The Venetian One-Night Baby

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  His eyes pulsed with something she couldn’t quite identify. Suppressed anger or locked-down lust or both? ‘You were spoiling for a fight all through that dinner party and during the trip when I gave you a lift home.’

  ‘So? We always argue. It doesn’t mean I want you to kiss me.’

  His eyes held hers in a smouldering lock that made the backs of her knees fizz. ‘Are we arguing now?’ His tone had a silky edge that played havoc with her senses.

  Sabrina took a step back, one of her hands coming up her neck where her heart was beating like a panicked pigeon stuck in a pipe. ‘I need to get ready for the c-cocktail party...’ Why, oh, why did she have to sound so breathless?

  He gave a soft rumble of a laugh. ‘Your virtue is safe, Sabrina.’ He walked to the door of the suite and turned to look at her again. ‘Don’t wait up. I’ll be late.’

  Sabrina gave him a haughty look that would have done a Regency spinster proud. ‘Going to have your client, are you?’

  He left without another word, which, annoyingly, left her with the painful echo of hers.

  * * *

  Max closed the door of his suite and let out a breath. Why had he done the knight in shining armour thing? Why should he care if she couldn’t get herself organised enough to book a damn hotel? She would have found somewhere to stay, surely. But no. He had to do the decent thing. Nothing about how he felt about Sabrina was decent—especially after that kiss. He’d lost count of how many women he’d kissed. He wasn’t a man whore, but he enjoyed sex for the physical release it gave.

  But he couldn’t get that kiss out of his mind.

  Max had always avoided Sabrina in the past. He hadn’t wanted to encourage his and her parents from their sick little fantasy of them getting it on. He got it on with women he chose and he made sure his choices were simple and straightforward—sex without strings.

  Sabrina was off limits because she was the poster girl for the happily-ever-after fairytale. She was looking for Mr Right to sweep her off her feet and park her behind a white picket fence with a double pram with a couple of chubby-cheeked progeny tucked inside.

  Max had nothing against marriage, but he no longer wanted it for himself. Six years ago, his fiancée had called off their wedding, informing him she had fallen in love with someone else, with someone who wanted children—the children Max refused to give her. Prior to that, Lydia had been adamant she was fine with his decision not to have kids. He’d thought everything was ticking along well enough in their relationship. He’d been more annoyed than upset at Lydia calling off their relationship. It had irritated him that he hadn’t seen it coming.

  But it had taught him a valuable lesson. A lesson he was determined he would never have to learn again. He wasn’t cut out for long-term relationships. He didn’t have what it took to handle commitment and all its responsibilities.

  He knew marriage worked for some people—his parents and Sabrina’s had solid relationships that had been tried and tested and triumphed over tragedy, especially his parents. The loss of his baby brother Daniel at the age of four months had devastated them, of course.

  Max had been seven years old and while his parents had done all they could to shield him from the tragedy, he still carried his share of guilt. In spite of the coroner’s verdict of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Max could never get it out of his mind that he had been the last person to see his baby brother alive. There wasn’t a day that went by when he didn’t think of his brother, of all the years Daniel had missed out on. The milestones he would never meet.

  Max walked out of his hotel and followed the Grand Canal, almost oblivious to the crowds of tourists that flocked to Venice at this time of year. Whenever he thought of Daniel, a tiny worm of guilt burrowed its way into his mind. Was there something he could have done to save his brother? Why hadn’t he noticed something? Why hadn’t he checked him more thoroughly? The lingering guilt he felt about Daniel was something he was almost used to now. He was almost used to feeling the lurch of dread in his gut whenever he saw a small baby. Almost.

  Max stepped out of the way of a laughing couple that were walking arm in arm, carrying the colourful Venetian masks they’d bought from one of the many vendors along the canal. Why hadn’t he thought to book a room at another hotel for Sabrina? It wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford it. He’d made plenty of money as a world-acclaimed architect, and he knew things were a little tight with her financially as she was still building up her wedding-dress design business and stubbornly refusing any help from her doctor parents, who had made it no secret that they would have preferred her to study medicine like them and Sabrina’s two older brothers.

  Had he wanted her in his room? Had he instinctively seized at the chance to have her to himself so he could kiss her again?

  Maybe do more than kiss her?

  Max pulled away from the thought like he was stepping back from a too-hot fire. But that’s exactly what Sabrina was—hot. Too hot. She made him hot and bothered and horny as hell. The way she picked fights with him just to get under his skin never failed to get his blood pumping. Her cornflower-blue eyes would flash and sparkle, and her soft and supple mouth would fling cutting retorts his way, and it would make him feel alive in a way he hadn’t in years.

  Alive and energised.

  But no. No. No. No. No.

  He must not think about Sabrina like that. He had to keep his distance. He had to. She wasn’t the sex without strings type. She wasn’t a fling girl; she was a fairytale girl. And she was his parents’ idea of his ideal match—his soul mate or something. Nothing against his parents, but they were wrong. Dead wrong. Sabrina was spontaneous and creative and disorganised. He was logical, responsible and organised to the point of pedantic. How could anyone think they were an ideal couple? It was crazy. He only had to spend a few minutes with her and she drove him nuts.

  How was he going to get through a whole weekend with her?

  CHAPTER TWO

  SABRINA WAS A little late getting to the cocktail party, which was being held in a private room at the hotel. Only the designers and models and their agents and select members of the press were invited. She entered the party room with her stomach in a squirming nest of nibbling and nipping nerves. Everyone looked glamorous and sophisticated. She was wearing a velvet dress she’d made herself the same shade of blue as her eyes and had scooped her hair up into a bun and paid extra attention to her makeup—hence why she was late to the party.

  A waiter came past with a tray of drinks and Sabrina took a glass of champagne and took a generous sip to settle her nerves. She wasn’t good at networking...well, not unless she was showing off in front of Max. She always worried she might say the wrong thing or make a social faux pas that would make everyone snigger at her.

  Large gatherings reminded her of the school formal the day after she’d slept with her boyfriend for the first time. The rumourmongers had been at work, fuelled by the soul-destroying text messages her boyfriend had sent to all his mates. Sabrina had heard each cruelly taunting comment, seen every mocking look cast in her direction from people she had thought were her friends.

  She had stood behind a column in the venue to try and escape the shameful whispers and had heard her boyfriend tell a couple of his mates what a frigid lay she had been. The overwhelming sense of shame had been crippling. Crucifying.

  Sabrina sipped some more champagne and fixed a smile on her face. She had to keep her head and not time-travel. She wasn’t eighteen any more. She was twenty-eight and ran her own business, for pity’s sake. She. Could. Do. This.

  ‘You’re Sabrina Midhurst, aren’t you?’ a female member of the press said, smiling. ‘I recognised you from the expo programme photo. You did a friend’s wedding dress. It was stunning.’

  ‘Yes, that’s me,’ Sabrina said, smiling back. ‘And I’m glad you liked your friend’s dress.’

  ‘I’d like to do a feat
ure article on you.’ The woman handed Sabrina a card with her name and contact details on it. ‘I’m Naomi Nettleton, I’m a freelancer but I’ve done articles for some big-name fashion magazines. There’s a lot of interest in your work. Would you be interested in giving me an interview? Maybe we could grab a few minutes after this?’

  Sabrina could barely believe her ears. An interview in a glossy magazine? That sort of exposure was gold dust. Her Love Is in the Care boutique in London was small and she’d always dreamed of expanding. She and her best friend Holly Frost, who was a wedding florist, hoped to set up their shops side by side in Bloomsbury in order to boost each other’s trade. At the moment, they were blocks away from each other but Sabrina knew it would be a brilliant business move if they could pull it off.

  She wanted to prove to her doctor parents the creative path she’d chosen to follow wasn’t just a whim but a viable business venture. She came from a long line of medicos. Her parents, her grandparents and both her brothers were all in the medical profession. But she had never wanted that for herself. She would much rather have a tape measure around her neck than a stethoscope.

  She had been drawing wedding gowns since she was five years old. All through her childhood she had made dresses out of scraps of fabric. She had dressed every doll and teddy bear or soft toy she’d possessed in wedding finery. All through her teens she had collected scrapbooks with hundreds of sketches and cuttings from magazines. She’d had to withstand considerable family pressure in order to pursue her dream and success was her way of proving she had made the right choice.

  Sabrina arranged to meet the journalist in the bar downstairs after the party. She continued to circulate, speaking with the models who had been chosen to wear her designs and also with the fashion parade manager who had personally invited her to the event after her daughter had bought one of Sabrina’s designs.

  She took another glass of champagne off a passing waiter.

  Who said word of mouth didn’t still work?

  * * *

  Max came back to the hotel after the dinner with his client had gone on much later than he’d originally planned. He hadn’t intended having more than a drink with Loretta Barossi but had ended up lingering over a meal with her because he hadn’t wanted to come back to his room before Sabrina was safely tucked up and, hopefully, asleep in bed. Unfortunately, he’d somehow given the thirty-six-year-old recently divorced woman the impression he’d been enjoying her company far more than he had, and then had to find a way to politely reject her broadly hinted invitation to spend the night with her. But that was another line he never crossed—mixing business with pleasure.

  He was walking past the bar situated off the lobby when he saw Sabrina sitting on one of the plush sofas talking to a woman and a man who was holding a camera in his lap. As if she sensed his presence, Sabrina turned her glossy honey-brown head and saw him looking at her. She raised her hand and gave him a surreptitious fingertip wave and the woman with her glanced to see to whom she was waving. The woman leaned forward to say something to Sabrina, and even from this distance Max could see the rush of a blush flooding Sabrina’s creamy cheeks.

  He figured the less people who saw him with Sabrina the better, but somehow he found himself walking towards her before he could stop himself. What had the other woman said to make Sabrina colour up like that?

  Sabrina’s eyes widened when he approached their little party and she reached for her glass of champagne and promptly knocked it over. ‘Oops. Sorry. I—’

  ‘You’re Max Firbank, the award-winning architect,’ the young woman said, rising to offer her hand. ‘I’ve seen an article about your work in one of the magazines I worked for a couple of years ago. When Sabrina said she was sharing a room with a friend, I didn’t realise she was referring to you.’ Her eyebrows suggestively rose over the word friend.

  Sabrina had stopped trying to mop up her drink with a paper napkin and stood, clutching the wet and screwed-up napkin in her hand. ‘Oh, he’s not that sort of friend,’ she said with a choked little laugh. ‘I had a problem with my booking and Max offered me his bed, I mean a bed. He has two. Two big ones—they look bigger than king-sized, you could fit a dozen people in each. It’s a huge room, so much space we hardly know the other is there, isn’t that right, Max?’ She turned her head to look at him and he almost had to call for a fire extinguisher because her cheeks were so fiery red.

  Max wasn’t sure why he slipped his arm around her slim waist and drew her to his body. Maybe it was because she was kind of cute when she got flustered and he liked being able to get under her skin for a change, the way she got under his. Besides, he didn’t know any other woman he could make blush more than her. And, yes, he got a kick out of touching her, especially after That Kiss, which she enjoyed as much as he had, even though she was intent on denying it. ‘You don’t have to be shy about our relationship, baby.’ He flashed one of his rare smiles. ‘We’re both consenting adults.’

  ‘Aw, don’t you make a gorgeous couple?’ the woman said. ‘Tim, get a photo of them,’ she said to the man holding the camera. ‘I’ll include it in the article about Sabrina’s designs. That is, if you don’t have any objection?’

  Hell, yeah. He had one big objection. He didn’t mind teasing a blush or two out of Sabrina but if his family got a whiff of him sharing a room with her in Venice they would be measuring him for a morning suit and booking the church. Max held up his hand like a stop sign. ‘Sorry. I don’t make a habit of broadcasting my private life in the press.’

  The woman sighed and handed him a business card. ‘Here are my details if you change your mind.’

  ‘I won’t.’ He gave both the journalist and the photographer a polite nod and added, ‘It was nice meeting you. If you’ll excuse us? It’s been a big day for Sabrina. She needs her beauty sleep.’

  * * *

  Sabrina followed Max to the lift but there were other people waiting to use it as well so she wasn’t able to vent her spleen. What was he thinking? She’d been trying to play down her relationship with Max to the journalist, but he’d given Naomi Nettleton the impression they were an item. She stood beside him in the lift as it stopped and started as it delivered guests to their floors.

  Max stood calmly beside her with his expression in its customary inscrutable lines, although she sensed there was a mocking smile lurking behind the screen of his gaze. She moved closer to him to allow another guest into the lift on level ten and placed her high heel on Max’s foot and pressed down with all her weight. He made a grunting sound that sounded far sexier than she’d expected and he placed the iron band of his arm around her middle and drew her back against him so her back was flush against his pelvis.

  Her mind swam with images of them locked together in a tangle of sweaty limbs, his body driving into hers. Even now she could feel the swell of his body, the rush of blood that told her he was as aroused as she was. Her breathing quickened, her legs weakened, her heart rate rocketed. The steely strength of his arm lying across her stomach was burning a brand into her flesh. Her inner core tensed, the electric heat of awakened desire coursing through her in pulses and flickers.

  The mirrors surrounding them reflected their intimate clinch from a thousand angles but Sabrina wasn’t prepared to make a scene in front of the other guests, one of whom she had seen at the cocktail party. After all, she had a professional image to uphold and slapping Max’s face—if indeed she was the sort of person to inflict violence on another person—was not the best way to maintain it.

  But, oh, how she longed to slap both his cheeks until they were as red as hers. Then she would elbow him in the ribs and stomp on his toes. Then she would rip the clothes from his body, score her fingernails down his chest and down his back until he begged for mercy. But wait...why was she thinking of ripping his clothes off his body? No. No. No. She must not think about Max without clothes. She must not think about him naked.

 
She. Must. Not.

  Max unlocked the door and she brushed past him and almost before he had time to close it she let fly. ‘What the hell were you playing at down there? You gave the impression we were sleeping together. What’s wrong with you? You know how much I hate you. Why did you—?’

  ‘You don’t hate me.’ His voice was so calm it made hers sound all the more irrational and childish.

  ‘If I didn’t before, I do now.’ Sabrina poked him in the chest. ‘What was all that about in the lift?’

  He captured her by the waist and brought her closer, hip to hip, his eyes more blue than grey and glinting with something that made her belly turn over. ‘You know exactly what it was about. And just like that kiss, you enjoyed every second of it. Deny it if you dare.’

  Sabrina intended to push away from him but somehow her hands grabbed the front of his jacket instead. He smelt like sun-warmed lemons and her senses were as intoxicated as if she had breathed in a potent aroma. An aroma that made her forget how much she hated him and instead made her want him with every throbbing traitorous cell of her body. Or maybe she was tipsy from all the champagne she’d had downstairs at the party and in the bar. It was making her drop her inhibitions. Sabotaging her already flagging self-control. Her head was spinning a little but didn’t it always when he looked at her like that?

  His mouth was tilted in a cynical slant, the dark stubble around his nose and mouth more obvious now than earlier that evening. It gave him a rakish air that was strangely attractive. Dangerously, deliciously attractive. She was acutely aware of every point of contact with his body: her hips, her breasts and her belly where his belt buckle was pressing.