London's Eligible Bachelors. Sharon Kendrick

Sabrina was here. Her hair was all caught back in a smooth pleat at the back of her head and he wanted to reach out and tumble it all the way down her back.

      ‘You look beautiful,’ he said slowly.

      The way he was looking at her made her feel beautiful. She savoured the compliment, held onto it and tried it out in her mind. ‘Why, thank you,’ she said demurely.

      ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’ He couldn’t believe he’d just said that either. Hadn’t the hard lessons of his childhood meant that he’d spent his whole life striving for some kind of invulnerability?

      ‘I nearly didn’t.’ Oh, God, she thought, please don’t ask me why. Because I might just have to tell you that I knew, if I came, where I might end up spending the night.

      ‘What changed your mind?’

      ‘I was hungry.’

      He laughed as the waiter came over with the menus, and Sabrina took hers with hands which had begun to tremble. She wondered whether Guy had noticed.

      He had. But he hadn’t needed to see her fingers shaking to know that she was working herself up to a fever pitch of sexual excitement which almost matched his own. That was evident enough from the soft line of colour which suffused the high curve of her cheekbones and the hectic glitter of her eyes. The way her lips looked all swollen and pouting, parting moistly of their own volition, the rosy pink tip of her tongue peeping through. And the way the buds of her tiny breasts pushed like metal studs against the silvery silk of her gown.

      His grey eyes glittered into hers as she stared unseeingly at the menu. ‘Want me to order for you?’

      Strange she should be so grateful for a question which would normally have left her open-mouthed with indignation. ‘Yes, please.’

      His eyes scanned the menu uninterestedly. About the only things he felt like eating right now were oysters, followed by a great big dish of dark, juicy cherries—and it didn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to work out why that was.

      Guy shifted his chair a little, relieved that the heavy white damask of the tablecloth concealed the first heavy throbbing of desire. Another first, he thought wryly, unable to remember a time when he’d been so exquisitely aroused by a woman without any touch being involved.

      He ordered Brodetto di pesce followed by moleche. Dessert he would take an option on. He had his own ideas for dessert…

      The waiter brought over a bottle of the bone-dry Breganze bianco, but Sabrina felt intoxicated just by the lazy promise of his smile.

      ‘I don’t know if I need any wine,’ she admitted.

      ‘Me neither.’ He shrugged, but he poured them half a glass each and signalled for some water.

      Sabrina sipped at her drink, feeling suddenly shy, not daring to look up, afraid of what she would see in the grey dazzle of his eyes. Or what he might read in hers…

      ‘You know, we’ve spent nearly the whole day together—and I don’t know a single thing about you,’ he observed softly. ‘I’m not used to women being quite so mysterious.’

      Sabrina put her glass down. Here it came. The getting-to-know-you talk. A talk she most emphatically did not want to have. She’d been touched by a tragedy which had left her tainted, simply by association. People treated you differently once they found out and she didn’t want Guy to treat her differently. She wanted him to carry on exactly as he was.

      She forced a lightness into her voice. ‘What exactly do you want to know?’

      Guy narrowed his eyes. Women usually loved talking about themselves. Give them an opener like that and you couldn’t shut them up for hours. ‘It isn’t supposed to be an interrogation session,’ he informed her softly, and then he leaned across the table, dark mischief dancing in his eyes. ‘Why? Have you got some dark, guilty secret you’re keeping from me, Sabrina? Don’t tell me—in real life you’re a lap-dancer?’

      His outrageous question lifted some of the tension, and Sabrina found herself smiling back. ‘Much more exciting than that! I work in a bookshop, actually,’ she confided, and waited for his reaction.

      ‘A bookshop?’ he repeated slowly.

      ‘That’s right.’ Now it was her turn for mischief. ‘You know. They sell those things consisting of pages glued together along one side and bound—’

      ‘And why,’ he said, with a smile playing at the corners of his lips, ‘do you work in a bookshop?’

      She took a sip of her wine. ‘Oh, all the usual reasons—I love books. I’m a romantic. I have a great desire to exist on low wages. Do you want me to go on?’

      ‘All night,’ he murmured. ‘All night.’ But then their fish soup arrived and Guy stared at his darkly, wishing that he had known her longer. Wishing that she was already his lover so that he could have suggested that they leave the food untouched and just go straight home to bed. ‘And where exactly is this bookshop?’

      Sabrina nibbled at a piece of bread. ‘In Salisbury. Right next to the Cathedral. Do you know it?’

      ‘Nope. I’ve never been there,’ he said thoughtfully.

      She studied the curved dip at the centre of his upper lip and shamelessly found herself wanting to run her tongue along its perfect outline. ‘How about you? Where do you live? What kind of work do you do?’ She thought of the man she had first seen, in jeans and T-shirt. ‘It must be something pretty high-powered for your company to pay for a hotel like that.’

      Guy hesitated. When people said that money talked, they didn’t realise that it also swore. It sounded ridiculous to consider yourself as being too highly paid, but he’d long ago realised that wealth had drawbacks all of its own. And when you were deemed rich—in a world where money was worshipped more than any of the more traditional gods—then lots of people wanted to know you for all the wrong reasons.

      Not that he would have put Sabrina into that category. But he liked the sweet, unaffected way she was with him. He hadn’t been treated as an equal for a very long time. And if he started hinting at just how much he was really worth, might she not be slightly overawed?

      ‘Oh, I’m just a wheeler-dealer,’ he shrugged.

      ‘And what does a wheeler-dealer do?’

      He smiled. ‘A bit of everything. I buy and sell. Property. Art. Sometimes even cars. Houses occasionally.’ But there was no disguising the dismissiveness in his voice as he topped her wine up. ‘All pretty boring stuff. Finish your soup.’

      ‘I have finished.’

      She’d barely touched it, he noticed as the waiter removed their plates—but, then, neither had he. And he was still aroused. So aroused that…

      Sabrina saw the dark colour which had flared over his cheekbones and suddenly she felt weak. Across the table they stared at one another, and the sounds of the other diners retreated so that they might have been alone in the crowded room.

      ‘G-Guy,’ she stumbled, through the ragged movement of her breathing.

      ‘What is it?’ he murmured.

      ‘The waiter is w-waiting to give us our main course.’

      Guy looked up to find the waiter standing beside the table, holding two plates containing crayfish and barely able to contain his smile.

      ‘Grazie,’ said Guy tightly.

      ‘Prego.’ The waiter grinned.

      Sabrina smoothed her fingers over her flushed cheeks. She didn’t speak until the waiter was out of earshot. ‘Did you see his face?’ she whispered.

      ‘We’re in Italy,’ he remarked, with a shrug. ‘They’re used to couples displaying…’ he lingered over a wholly inappropriate word ‘…affection. Now eat your crayfish,’ he urged