London's Eligible Bachelors. Sharon Kendrick
her to be standing half-naked beside him, concentrating fiercely on which numbers his fingers were punching out on the alarm system and not on the delicious lemon and musk scent which drifted from his skin.
‘Now, this key,’ he told her, deliberately leaning a little bit away from her, because it was more than distracting being this close to the butting little swell of her breasts as they jutted against the slippery satin of her robe, ‘is for this lock here. The longer, thicker key…’ Oh, God, he thought despairingly, what was she doing to him? ‘That locks here.’ He swallowed. ‘Got that?’
‘Could you show me again?’ She had hardly heard a thing he was saying, and she wished he would just go. But the last thing she needed was for all his expensive paintings and books and furniture to suddenly ‘walk’—just because she hadn’t had the sense to lock up properly.
‘Do you want me to write it down for you, step by step?’ he questioned sarcastically.
‘That won’t be necessary!’
This time she listened as if her life depended on it.
‘Understand now?’
‘Perfectly, thank you very much.’
He shot a glance at his watch and gave a small click of irritation. ‘You’ve made me late now. I haven’t been late in years.’
‘Well, you could have shown me all this last night, couldn’t you?’
Yeah, he supposed he could have done—it was just that they had opened a bottle of wine during dinner and had then sat and finished it in the sitting room. Bad idea. And Sabrina had kicked her shoes off in front of the fire, perfectly innocuously, but Guy had been riveted by the sight of those spectacularly slender ankles and had found it difficult to tear his eyes away from them. He had never quite understood why the Victorians had considered the ankle such an erogenous zone, but last night the reason had suddenly hit him in a moment of pulse-hammering insight.
He usually did paperwork on Sunday evenings, but last night it had lain neglected. And now he was late.
He glowered. ‘I’ll be home around seven.’
She looked at him expectantly. ‘Will you be eating supper? Or going out?’
He had said that he would meet up for a drink with Philip Caprice—the man who was now working for Prince Raschid—but he couldn’t really leave her alone on her first full day in London, could he?
He sighed. ‘No, I won’t be going out.’
‘Then—’ she suddenly felt ridiculously and utterly shy ‘—maybe I could cook you supper tonight. I’ll buy the food and everything—as I said, that can be my contribution towards my upkeep.’
He hid a smile, unwillingly admiring her persistence, as well as her independence. ‘OK,’ he agreed gravely. He suspected that she would conjure up some bland but rather noble concoction of pulses or brown rice or something. He repressed a shudder. ‘I shall look forward to it.’
After her shower, Sabrina went back to her room to get dressed. At least now it looked slightly better than when she had first arrived. Guy had cleared away the clutter on the desk, and had pushed the filing cabinets back against the wall. The exercise bike had been moved from its inconvenient position located slap-bang in the middle of the room. It could do with some decent curtains, she decided suddenly, instead of those rather stark blinds.
She shook her head at herself in the mirror. She was here on a purely temporary basis—she certainly shouldn’t start thinking major redecoration schemes!
She dressed in black trousers and a warm black sweater and took the tube to where the London branch of Wells was situated, close to St Paul’s Cathedral.
It was an exquisite jewel of a Georgian building, set in the shadow of the mighty church. Sabrina had been there twice while negotiating her transfer and had met the man she would be working for.
Tim Reardon was the archetypal bookshop owner—tall, lean and lanky, with a fall of shiny straight hair which flopped into his eyes most of the time. He was vague, affable, quietly spoken and charmingly polite. He was single, attractive—and the very antithesis of Guy Masters.
And Sabrina could not have gone out with him if he had been the very last man on the planet.
‘Come on in, Sabrina.’ Tim held his hand out and gave her a friendly smile. ‘I’ll make us both coffee and then I’ll show you the set-up.’
‘Thanks.’ She smiled and began to unbutton her coat.
‘Where are you staying?’ he asked, as he hung her coat up for her.
It still made her feel slightly awkward to acknowledge it. ‘In Knightsbridge, actually.’
‘Knightsbridge?’ Tom gave her a curious look which clearly wondered how she could afford to live in such an expensive neighbourhood on her modest earnings.
‘I’m staying with a…friend,’ she elaborated awkwardly.
‘Lucky you,’ he said lightly, but to her relief, he didn’t pursue it.
It was easy to slot in. The shop virtually mirrored its Salisbury counterpart, and after she and Tim had drunk their coffee they set to work, opening the post and filing away all the ordered books which had just come in.
The shop was quiet first thing in the morning, and it wasn’t until just after eleven that the first Cathedral tourists began to drift in, looking for their copies of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen.
During her lunch-hour Sabrina managed to locate a supermarket and rushed round buying ingredients. Never had choosing the right thing proved as taxing. She wanted, she realised, to impress Guy.
When he arrived back home that evening, he walked in on an unfamiliar domestic scene, with smells of cooking wafting towards him and loud music blaring from the kitchen.
He moved through the flat in the direction of the noise, pausing first at the dining-room door, where the table had been very carefully laid for dinner for two.
And when he walked into the kitchen, Sabrina didn’t notice that he was there, not at first. She was picking up something from the floor, her black trousers stretched tightly over the high curve of her bottom, and Guy felt his throat thicken.
‘Hello, Sabrina.’
Half a lemon slid uselessly from her fingers back to the floor as she heard the soft, rich timbre of his voice. She turned round slowly, trying to compose herself, to see him still wearing the beautiful dark suit, the slight shadowing around his chin the only outward sign that twelve hours had elapsed since she had last seen him. Oh, sweet Lord, she thought despairingly. He is gorgeous.
‘Hi!’ she said brightly. ‘Good day at—’
‘The office?’ he put in curtly. ‘Yes, fine, thanks.’
‘Shall I fix you a drink? Or would you prefer to get changed first?’
His mouth tightened. ‘Any minute now and you’re going to offer to bring me my pipe and slippers.’
Sabrina stiffened as she heard his sarcastic tone. ‘I was only trying to be friendly—’
‘As opposed to coming over as a parody of a wife, you mean?’
‘That was certainly not my intention,’ she told him primly.
The glittering grey gaze moved around the room to see that his rather cold and clinical kitchen had suddenly come to life. ‘This looks quite some feast,’ he observed softly.
‘Not really.’ But she blushed with pleasure. ‘And if you’re planning to get out of your best suit, could you, please, do it now, Guy? Because dinner will be ready in precisely five minutes.’
Neglected work. Late. And now she was telling him to get changed!
Guy opened