The Unlikely Mistress

by Sharon Kendrick

  Saying something that she couldn’t quite make out, Guy just grabbed her by the hand and steered her into the sitting room.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she spluttered.

  ‘What does it look like? I’m taking you somewhere where we can talk.’ Somewhere that didn’t involve a bed. ‘I’m damned if I’m going to have you fainting on me for a second time!’

  ‘I’m not going to faint. I want to go to bed,’ she said plaintively.

  ‘Well, we need to talk,’ he said grimly. ‘Or, rather, you need to talk, princess.’

  He pushed her down very gently on the sofa and covered her with a cashmere throw, which was as light as a feather and as warm as toast.

  ‘That’s nice,’ she said automatically.

  It was also vital, in his opinion, that she cover up. If he wanted to talk to her—or, rather, have her talk to him—then he needed to concentrate. And it would be damned nigh impossible trying to concentrate on anything—other than an urgent need to possess her—when that silky robe was clinging like honey to the sweet swell of her limbs and moulding the perfect outline of her tiny breasts.

  He sat down next to her and stared into the pale heart of her face. ‘It was thoughtless of me. I should have telephoned—told you I was going to be late.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She shook her head. ‘I had no right to expect—’

  ‘You had every right to expect consideration,’ he refuted heatedly. ‘And at least a modicum of understanding.’ There was a grim kind of pause and his grey eyes glittered with self-recrimination. ‘And I showed you neither.’ He had deliberately stayed out tonight—and he still wasn’t sure why—without thinking through the consequences of his actions. ‘Neither,’ he finished bitterly.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she repeated, and even managed to raise her shoulders in a shrug, as if it really didn’t matter, but he shook his head like a man who was onto something and wouldn’t give up.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me,’ he said slowly, ‘about the night Michael died? Is that what happened? Were you waiting for him and he never came?’

  Something in the burning intensity of his eyes pierced right through the barriers she’d built around herself. She’d pushed the memories of that night to the far recesses of her mind. Deliberately. It had been a defence mechanism to shield her from the bitter pain, and the guilt. She’d refused counsellors and her mother’s faltering requests that she open up and talk to someone.

  But something in Guy’s face completely disarmed her, and her words of defiance and denial died on her lips.

  ‘OK, I’ll tell.’ She nodded her head slowly. ‘I’ll tell you everything.’ There was a pause while she struggled to find the right words. ‘Like I said, Michael wanted to go out that night and I didn’t, and it was more than about the fact we couldn’t afford it. It was a filthy night. The weather was awful…snow and ice.’

  She took a slow, shuddering breath and stared at him as she forced herself to face up to the truth for the first time. ‘Just awful. I said that it wasn’t a good night to be out driving…but he wouldn’t listen…He just wouldn’t listen!’

  Guy nodded as the strands of her story began to be woven together, beginning to make some sense of her guilt.

  ‘I told him to be sure and ring me when he got to the pub, only the phone call didn’t come, and I wasn’t sure if he was sulking because he was angry with me…and…’

  ‘And?’ His voice was soft. Too soft. How could you resist a voice that soft?

  ‘And when I rang the pub…’ Sabrina bit her lip ‘…they said they hadn’t seen him. So I thought he must have changed his mind about going there, never dreaming…never dreaming—’

  ‘Never dreaming that the inconceivable had happened,’ he said carefully, ‘and that he’d never be coming back again?’

  His words were edged with anger, and an emotion it took her a moment or two to recognise. Pain. ‘That’s right,’ she agreed slowly.

  ‘So you think that you should have stopped him from driving that night?’

  ‘Of course I should have stopped him!’ she shot back bitterly, but Guy shook his dark head.

  ‘Don’t you know that we can’t govern other people’s lives?’ he demanded quietly. ‘Or decide their destiny. You could have stopped him from going, but how do you know that he wouldn’t have been hit by a bus on his way to work the next day? Maybe,’ he added, with slow deliberation, ‘maybe it was just his time.’

  Her lips froze. ‘His time?’

  ‘To die.’ His mouth hardened.

  ‘Fate,’ she elaborated painfully. ‘That’s fate.’

  ‘Yeah, fate.’

  She stared straight into the burning silver gaze, dazzled by it. ‘You honestly believe that?’ she whispered, and he gave a hollow kind of laugh.

  ‘Sometimes it’s easier to think of it that way.’ He shrugged. ‘Easier for the living to let go and carry on. And you have to let go, Sabrina, you have to—you must realise that. Don’t you?’

  ‘But I feel so guilty!’

  ‘Because he’s dead and you’re alive?’

  His perception took her breath away. ‘Yes.’

  He gave a brittle smile. ‘But nothing can change that, Sabrina. Nothing can bring him back. You owe it to yourself to let go. And to Michael.’

  ‘Yes.’ She sighed with a kind of surrender made all the easier by that luminous look of understanding. ‘Yes.’

  He watched as the thready breath made her lips tremble, he saw her wide-eyed look of trust, and he knew what she wanted and needed more than anything else at the moment. Pure animal comfort. Even if doing it would half kill him.

  He drew her into the circle of his arms and hugged her tightly against his chest, the wetness of her tears warming his skin through his shirt. Her breasts were soft and pointed and her hair was full of the scent of lilac, and it took every bit of his self-control to dampen down his instinctive desire as he smoothed the bright strands down with a distracted hand.

  ‘It’s going to be OK,’ he muttered, and prayed for his body not to react to her proximity. ‘I promise you.’

  Through her tears it occurred to Sabrina that his kindness and understanding were just two more facets of a complex personality which perplexed and intrigued her more with each day that passed. And that simply wasn’t on the agenda. Her stay here was only temporary, she reminded herself as more tears spilled onto his shirt.

  Guy let her cry until her sobs became dry and shuddering, and then he went and made her some hot chocolate, sitting in front of her like a determined nurse while she drank it.

  He thought how unselfconsciously provocative her movements were. Thought that she shouldn’t look that sexy with eyes bright red from crying and hair which was matted by those tears. But sexy she looked. Extremely sexy.

  ‘So.’ He sat back on his heels. ‘Are you going to let it go now, Sabrina?’

  She couldn’t have said no, even if she’d wanted to, not with that silver gaze compelling her to start living her life again. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘I am.’

  ‘Good.’ He smiled. ‘And are you going to let me take you out for dinner next week?’

  She forced herself to remember that the question wasn’t as warmly intimate as it sounded. ‘Sure,’ she said lightly. ‘Is this the client dinner?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘I have a Middle-Eastern potentate I’ve just bought a picture for. How would you like to have dinner with Prince Khalim?’

  ‘Prince Khalim?’ She gulped. ‘Just how many princes do you know, Guy?’

  He smiled. ‘Khalim is my oldest friend. I’ve known him since schooldays—it was through him I got most of my contacts.’

  ‘But, Guy—’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he soothed. ‘You’ll like him—a little old-fashioned perhaps, but he’s a nice guy.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  FOR the next week, Sabrina was in a complete state of nerves. What on earth did you wear if you
were going out for dinner with a prince?

  She rang her mother and explained her predicament.

  ‘Good heavens,’ said her mother faintly. ‘A prince? You’ll never want to come home to Salisbury at this rate!’

  Sabrina winced at how her mother had unerringly hit on the truth. She couldn’t imagine wanting to either, but that had everything to do with Guy and nothing whatsoever to do with a Middle-Eastern potentate.

  ‘What do I wear, Mum?’ she repeated patiently.

  ‘You’ve got lots of lovely clothes! Just be yourself,’ said her mother. ‘My goodness—wait until the neighbours hear about this!’

  ‘Well, I don’t want you to tell them,’ said Sabrina stubbornly. Because however much she wished otherwise, one day soon she was going to have to go back and live at home, and she would do herself no favours whatsoever if she arrived with Guy Masters’s magic dust still clinging to her skin.

  She even tried to quiz Guy about the correct dress code one evening when he arrived home even later than usual and had been in a snarling temper. She produced a huge tureen of soup, and he stared down at the steaming bowlful and suddenly went very quiet.

  ‘You don’t like home-made soup?’ she asked nervously.

  Guy looked up. The soup looked perfect. Damn it—she looked perfect, standing there in a pair of white jeans and a white T-shirt, with her bright hair caught back in a ponytail.

  ‘Haven’t had a lot of experience of it,’ he said shortly. ‘My mother used to open a can.’

  Sabrina pushed some cheese across the table towards him. ‘Wasn’t she keen on cooking, then?’

  It was an such an artless question that Guy found himself uncharacteristically answering it. ‘Not particularly. And we were always…moving,’ he said slowly. ‘So a lot of her time was taken up with settling into new places.’

  ‘You make it sound quite nomadic, Guy.’

  ‘Do I? I suppose it was when you compare it with living in one place all your life.’

  ‘Like me, you mean?’

  He shrugged. ‘Well, you did, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said carefully, as some warning light in his eyes told her to go back to the safer subject of cooking, rather than the potential minefield of childhood.

  She sawed through a crusty loaf and handed him a huge chunk of it. ‘My mother was so busy going out to work that she never had time to cook properly, except at weekends.’

  He nodded, seeing the sudden, defensive set of her face. Despite his reservations, he found himself asking, ‘How old were you when your father left?’

  ‘Eight.’ She pulled a face. ‘He fell in love with my mum’s “best” friend.’

  He winced. ‘That must have been tough.’

  ‘Yes.’ She stared down at the soup without really seeing it. ‘For a while it was dreadful.’ She looked up and gave him a bright smile. ‘But time heals, doesn’t it? Corny, but true.’

  ‘Yeah, but you always get left with a scar.’ He shrugged, but he shook his head at the silent question in her eyes. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘Just I always vowed that when I grew up I would learn how to cook properly.’

  Unexpectedly, he found the thought of Sabrina as a little girl exquisitely touching. He sipped the soup. ‘Well, you achieved it with honours,’ he murmured.

  She glowed with pleasure. ‘Guy?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘You know this dinner on Saturday night—’

  He put his spoon down. ‘Damn!’

  ‘It’s been cancelled?’ she asked hopefully.

  He shook his head. ‘Nope—but I haven’t organised anything and I’m in Paris all day tomorrow. You’ll have to book the restaurant, Sabrina.’

  ‘Like Where? I don’t really know London at all!’

  He reeled off a list of London’s most famous eating places and Sabrina shook her head doubtfully.

  ‘We’ll never get a table at any of those places this late!’

  He gave a small smile. ‘Just try mentioning my name.’

  From anyone else it would have sounded outrageously arrogant—from Guy it just sounded supremely confident.

  ‘And what on earth can I wear?’ she wailed.

  ‘Wear what you want.’ He shrugged. ‘You always look pretty good to me.’

  She had received better compliments in her life, but none had she embraced as warmly as Guy’s careless words and she had to force herself to suppress the guilt. She was letting go, and starting to live again—and there was nothing unacceptable about enjoying a compliment.

  It still didn’t solve the problem of what to wear, of course.

  Guy left at the crack of dawn the following morning. Sabrina heard him moving around the flat and for once came, yawning, out into the hall to say goodbye to him.

  His hand tightened around the handle of his briefcase as he saw her hair in all its tousled disarray tumbling down over her shoulders. Was she trying to play the siren? he wondered distractedly. But that was just the thing—he honestly didn’t think she was.

  ‘Have you remembered your passport?’

  ‘Sabrina!’ he exploded. ‘I’ve been flying to Paris at least once a month for the last I don’t know how long! How the hell do you think I managed before you came into my life?’ It had been a calm, ordered time which was slowly but surely fading from his memory, the end of which had seemed to coincide with him urging her to let her guilt and her sorrow go. He had only himself to blame, and yet he hadn’t realised how familiar it could feel, living with a woman—even if you weren’t having sex with her. He winced. Why remind himself of that?

  ‘Send me a postcard.’ Sabrina smiled.

  ‘I won’t have time,’ he said tightly, because he was having to fight the terrible urge to kiss her goodbye—as if she were his wife or something. His smile tasted like acid on his mouth. ‘And don’t forget to book the damned restaurant!’

  ‘I won’t forget.’ She stood at the front door until he’d disappeared out of sight, praying that he would turn round and give her that rare and brilliant smile. But he didn’t.

  Sabrina felt more than a little intimidated at the thought of booking a meal at a place she had only ever read about in magazines. Wouldn’t even her best dress look out of place in a venue as upmarket as that? And, when she thought about it, wouldn’t Prince Khalim be bored rigid with going to fancy restaurants, and Guy, too, for that matter? Wouldn’t they rather try something a little different?

  She spent her lunch-hour scouring the restaurant section of the capital’s biggest glossy magazine, and eventually found what she’d half thought she’d been looking for. She picked up the phone and booked it.

  But Guy was delayed in Paris. He phoned that night.

  ‘This deal is taking longer than I thought,’ he said, and she could hear the sounds of people in the background. ‘I may even have to stay over for a few days.’

  ‘A few days?’

  ‘You’ll be OK on your own, won’t you?’

  Sabrina pulled a face. She couldn’t be missing him already, could she? ‘Yes, of course I will.’

  ‘Just lock up carefully.’ There was a pause. ‘Ring Tom Roberts if you need anything. Actually, I’ll ring him—get him to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘I don’t need anyone to keep an eye on me! You make me sound helpless!’ she objected, and could hear the smile in his response.

  ‘Not helpless, Sabrina. Maybe just a little vulnerable at the moment.’ And make damned sure you remember that, he thought grimly as he hung up before tapping out Tom’s number.

  Guy arrived back from Paris on Saturday morning, feeling all frazzled and frayed around the edges as he walked into the kitchen to a delicious smell of coffee. Sabrina was already dressed, busy buttering a slice of toast. He paused for a moment which felt dangerous. Because his kitchen had never felt more of a home than it did at that moment.

  He’d missed her, he realised with a sudden sense of shock.

  ‘Hi,’ he said softly.


  Sabrina turned round slowly, trying to compose her face, making sure that every trace of leaping excitement had been eradicated from her features. She smiled instead. ‘Welcome home! How was your trip? Would you like some coffee?’

  He wanted something a lot more fundamental than coffee, but he nodded his head, sat down at the table and took the mug of coffee she slid towards him.

  ‘You’re up early,’ he commented.

  ‘I’m working today, remember?’

  He frowned. Had it really been three weeks since the last time she’d been in the shop on Saturday morning? ‘Yeah.’ He sighed. He’d been almost tempted to take the day off himself, and to ask her whether she wanted to go to a gallery with him, but if she was working…‘I guess I might as well go in myself.’ He yawned.

  Sabrina fixed him with a stern look. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Guy! You’ve only just got back from Paris. Give yourself a break!’

  He glared at her. ‘I’ve managed to get along just fine for the last thirty-two years without anyone telling me how to live my life, if it’s all the same to you, Sabrina.’ He paused. ‘Did you book the restaurant?’

  ‘I did,’ she said steadily, without missing a beat.

  ‘Which one?’

  Her bright smiled didn’t falter. ‘It’s a surprise!’

  ‘A surprise?’

  She wondered what had caused that sudden hardening of his voice. ‘You don’t like surprises?’

  ‘No,’ he clipped out, and then saw her crestfallen face and relented. It was unpredictability he shied away from. She wasn’t to know that surprises made him feel as though the control which was so fundamental to him could be in danger of slipping away. Loosen up, he told himself—just as he’d told her to. He smiled. ‘It had better be a good one.’

  ‘Oh, I think it will be.’

  ‘We’re picking Khalim up from his hotel at eight.’

  She nodded, trying to be helpful. ‘So shall I order us a car, too?’

  ‘Yes,’ he murmured, wondering why he got the distinct impression that the balance of power had somehow shifted in this relationship without him really noticing. He’d wanted her to try and let the past go, but he hadn’t expected such an enchanting switch into sexy and sassy and bossy mode. It was much too irresistible a transformation. ‘Thanks,’ he added heavily.