Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick
conjured up by the word ‘sweetheart’. ‘So you two know each other?’ he quizzed eagerly.
‘We’re neighbours,’ Geraint revealed.
‘Oh.’ Stuart seemed fascinated by this. ‘You live at St Fiacre’s too, do you?’
Geraint smiled. ‘Only for the time being, until I find a place I like enough to want to buy. I’m renting my friend Dominic Dashwood’s house—he’s gone away for the winter.’
Barbados, probably, thought Lola, or somewhere equally exotic. Dominic Dashwood was the neighbour she hardly ever saw, and he made other rich men look like paupers. His wealth was legendary—but not nearly as legendary as his reputation and appetite for beautiful women.
Stuart beamed at Lola,. ‘You should have said that you knew each other! Mind you,’ he confided to Geraint, ‘our Lola always gets on exceptionally well with the passengers! Gets more invitations to dinner than anyone else on the craft—and the occasional surprise present from a passenger!’ He winked at Lola, and moved away down the aisle.
‘Oh, does she?’ asked Geraint tonelessly, scarcely seeming to notice that Stuart had left, and for a moment Lola was aware of an odd look in his narrowed grey eyes. A fierce, intent kind of look. Just for a moment there Geraint Howell-Williams had looked almost... almost... bitter...
‘There’s no rule against accepting gifts from passengers!’ Lola stated, extremely irritated by that critical look on his face, which made her sound much more flippant than she usually did. And which, she realised, had the unfortunate effect of making herself sound like some kind of second-rate gold-digger!
The flippancy made him wince, and Lola was aware of an unsettling feeling of disquiet stealing over her, as if his disapproval of her somehow diminished her in her own eyes.
‘And that’s your main criterion for living, is it?’ he questioned quietly. ‘That if there is no rule against it then it must be OK?’
‘Please don’t put words into my mouth,’ returned Lola softly.
He studied her face for a moment before speaking. ‘I don’t intend to. I intend to put food into your mouth instead. What time shall I pick you up tonight?’
But Lola shook her head, hoping that her reluctance to do what she knew to be the right thing did not show. ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea, do you?’
His mouth thinned into something resembling a smile. ‘Why else would I suggest it?’
Lola looked up and down the cabin quickly, to check that none of the other staff were in earshot, and then she lowered her voice. ‘Look-perhaps I gave you the wrong idea last night—’
‘That would depend on your definition of “wrong”, surely, Lola?’ he demurred softly. ‘I certainly had no problem with your behaviour last night—’
‘I’ll bet you didn’t!’ Lola snapped, her cheeks growing hot as she remembered her virtual surrender in his arms. ‘And if I hadn’t stopped it who knows where we would have ended up?’
‘I hardly think you need the brains of Einstein to work that one out for yourself,’ he responded drily.
Lola felt her fingers itching frantically and in that moment longed to slap him.
It was extraordinary. She had tried to slap him last night, too—that had been how the kiss had started. She, normally the most peaceable of people, had started exhibiting the most uncharacteristic behaviour!
Just why did she react so violently and so uniquely to this one particular man? Would an analyst say that the violence was a substitute for sex—because subconsciously she desired him, even though there was something about him which made her wonder whether she could trust him?
She took a deep breath and hoped that she was managing to present a calm, neutral face. ‘The aircraft is full, and I’m very busy. So would you please excuse me now, Mr Howell-Williams—unless you’ve decided what you want me to get you?’
‘Tomato juice, please,’ he said, deadpan, and Lola pursed her lips.
‘Are you trying to be funny?’
‘Well, I was, yes,’ he admitted, and gave her a heart-stopping grin.
And it was that grin which proved her absolute undoing. She actually began to dimple back at him—her face soon lit up by a huge, helpless smile. ‘I’d better go and get your drink—’
He stayed her with nothing more than a look—cool and provocative and very, very assured. Lola would have defied anyone to resist a look like that.
‘I don’t want a drink,’ he said quietly. ‘I just want you to agree to have dinner with me tonight.’
Lola felt goose-bumps jump up all over her skin. She had a powerful premonition of just how vulnerable she might be to this man’s exceptional allure. That was, if she let herself... She opened her mouth to refuse, but Geraint pre-empted her.
‘And what if I tell the purser you were being outrageously rude to me just now?’ he mused. ‘And accused me of being a sexist pig. And that now you’re refusing to allow me the opportunity to clear my name?’
‘That’s called blackmail,’ protested Lola, but only half-heartedly.
‘That’s called getting your own way,’ he corrected her.
‘Which I suppose you always do?’
He gave an unrepentant smile. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think it’s about time someone turned you down,’ she told him fiercely.
‘For my own good?’ he mocked.
Lola shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’
‘And you think you could be that person?’
She gave him a level look, her sky-blue eyes dazzling him. ‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m not going to take no for an answer, that’s why. Not from you. So what have you got to say about that, Lola Hennessy?’
It was a pointless question when accompanied by a glittering look of approbation which would have made the most committed man-hater melt into submission! It was like asking a prisoner if they would like to taste freedom again!
Lola found Geraint Howell-Williams outrageously attractive, yes, but highly disturbing too. She sensed that sexually he was light years ahead of her, but the reason for her disquiet went deeper than that.
For there was an almost tangible air of danger about him, a danger which surrounded him like an aura and yet only added to his buccaneer-like appeal. She could almost imagine him in a billowing white shirt, a gleaming sword held aloft as he fought off invaders!
She swallowed the image down; it was inexplicably making her want to kiss him again.
‘Lola?’ he prompted, his voice a throaty caress. ‘Are you going to have dinner with me tonight?’
‘Yes, I am,’ she told him without hesitation, because at that precise moment—rightly or wrongly—it was what she wanted more than anything else in the world.
‘SO WHAT are you going to wear for this date of the century?’ Mamie yelled.
Lola made an ugly face at herself in the mirror. ‘That’s the trouble—I don’t know!’ She pulled the belt of her towelling robe even tighter and walked out of the bathroom into the rather luxurious room which Atalanta Airlines had assigned to her. Situated slap bang in the middle of the city centre, the New Rome Hotel commanded a magnificent view over the ancient capital.
Lola and Mamie had checked in just over an hour ago, and now Marnie was sitting on Lola’s bed, drinking