Bedding His Virgin Mistress. PENNY JORDAN

started to pace the small office. Her childhood had taught her all there was to know about the pain that came with being emotionally rejected. She had fought hard to give herself the protective air of calm self-confidence she projected to others, and for the right to claim their respect. The pathetic, needy child she had once been, desperate for approval and love, had been totally banished, and that was the way Carly intended it to stay.

      So why was she thinking like this? No one was threatening her self-reliance, after all—least of all Ricardo Salvatore, who probably had the same loathing of emotional bondage as she did herself, if for very different reasons.

      CHAPTER THREE

      CARLY checked her watch—Lucy had given both Carly and Jules smart Cartier Tank Francaise watches for Christmas in the first year the business had made a profit—and then bent down and grabbed the handle of her case.

      The car Ricardo Salvatore was sending to pick her up was due to arrive in exactly two minutes’ time. It was time for her to leave.

      She heaved her suitcase off the floor, grimacing a little ruefully as she did so, remembering how Lucy had burst into the office the previous Thursday morning announcing, ‘Oh, my God, Carly—I’ve just realised! There won’t be anything in the Wardrobe that will fit you!’

      The ‘Wardrobe’ was a standing joke between them all, and was in actual fact a small room in Lucy’s parents’ London home which housed the glamorous outfits Lucy and Jules, who were very much the same height and build, wore when they were ‘on duty’ at events.

      The clothes—all designer models—were second hand, surreptitiously trawled from a variety of sources, and the subject of amused speculation between them.

      ‘Just look at this!’ Lucy had marvelled after their last expedition, as she held up what looked like a sequin-covered handkerchief with halter neck straps. ‘Who on earth would buy this?’

      ‘You did,’ Carly had pointed out, laughing.

      ‘Yes, but I only paid fifty pounds for it—it cost over a thousand brand-new.’

      ‘It’s very sexy,’ Jules had pronounced.

      ‘It’s repulsive,’ Carly had criticised. ‘Vulgar and tarty.’

      ‘Mmm…Well, Nick spotted it.’

      But the Wardrobe contained nothing that would fit Carly, and so, that Thursday, Lucy had announced firmly, ‘Come on, Carly. We’ve got to go out on a trawl!’

      Carly had tried to protest and resist, but Jules and Lucy had been insistent.

      The result of their foray into the second-hand shops and market stalls of Lucy’s favourite haunts—which had emptied the clothes budget Carly had so carefully worked out—had been collected from the dry cleaners this morning and were now packed in Carly’s case, along with her own clothes.

      Mentally Carly reviewed them—a white silk trouser suit which Lucy had cooed over, enraptured, pronouncing, ‘Oh, this is so retro—Seventies rock wife! And you’ve got the boobs for it, Carly.’

      Maybe she had, but she certainly wouldn’t be wearing the jacket over bare skin and half open! There were also a couple of evening dresses, both of which were potentially so revealing that Carly had already decided she would be wearing a silk jacket over them.

      She hadn’t been very keen on the designer swimsuit Lucy had found either. It was cut away in so many places that Carly feared it threatened to reveal more of her than the skimpiest of bikinis, but at least it had matching culotte pants and a jacket.

      Her own classic casuals—the simple linen separates she favoured for summer and some up-to-the-minute accessories they had found in the likes of Zara—had all passed Lucy’s inspection and been declared perfect for the events she would be attending.

      Dragging her suitcase behind her, Carly pushed open the door onto the street and stepped out into the late-morning sunshine.

      Ricardo watched her from his vantage point in the back seat of the limo, as the driver moved the car out of the parking bay he had found further up the street.

      Oh, yes, she was a typical example of her upmarket, ‘no expense spared but someone else pays’ lifestyle, Ricardo decided cynically as he watched her. Immaculate white tee shirt, perfectly fitting blue jeans, long shiny hair, minimal make-up, sunglasses, discreetly ‘good’ watch, penny loafers. The too-thin girl in designer clutter who was tottering past her on spindly heels, clutching a weird-looking handbag, couldn’t hold a candle to her. Because Carly had class.

      What would she be like in bed?

      He didn’t intend to let too much time elapse before he found out.

      He thought of another society woman from his youth, one whom he had met when he was growing cynical but not yet completely hardened. Initially he had thought her pretty, but she hadn’t looked very pretty at all when he had flatly refused to meet her escalating demands—especially when he’d discovered they included a wedding ring in exchange for the supposed benefit of marrying into a higher social bracket. He’d told her that he preferred an honest whore.

      Women like her, like Carly, might not openly demand money in return for sex, but what they were looking for was the richest and highest status man they could find—their bodies in exchange for his name.

      It was a trade-off that nauseated him, as did those who participated in it.

      He had no illusions about women or sex. He had lived too long and seen too much for that. His wealth could buy him any woman he wanted, and that included Carly. She had made that plain enough already, with the way she had looked at his mouth.

      She hadn’t even tried to be subtle about it! She had stared openly and brazenly at him. If they hadn’t been in her office it would have been an open invitation to him to push her tee shirt out of the way and free her breasts to spill into his hands so that he could accept their flaunting invitation.

      It had told him that he could have yanked down her jeans and explored and enjoyed her and she would not have said a single word in denial.

      And then in the morning she would no doubt expect to receive her payment—a piece of jewellery, a telephone call from an exclusive shop inviting her to choose herself something expensive…

      That was the way things were done in her world.

      He was wasting too much time on her, he warned himself. His primary reason for what he was doing was the potential acquisition of Prêt a Party, not the inevitable sexual acquisition of Carly Carlisle who, although she did not know it yet, would be one of the first in line to lose her job.

      Carly frowned as the large, elegant steel-grey car drew up alongside her.

      A limo, Lucy had said, and she had pictured a huge, shiny black ostentatious vehicle, not something so supremely understated. But the rear door was opening and Ricardo was getting out.

      ‘Is this all your luggage?’

      She gaped at him as he reached for her case, and then looked uncertainly towards the chauffeur.

      ‘Charles is driving. I am perfectly capable of picking up a case,’ Ricardo told her dryly, following her uncertain look.

      ‘The…my case is heavy,’ she told him, but he ignored her, picked it up and put it in to the boot of the car as if it was as light as a feather pillow.

      He was wearing a black tee shirt and a pair of tan-coloured casual trousers, and the muscles in his arms were hardening as he lifted her case. He looked more like a man who worked outdoors than one who sat at a desk, she acknowledged, unwilling to admit to the response that the sight of him was eliciting from her own body.

      After what had happened when she had given her imagination its head, she was now keeping it on a controlling diet of bread and water, and that meant no thinking about the effect Ricardo could have on her! So he had a good enough body to carry off