It was the sort of sleep where you had dreams.
She was sitting in a boat. It was a tall, silent boat, coming up fast on a fortress in the dark. She was terrified and cold and alone. She thought, I can’t do this.
Then suddenly she wasn’t in the boat any more. She was inside the fortress and running, running, running… And someone moved out of the shadows. She stopped dead, trying not to breathe. But it was hopeless. Her breathing sounded like an avalanche. A shadow detached itself from the darkness, moved towards her. She thought, My enemy? And then the shadow fell over her, engulfing her and— and—and—
And she woke up.
Jay took his hand off her shoulder and sat back. ‘Seat belt,’ he said briefly. But he gave her an odd look.
It was only a dream, Zoe told herself. Only a dream.
But she was glad that he did not try to touch her on the way from the airport to the hotel.
And when they got to the hotel she forgot fears and dreams alike in sheer amazement.
‘It’s a palace,’ she said, awed.
Jay was signing them in. A double room. Of course. Zoe stood and stared at the cherubic trumpeters on the marvellously painted ceiling and tried to pretend that she did this all the time.
The bellboy loaded their cases onto a six-foot brass birdcage and summoned them to follow him. The elevator was discreetly hidden behind panelled doors decorated with pastel nymphs and knowing satyrs. Zoe avoided the satyrs’ eyes. Jay seemed unaware.
‘It probably was a palace originally,’ he said indifferently. ‘A merchant’s palace anyway. In Venice rank strictly followed profit on the high seas. They weren’t big on idle aristocrats.’
Zoe was impressed. ‘I never did history,’ she confessed. ‘I was always more of a scientist. My degree is in chemistry.’
He gave a choke of laughter.
‘What?’ she said, suspecting mockery.
‘And this is the woman who rebuked me for not being a people person!’
She chuckled wickedly. ‘Ah, but I learn about people from life, not books.’
He shook his head. ‘Well, this weekend you’re going to learn about Venice if it kills me.’
And then they got to their floor and she found he had booked not just a double room but a whole suite. She was embarrassed by this extravagance, and said so disjointedly as soon as the bellboy had left, well tipped.
Jay shrugged. ‘I promised you no pressure.’
It silenced her utterly.
He was disposing his things with the automatic efficiency of a man who had worked in a lot of hotel rooms. He put his laptop on a small baroque desk, plugged it in, adjusted the lighting to suit. Then he hung up his suit and a spare pair of trousers and took his sponge bag into the bathroom.
It all took about three minutes. He had finished before Zoe managed to rouse herself from her stunned stillness. She had sat down on an antique wooden chair and was staring fixedly at a lavish bowl of fruit in the middle of a rather less antique coffee table.
Jay came out of the bedroom and looked at her shrewdly.
‘Get your walking shoes on,’ he said briskly. ‘We’ll do a circuit, so you know where to find things. Shake away the aeroplane blues.’
Zoe licked her lips. ‘Yes. I mean, what a good idea. Thank you.’
She gave herself several mental shakes and did as he said.
It was obvious that he knew Venice well. He took her to the Grand Canal first. But when he saw that she found the press of people almost overwhelming in the hot sunshine, he whisked her over a couple of little bridges, through a tiny square and into a herring-bone-paved side street.
To their left, the water lapped gently against stones that were green with age and watery moss. To their right, the decorated fac¸ade of a three-storeyed merchant’s house cast a warm ochre shade. A cat dozed beside a marble fountain. A shutter banged back. A small boy ran out of a house and was chased back inside. And all the while the water lifted and murmured like an animal padding beside them.
‘It’s amazing,’ said Zoe, awed.
Jay gave a long sigh of pleasure. He looked round. ‘Yes. There’s nowhere in the world like Venice.’
On the other side of the little canal a striped awning rolled down to shield the street from the evening sun. As if by magic, it seemed, a cake shop was appearing as the building seemed to wake out of its lazy afternoon doze. A woman came out and pushed back wooden shutters decorated with two china masks and a single elegant high-heeled shoe, to reveal a window of mouthwatering pastries. It was beautiful and strange and somehow menacing.
‘How can they make a cake shop look like a carnival assignation?’ said Zoe, pointing it out.
‘Style. And deception. The twin principles that Venice lives by,’ said Jay. He sounded pleased. ‘Always has. Let me show you.’
He took her through dark little streets, across tiny canals that looked like people’s private driveways and down main thoroughfares. The water was cool and mysterious beside their feet, like a lazy, watchful snake, Zoe thought. While the buildings were warm as toast to the touch. The colours were like every painting of Venice she had ever seen: buildings in cherry and terracotta and straw and the exact shade of crisp pastry. The landscape was studded with grey stone bridges and fountains and statues, like diamonds on a rich fabric. And through it all the sinewy, silent water.
At last they came back to the Grand Canal again. By that time Zoe’s head was spinning.
‘I’m lost. I thought the Grand Canal was back there.’ She waved a hand behind them.
Jay looked even more pleased. ‘It is. We’re on the great loop of a meander. Now we cross the Accademia Bridge here, and we’ll go and see the Big Attraction.’
The Piazza San Marco was full of people again. But Zoe did not care. She sank onto a rattan chair in one of the outdoor cafés and sighed with exquisite satisfaction.
‘I never knew—’ she said in wonder.
‘You can see just as much in books, of course. Or television. But you don’t sense it,’ agreed Jay. He summoned a waiter with his usual ease and ordered English tea. ‘Later we’ll have Bellinis. I always like to leave cocktails until after dark when I’m here.’
Zoe did not quibble with that. ‘You seem to know Venice very well.’
He smiled. It was one of his real smiles, not the up-and-under sexy stuff that she saw him use on clients or difficult women. It felt as if he had let his guard down and was letting her see him. More than see him. Warm her hands at the flame of his intelligence.
‘Venice was the first city that reconciled me to Europe.’
‘What?’ She was genuinely startled.
He stretched his long legs out in front of him, screwing up his eyes. She thought he watched the tourists as if they were a mildly interesting form of wildlife.
‘I’m only half-European, you know. The later flowering half. I was born in India. Kerala. That’s where my mother comes from. We lived there with my grandfather until I was seven.’
Zoe was surprised. She had heard about his grandfather. ‘The Brigadier?’
The passionate mouth curved. He was laughing at himself. She thought he was no longer strictly policing himself, curbing his instincts, banking down his passions. There was an alluring suggestion that he had loosed control. Oh, for the moment he was just lazily content. But potentially—Well, she could not guess. She had never seen him look like this. So relaxed. So alert. So accessible.
It made her want to touch him. More than touch. Curve against his body and stroke his skin and turn his mouth towards her and—
Careful, Zoe!
He said lazily, ‘Not the Brigadier. My mother’s father. He was a wholly different kettle of fish.’
She thought, He liked that grandfather a lot. Maybe even loved him. She had never thought of sexy, sophisticated Jay Christopher as loving anyone before. It was intriguing.
‘What was he like?’
His face softened. ‘The ideal grandfather. He knew brill
iant games. He told stories. He taught me to swim—and how to recognise fish and birds and plants. He was a scholar and a philosopher. But most of all he was kind.’
Yes, he definitely loved him.
‘Why did he bring you up?’
‘Oh, the usual. My father was a hippy drop-out on the Maharishi trail when he met my mother. He persuaded her to leave college and go on the road with him. She got pregnant. He didn’t tell his family—he said they were British snobs and he never wanted to see them again. My Indian grandfather took them both in and they married. So I was born in this wonderful house on the beach. I used to fall asleep every night to the sound of the surf. Sometimes when I close my eyes I can still hear it.’
There was a world of loss in the deep voice. Zoe leaned forward.
‘When did you leave?’
‘When I was seven. I told you.’
Their tea came. She drank, watching him watch the crowd.
‘What happened? Did your father decide to go back to England after all?’
‘No. My father was long gone by then. Later we heard he’d died of pneumonia somewhere. We were never quite sure when, exactly. But as soon as my English grandfather found out he came looking for me. They sent him my father’s papers. That was how he found out that he had a grandson.’ His voice changed, flattened. ‘So he came and took us back to England.’
Zoe said slowly, ‘And you hated it.’
Jay shrugged impatiently. ‘It was okay once we got to the country. At least that was green and there were trees. London was bad. All that concrete. I was used to colours and spices and heat. Even the rains are warm in Kerala. At least on the coast, where we lived. In London everything was the colour of old chewing gum. And it smelled like wet Mackintosh.’
‘Horrible!’
‘To a seven-year-old, it was pretty much hell, yes.’ He drank his tea, his eyes shadowed.
‘But you went back?’
‘My English grandfather wouldn’t allow it. So, no, not until I was eighteen. And then later, of course, when I started to earn money and could afford it. But it wasn’t the same.’
Zoe’s heart turned over, he sounded so bleak. ‘Why?’
‘Me. The place was the same. Full of books and open to the sea breezes. But I’d changed.’
‘Well, of course. You’d grown up.’
‘It was more than that. I’d started winning races, you see. I was eighteen and I liked the buzz. And the attention.’
‘Understandable.’
‘Ah, but my lost grandfather told me to be careful of that. ‘‘You can like winning so much you lose sight of what it is you’re doing to win,’’ he said. But I didn’t take any notice.’
She said bracingly, ‘At eighteen boys don’t take any notice of anyone. It’s in the job description.’
His eyes lit with sudden laughter. He came out of his reverie, turning to her. ‘And how do you know that?’
‘My brother Harry. He tuned me out some time around fifteen.’
‘Tuned you out? You brought him up?’
‘It’s been a kind of communal effort,’ said Zoe ruefully. ‘Mother’s spaced out. Father’s off pretending he’s hunk of the month. We sort of brought each other up. Only I was the eldest so I did the shopping.’
Jay’s eyes were warm on her. ‘Then I think it’s time someone spoiled you to death.’
She looked around the square and grinned from ear to ear. ‘Somebody is.’
He took her hand. She thought he was going to squeeze it. Another of those brotherly caresses which she ought to be getting used to.
But he didn’t. Instead he raised it to his lips. It was not a real kiss, just a brush of his lips, his breath on her knuckles. It was not sexy. It was not playful. In fact it felt oddly formal, like a declaration of some sort. It felt was as if he was honouring her in some way, like a courtier paying respect to a queen he had suddenly decided was worth it.
And it was not brotherly.
Yes! thought Zoe.
CHAPTER NINE
WHEN they had finished tea, Jay gave her a rapid and informed tour, dodging tourists.
‘Venetian art was looted from everywhere in the known world,’ he said, pointing at the Basilica in a friendly way. ‘Carvings, columns and capitals courtesy of Genoa and Constantinople. Constantinople, of course, had already pinched a lot from China.’
And, when they got to the Doge’s Palace, ‘The four figures in porphyry were probably acquired after the sack of Acre. The ownership of property is provisional and strictly temporary.’
‘I suppose it is,’ said Zoe, entertained.
‘Bridge of Sighs,’ he said waving his hand at the dark little prison tunnel over the small canal. ‘Once you crossed that, you stopped caring about property, I guess.’
She shivered. ‘It’s not all joy, is it, Venice?’
‘What is? It has energy.’ He paused. ‘And that gives me an idea. I think I know how to close my speech, now. Zoe, you’re a genius.’
And he rushed her back to the hotel at top speed.
In the suite he flung himself at the laptop computer immediately. Zoe wandered around a while, self-conscious again. But he was so absorbed in what he was doing that it was impossible to remain embarrassed.
She decided to bath and wash the dust out her hair.
‘Fine,’ said Jay absently, his fingers flying, his eyes on the screen.
So much for the evil seducer, pouncing on her the moment she got her clothes off, thought Zoe with irony. Not very flattering. But somehow—right.
She sang in the bath.
When she padded out, wrapped in the hotel’s fluffy white robe with her hair in a towel, Jay was standing in the long open windows looking out at the street below. She went to stand beside him.
‘Look at that,’ he said softly.
The building opposite was arched and columned fantastically. The roofline had a carved frieze that looked as if it had been done with curling tongs. It was built of biscuit-coloured stone, with heavily carved wooden doors of treacle- brown. Zoe knew the colours because she had seen them earlier. But the sunset turned them to pure gold.
‘Oh,’ she said on long breath of wonder.
He put his arm round her and they stood looking—at the golden evening, the busy pavement, the gondoliers in their long dark gondolas. And the water, darker than anything else, unimaginably dark below the surface of brazen ripples that were conferred by the dying sun.
‘See,’ he said. ‘Energy. Mystery. Everything. God, I love this place.’
‘I can see.’
He jumped then, and looked down at her.
‘Feeling okay?’ he asked, his eyes searching.
Zoe knew he was not talking about her health, or the effects of sightseeing, or even the seductively lazy bath. He was checking to see that she did not want to back out yet. She felt totally cared for.
‘Feeling wonderful,’ she told him honestly.
Jay gave her the widest grin she had ever seen.
‘Great,’ he said with enthusiasm. ‘Then here we go for Venice by night.’
She wore soft silky trousers and a gold strappy top that looked a lot more expensive than it was. She gave up on her hair, which just turned into a waterfall of fox-brown curls as a result.
‘No jewellery?’ said Jay, emerging from the bedroom in one of his spectacular silk shirts.
‘Forgot it—sorry. I don’t have much, and wear less. Does it matter?’
‘On the contrary,’ he said with a maddeningly mysterious smile.
She decided not to challenge him. Tonight the shirt was peacock-green. It made him look like an emperor. You challenged emperors at your peril.
She told him so, and he laughed.
‘Tonight we’re on the same side,’ he said. ‘No challenge necessary.’ They strolled through the streets hand in hand. Like friends. Like lovers.
The gold of the miraculous sunset slowly died away, as if someone had pulled a cloth of gold out towards the sea.
That left the lights that were set by people. Windows and streetlamps and little lanterns on the prows of the gondolas.
‘They look slightly dangerous,’ said Zoe, as a gondola swept up to some steps and some laughing passengers climbed out.
He was surprised. ‘Do you think so? They’re perfectly safe. The gondoliers are incredibly expert. It runs in the family, you know.’
‘Not dangerous like that. I suppose I mean sinister. As if they’re full of clever men plotting.’
He hugged her, laughing.
‘I shall have to bring you here during carnival. The masks can be very beautiful, but they are unsettling.’
Zoe loved him hugging her. She rubbed her cheek against the peacock silk shoulder. She felt proud and mischievous at the same time.
His arm tightened. ‘Venice has made sinister an art form. You know they used to have a Signori di Notte? It was specially set up to keep the peace at night.’ His voice dropped thrillingly. ‘The time of assassins, thieves and spies.’
Zoe wrinkled her nose at the assassins. ‘And lovers,’ she pointed out.
His arm was suddenly a steel bar.
‘And lovers,’ he agreed in a still voice.
That was when the trembling started. A slow, sweet, deep trembling that she had never felt before.
And suddenly she thought—Could he be right? Could it be that she had never wanted to make love to anyone because she had never been in love? It was not the fashionable answer. Not even the rational one, in some way. And yet she felt in her bones that no one before had been possible. And Jay was more than possible. He was the only one.
Nonsense, she told herself. It was the night and Venice and all the hocus pocus of gondolas and streets that weren’t streets, but treacherous, shifting, mysterious water. This was fantasy, pure and simple.
But his arm round her wasn’t fantasy. Nor was the account of his childhood. She was sure that nobody else in Culp and Christopher knew about that.
And nor was the look in his eyes.
She had seen Jay’s up-and-under, sex-is-a-state-of-mind look. She had had the benefit of the sexy stare straight into her eyes. She had seen him challenging and she had seen him shameless. In all the weeks she had known him she had never seen him look at anyone like this.
The Millionaire's Virgin (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 46