London's Eligible Bachelors. Sharon Kendrick

was as different from his suite in Venice as it could have been—clean and middle-of-the-road, with a mass of chintz and swagged fabrics—and Sabrina heaved a small sigh of relief. She certainly didn’t need reminders in the way of vast, luxuriously appointed beds or priceless paintings.

      She flopped down onto the flower-sprigged duvet and heaved a sigh of relief.

      Guy stood beside the bed, looking down at her, his face impenetrable as a disturbing thought nagged at his conscience. ‘So why the hell did you faint?’

      Reproach sparked from her eyes. ‘Why do you think I fainted, Guy? Don’t you imagine that the things you accused me of would make most women feel ill?’

      But he shook his head. ‘Harsh words are not normally enough to make a healthy young woman pass out.’ His eyes threw her a cold, challenging glitter. ‘You’re not pregnant by any chance, are you?’

      She supposed that he had every right to ask her, but that didn’t make answering any easier. Especially not when the look of abject horror on his face told her exactly what he would think of that particular development.

      ‘No, I’m not.’ She lifted her head. ‘And please don’t imply that that was something in my game plan. We took precautions, remember?’

      He wished she hadn’t reminded him, though maybe he only had himself to blame—he had been the one who had brought the subject up. But her defiant words only painted the most gloriously explicit picture of the way she had made the putting on of those damned condoms into some of the single most erotic moments of his life.

      He forced himself to express the harsh truth. ‘And precautions fail. Everyone knows that.’

      Sabrina stared at him as life and energy began to warm their way around her veins once more. And anger. ‘Then you should have given more thought to that before we made love, shouldn’t you?’

      ‘Yes,’ he said bitterly. ‘Maybe I should—only I wasn’t thinking too straight at the time.’

      ‘And just how would you be coping now if I told you that, yes, I was pregnant?’

      He glittered her a chilly look. ‘I’m in the fortunate position of being able to support a child—’

      ‘Financially, you mean?’ she challenged. ‘Certainly not emotionally, by the sound of it.’

      ‘Anyway, you’re not pregnant, are you, Sabrina?’ he snapped. ‘So it’s academic!’

      But the nagging and worrying thought was that she could have allowed herself to get pregnant, and then never seen him again. Because Guy was right. Precautions did fail. Yet falling pregnant had been the very last thing on her mind. ‘Maybe we both acted like the world’s two biggest fools!’

      He didn’t agree with her blurted declaration, just continued to subject her to a cool, steady scrutiny. ‘So, if pregnancy is not the reason for you fainting, what else could it be? Have you been eating properly?’

      ‘I…yes…no,’ she admitted eventually. ‘Not really.’

      ‘For how long?’ he clipped out.

      ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? Since Michael died, I guess.’

      Guy felt the flicker of a muscle at his cheek, unprepared for the sharp kick of unreasonable jealousy. So the fiancé had had a name, had he? ‘And how long ago was that?’

      There was no way to answer other than truthfully, but mentally Sabrina prepared herself for his disapproval. ‘Four months,’ she told him baldly.

      There was silence. ‘Four months?’ he said heavily, as though he must have misheard her.

      She didn’t look away. ‘That’s right. I expect I’ve shocked you,’ she said. ‘Haven’t I?’

      He gave a bitter laugh. ‘One way and another, I’ve done a pretty good job of shocking myself lately.’ Four months? His mouth hardened. It threw what had happened into a completely different perspective. He had wondered about her spectacular and uninhibited response in his arms.

      So had he just been a substitute for the man who had died? A warm, living body filling her and reminding her of what life should be?

      ‘You didn’t waste much time, did you?’ he said flatly.

      ‘And here comes the condemnation,’ she said in a low voice.

      ‘It was an observation.’ He walked over to study an unimaginative little hunting print and resisted the temptation to punch his fist against the flowered wallpaper. When he turned around to face her, Sabrina could see the fire and the fury that sparked from his eyes. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me about it before?’

      She bit her lip, willing her eyes not to fill with tears. ‘Why do you think?’ she said tremulously, before she had had time to think it through.

      Guy stilled, his eyes narrowing perceptively. ‘Because I wouldn’t have made love to you,’ he said slowly. ‘Because even if it had killed me—’ and he suspected that it might have gone some way towards doing that ‘—there is no way that I would have taken a vulnerable woman to bed and seduced her over and over again! But you wanted me badly, didn’t you, Sabrina?’ he concluded arrogantly. ‘So much that you weren’t prepared to risk not getting what you wanted! That’s why you didn’t tell me!’

      Sabrina shook her head, and it felt as though it were filled with lead. ‘You wanted it, too.’ She bit her lip guiltily. ‘You make me sound passive—and I wasn’t. We both know that. We both wanted it…’

      ‘Badly,’ he put in softly, seeing the answering colour which flooded her cheeks. ‘Very, very badly. Yes, we did.’ He shook his head in a gesture which was the closest he had ever come to confusion. ‘The question is why we both wanted it—so much that it drove reason and sane behaviour clean away.’

      ‘We were sexually attracted,’ she said shakily. But it had been much more than that. She forced herself to forget the warm glow of recognition she had experienced the very first time she had set eyes on him. As if she had known him all her life. Or longer. She stared at his handsome face and tried to sound coolly logical. ‘I’m sure that kind of thing happens to you all the time, Guy.’

      He shook his head in anger. ‘But that’s just the point, dammit—it doesn’t! Oh…’ He shrugged as he saw her disbelieving face. ‘Women come on to me all the time, sure…’

      Sabrina’s smile turned into a grimace, wondering if he had any idea how much he had just insulted her.

      ‘But usually it leaves me cold,’ he reflected thoughtfully. ‘I haven’t had casual sex since I was a teenager.’ And never like that, he thought achingly. Never like that.

      Sabrina flinched. ‘I don’t remember coming on to you,’ she objected, but more out of a sense of pride than conviction. ‘I thought it was you coming on to me!’

      He threw her a look of mocking query. ‘It was pretty mutual, Sabrina. You’re not going to deny that, are you?’

      No, she wasn’t going to deny it. She looked down at her lap, as if the knotted fingers lying there would provide some kind of inspiration.

      ‘I’m still waiting for an answer, princess.’

      The resolve which had deepened his voice made Sabrina frown at him in alarm. ‘That sounded like a threat!’

      He shook his head. ‘Of course it isn’t a threat,’ he said patiently. ‘But surely you aren’t deluding yourself that we don’t need to talk about what happened.’

      She bit her trembling lip. ‘C-can’t we just call it history, and forget it ever happened?’ she croaked.

      ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘Of course we can’t. I think you owe me some sort of explanation, Sabrina.’

      ‘I owe you nothing!’