‘Oh, God. Oh, no! I didn’t think …”
‘OK. Don’t panic. Let’s be rational about this. First you have to take everything out of the bag.’
‘Everything out,’ repeated Tamsin desperately, pulling out armfuls of cashmere and wool and trying not to cry. ‘OK. Now wh—?’
She stopped suddenly as she heard the sound of a car engine in the mews below.
He wasn’t due for another fifteen minutes yet, and surely he wouldn’t be so inconsiderate as to—?
A door slammed. Footsteps echoed on the frosty pavement.
‘Oh, Serena. He’s here,’ she whimpered into the phone as the doorbell rang. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘OK,’ said Serena urgently. ‘You’re going to be cool and professional. You’re going to bear in mind at all times that he is absolutely not to be trusted, and most importantly of all—’ the doorbell rang again ‘—you are not going to sleep with him.’ She sighed. ‘But first, you’re going to let him in.’
‘Finally.’ Alejandro walked past her into the narrow hallway and looked around with barely concealed impatience. ‘I was just about to leave. I assumed you’d had second thoughts.’
‘About such a—what was it?—generous opportunity to prove myself?’ Tamsin said sweetly. ‘Now why would I do that?’
‘You tell me,’ he replied with heavy irony. ‘Are you ready?’
She was halfway up the narrow stairs. ‘Nope. Come up.’
Gritting his teeth in irritation, Alejandro followed her, trying not to look at her rear in the skinny black jeans she wore.
‘This better not take long. My driver’s waiting.’
‘Really?’ she said lightly. ‘Can you drive to Argentina? I thought we’d be going by plane.’
He found himself in a large living space with windows all along one wall and warm old pine floorboards. There was a kitchen area at one end with peacock-blue cupboards and an enormous French baker’s rack groaning under the weight of china and pans. The other end was taken up with a huge sofa upholstered in shocking pink brocade and a white furry rug. The whole space was painted in a creamy off-white, and even on the greyest winter morning it was airy and bright.
It was also incredibly messy.
‘Have you been burgled, or is it always like this?’ he asked, looking around. On the table beside the telephone was a pile of unopened brown envelopes, many of them printed in red and marked ‘urgent’.
Stepping over piles of clothes, magazines, discarded shoes and scraps of fabric, he made his way to the door through which Tamsin had just disappeared and felt a dart of heat as he realised it was her bedroom.
‘No, and no,’ she said haughtily, picking up an armful of bulky winter clothes and shoving them into the bottom drawer of an enormous old armoire. ‘It’s like this because some annoying person forced me to travel halfway across the world at a moment’s notice, and then arrived early to pick me up.’
Alejandro glanced at his watch. ‘Ten minutes. That’s hardly early. I assumed you would have packed last night.’
‘Oh, did you?’ she snapped. ‘Well, I think that’s one of the many things I find annoying about you, Alejandro. You have no right to assume anything. How do you know that I didn’t have other plans last night? Why should I turn my life upside down and cancel everything when you snap your fingers?’
Without letting a flicker of the emotion that suddenly licked up through him at the thought of what her ‘other plans’ for last night had been, Alejandro bent down and picked up a scrap of fuchsia-pink silk from the floor beside the bed and held it up. It was a suspender belt.
‘It doesn’t look as if you cancelled anything last night,’ he said sardonically, feeling a twist of grim satisfaction as he watched her eyes widen in outrage. For a moment she stared mutely at him as he turned the delicate band of silk and lace around in his hands before tossing it casually onto the bed.
‘If you must know I spent last night in my design studio, alone, getting together all the stuff I need to bring with me for work. That’s why I haven’t had time to tidy up, or pack, because that’s why I thought you’d hired me—to design your rugby strip for you. If you’d wanted someone with the domestic skills of Snow White, you should have gone to Disneyland.’
She had a point. Maybe he should have, because from what he’d found out last night it seemed likely that Snow White would be about as capable of designing sportswear as Lady Tamsin Calthorpe, and would probably be a lot less scared of hard work.
Leaning against the doorframe, Alejandro shoved his hands into his pockets and watched her thoughtfully. He knew from the press conference yesterday when she had so convincingly denied that there had been any problems with the production of the shirts that she was a virtuoso liar. In fact, identifying when she was telling the truth and when she was making it up was going to be very entertaining. The flight to Buenos Aires was fifteen hours. A challenge like that would pass the time nicely.
He sighed impatiently, letting his gaze wander around the room. The bed was an old Edwardian brass one, piled high with lace pillows and silk cushions, both its head- and-foot-boards draped with sequined scarves, bead necklaces and bras. The intimate femininity of the place made him uncomfortable. It reminded him of things that he’d resolved to forget. A bottle of perfume on the antique dressing-table instantly brought back the warm, fresh scent of her body; a lidless lipstick beside it conjured an image in his mind of her lips, plump and pink in the moments before he’d kissed her, engorged with desire and scarlet with his own blood as he’d pulled away.
Levering himself away from the doorway in one sharp, aggressive movement, he crossed impatiently to the window. ‘I suppose it’s pointless telling you to hurry up.’
Tamsin gritted her teeth and very deliberately carried on folding the long linen shirt on the bed. ‘If you helped it would be quicker,’ she said with exaggerated patience. ‘Or is helping anyone an entirely alien concept?’
Alejandro turned round. ‘It depends,’ he said slowly in a voice that dripped acid, ‘whether the person you help is then going to claim they did it all themselves.’
The barb found its mark with cruel accuracy. Tamsin bit back a small gasp of pain and grabbed another plain-white linen shirt from the wardrobe, followed by a faded pair of cutoff jeans and an Indian-print tunic top. ‘Forget it,’ she muttered through clenched teeth. ‘Just don’t bother.’
‘Don’t forget this.’ Alejandro picked up the suspender belt from where he’d thrown it on the bed and held it out to her. His eyes glittered with malicious amusement. Tamsin snatched it and shoved it viciously back in the drawer.
‘I don’t think I’ll be needing that,’ she said icily, gathering up a pale-blue satin bra and another one in pink candy-striped silk and throwing them in on top of the suspender belt. ‘Or these. It’s work, remember, Alejandro. I thought we made that perfectly clear.’
Ostentatiously she pulled out three pairs of plain-white cotton knickers, and a white cotton bra and, casting a defiant glance at Alejandro, threw them into the bag. Then she zipped it up.
‘There. I’m done.’
‘That’s all you’re taking?’
She saw him glance incredulously down at the bag, and shrugged nonchalantly to cover up her own sense of unease. Half an hour earlier it had been bursting at the seams, now it was half empty. But having Mr Disapproving there had really cramped her style. There was no way she was going to let him watch her pack anything that could remotely be considered frivolous or alluring.
‘I think it’s enough, since I don’t intend to