The Unlikely Mistress

by Sharon Kendrick

  ‘Your mother?’ A frown of disbelief criss-crossed his forehead. Surely she didn’t still live with her mother?

  Sabrina read the disappointment in his eyes, and pride and fury warred inside her like a bubbling cauldron. What had he expected? A reenactment of that night in Venice? A half-finished meal and she would fall back into bed with him?

  ‘Yes,’ she said, with a demure flutter of her eyelashes. ‘I live with my mother.’

  ‘And what time do you finish?’

  ‘Five-thirty.’

  ‘I’ll be here,’ he promised, on a note of silky threat. ‘Waiting.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ she responded furiously.

  Guy forced himself to give his cool, polite smile as he left the shop. But inside he was raging. Raging.

  He should have just forgotten all about her. That was what he had told himself over and over on the plane coming back from Italy. He didn’t know what had possessed him to track her down like some kind of amateur sleuth. Because, yes, there were a few questions he would like a few honest answers to—but common sense had told him just to cut his losses and run. She was trouble, and he couldn’t for the life of him work out why.

  He should have just posted her the chain and the ring with a cynical note attached saying, ‘Thanks for the memory.’

  And left it at that.

  But he had been driven by a compulsion to see her again and to challenge her—a compulsion he was certain was driven by nothing more than the fact that she had given him the best sex of his life.

  But maybe that had been because she’d been a stranger, not in spite of that fact. Because she’d had no expectations of him. Or any knowledge. She’d judged him as a man—a well-paid employee, true, but not as a man with megabucks. She had responded to him in the most fundamental way possible, and he to her. It had left him shaken, seeking some kind of explanation which would enable him to let the memory go.

  She had been honest and open and giving in his bed—so why the secrets? The hidden chain and a ring which was almost certainly an engagement ring. Why the sudden and dramatic exit—like something out of a bad movie?

  Guy walked around Salisbury dodging the showers—but not dodging them accurately enough. So that by the time he arrived at Wells Bookstore at twenty-five minutes past five his thick, ruffled hair was sprinkled with raindrops which glittered like tears amidst the ebony waves.

  Sabrina glanced up from her desk and her heart caught in her throat at the sight of his rain-soaked frame. He would, she thought, be all too easy to fall in love with. Women must fall in love with him all the time. Leave me alone, Guy Masters, she urged him silently. Go away and leave me alone.

  Paul, who was standing a little space away, followed the troubled direction of her eyes.

  ‘Your friend is waiting,’ he said carefully. ‘You’d better go.’

  Sabrina turned to him, her eyes beseeching him. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

  Paul shrugged. ‘It’s not my place to say anything about your private life, Sabrina—but it is very soon after Michael, isn’t it? Just take it easy, that’s all.’

  Guilt smote at her with a giant hand. ‘He’s just a friend.’

  Paul gave her an awkward smile. ‘Sure he is,’ he said, as though he didn’t quite believe her. ‘Look, it’s none of my business.’

  ‘No.’ She picked up her coat from the hook. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Paul. Goodnight.’

  Through the window Guy watched her shrugging her raincoat on, unable to stop himself from marvelling at the innate grace of her movements. She moved like a dream, he thought—all long, slender limbs and that bright, shiny hair shimmering like sunlight in the grey of the rainy afternoon.

  He remembered the way she had straddled him, her pale, naked thighs on either side of his waist, and he felt the first uncomfortable stirrings of desire—until he reminded himself that that was not why he was here.

  Sabrina pushed the door open and thought how chilly Guy’s grey eyes looked, and how unsmiling his mouth. She told herself that this would be one short evening to get through and then she need never see him again. He had lied to her, she told herself bitterly.

  ‘Where would you like to go?’ she questioned.

  ‘You live here.’ He shrugged. ‘How the hell should I know?’

  ‘I meant do you just want coffee—or a drink?’

  He remembered that night in Venice and the lack of interest with which he’d greeted the wine. Yet tonight he could have willingly sunk a bucketful of liquor. ‘A drink,’ he said abruptly.

  Me, too, she thought as she led the way across a cobbled courtyard to one of the city’s oldest pubs.

  Inside, a log fire blazed at each end of the bar and the warmth hit her like a blanket.

  ‘Go and find a seat,’ he instructed tersely. ‘What do you want to drink?’

  ‘B-brandy.’ She shivered violently, despite the heat of the room.

  She found a table far away from the others. She suspected that their conversation wouldn’t be for general consumption. Then she slipped her coat off and sat there waiting for him, her knees glued primly together—like a girl who had just been to deportment lessons.

  He brought two large brandies over to the table and sat down opposite her, aware of the way that she shrank back when their knees brushed.

  ‘Oh? So shy, Sabrina? Don’t like me touching you?’ He held his glass up in a mocking toast. ‘Isn’t that a little like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted? You weren’t so shy in my bed, were you, my beauty?’

  She gulped down some brandy, the liquid burning welcome fire down her throat, and her cheeks flushed with indignant heat. ‘Did you bring me here just so you could insult me?’ she demanded. ‘Is that what you’d like, Guy?’

  He shook his dark head and sipped his own drink more sparingly, surveying her over the rim of his glass with eyes which gave nothing away. ‘Not at all.’ But he bit back the unexpectedly explicit comment about what he would like.

  She put the glass down, feeling slightly dizzy with the impact of the burning liquor on an empty stomach. ‘What, then?’

  He dipped his hand deep into his trouser pocket, aware that her eyes instinctively followed the movement. Aware, too, that she certainly wasn’t immune to him either. He watched with fascination as her eyes darkened and he could sense that she was resisting the desire to run her tongue over her lips.

  ‘Recognise this?’ he asked casually, as he withdrew the thin gold chain with the pretty little ring and dropped it on the polished surface of the table in front of her.

  Sabrina’s heart pounded with guilt and shame. ‘Don’t insult me even more by asking me questions like that!’ she said bitterly. ‘Of course I recognise it! It’s mine—you know it’s mine! I left it in your bedroom!’

  It lay like an omen before them.

  ‘Then why hide it from me?’

  She opened her mouth to deny it, but could not. He knew. He was an intelligent man. She was cornered, and she reacted in the same way that all trapped creatures reacted. She attacked. ‘You lied to me, too!’ she accused.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘When?’

  ‘You implied that you were employed by the company—you didn’t tell me you owned it!’

  He nodded and his eyes took on a hard, bright glitter. ‘Yes, I heard about your discussion with Prince Raschid’s emissary.’

  ‘She insulted me!’

  ‘So I believe.’ His lips flattened into a forbidding line.

  ‘She was jealous,’ said Sabrina slowly, as she recognised now the emotion which had made the woman’s voice so brittle. ‘Jealous that I was in your bedroom.’

  ‘Yes.’ His gaze didn’t waver.

  ‘Have you slept with her, too?’

  ‘That’s none of your business!’ he snapped, but something about the dark horror written in her eyes made him relent. ‘Of course I haven’t slept with her! She’s a business acquaintance I’ve met on barely half a dozen occ
asions!’

  ‘And you met me once,’ said Sabrina hollowly.

  ‘That’s different!’ But he didn’t pause to ask himself why.

  ‘So why did you lie to me about owning the company?’

  He paused deliberately and met her eyes with a bitter challenge. ‘I wanted to be sure that it was me you were turned on by, and not all the trappings.’

  ‘As though I’m some kind of cheap little gold-digger, you mean?’ Sabrina glared at him. ‘And you lied to me about when you were leaving Venice, too!’ she accused.

  He raised a dark, arrogant eyebrow. ‘Did I?’

  ‘You know you did! You told me you were staying for a few days, yet the airport said you had a flight booked out that afternoon!’

  He gave her a look of barely concealed impatience. ‘Oh, that!’ he said dismissively. ‘So what? Flights can usually be changed.’

  ‘And if they can’t?’ she challenged.

  ‘Then you buy another ticket.’ His eyes glittered. ‘A small price to pay under the circumstances.’

  The cool, arrogant statement told her in no uncertain terms his true opinion of her, and Sabrina stared at him with hurt and anger in her eyes. ‘These particular circumstances being sex with a stranger, you mean?’

  He smiled. He certainly preferred her fighting and spitting to that lost look of despair she’d worn when they’d first walked in here. ‘You were there, too, Sabrina. That’s what we did—had sex.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said bitterly, thinking that he didn’t even respect her enough to dress up what had happened by calling it lovemaking.

  ‘And you still haven’t answered my question,’ he observed coolly. ‘About the ring.’

  Shakily, she grabbed her glass from the table and drank from it.

  He wondered whether she was aware that her tiny breasts moved with such sweetness beneath the fine sweater she wore. A pulse began to beat insistently at his temple and he jabbed an angry finger at the chain. ‘So why hide it from me, Sabrina?’

  She stared down into the trickle of brandy left in her glass and started to feel nervous. ‘Can I have another drink, please?’

  ‘No, you bloody well can’t!’ He didn’t take his gaze from her downcast head. ‘Sabrina? I’ll ask you again. Why hide it from me?’

  ‘I d-don’t know.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you do.’ He sucked in a deep, painful breath. ‘Is it an engagement ring?’

  Well, now he would know what type of woman she really was. ‘Yes. Yes, it is. You know it is!’

  He nodded, unprepared for the jerking pain of jealousy. And a bright, burning anger—as fierce as anything he had ever experienced. It pierced like an arrow through his heart. He tried to stay calm, but it took every shred of self-restraint he possessed. ‘I see.’

  There was something so wounding about the way he said those two empty words that Sabrina looked at him with a question in her eyes.

  ‘Now I understand,’ Guy said heavily. He pushed the chain across the table towards her and gave a hollow, humourless laugh. ‘You must have had a lot of explaining to do.’

  She stared back at him in genuine confusion. ‘Explaining?’

  He leaned back in his chair a little, as if close proximity to her might taint him. Or tempt him. ‘Well, yes. Hell, I know you’re a liberal woman, Sabrina—you certainly proved that—but surely your fiancé would be a little jealous if he found out about your little lapse?’ His mouth curved. ‘Though maybe not. Maybe you’re the kind of couple who play away.’ He lowered his voice into a sexy, insulting whisper. ‘Then get turned on by telling each other all about it. There are couples like that, or so I believe.’

  The blood left Sabrina’s face and she stared at him in horror, scarcely able to make any sense of his words. She would have risen to her feet and walked out there and then, except that her legs felt so unsteady she didn’t think she would be able to stand properly. ‘How d-dare you insult me?’ she whispered.

  ‘You’re honestly asking how I dare?’ His eyebrows disappeared into the still damp strands of his ebony hair. But now it was his turn to look outraged as he leaned forward, his voice little more than a harsh, accusing whisper. ‘Quite easily, actually. When you meet a woman and she does what you did to me that night, it’s kind of disappointing to discover that she’s got some poor sucker of a fiancé waiting on the sidelines.’

  His mouth twisted as his anger drove him on remorselessly. ‘Maybe you were bored with him, huh? Or were on the lookout for someone a little more…loaded.’

  He deliberately gave the taunt two meanings, and his dark gaze flickered insultingly in the direction of his lap, seeing her flinch as her eyes followed his. And then he shifted in his seat, angry and uncomfortable, realising that he was starting to get turned on. What the hell did she do to him? ‘Was that it?’ he snarled. ‘Were you looking for someone with a little more to offer than your home-spun boy?’

  Sabrina felt sick and she shook her head, unable to speak. But he didn’t seem to be expecting an answer because he ploughed on, a hard, clipped edge of rage to his voice.

  ‘So what did you tell him? Did you describe in full and graphic detail the things I did to you? The things you did to me? Just what did you tell him, Sabrina?’

  The unwitting inappropriateness of his question brought her a new kind of strength, and she wanted to reach out and to wound him, just as he had wounded her.

  ‘Nothing!’ she choked out. ‘I didn’t tell him anything! I couldn’t, could I? Because he’s dead, you see, Guy! Dead, dead, dead!’

  And the spots which danced before her eyes dissolved into rainbows, and then, thankfully, into darkness.

  CHAPTER SIX

  GUY knew that Sabrina was going to faint even before the great heavy weight of her eyelids flickered to slump over her eyes. The colour blanched right out of her face and she swayed, slender and blonde as a blade of wheat.

  He caught her just before she slid to the ground, pushing her head down to her knees while with his other hand he reached round to undo the top button of her shirt. He felt her wriggle beneath his fingers.

  She groaned. ‘Guy—’

  ‘Don’t try to say anything.’ His words were controlled and clipped as he rubbed the back of her neck, while inside his mind raced. A dead fiancé. His eyes narrowed. Why the hell hadn’t she told him that right at the beginning?

  Sabrina felt dizzy, dazedly aware that the other customers must be staring at her and knowing that the last thing she wanted was to attract more attention to herself. She needed to get out of here. And fast. But Guy’s fingers were distracting her so. She tried ineffectually to shrug off the fingertips which massaged so soothingly at the nape of her neck.

  He felt her flinch beneath his touch and his mouth hardened. ‘Don’t worry,’ he ground out agitatedly. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

  How could he hurt her any more than she had been hurt already? As if his words had not wounded her and left her smarting. She felt the salty trickle of a tear as it meandered its way down her cheek and she sucked in a choked kind of sob. As if she were listening through a cotton-wool cloud which had dulled all her senses, she heard Guy talking to someone else. And then he was easing her head back and dabbing at her damp temples with some deliciously cool cloth.

  She opened her eyes with difficulty, startled by the flickering gleam of concern which had briefly softened the hard eyes. ‘I’m OK.’

  ‘You are not OK,’ he contradicted her, crouching down so that his face was on a level with hers. ‘Do you want me to take you home?’

  In this state? Why, her mother would start fretting about her—and hadn’t she had enough to worry about over the last few months? ‘Can we wait here for a little bit?’ she asked weakly.

  Guy made a slow, glittering appraisal of all the curious faces that were turned in their direction and frowned. ‘Or somewhere less public? There are rooms upstairs. Why don’t I see if we can use one—at least until you recover.’

  Sabrina stared at
him in undisguised horror. Surely he didn’t imagine for a moment that…that…

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Guy gave a low, hollow laugh. ‘Is that what you think of me, Sabrina?’ he questioned. ‘So governed by my libido that I’d take any opportunity to pounce on the nearest woman, even though she’s only half-conscious?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘No, you didn’t have to,’ he said grimly. ‘The accusation was written all over your face. But don’t worry, princess—that’s not really my thing.’

  Sabrina let her head fall back against the rest. ‘I don’t want to stay here.’

  ‘You don’t have to. Come on, let’s go upstairs,’ he said, and his arm was strong at the small of her back as he helped her to her feet.

  The temptation to just lean back and lose herself in the warm haven of his arms was overwhelming, but Sabrina feebly pushed his guiding hand away from her. Touching him in any way at all was too much like trouble.

  ‘I can do it myself,’ she said stubbornly.

  He looked as if he didn’t believe her, but didn’t argue the point, just walked right behind her in case she stumbled and fell.

  Gripping the bannister with a grim kind of determination, she was glad when they reached the top and he pushed open the door of one of the rooms.

  It was as different from his suite in Venice as it could have been—clean and middle-of-the-road, with a mass of chintz and swagged fabrics—and Sabrina heaved a small sigh of relief. She certainly didn’t need reminders in the way of vast, luxuriously appointed beds or priceless paintings.

  She flopped down onto the flower-sprigged duvet and heaved a sigh of relief.

  Guy stood beside the bed, looking down at her, his face impenetrable as a disturbing thought nagged at his conscience. ‘So why the hell did you faint?’

  Reproach sparked from her eyes. ‘Why do you think I fainted, Guy? Don’t you imagine that the things you accused me of would make most women feel ill?’

  But he shook his head. ‘Harsh words are not normally enough to make a healthy young woman pass out.’ His eyes threw her a cold, challenging glitter. ‘You’re not pregnant by any chance, are you?’