‘I can’t talk to you now,’ she stated levelly. ‘I’m working.’
‘Then when?’
‘I don’t know,’ she prevaricated.
The grey eyes narrowed. ‘What time is your lunch-hour?’
‘I don’t usually take lunch.’
‘House rules?’ he drawled.
‘No, my rules,’ she answered stiffly.
‘Then change the rules, baby,’ he commanded, with a cool arrogance which infuriated her almost as much as it reminded her of his consummate mastery in bed. ‘And change them now.’
Sabrina tried to imagine the worst-case scenario. What if she agreed to meet him for lunch—in a city where she had lived all her life and where she was known? She wasn’t the same woman here as he had met in Venice. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But what if he managed to reduce her to that same mindless being who just cried out for his touch?
And it wasn’t difficult to work out how he might go about that. Surely he would only have to take her in his arms again. Just as he’d done before. She couldn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t succumb, and how could she possibly come back in here after that and spend the afternoon working, as if nothing had happened?
‘I eat my lunch here,’ she told him resolutely.
He rubbed a thoughtful forefinger over his chin, and the movement was accompanied by the unconscious thrust of his hips. ‘Then I guess I’ll just wait here until you’ve finished,’ he told her softly, and then deliberately raised his voice. ‘Perhaps you could point me to the section on erotic literature?’
‘Don’t you dare—’
‘Is something wrong, Sabrina?’ Paul came through from the storeroom, pushing his spectacles to the back of his nose, looking with distrust at the tall, dark man who was towering over his assistant’s desk.
Sabrina sent a look of appeal up at Guy but was met with nothing but an uncompromising glitter. She knew then that he wouldn’t be going anywhere until he got what he’d come for. And that there was no way she could get out of this meeting. She swallowed down her reservations and forced a brittle smile.
‘Guy is a friend…’ She hesitated on the inappropriate word before continuing, seeing the brief, hard twist of his mouth as he registered it, too. ‘A friend of mine. Who has dropped into town unexpectedly—’
Guy fixed Paul with a bland smile. ‘And I was hoping to persuade her to come to lunch with me, but—’
‘Well, we usually eat a sandwich here—but you go to lunch if you want, Sabrina!’ said Paul immediately. ‘It’ll make a nice change.’
Sabrina shook her head and sent Guy a furious look. How dared he be so manipulative in order to get his own way? ‘No, thanks, Paul. I’ve agreed to meet Guy…after work.’ She managed to get the words out—even though they almost choked her in the process.
‘Yes, she has. I can hardly wait.’ Guy gave her another wintry smile, but the hungry look of intent which had darkened his eyes told its own story. ‘I’m taking you out for dinner, Sabrina.’
That was what he thought! ‘Just a drink will be fine,’ she said stiffly. ‘My mother will be expecting me home for supper.’
‘Your mother?’ A frown of disbelief criss-crossed his forehead. Surely she didn’t still live with her mother?
Sabrina read the disappointment in his eyes, and pride and fury warred inside her like a bubbling cauldron. What had he expected? A reenactment of that night in Venice? A half-finished meal and she would fall back into bed with him?
‘Yes,’ she said, with a demure flutter of her eyelashes. ‘I live with my mother.’
‘And what time do you finish?’
‘Five-thirty.’
‘I’ll be here,’ he promised, on a note of silky threat. ‘Waiting.’
‘I’ll look forward to it,’ she responded furiously.
Guy forced himself to give his cool, polite smile as he left the shop. But inside he was raging. Raging.
He should have just forgotten all about her. That was what he had told himself over and over on the plane coming back from Italy. He didn’t know what had possessed him to track her down like some kind of amateur sleuth. Because, yes, there were a few questions he would like a few honest answers to—but common sense had told him just to cut his losses and run. She was trouble, and he couldn’t for the life of him work out why.
He should have just posted her the chain and the ring with a cynical note attached saying, ‘Thanks for the memory.’
And left it at that.
But he had been driven by a compulsion to see her again and to challenge her—a compulsion he was certain was driven by nothing more than the fact that she had given him the best sex of his life.
But maybe that had been because she’d been a stranger, not in spite of that fact. Because she’d had no expectations of him. Or any knowledge. She’d judged him as a man—a well-paid employee, true, but not as a man with megabucks. She had responded to him in the most fundamental way possible, and he to her. It had left him shaken, seeking some kind of explanation which would enable him to let the memory go.
She had been honest and open and giving in his bed—so why the secrets? The hidden chain and a ring which was almost certainly an engagement ring. Why the sudden and dramatic 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