The Unlikely Mistress

by Sharon Kendrick

  ‘Do you like smoked salmon?’ he asked.

  ‘Er, love it.’

  He looked up at her, and frowned. ‘Well, do you or don’t you?’

  ‘I said yes, didn’t I?’

  ‘You sounded unsure.’ He gave a little click of irritation. ‘Look, Sabrina, let’s just get a couple of things straight, shall we? I don’t want you agreeing with me for the sake of it—just because it’s my flat.’

  ‘OK,’ she agreed. ‘And while we’re on the subject of house rules—’

  ‘Rules?’ he interrupted, with a sardonic elevation of his dark brows. ‘Goodness me, how very schoolmistressy of you! Are we talking firm and unbending rules, I wonder, or very, very flexible ones?’

  Sabrina felt a mixture of fury and frustration as she stared into eyes which mocked her. He could stop that right now! ‘Oh, do, please, spare me the innuendo!’ she snapped.

  Guy gave a reluctant smile. Had he actually been worried that all the fire had gone out of her? Not all of it, no. ‘OK,’ he said slowly.

  ‘I meant rules about things like paying you rent—’

  ‘The rent doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does matter,’ said Sabrina stubbornly. ‘I can’t stay here for nothing—and before you tell me that you can afford it—’

  ‘You know very well I can—’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘Then just what is the point?’ said Guy steadily, hooking his thumbs into the waistband of his jeans.

  The movement distracted her, and suddenly she found his proximity disburbing. More than disturbing. Had she really thought that she would just be able to ignore that blatant sex appeal? ‘I’d just like to make a contribution while I’m here.’

  Their eyes met.

  ‘Oh?’ questioned Guy softly.

  She saw the swift darkening of his eyes. ‘I’ll contribute food,’ she told him shakily.

  ‘Food?’ Guy queried dazedly.

  ‘Towards the running of the household,’ she elaborated.

  ‘Yeah,’ he agreed distractedly. ‘Whatever you say, Sabrina.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  SABRINA was woken by a banging on the door, and her eyes flickered open for a few dazed moments before reality clicked in from unconsciousness. Her gaze drifted upwards. A high ceiling. A beautiful flat. Guy’s flat.

  ‘Sabrina!’

  Guy’s voice!

  ‘What is it?’ she answered groggily.

  ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘I am now.’ She yawned and picked up her wristwatch, which was lying on the locker. Six-thirty? What time did he call this? She had never been the best early morning person in the world. Still in the warm haze of sleep, she felt too lazy to be inhibited.

  ‘Why have you woken me up?’ She yawned again.

  ‘I wondered why you weren’t up. Did you set your alarm? We don’t want you to be late on your first day, now, do we, Sabrina?’

  That teasing little lilt set her senses fizzing. ‘Of course I set my alarm! I don’t have to be at work until nine!’

  ‘That late?’ he drawled. ‘I’ll have been at my desk for at least two hours by then.’

  ‘I’ll have a medal minted for you, Guy!’

  He sounded amused. ‘I’m just off now—you’d better come out while I show you how the security system works.’

  Sabrina was out of bed and pulling a face at her tousled reflection in an instant. She raked a brush through the unruly locks, pulled on her dressing gown and opened the door.

  He was wearing the most beautiful dark pinstriped suit with a matching waistcoat and pure silk tie. The snowy shirt emphasised the blackness of his hair, the faint tan of his skin and the almost indecent length of his legs.

  Sabrina couldn’t stop her heart from racing at just the sight of him—but it was with pure delight rather than desire, as if seeing Guy in the morning was the most perfect way to start a day. Even though her fingers flew automatically to her chest to clutch together the gaping blue satin of the robe.

  Guy didn’t miss the movement, nor the tantalising glimpse of pale breast it obscured. He swallowed. ‘Let me show you how to set the alarm.’

  ‘Right.’ Sabrina tried to listen carefully to what he was saying, but it wasn’t easy. It seemed bizarre, crazy, stupid—tantalising—for her to be standing half-naked beside him, concentrating fiercely on which numbers his fingers were punching out on the alarm system and not on the delicious lemon and musk scent which drifted from his skin.

  ‘Now, this key,’ he told her, deliberately leaning a little bit away from her, because it was more than distracting being this close to the butting little swell of her breasts as they jutted against the slippery satin of her robe, ‘is for this lock here. The longer, thicker key…’ Oh, God, he thought despairingly, what was she doing to him? ‘That locks here.’ He swallowed. ‘Got that?’

  ‘Could you show me again?’ She had hardly heard a thing he was saying, and she wished he would just go. But the last thing she needed was for all his expensive paintings and books and furniture to suddenly ‘walk’—just because she hadn’t had the sense to lock up properly.

  ‘Do you want me to write it down for you, step by step?’ he questioned sarcastically.

  ‘That won’t be necessary!’

  This time she listened as if her life depended on it.

  ‘Understand now?’

  ‘Perfectly, thank you very much.’

  He shot a glance at his watch and gave a small click of irritation. ‘You’ve made me late now. I haven’t been late in years.’

  ‘Well, you could have shown me all this last night, couldn’t you?’

  Yeah, he supposed he could have done—it was just that they had opened a bottle of wine during dinner and had then sat and finished it in the sitting room. Bad idea. And Sabrina had kicked her shoes off in front of the fire, perfectly innocuously, but Guy had been riveted by the sight of those spectacularly slender ankles and had found it difficult to tear his eyes away from them. He had never quite understood why the Victorians had considered the ankle such an erogenous zone, but last night the reason had suddenly hit him in a moment of pulse-hammering insight.

  He usually did paperwork on Sunday evenings, but last night it had lain neglected. And now he was late.

  He glowered. ‘I’ll be home around seven.’

  She looked at him expectantly. ‘Will you be eating supper? Or going out?’

  He had said that he would meet up for a drink with Philip Caprice—the man who was now working for Prince Raschid—but he couldn’t really leave her alone on her first full day in London, could he?

  He sighed. ‘No, I won’t be going out.’

  ‘Then—’ she suddenly felt ridiculously and utterly shy ‘—maybe I could cook you supper tonight. I’ll buy the food and everything—as I said, that can be my contribution towards my upkeep.’

  He hid a smile, unwillingly admiring her persistence, as well as her independence. ‘OK,’ he agreed gravely. He suspected that she would conjure up some bland but rather noble concoction of pulses or brown rice or something. He repressed a shudder. ‘I shall look forward to it.’

  After her shower, Sabrina went back to her room to get dressed. At least now it looked slightly better than when she had first arrived. Guy had cleared away the clutter on the desk, and had pushed the filing cabinets back against the wall. The exercise bike had been moved from its inconvenient position located slap-bang in the middle of the room. It could do with some decent curtains, she decided suddenly, instead of those rather stark blinds.

  She shook her head at herself in the mirror. She was here on a purely temporary basis—she certainly shouldn’t start thinking major redecoration schemes!

  She dressed in black trousers and a warm black sweater and took the tube to where the London branch of Wells was situated, close to St Paul’s Cathedral.

  It was an exquisite jewel of a Georgian building, set in the shadow of the mighty church. Sabrina had been there twice wh
ile negotiating her transfer and had met the man she would be working for.

  Tim Reardon was the archetypal bookshop owner—tall, lean and lanky, with a fall of shiny straight hair which flopped into his eyes most of the time. He was vague, affable, quietly spoken and charmingly polite. He was single, attractive—and the very antithesis of Guy Masters.

  And Sabrina could not have gone out with him if he had been the very last man on the planet.

  ‘Come on in, Sabrina.’ Tim held his hand out and gave her a friendly smile. ‘I’ll make us both coffee and then I’ll show you the set-up.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She smiled and began to unbutton her coat.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ he asked, as he hung her coat up for her.

  It still made her feel slightly awkward to acknowledge it. ‘In Knightsbridge, actually.’

  ‘Knightsbridge?’ Tom gave her a curious look which clearly wondered how she could afford to live in such an expensive neighbourhood on her modest earnings.

  ‘I’m staying with a…friend,’ she elaborated awkwardly.

  ‘Lucky you,’ he said lightly, but to her relief, he didn’t pursue it.

  It was easy to slot in. The shop virtually mirrored its Salisbury counterpart, and after she and Tim had drunk their coffee they set to work, opening the post and filing away all the ordered books which had just come in.

  The shop was quiet first thing in the morning, and it wasn’t until just after eleven that the first Cathedral tourists began to drift in, looking for their copies of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen.

  During her lunch-hour Sabrina managed to locate a supermarket and rushed round buying ingredients. Never had choosing the right thing proved as taxing. She wanted, she realised, to impress Guy.

  When he arrived back home that evening, he walked in on an unfamiliar domestic scene, with smells of cooking wafting towards him and loud music blaring from the kitchen.

  He moved through the flat in the direction of the noise, pausing first at the dining-room door, where the table had been very carefully laid for dinner for two.

  And when he walked into the kitchen, Sabrina didn’t notice that he was there, not at first. She was picking up something from the floor, her black trousers stretched tightly over the high curve of her bottom, and Guy felt his throat thicken.

  ‘Hello, Sabrina.’

  Half a lemon slid uselessly from her fingers back to the floor as she heard the soft, rich timbre of his voice. She turned round slowly, trying to compose herself, to see him still wearing the beautiful dark suit, the slight shadowing around his chin the only outward sign that twelve hours had elapsed since she had last seen him. Oh, sweet Lord, she thought despairingly. He is gorgeous.

  ‘Hi!’ she said brightly. ‘Good day at—’

  ‘The office?’ he put in curtly. ‘Yes, fine, thanks.’

  ‘Shall I fix you a drink? Or would you prefer to get changed first?’

  His mouth tightened. ‘Any minute now and you’re going to offer to bring me my pipe and slippers.’

  Sabrina stiffened as she heard his sarcastic tone. ‘I was only trying to be friendly—’

  ‘As opposed to coming over as a parody of a wife, you mean?’

  ‘That was certainly not my intention,’ she told him primly.

  The glittering grey gaze moved around the room to see that his rather cold and clinical kitchen had suddenly come to life. ‘This looks quite some feast,’ he observed softly.

  ‘Not really.’ But she blushed with pleasure. ‘And if you’re planning to get out of your best suit, could you, please, do it now, Guy? Because dinner will be ready in precisely five minutes.’

  Neglected work. Late. And now she was telling him to get changed!

  Guy opened his mouth to object and then shut it again. What was the point? And she was right—he didn’t want to eat in his ‘best’ suit, which was actually one of twenty-eight he had hanging neatly in his wardrobe. He sighed. ‘Five minutes,’ he echoed.

  He took slightly longer than five minutes, simply because, to his intense exasperation, he realised that she had managed to turn him on. Had that been her bossiness or her presumption? he wondered achingly as he threw cold water onto his face like a man who had been burning up in the sun all day. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that he hadn’t been with a woman since that amazing night with Sabrina in Venice. Hadn’t wanted to. Still didn’t want anyone. Except her.

  Now, that, he thought, was worrying.

  The meal began badly, with Guy frowning at the heap of prawns with mayonnaise which Sabrina had heaped on a plate.

  ‘You don’t like prawns?’ she asked him nervously.

  ‘Yeah, I love them, but you really shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.’

  ‘Oh, it was no trouble,’ she lied, thinking about the beef Wellington which was currently puffing up nicely in the oven. ‘Do you want to open the wine? I bought a bottle.’

  He shook his head, remembering last night, the way it had loosened him up so that he had spent a heated night tossing and turning and wondering what she would do if he walked just along the corridor and silently slipped into bed beside her. ‘Not for me thanks,’ he answered repressively. ‘You can have some, of course.’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks.’ As if she would sit there drinking her way through a bottle of wine while he looked down that haughty and patrician nose of his.

  Guy saw the beef Wellington being carried in on an ornate silver platter he’d forgotten he had and which she must have fished out from somewhere.

  ‘Sabrina,’ he groaned.

  Her fingers tightened on the knife. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t like beef Wellington,’ she said, the slight note of desperation making her voice sound edgy.

  ‘Who in their right mind wouldn’t?’ He sighed. ‘It’s just that you must have spent a fortune on this meal—’

  ‘It was supposed to be a way of saying thank you—’

  ‘And I’ve told you before not to thank me!’ he said savagely, feeling the sweet, inconvenient rush of desire as her lips trembled in rebuke at him. ‘Look, Sabrina, I don’t expect you earn very much, working in a bookshop—’

  ‘Certainly nowhere in your league, Guy,’ she retorted.

  ‘And I don’t want you spending it all on fancy food!’

  ‘I’m not here to accept charity—especially not yours!’

  ‘Sabrina—’

  ‘No, Guy,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I want to pay my way as much as possible.’

  He took the slice she offered him and he stared down at it with grudging reluctance. Pink and perfect. So she could cook, too. He scowled. ‘Do that,’ he clipped out. ‘But this is the last time you buy me steak! Understood?’

  That was enough to guarantee the complete loss of her appetite, and it was only pride which made Sabrina eat every single thing on her plate. But by the time they were drinking their coffee his forbidding expression seemed to have thawed a little.

  ‘That was delicious,’ he said.

  ‘The pleasure was all mine.’

  He heard the sarcasm in her voice, saw the little pout of accusation which hovered on her lips. Maybe he had been a little hard on her. ‘I’m not used to sharing,’ he shrugged.

  ‘It shows.’ She risked a question, even if the dark face didn’t look particularly forthcoming. ‘Have you got any brothers and sisters?’

  ‘One brother; he’s younger.’

  ‘And where is he now?’

  He sighed as he saw her patient look of interest. These heart-to-heart chats had never really been part of his scene. ‘He lives in Paris—he works for a newspaper.’

  ‘That sounds interesting.’

  He blanked the conversation with a bland smile. ‘Does it?’

  But Sabrina wasn’t giving up that easily. What were they supposed to talk about, night after night—the weather?

  ‘So, no live-in girlfriends?’ she asked.

  The eyes glittered. ‘Nope.’

  ‘Oh.
’ She digested this.

  ‘You sound surprised,’ he observed.

  ‘I am, a little.’

  ‘You see me as so devastatingly eligible, do you, Sabrina?’

  Her smile stayed as enigmatic as his. ‘That’s a fairly egotistical conclusion to jump to, Guy—that wasn’t what I said at all. I just thought that a man in your position would yearn for all the comforts of having a resident girlfriend.’

  ‘You mean regular meals.’ His eyes fell to his empty plate. ‘And regular sex?’

  Sabrina went scarlet. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘The comfort and ease of the shared bed?’ he mused. ‘It’s tempting, I give you that. But sex is the easy bit—it’s communication that causes all the problems. Or rather the lack of it.’ His voice grew hard, almost bitter.

  Sabrina looked at him and wondered what he wasn’t telling her. ‘You mean you’ve never found anyone you could communicate with?’

  ‘Something like that.’ No one he’d ever really wanted to communicate with. ‘Or at least, not unless we both happened to be horizontal at the time.’ He looked at her thoughtfully as she blushed. ‘But I have a very low boredom threshold, princess,’ he added softly.

  He was telling her not to come too close—it was as plain as the day itself. And it was the most arrogant warning she had ever heard. ‘More coffee?’ she asked him coolly.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘SO HOW has your first week been?’

  Guy looked across the sitting room to where Sabrina was curled up like a kitten with a book on her lap—she was always reading, though he noticed that not many pages had been turned in the past hour. Snap, he thought with a grim kind of satisfaction. He hadn’t made many inroads into his own reading.

  Sabrina met the piercing grey gaze and repressed a guilty kind of longing. How could she possibly concentrate on her book when she had such a distraction sitting just across the room from her?

  ‘I’ve enjoyed it,’ she told him truthfully. Well, most of it, anyway. It wasn’t easy being around him, being plagued by memories of a time it was clear that both of them wished forgotten—but at least she had done her utmost not to show it. She forced a smile. ‘How do you rate me as a flatmate?’