London's Eligible Bachelors. Sharon Kendrick
just a minute, I’ll get him for you,’ said Sabrina hastily, but when she looked up it was to find Guy standing in the doorway, his face a dark and daunting study.
Wordlessly, he came and took the phone from her, and Sabrina quickly left the room, but not before she heard his first responses.
‘Hi, Ma. Mmm. Mmm. No, no. No—nothing like that.’
A few minutes later, he came and found her in the kitchen, chopping up her mushrooms.
‘Don’t do that again!’ he warned.
She put the knife down. ‘Do what?’
‘Answer my phone—especially when I’m around.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said stiffly. ‘I didn’t realise I was breaking some unwritten rule, but of course it is your flat.’ His flat, his territory, his control.
But he didn’t appear to be listening. ‘And now my mother’s asking me eight hundred questions about you. Move a woman in and suddenly everyone’s thinking rice and confetti!’
‘Well, I can assure you that I’m not,’ she told him acidly.
‘Me, neither!’ he snapped.
She turned her back on him and heard him go out, slamming the door behind him, and she viciously decapitated a mushroom. He was bad-tempered and unreasonable, she told herself. And she must have been crazy to agree to come here.
Guy walked into the Kensington wine-bar where his friends had been congregating on Friday evenings for as long as he could remember, surveying the dimly lit and crowded room with an unenthusiastic eye. He asked himself why he had bothered to come out to fight his way to the bar for a glass of champagne when he could have drunk something colder and vastly superior at home. And maybe given Sabrina a glass, too.
He shook his head. What the hell was he thinking of? He always went out on a Friday night!
‘Guy!’ called Tom Roberts, from the other side of the room, and Guy forced himself to smile in response as he wove his way through the crowded room.
‘It’s obviously been a bad day!’ joked his cousin, as Guy joined him.
‘On the contrary.’ Guy took the proffered glass of champagne and gave it a thoughtful sip. ‘I think I may have negotiated a deal on that old schoolhouse over by the river. It’s going to make someone a wonderful home.’
‘So why the long face?’ teased Tom.
‘I guess I’m just tired,’ said Guy, and that much was true. Sleep didn’t come easily when all you could think about was moon-pale flesh and banner-bright hair and a naked body in the room just along the corridor.
Tom topped up his glass. ‘So how’s the new flatmate working out?’ he asked casually.
Guy could recognise a leading question when he heard one. ‘Sabrina?’ he stalled, equally casually.
Tom smiled. ‘Unless you’ve moved another one in.’
‘I must have needed my head examined!’ groaned Guy.
‘That bad, is it?’ Tom threw him a sympathetic glance. ‘She seemed sweet.’
‘Yeah, she is.’ Too damned sweet. Sweet as honey. That night in his bed—all clinging and sticky like honey. A honey trap, he thought with a sudden heat, and drained his glass in one. ‘Where’s Trudi tonight?’ he asked.
‘She’s on a sales conference in Brussels,’ explained Tom. ‘She’s not coming back until tomorrow.’
Guy nodded. Good. Good. ‘Fancy going out for a meal in a while?’ he asked.
‘Oh!’ Tom started grinning. ‘Diversionary tactics to keep you out of the flat, you mean?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Guy shrugged.
‘Oh, we’ve all been there, mate,’ said Tom obscurely. ‘There’s bound to be a woman sooner or later who gets underneath your skin. It’s about time it happened to you!’
‘Sorry.’ Guy’s voice was cool but firm. ‘You’ve lost me.’
Tom put his glass down and narrowed his eyes. ‘And you still haven’t told me anything about Sabrina Cooper…’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘The obvious. Like, is she a friend, or is she a lover?’
Guy opened his mouth and then shut it again. What was the point in trying to explain the whole bizarre situation, even to a man who had known him nearly all his life? Sabrina’s reputation wouldn’t emerge from it unscathed. And neither, he realised grimly, would his own.
‘We’re men, Tom,’ he said flippantly, ‘so we never talk about things like that, right?’
In Guy’s high-tech kitchen, Sabrina unenthusiastically cooked her risotto, and then picked at it without interest. She had made plenty. Enough for two…just in case. But Guy still wasn’t back. Should she pop the rest into the fridge and cover it with clingfilm? Or would Guy go mad if she did that? Probably. He’d blanched with horror when she’d suggested frying up some leftover potato for breakfast.
After supper she forced herself to relax in a long, deep bath, and when she came out she looked at the clock to see that it was getting on for ten. So, his ‘quick’ drink was taking longer than he’d anticipated.
She put her bedroom light out and tried to sleep, but sleep infuriatingly refused to protect her with its mantle of oblivion. In the end she gave up trying and snapped on the light and tried reading her book.
‘Tried’ being the operative word. The words danced like tiny black beetles in front of her and all she could think about was that it was now nearly midnight and all the bars would be closed.
And Guy still wasn’t back.
She pulled on her dressing gown and went to pace up and down the sitting room.
By twelve she was getting frantic, and by one she was just about to pick up the phone and call the hospital when she heard the sound of a key being turned in the lock. She flew out into the hall to find Guy with his back to her, shutting the door with exaggerated care and hanging up his overcoat with the other hand.
Sabrina didn’t even stop to think about it. She just blazed right in there. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ she demanded.
He turned round, the grey eyes narrowing to cold chips of slate as he saw Sabrina in her satin dressing gown, her tiny breasts heaving, a look of complete fury on her face. ‘I beg your pardon?’
That frosty little question should have been enough to stop her in her tracks, and normally it would have done, but, then, this didn’t feel normal. None of it did. Surely ‘normal’ would have meant a complete numbing of her senses until she was properly over Michael?
‘You told me you were going out for a quick drink!’ she stormed, her breathing coming through in great ragged bursts.
Guy felt torn between incredulty and irritation. ‘And?’
‘And it wasn’t, was it? Not quick at all. It’s way past midnight—what time do you call this?’
‘It’s none of your damned business what time it is!’ he roared. ‘I’ll live my own life, the way I always have done! I’ll go out when I want and where I want and with whom I want—and I’ll do it without your permission, thank you, princess!’
Through her shuddering breaths Sabrina stared at him, realising just how preposterous she must have sounded. And realising that if she didn’t get away from him pretty quickly, she risked making even more of a fool of herself.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said tightly. ‘I spoke out of turn.’ She half ran along the corridor and into her room and