Abby thought, I could do that. I could really do that. But—do I want to? Buying furniture for a man—for this man—seemed more personal than she wanted to get. Especially with a man who gave away so few clues about himself.
Except he’s dropped his guard twice with me already.
Somehow that made it seem even more hazardous.
She said hurriedly, ‘Why don’t you ask the porters? They usually have connections everywhere.’
‘Tried that. It’s got me a borrowed bed until the end of the week.’
‘That’s all?’
He shrugged. ‘The block is new. The porters are all new. I guess they haven’t got their networks up and running yet.’
She felt as if she were drowning. ‘You must have friends who would help. Family…’
‘Sure. I tried calling my oldest sister. No answer. I even rang the office to track her down. They told me to get real. It’s February. Everyone who doesn’t have to be in BA is at the beach.’
‘She’ll be back, though.’
‘Sure. Could be two weeks. Could be three. And then she’ll take time to get over here. Meanwhile I’m sleeping on the floor from Saturday.’
Abby said desperately, ‘I’ve never done anything like it.’
‘But this flat of yours—you furnished that?’
‘Well, yes,’ she admitted reluctantly.
‘Then you can help me. I’m not fussy. It doesn’t have to last for ever. Just get the basics until I have time to think about it properly.’
She looked at him. He was not purring at her now. There was none of that deliberate charm. He just looked desperately tired, all of a sudden. Abby’s tender heart, always her downfall, went out to him.
‘All right.’
He gave her a blinding flash of white teeth. The look of tiredness disappeared as if it had never been.
‘Great. It’s a deal.’ He held out a hand across the table.
Abby took it reluctantly. She had the uncomfortable feeling she had been duped.
He said cheerfully, ‘You put my household together. You stay as long as you like. Excellent use of resources. You solve my problem, I solve yours.’
‘I hope so,’ said Abby.
She had a nasty feeling that a whole portfolio of new problems was just about to open up in front of her.
CHAPTER SIX
THE first problem that night was the bed. There was only one.
‘You take it,’ said Emilio.
Abby was conscience stricken. ‘I couldn’t. I wished myself on to you. I’ll—’
‘My dear girl, are you seriously suggesting that you sleep on the floor while I take the best sprung mattress the twenty-first century can offer?’
‘Yes. Why not?’
He gave a sigh of pure exasperation. ‘Get real.’
‘Get real yourself,’ said Abby with spirit. ‘The only reason why you should sleep on the floor instead of me is some macho thing.’
Emilio stiffened. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Which is totally outdated.’
He was furious.
‘When did courtesy go out of fashion?’
‘But it’s not courtesy. It’s patronising. You wouldn’t tell a man who landed himself on you like this to take the only bed. But I’m a woman—’
‘At least we agree on something,’ he murmured.
Abby ignored that. ‘So you think you have to treat me as if I’m a fragile little flower.’
‘Oh, is that what I’m doing?’
She ignored that, too. ‘It’s not necessary. And it’s not respectful.’
‘So I should let you sleep on the floor to show how much I respect you?’
‘Yes,’ said Abby confused.
‘Then I’m sorry, I don’t respect you enough.’
Their eyes locked. Abby was quite simply glaring but Emilio’s expression was a lot more complicated. The dark brown eyes were intent as if he was trying to make out the intricacy of some intriguing object. Meeting that intensity head-on, Abby felt her heart jolt. For a tiny moment, it felt as if the thick new carpet and even the floor had dissolved under her. She was hurtling through space while those dark eyes watched, interested…
Reason, she thought hurriedly. That’s what men respond to.
Abby had dealt with her four brothers since she was a baby. Since she was twelve she had run their household. She knew there was no point in yelling at men, no matter how right you were. In fact the more right you were, the less point there was in yelling. You just had to present them with reasoned arguments. That way, sometimes, they could be brought to admit you had a case.
All she had to do was tell herself that the floor was solid, wrench her attention back from those mesmeric eyes, and concentrate. So…
She made her tone as conciliatory as she knew how. ‘It won’t hurt me. I have slept on the floor lots of times.’
‘Not,’ said Emilio grimly, ‘with me.’
Every single argument went out of her head. She just stood there, gawping at him, wordless. The phrase rang round her head like a church bell, drowning everything else.
With me. With me.
He looked amused.
Of course, he had not actually said, you sleep with me. Had probably not even thought it. Only now, with her opening and closing her mouth like a stranded fish, he was going to think of it all right. She could not have reacted more strongly if he had suggested a full seduction, thought Abby in despair. The idea was there with them now, flying around in the empty room like an escapee from Pandora’s box.
Suddenly every half-remembered erotic fantasy she had ever had returned to join in the fun. She was no longer arguing with an impatient man in an unfurnished flat. There was music. Unseen candlelight.
The man in question took on a new aspect. He was no longer either a difficult client or a bad memory. He had all the mystery of a masked stranger in the shadows. But a stranger she half expected and a mask she wanted to penetrate.
Oh, Lord, thought Abby, startled.
Her clothing seemed to loosen somehow. Under it, her body realised it was beautiful. She stood taller. The air was suddenly full of the scent of roses.
Her skin shivered as if he had touched her. Abby found she was holding her breath.
But she did not need to.
‘Sorry,’ said Emilio, laughing. ‘That could have been better phrased.’
Abby swallowed and started breathing again. She felt as if her cheeks were on fire.
‘Yes, it could,’ she said curtly.
He looked at her curiously. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Are you sure?’
She shook her head irritably at the fantasies. They mocked her. But they wouldn’t go away.
‘I just don’t think it was very funny.’
‘So teasing is out? As well as chivalry?’
‘Chivalry is a patriarchal concept,’ snapped Abby, goaded.
She did not believe it but, with all those images of clothes falling off still waving about in her imagination, she had to do something. Going to war was as good a strategy as any. And this was stuff she knew. She had heard Molly di Perretti say it often enough.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘The whole point of chivalry is to keep women helpless,’ announced Abby. She was on a roll now. ‘And we’re supposed to be grateful for it.’
Emilio was outraged. ‘If this is gratitude, I think I’ll pass.’
Of course, that reminded her that she did, indeed, owe him a debt of gratitude. He had rescued her from something close to despair tonight, to say nothing of the weather. He had fed her and listened to her and then he had come up with a solution to her problem. What was more, there was no one else she could turn to tonight. He was putting a roof over her head and here she was, screaming at him.
Her eyes fell.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered.
Emilio was silent for a moment. Then he said in an odd voice, ‘You’re
in a real mess, aren’t you?’
Abby looked up, shocked. Surely he couldn’t have picked up her brief romantic fantasy, back there?
‘What do you mean?’ Her voice jumped all over the place.
Emilio was already turning away. ‘We’re due a long talk about men and women and a sense of proportion. But not tonight. You’re wiped.’
A sense of proportion? Oh, heavens, he had picked up that surge of longing. She set her teeth.
‘I don’t need you to analyse me,’ she said rudely to hide her wincing.
‘You don’t know what you need,’ said Emilio quite kindly.
Abby lifted her chin. ‘So what do you suggest?’ She flung it at him like a challenge.
‘A bath. Then a good night’s sleep in that bed,’ he said literally. ‘Things are always more manageable in the morning.’
Abby’s chin went up even higher. He sounded so damned superior, she thought mutinously. But she knew he was right. Perversely that annoyed her even more.
Even though a warm bath sounded like heaven, she was not going to do anything he said without a fight.
‘You’ve got guest towels then, have you? Even though you haven’t got any furniture?’ she taunted.
For a moment the black brows twitched together in annoyance. So there were some things he did not have an answer for, thought Abby in unworthy triumph.
Then he said equally, ‘I haven’t the slightest idea. Let’s look.’
The guest bathroom was bare but there was a collection of towels of assorted sizes, still in their packets in the master bathroom. Emilio stood in the doorway from the bedroom and looked at her. His smile that only just stopped short of triumph.
‘Help yourself.’
Suddenly Abby was too tired to fight him anymore. She felt her shoulders sag and had to fight not to sink onto the bed behind her. She turned away to hide the fact that her eyes were filling with stupid tears. Simple tiredness, of course.
‘You’re very kind,’ she said in a stifled voice.
She seemed to have been wearing the severe business jacket half her life. She shrugged out of it and let it fall with relief. It missed the bed and flopped onto the carpet. She thought she heard a stifled sound from Emilio but when she looked round at him he had crossed to the window and was staring out into the lamplit gardens below.
‘I’ll call the Hyde. See if they can let me have a room for one more night,’ he mused.
Now that Abby had admitted to herself how tired she was, she did not have the energy for more than a token protest.
He looked at her, all the way across the bed. She could not read his expression but his eyes were searching.
‘Will you be worried here on your own?’
She was surprised. ‘No. Why should I?’
He seemed to choose his words carefully. ‘Some people can’t sleep in strange apartments.’
Abby flexed her stiff shoulders. ‘I could sleep standing up in a ditch tonight,’ she said ruefully.
He did not answer.
Just for a moment, she thought she could read his expression after all. He was staring at the place in the base of her throat where the pulse beat. And the expression was hunger.
But then his eyes flickered and he was giving her a cool smile. Abby decided that she must have been mistaken. After all, she had not seen a lot of hunger in men’s eyes, she thought ruefully.
‘Then sleep well.’ He went to the door of the master suite, then paused. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow for breakfast. We need to get some things clear. Don’t go to work before we’ve talked.’
Abby was too tired to object. She suppressed a yawn with difficulty.
‘Whatever you say.’
He left.
Abby eased her stiff shoulders under the steaming water but she did not stay in the bath long. She knew there was a real risk of falling asleep. As it was, she seemed to be dreaming. Wildly improbable dreams, too, involving Emilio Diz and a rescue from pirates.
It was an old friend, that dream. Though it had not visited her since she was—well, how old? Sixteen was it?
Trying to decide, Abby found that she was slipping dangerously close to sleep and the water line. She shook herself awake and climbed out of the bath.
That wasn’t going to start all over again, she told herself muzzily. It had been bad enough having an adolescent crush when she was sixteen. She had dragged herself through it then and she had got over it. But she wasn’t going to go round for a second shot.
Emilio Diz had not seen her as a woman then. He was not seeing her as a woman now. Then, she had just been a starstruck teenager to him. Now she was a salvage project. Neither, thought Abby, weaving her way to the bed wrapped in the biggest fluffiest bath towel she had ever seen, was attractive. So the sooner she stopped dreaming about him the better.
The exclusive hotel was much too gentlemanly to express surprise at Emilio’s request. He had stayed there every time he came to London for several years. So had his family, of whom there were a number. He was a valued customer.
So yes, they were happy to accommodate Señor Diz for a further night. No, his lack of baggage was not a problem. They were discreetly incurious about the reasons for the change of plan. When he announced that his apartment was still not ready, they were even more discreetly sympathetic. And when he asked for an early morning call accompanied by a breakfast hamper for two from the kitchen, they became discretion personified.
‘On the hunt?’ the night porter asked the knowledgeable night desk manager after Emilio had run up the staircase to his first-floor suite.
‘Of course,’ said the manager. ‘Though it’s not like him.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘They usually give him breakfast, not the other way round.’
‘Maybe she’s thrown him out,’ suggested the porter.
‘Women don’t throw Emilio Diz out.’
‘Maybe this time he’s in love,’ said the porter, a romantic.
‘More likely, this time he’s met his match,’ said the manager, a realist.
He would have been surprised at how close he was to Emilio’s own feelings on the matter.
He prowled the overheated hotel room restlessly. The woman was infuriating. Why on earth didn’t she stand up for herself, instead of letting her father’s new wife walk all over her like that? He had no patience with such spinelessness.
Except that she wasn’t spineless. She had stood up to him easily enough. More than stood up to him. Provoked him. Deliberately.
He nearly bumped into an antique coffee table at the thought.
Well, no, he corrected himself, sinking onto rather pretty Chippendale sofa and rubbing his shin absently. Not all the provocation was deliberate. Some of it—the worst of it—she was clearly completely unaware of.
He frowned. No women of her age ought to be unaware of provocation like that. He remembered the careless way she had let the jacket drop, as if she had completely forgotten what she was wearing underneath. And what she was not wearing.
Emilio closed his eyes. He could still feel that jolt of shock as she half turned, revealing the smooth naked skin of her back under all that criss-cross lacing. She had a small mole between her shoulder blades. He broke out in a sweat remembering.
For a crazy moment he had nearly cancelled the distance between them and bent his lips to that mole. It would have been so easy. It was what that apology of a top must have been designed for. She had no business wearing it if she didn’t want a man to…
He curbed the direction of his thoughts.
Careful, he told himself. She was not inviting anything and you know it. The woman was asleep on her feet. She probably had forgotten what she was wearing underneath. She’d worn it to that damned meeting. She certainly wasn’t inviting any advances there.
And she didn’t invite any all evening. It would have been easy enough to give him the signal that she was available, after all. And she would know how to do it. She was not his little crane fl
y anymore. She was Lady Abigail Templeton Burke, with her turquoise hair and her drawling social confidence. She might not be able to deal with her stepmother but he would have put money on her having all the men she wanted on a string.
So if she did not give him a signal, it was because she did not want to.
Emilio frowned. Why didn’t she want to? How could this awareness be one-sided?
But he knew the answer to that, too. That evening at the Montijo’s place had been a turning point for him. Maybe that was why he had never forgotten his little crane fly. But she had been only just coming out of adolescence. There would have been lots of encounters like that for her. It was part of the growing up process. It would have been no big deal for her.
She probably doesn’t even remember you, he told himself bracingly.
It was extraordinary how desolate that made him feel.
Abby woke with a jump. For a moment she did not know where she was. She stared at the bay window. It was in quite the wrong place and much too big. Come to that, the bed was even bigger and not one she recognised. The duvet cover was too crisp, it smelled wrong. And the pillows were all over the place. She closed her eyes and—
Not with me, said a voice in her head.
Abby’s eyes flew open. She shot up in the borrowed bed as if an alarm had gone off. Emilio Diz! She was in his home, in his bed, heaven help her. After all these years of suppressing that particular memory, here she was full circle, facing her nemesis again.
Well, no. Not actually facing him. She was alone, in spite of the voice in her head. Wasn’t she?
Abby looked round warily. But though the unfamiliar window was in his bedroom and there were two substantial matching suitcases standing in the corner, there was no sign of the man himself. He had haunted her dreams but he had had the decency to keep out of her room. No tell-tale indentation in the maltreated pillow beside her. No man’s clothes strewn amongst her own.
She relaxed and looked at her watch. He said he would come to breakfast. Well, it was still early but she did not want to risk him finding her in bed. She got up.
More Than A Millionaire (Contemporary Romance) Page 9