‘Why do you think? Because there was no taxi and the man at the ticket office said it wasn’t far.’
‘You should have rung me.’
‘Make your mind up, Conall. You can’t criticise me for not behaving like a normal person and then moan at me when I do. I thought it would be good for me to make my way to the house independently. I thought you might even award me a special gold star for good behaviour.’ She glanced at him, a smile playing around her lips. ‘And to be honest, I didn’t know you were already there.’
Conall said nothing as the car made its way through the downpour, the rhythmical swishing of the wiper blades the only sound he could hear above his suddenly erratic breathing. Of course she hadn’t known he’d be at the house—he hadn’t known himself. He’d planned to arrive later when everything was in place but something had compelled him to get here earlier, and that something was making him uncomfortable because it was all to do with her.
He’d tried telling himself that he needed to oversee the massive security detail which the Prince of Mardovia’s bodyguards had demanded prior to the royal visit. That he needed to check on the painting he was hoping to sell and to ensure it was properly lit. But although both those reasons were valid, they weren’t the real reason why he was desperately trying to avert his gaze from the damp denim which outlined the slenderness of her thighs.
Admit it, he thought grimly. You want her. Despite everything you know about her, you haven’t been able to get her out of your head since you saw her lying on a white leather sofa wearing that baggy T-shirt. Only now the image searing into his brain was the way her wet silk shirt had been clinging to her peaking breasts before he’d hastily covered them up with his jacket. Was it shocking to admit that he wanted to rip the delicate fabric aside and lick her on each hard nub until she squirmed with pleasure? To slide the damp denim from her thighs and put his heated hands all over her chilled flesh?
Of course it was shocking. He had been entrusted to look after her, not seduce her. If it was sex he wanted then Eleanor was only a phone call away. Their grown-up and civilised ‘friends with benefits’ relationship suited them both—even if the physical stimulation it gave him wasn’t matched by a mental one.
But for once the thought of Eleanor’s blonde beauty paled in the face of the fiery, green-eyed temptress on the seat next to him and he was relieved when the sudden shower began to lessen. The sun broke through the clouds as the car made its way up the long drive, just in time to illuminate his house in a radiant display which emphasised its stately proportions. Golden light washed over the tall chimneys and glinted off the mullioned windows. The emerald lawns surrounding the building looked vivid in the bright sunshine and, on a tranquil pond, several ducks quacked happily. Beside him he felt Amber stiffen.
‘But this is...this is beautiful,’ she breathed as the car drew up outside.
He heard the note of wonder in her voice and his mouth hardened. He wondered if she would have been quite so gushing if she’d known the truth about his background. About the hardship and pain and the sense of being an outsider which had never quite left him.
‘Isn’t it?’ he agreed evenly as he stared at the house. With its acres of parkland and sense of history, places like this didn’t come on the market very often and Conall still couldn’t quite believe it was his. Coming hot on the heels of his London deal, it had been a heady time in terms of recent property acquisitions. Had he ever imagined being a major landowner, when he was eighteen and mad with rage and injustice? When the walls of the detention centre had threatened to close in on him and he had been looking down the barrel of an extended jail sentence?
He turned off the ignition, his glance straying to Amber’s large handbag, and it wasn’t the sight of the printout about Prince Luciano which caught his eye—although he was pleased to see she’d been doing her homework—but the intricate doodles on the edge of one of the pages which stirred a faint but enduring memory.
He frowned. ‘I remember seeing some drawings like this in your apartment that first day.’
She stiffened. ‘What, you mean you were snooping around?’
‘They were half hidden behind a sofa. Were they yours?’
‘Of course they were mine—why?’
Ignoring the defensive note in her voice, he narrowed his eyes. ‘I thought some of them showed real promise and a few were really very good.’
‘You don’t have to say that. Anyway, I know they’re rubbish.’
‘I don’t say things I don’t mean, Amber. And why are they rubbish?’
She shrugged, but the words seemed to take a long time coming. ‘I used to paint a lot when we were in Europe and my mother was otherwise occupied. But when I went to live with my father, he made it very clear he thought they were no good—that a kid of six could throw some paint at the canvas and get the same effect, and that I was wasting my time.’ She flashed a brittle kind of smile. ‘So I stopped trying to be an artist and became the society girl that everyone expected. Those paintings you saw were years old. I just...just couldn’t bear to throw them away.’
Conall experienced a moment of real, silent rage as he read the brief flash of hurt and helplessness in her eyes. Were adults deliberately cruel to troubled teenagers, or was it simply that they didn’t know how to handle them?
But maybe she’d always been difficult to handle—in so many ways. Right now she looked like every teenage boy’s fantasy in her wet shirt, with his bulky jacket draped around her slender shoulders, making far too many lustful thoughts crowd his mind. ‘I’ll show you around the house so you have plenty of time to acclimatise yourself before the party, but the guided tour can wait until later. First you need to get out of those wet clothes.’
As soon as the words had left his lips he wanted to take them back, because they sounded like the words a man would say to a woman just before he began touching her. Silently chastising himself for his own foolishness, he got out of the car and opened the door for her.
Still hugging his jacket to her, Amber followed him inside the house into a huge oak-panelled hallway from which curved a majestic staircase. Enormous bucketfuls of white flowers stood on the floor, obviously waiting to be transplanted into vases, and she could hear the sound of female voices coming from a room somewhere and a radio playing in the distance.
‘Last-minute party prep,’ he said, in reply to a question she hadn’t asked. ‘You’ll meet the team later. Now come with me and I’ll show you to your room.’
Her clothes were still clinging damply to her body and Amber guessed she should have been cold—but cold was the last thing she felt right now. Her blood felt heavy and warm as she followed Conall upstairs and her heart was beating painfully against her ribcage. She barely noticed the beautifully restored woodwork or the walls covered with paintings, so fixated was she on the hard thrust of his buttocks against the black denim of his jeans. She could feel her throat growing dry as she stared at the back of his neck, unable to tear her gaze away. With his black hair curling over the collar of his cashmere sweater and his muscular physique rippling with health and strength, he looked in total command of the situation, which she guessed he was. But the weird thing was that she didn’t do this. She didn’t drool over men who treated her as if she were a naughty schoolgirl. Truth was, she didn’t drool over anyone. She bit her lip as she remembered the accusations which had been levelled at her in the past. Cold. Frigid. Ice queen. Valid accusations, every one of them. Yet when Conall looked at her, he made her want to melt, not freeze.
Pushing open the door of a second-floor bedroom overlooking the parkland at the back of the house, he put her case down. ‘You should be comfortable enough in here,’ he said abruptly.
Amber glanced around, suddenly shy to find herself alone in a bedroom with him. Comfortable was an understatement for such a lavish room and she was grateful he’d given her somewhere
so lovely to sleep, with its heavy velvet drapes and enormous four-poster bed. She looked up into his face, knowing she ought to be asking intelligent questions about the forthcoming party but it was difficult when all she could think about was the curve of his lips and the shadowed roughness of his jaw.
‘What time do you need me?’ she said, her words sounding jerky as she moistened the roof of her mouth with her tongue.
‘Come downstairs at around seven and I’ll show you the painting. The Prince is arriving at eight-fifteen and his timetable is worked out to the nearest second. I’d better warn you that lateness won’t be tolerated when you’re dealing with royals.’
‘I won’t be late, Conall.’ Amber took off his jacket and handed it to him, feeling chilled as the leather left her skin and missing the subtle scent which was all his. ‘And thanks for lending me this.’
But he didn’t take the jacket from her. He just stood there as if someone had turned him to stone. His brilliant eyes gleamed from between the dark lashes and his golden skin suddenly seemed taut over his cheekbones. ‘You know, you’re really going to have to stop doing this, Amber,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve given you several chances but my patience is wearing thin and, in the end, I’m only made out of flesh and blood—the same as any other man.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Oh, come on.’ His voice was edged with a note of irritation. ‘There are many parts you play exceedingly well, but innocence isn’t one of them. Much more of those big green eyes gazing at me like that and licking at your lips like a cat which has just seen a mouse—and I’ll be forced to kiss you, whether I want to or not.’
Amber looked at him, genuinely confused. ‘Why would you even consider kissing me if you didn’t want to?’
He laughed, but his laugh contained something dark and unknown and Amber felt as if she were a non-swimmer paddling on the edge of the shore, not noticing the powerful tug of the undercurrent edging towards her.
‘Because you’re not my kind of woman and because I am, in effect, your employer.’ His voice dipped to a silken whisper. ‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to.’
His unmistakable passion mixed with the complexity of her own feelings filled Amber with a sudden sense of power and she tilted her chin to look at him defiantly. ‘Well, if you really want to kiss me that badly, why don’t you just go ahead and do it?’
‘I don’t kiss women who smoke.’
There was a pause. ‘But I haven’t had a cigarette since that day I came to your office.’
‘You haven’t?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Why not?’
Should she tell him the truth? Because he’d told her she smelt disgusting and had made her feel dirty. But mainly because she’d wanted to show him she could. Somehow Conall Devlin had succeeded where two very expensive hypnotherapy courses had failed, and she’d quit smoking without a single craving.
‘Because I am at heart a very obedient woman.’ Shamelessly she batted her eyelashes at him. ‘Didn’t you know that?’
It was provocation pure and simple and Conall felt something inside him snap, like a piece of elastic which had been stretched beyond endurance. He heard the roar of blood in his ears and felt the jerk of an erection pushing hard against his jeans as he found himself pulling her into his arms and breathing in her warmth.
‘The only thing I know is that you are a stubborn and defiant woman who has tested me beyond endurance,’ he said, his voice rough. ‘And maybe this has been inevitable all along.’
She stared into his eyes. ‘You’re going to put me across your lap and smack my bottom?’
‘Is that what you’d like? Maybe later. But not right now. Right now I’m going to kiss you—but be warned that this is going to spoil you for anyone else. Are you prepared for that, Amber? That every man who kisses you after this is going to make you remember me and ache for me?’
‘You are so arrogant,’ she accused.
But her lips were parting and Conall knew she wanted this just as much as him. Maybe more—for he caught a flash of hunger in her darkening eyes. Sliding one hand around her waist while the other cushioned her still-damp hair, he lowered his mouth onto hers. And didn’t part of him want her to have lied to him—to discover the stale odour of tobacco on those soft lips so that he could pull away in disgust?
But she hadn’t lied. She tasted of peppermint and she smelt of daisies and the way she melted into his body was like throwing a match onto a pile of bone-dry timber. He groaned as he felt the stony stud of her nipples pressing against him and he reached down to cup one between his thumb and forefinger, enjoying the way she squirmed beneath his touch and whispered his name. He was so hard that he was afraid that his jeans might rip open all by themselves and, with something which sounded like a roar, he pushed her against the open door, so that it rocked crazily beneath the sudden urgent force of their bodies.
They kissed as if they’d just discovered how to kiss. Her arms were reaching up to his shoulders, as if she was trying to stop herself from sliding to the ground, and as Conall nudged his thigh between hers he was tempted to do just that. To lay her down on the hard floorboards and rip off their clothes and just take her, as he had been wanting to for days. Because if he did that—wouldn’t he rid his blood of this fever so that he could just forget her? His hand cupped her breast and she gasped, drawing in a shuddering breath as he bent his head and grazed his teeth against the nipple which was hard against her damp silk shirt.
‘C-Conall,’ she gasped.
‘I know,’ he ground out as desire shot through him in a potent stream. ‘Good, isn’t it?’ With his middle finger, he rubbed along the seam of her jeans at the crotch and he could feel her heat searing through the thick denim as she wriggled her hips in silent invitation.
The scent of sex and of desire was as potent as any perfume and he groped his hand downwards, reaching for his belt. He tugged it open and was just about to undo the top button of his jeans when some sharp splinter of sanity lanced into his thoughts and reality hit him like a slug to the jaw. He dragged his lips away, his eyes focusing and then refocusing as he stared at her and took a step back. Her shirt was half-open and her magnificent breasts were rising and falling as she struggled to control her breathing. Her black hair was plastered to her head, her eyes streaked with mascara from the rain and her lips were rosy-pink and trembling. He wondered what part of teaching her how to try to be a better person this fell under and a wave of self-disgust shot through him as he thought of what he’d just done. And what he’d been tempted to do...
Since when did he violate another man’s trust in him, when he knew all too well how painful the consequences of shattered trust could be?
And since when did he lose control like that?
‘Is something...wrong?’ she questioned.
But he didn’t answer. He was too angry with himself to even try. Did she put out like that for everyone? he wondered furiously. Was he just one in a long line of men she indiscriminately chose to satisfy her sexual needs? He took another step away from her, even though every sinew of his body was screaming out its protest. And yes, at that moment he would have traded his entire fortune to slide her panties down her legs and unzip himself and take her, but some last shred of reason stopped him as he reminded himself of the stark reality. That she was everything he’d spent his life trying to avoid and that wasn’t about to change any time soon.
It was difficult to speak when all he could think about was thrusting deep into her and losing himself inside her. Difficult to regain control when his heart was racing so hard that it hurt, but Conall had learnt many lessons in his life and masking his temper had been right at the top of the list. He hid it now, replacing it with a silky reason which was always effective.
‘Oh, Amber.’ Slowly he shook his head. ‘Where did you learn to look at a man like that and make him want to g
o against everything he believes in?’
Her expression was dazed but for once she wasn’t flying back at him with one of her smart comments and that pleased him, for it gave him back the power which had momentarily deserted him.
‘Judging by the look on your face and your body language, I imagine you must be greedily anticipating the next time,’ he continued, struggling to control his ragged breathing. ‘But I’m afraid there isn’t going to be one. Because that was something which should never have happened. Do you understand what I’m saying, Amber? From now on we’re going to stick to business and only business—so be downstairs at the time I told you so that I can brief you before the Prince arrives.’ His mouth hardened into a grim and resolute line. ‘And we’ll both forget this ever happened.’
CHAPTER SIX
AMBER’S HANDS WERE trembling as she shut the door on Conall and tried to block out the sounds of his retreating footsteps—but it wasn’t so easy to blot out the mocking words which still echoed around her head.
Forget it had ever happened?
Was he out of his mind?
Her fingers strayed to lips which felt as if they were on fire—as if he’d branded them with that hot and hungry kiss. Leaning back against the door, she closed her eyes. He’d done things to her she shouldn’t have allowed him to do. He’d touched her breasts and put his hand in between her legs but instead of feeling outrage or disgust—or even her habitual freezing fear—she had embraced every moment of it. It had been the most erotic thing which had ever happened to her until he had ended it so abruptly. His belt undone, he had pulled away from her with disgust darkening his eyes, his accusatory words making her sound like some sort of predator—as if she were using all her wiles to lure him into her bed. Oh, the irony.
Walking over to the window, she stared out over the beautiful green parkland and thought about the way she’d responded to him. How infuriating that a desire which had eluded her all these years had been awoken by a man who made no secret of despising her. Who had looked at her as if she were something he’d discovered in a dark corner of a room and wished he hadn’t. And his rejection had hurt. Of course it had—especially coming so fast on the heels of the nice things he’d said about her painting.
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