London's Eligible Bachelors. Sharon Kendrick

exit—like something out of a bad movie?

      Guy walked around Salisbury dodging the showers—but not dodging them accurately enough. So that by the time he arrived at Wells Bookstore at twenty-five minutes past five his thick, ruffled hair was sprinkled with raindrops which glittered like tears amidst the ebony waves.

      Sabrina glanced up from her desk and her heart caught in her throat at the sight of his rain-soaked frame. He would, she thought, be all too easy to fall in love with. Women must fall in love with him all the time. Leave me alone, Guy Masters, she urged him silently. Go away and leave me alone.

      Paul, who was standing a little space away, followed the troubled direction of her eyes.

      ‘Your friend is waiting,’ he said carefully. ‘You’d better go.’

      Sabrina turned to him, her eyes beseeching him. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

      Paul shrugged. ‘It’s not my place to say anything about your private life, Sabrina—but it is very soon after Michael, isn’t it? Just take it easy, that’s all.’

      Guilt smote at her with a giant hand. ‘He’s just a friend.’

      Paul gave her an awkward smile. ‘Sure he is,’ he said, as though he didn’t quite believe her. ‘Look, it’s none of my business.’

      ‘No.’ She picked up her coat from the hook. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Paul. Goodnight.’

      Through the window Guy watched her shrugging her raincoat on, unable to stop himself from marvelling at the innate grace of her movements. She moved like a dream, he thought—all long, slender limbs and that bright, shiny hair shimmering like sunlight in the grey of the rainy afternoon.

      He remembered the way she had straddled him, her pale, naked thighs on either side of his waist, and he felt the first uncomfortable stirrings of desire—until he reminded himself that that was not why he was here.

      Sabrina pushed the door open and thought how chilly Guy’s grey eyes looked, and how unsmiling his mouth. She told herself that this would be one short evening to get through and then she need never see him again. He had lied to her, she told herself bitterly.

      ‘Where would you like to go?’ she questioned.

      ‘You live here.’ He shrugged. ‘How the hell should I know?’

      ‘I meant do you just want coffee—or a drink?’

      He remembered that night in Venice and the lack of interest with which he’d greeted the wine. Yet tonight he could have willingly sunk a bucketful of liquor. ‘A drink,’ he said abruptly.

      Me, too, she thought as she led the way across a cobbled courtyard to one of the city’s oldest pubs.

      Inside, a log fire blazed at each end of the bar and the warmth hit her like a blanket.

      ‘Go and find a seat,’ he instructed tersely. ‘What do you want to drink?’

      ‘B-brandy.’ She shivered violently, despite the heat of the room.

      She found a table far away from the others. She suspected that their conversation wouldn’t be for general consumption. Then she slipped her coat off and sat there waiting for him, her knees glued primly together—like a girl who had just been to deportment lessons.

      He brought two large brandies over to the table and sat down opposite her, aware of the way that she shrank back when their knees brushed.

      ‘Oh? So shy, Sabrina? Don’t like me touching you?’ He held his glass up in a mocking toast. ‘Isn’t that a little like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted? You weren’t so shy in my bed, were you, my beauty?’

      She gulped down some brandy, the liquid burning welcome fire down her throat, and her cheeks flushed with indignant heat. ‘Did you bring me here just so you could insult me?’ she demanded. ‘Is that what you’d like, Guy?’

      He shook his dark head and sipped his own drink more sparingly, surveying her over the rim of his glass with eyes which gave nothing away. ‘Not at all.’ But he bit back the unexpectedly explicit comment about what he would like.

      She put the glass down, feeling slightly dizzy with the impact of the burning liquor on an empty stomach. ‘What, then?’

      He dipped his hand deep into his trouser pocket, aware that her eyes instinctively followed the movement. Aware, too, that she certainly wasn’t immune to him either. He watched with fascination as her eyes darkened and he could sense that she was resisting the desire to run her tongue over her lips.

      ‘Recognise this?’ he asked casually, as he withdrew the thin gold chain with the pretty little ring and dropped it on the polished surface of the table in front of her.

      Sabrina’s heart pounded with guilt and shame. ‘Don’t insult me even more by asking me questions like that!’ she said bitterly. ‘Of course I recognise it! It’s mine—you know it’s mine! I left it in your bedroom!’

      It lay like an omen before them.

      ‘Then why hide it from me?’

      She opened her mouth to deny it, but could not. He knew. He was an intelligent man. She was cornered, and she reacted in the same way that all trapped creatures reacted. She attacked. ‘You lied to me, too!’ she accused.

      His eyes narrowed. ‘When?’

      ‘You implied that you were employed by the company—you didn’t tell me you owned it!’

      He nodded and his eyes took on a hard, bright glitter. ‘Yes, I heard about your discussion with Prince Raschid’s emissary.’

      ‘She insulted me!’

      ‘So I believe.’ His lips flattened into a forbidding line.

      ‘She was jealous,’ said Sabrina slowly, as she recognised now the emotion which had made the woman’s voice so brittle. ‘Jealous that I was in your bedroom.’

      ‘Yes.’ His gaze didn’t waver.

      ‘Have you slept with her, too?’

      ‘That’s none of your business!’ he snapped, but something about the dark horror written in her eyes made him relent. ‘Of course I haven’t slept with her! She’s a business acquaintance I’ve met on barely half a dozen occasions!’

      ‘And you met me once,’ said Sabrina hollowly.

      ‘That’s different!’ But he didn’t pause to ask himself why.

      ‘So why did you lie to me about owning the company?’

      He paused deliberately and met her eyes with a bitter challenge. ‘I wanted to be sure that it was me you were turned on by, and not all the trappings.’

      ‘As though I’m some kind of cheap little gold-digger, you mean?’ Sabrina glared at him. ‘And you lied to me about when you were leaving Venice, too!’ she accused.

      He raised a dark, arrogant eyebrow. ‘Did I?’

      ‘You know you did! You told me you were staying for a few days, yet the airport said you had a flight booked out that afternoon!’

      He gave her a look of barely concealed impatience. ‘Oh, that!’ he said dismissively. ‘So what? Flights can usually be changed.’

      ‘And if they can’t?’ she challenged.

      ‘Then you buy another ticket.’ His eyes glittered. ‘A small price to pay under the circumstances.’

      The cool, arrogant statement told her in no uncertain terms his true opinion of her, and Sabrina stared at him with hurt and anger in her eyes. ‘These particular circumstances being sex with a stranger, you mean?’

      He smiled. He certainly preferred her fighting and spitting to that lost look of despair she’d worn when they’d first walked in here.