London's Eligible Bachelors. Sharon Kendrick
work soon took over. Maybe that was because she had become an expert in pushing away disturbing thoughts. She settled down to some long-overdue ordering and soon became immersed in that.
She heard the sound of the shop door clanging open and flourished her signature in the order book before looking up and blinking, her polite smile freezing into disbelief on her lips.
It couldn’t be him, she thought, even as her heart responded with an instinctive surge of excitement. But the delight ebbed away as quickly as it had come, to be replaced by a sudden wariness when she saw the dark, forbidding expression on his face.
It couldn’t be him. But it was.
She was aware of the fact that Paul was working in the storeroom, and composed her face accordingly.
‘Hello, Guy,’ she said, her voice sounding astonishingly calm considering that the thundering of her heart was threatening to deafen her. ‘This is a surprise.’
‘Is it?’ He leaned over the desk and the male scent of him reached out to her senses, sending them spinning out of control as she registered his closeness. ‘So you do remember me?’ he drawled silkily. ‘Wow—that’s a relief.’
Sabrina blushed at the implication behind his insulting question. ‘Of course I remember you! I…We…’
‘Had a night of no-holds-barred sex before you did a runner in the morning?’ he remarked insolently.
‘You were the one who did a runner, and will you keep your voice down?’ she hissed furiously.
‘Or what?’
‘Or I’ll have you thrown out of the shop!’
Guy’s gaze swivelled to where Paul was busy flicking through a card index, and he raised a laconic eyebrow. ‘Oh, really?’
She knew just what he was implying. For a man of similar age to Guy, Paul was no weakling, but comparing him to the angry specimen of manhood who stood just inches away from her would be like comparing a child’s chugchug train to a high-speed express. But even so…
Sabrina raised a stubborn chin to him. No matter what had happened between the two of them, he couldn’t just march in here like some autocratic dictator and start jeopardising her very livelihood. Not when he’d already taken out her heart and smashed it into smithereens…
‘Yes, really!’
He cocked an arrogant eyebrow at her. ‘Going to start talking, then, are we, Sabrina?’
‘I can’t talk to you now,’ she stated levelly. ‘I’m working.’
‘Then when?’
‘I don’t know,’ she prevaricated.
The grey eyes narrowed. ‘What time is your lunch-hour?’
‘I don’t usually take lunch.’
‘House rules?’ he drawled.
‘No, my rules,’ she answered stiffly.
‘Then change the rules, baby,’ he commanded, with a cool arrogance which infuriated her almost as much as it reminded her of his consummate mastery in bed. ‘And change them now.’
Sabrina tried to imagine the worst-case scenario. What if she agreed to meet him for lunch—in a city where she had lived all her life and where she was known? She wasn’t the same woman here as he had met in Venice. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But what if he managed to reduce her to that same mindless being who just cried out for his touch?
And it wasn’t difficult to work out how he might go about that. Surely he would only have to take her in his arms again. Just as he’d done before. She couldn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t succumb, and how could she possibly come back in here after that and spend the afternoon working, as if nothing had happened?
‘I eat my lunch here,’ she told him resolutely.
He rubbed a thoughtful forefinger over his chin, and the movement was accompanied by the unconscious thrust of his hips. ‘Then I guess I’ll just wait here until you’ve finished,’ he told her softly, and then deliberately raised his voice. ‘Perhaps you could point me to the section on erotic literature?’
‘Don’t you dare—’
‘Is something wrong, Sabrina?’ Paul came through from the storeroom, pushing his spectacles to the back of his nose, looking with distrust at the tall, dark man who was towering over his assistant’s desk.
Sabrina sent a look of appeal up at Guy but was met with nothing but an uncompromising glitter. She knew then that he wouldn’t be going anywhere until he got what he’d come for. And that there was no way she could get out of this meeting. She swallowed down her reservations and forced a brittle smile.
‘Guy is a friend…’ She hesitated on the inappropriate word before continuing, seeing the brief, hard twist of his mouth as he registered it, too. ‘A friend of mine. Who has dropped into town unexpectedly—’
Guy fixed Paul with a bland smile. ‘And I was hoping to persuade her to come to lunch with me, but—’
‘Well, we usually eat a sandwich here—but you go to lunch if you want, Sabrina!’ said Paul immediately. ‘It’ll make a nice change.’
Sabrina shook her head and sent Guy a furious look. How dared he be so manipulative in order to get his own way? ‘No, thanks, Paul. I’ve agreed to meet Guy…after work.’ She managed to get the words out—even though they almost choked her in the process.
‘Yes, she has. I can hardly wait.’ Guy gave her another wintry smile, but the hungry look of intent which had darkened his eyes told its own story. ‘I’m taking you out for dinner, Sabrina.’
That was what he thought! ‘Just a drink will be fine,’ she said stiffly. ‘My mother will be expecting me home for supper.’
‘Your mother?’ A frown of disbelief criss-crossed his forehead. Surely she didn’t still live with her mother?
Sabrina read the disappointment in his eyes, and pride and fury warred inside her like a bubbling cauldron. What had he expected? A reenactment of that night in Venice? A half-finished meal and she would fall back into bed with him?
‘Yes,’ she said, with a demure flutter of her eyelashes. ‘I live with my mother.’
‘And what time do you finish?’
‘Five-thirty.’
‘I’ll be here,’ he promised, on a note of silky threat. ‘Waiting.’
‘I’ll look forward to it,’ she responded furiously.
Guy forced himself to give his cool, polite smile as he left the shop. But inside he was raging. Raging.
He should have just forgotten all about her. That was what he had told himself over and over on the plane coming back from Italy. He didn’t know what had possessed him to track her down like some kind of amateur sleuth. Because, yes, there were a few questions he would like a few honest answers to—but common sense had told him just to cut his losses and run. She was trouble, and he couldn’t for the life of him work out why.
He should have just posted her the chain and the ring with a cynical note attached saying, ‘Thanks for the memory.’
And left it at that.
But he had been driven by a compulsion to see her again and to challenge her—a compulsion he was certain was driven by nothing more than the fact that she had given him the best sex of his life.
But maybe that had been because she’d been a stranger, not in spite of that fact. Because she’d had no expectations of him. Or any knowledge. She’d judged him as a man—a well-paid employee, true, but not as a man with megabucks. She had responded to him in the most fundamental way possible, and he to her. It had left