted for that wording. It was perfectly clear that he was out to needle her.

  She regarded him coolly. ‘I find my work stimulating.’ If he thought he could fluster her, he had another think coming. After three years in New York she didn’t fluster so easily. ‘Most people,’ she added, ‘who have jobs they’re truly involved in would agree, I think, that work gives a lot of satisfaction.’

  She didn’t bother to add this time that he no doubt found that an alien concept. It didn’t need saying. They both knew it was true. For though she’d heard he had a job—something to do with Formula One racing cars—it was clearly nothing more than a rich man’s pastime. An undemanding and conveniently part-time pastime that left him plenty of free time for ‘living’.

  ‘So I’ve heard.’ Leone was enjoying this little skirmish. ‘But a lot of satisfaction is one thing; total satisfaction is quite another. And I’m beginning to suspect that you fall into the latter category.’

  ‘Are you indeed?’

  ‘Yes, I am. Am I right?’

  Carrie fixed him with a look. Was he asking her about her sex life? Well, she was keeping that to herself—not that there was a great deal to divulge. A couple of mild romances, a few flirtations and not much more. Certainly nothing that would stand comparison with his love life!

  She held the deep blue gaze. ‘That’s something you’ll never know.’

  ‘Top secret, huh?’

  ‘Just my own private business.’

  ‘Too bad. I was hoping for some intimate little insight.’

  ‘Then I’m afraid I must disappoint you.’

  ‘That’s the worst thing you could do to me.’ He smiled. ‘I can’t bear it when a woman disappoints me.’

  Carrie could think of no reply and, really, it was little wonder, for all at once her heart was beating strangely. There was a rapid pulse in her throat and her breathing was fast and shallow. Wrong again, she was thinking. Who said she couldn’t be flustered?

  For there’d been an undercurrent in that exchange that had been distinctly sexual and she’d found herself responding with a sudden sense of excitement. But an excitement touched with guilt, for she’d known she shouldn’t be reacting to him like that. Only she’d been unable to stop herself and had had no desire to stop him. As they sat looking at each other now, the air around them seemed to crackle.

  Then Leone said, ‘So you’ve come to San Rinaldo looking for satisfaction? Professional satisfaction, I mean, of course.’ The blue eyes flashed. ‘After all, we’ve more or less established that for you that’s the only kind of satisfaction worth pursuing.’

  Carrie swallowed hard. How on earth, she was wondering, had the
conversation managed to arrive at this loaded point? Though she had a small suspicion that the responsibility was partly hers. For it had somehow grown out of the disapproving noises she’d made regarding his claim that life was for living.

  She made a mental note to be more cautious in future. The heir to the throne clearly had no scruples at all about baiting young women who took a disapproving tone with him. Not that that knowledge would actually be of any use to her. She was unlikely ever to meet him again.

  Just to think that was a great relief. She straightened her shoulders. And perhaps now she could persuade him to put an end to this meeting.

  She looked across at him, though avoiding looking too deeply into his eyes. Those smouldering lapis eyes, she was learning, were dangerous. She smiled a neutral smile. ‘Now that you’ve told me why you came here . . . and now that I’ve had a chance to explain about the other evening. . . it would seem your unfinished business has been completed.’

  Well, that was plain enough. As hints went, that one was yacht-sized. Politely, she waited. With any luck he’d make a move now, then she could just give him his money and wave a thankful goodbye.

  And he did start to stand up. At least, that was what it looked like. He sat forward in his seat, his hands on the chair arms. ‘You’re right; that particular piece of business has been completed.’

  But then, midway, he paused, the smoky blue eyes fixing her. ‘But that wasn’t the only reason I came here,’ he said.

  Oh, dear. Carrie stiffened. Had her initial suspicions been right? Was there seduction on the royal mind, after all? She looked into his eyes and felt herself shiver. Now, how was she going to get out of this?

  ‘Oh?’ she responded, and got ready to defend herself.

  Leone was watching her. ‘I promise you you’re going to like this.’