Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

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       CHAPTER TEN

      ‘SO HOW has your first week been?’

      Guy looked across the sitting room to where Sabrina was curled up like a kitten with a book on her lap—she was always reading, though he noticed that not many pages had been turned in the past hour. Snap, he thought with a grim kind of satisfaction. He hadn’t made many inroads into his own reading.

      Sabrina met the piercing grey gaze and repressed a guilty kind of longing. How could she possibly concentrate on her book when she had such a distraction sitting just across the room from her?

      ‘I’ve enjoyed it,’ she told him truthfully. Well, most of it, anyway. It wasn’t easy being around him, being plagued by memories of a time it was clear that both of them wished forgotten—but at least she had done her utmost not to show it. She forced a smile. ‘How do you rate me as a flatmate?’

      Guy thought about it. She was certainly less intrusive than he would have imagined. She kept out of his way in the mornings. She didn’t drift around the place in bits of provocative clothing—and she didn’t leave panties and tights draped over the radiator, which he understood was one of the major irritations when sharing with a woman.

      ‘Seven out of ten,’ he drawled, his smile not quite easy. ‘And how’s the bookshop surviving with its newest member of staff?’

      Sabrina wished he wouldn’t stretch his legs out like that. ‘The shop is f-fine,’ she stumbled. ‘In fact, it’s very similar to the Salisbury branch—’

      ‘So living in the big city doesn’t scare you, Miss Cooper?’ he mocked softly, cutting right through her stumbled reply.

      ‘I don’t scare easy,’ she said, raising a glittering blue gaze, and thinking that it was all too easy to be scared. Scared of her susceptibility to Guy Masters—especially when he looked at her like that. Scared of what might happen if he should happen to lazily make a pass at her—because surely most men who had already slept with a woman would make a pass. Even if they’d said that they wouldn’t.

      But Guy, of course, hadn’t.

      In fact, he’d spent the last five evenings behaving as though he had a piece of radioactive equipment in the room with him—keeping a wary and observant distance and occasionally glancing her a look from beneath those sensationally long black lashes. But tonight he seemed edgy.

      ‘Do you want to go out for a drink before supper?’ he asked suddenly.

      Sabrina snapped her book shut with nervous fingers. ‘What, now, tonight?’

      He shrugged. ‘It’s Friday night—it’s what people do.’

      Anything would be better than having to spend another whole evening watching while she managed to turn reading a book into a very erotic art form indeed. It was all getting a little too cosy for comfort. And Guy had found that leafing through art-world journals had lost most of its allure when he had the infinitely more distracting vision of Sabrina flicking that bright red-gold hair back over her slim shoulders.

      But it was a challenge he had set himself and Guy thrived on challenges. He was determined to resist her—and resist her he damned well would. Unwittingly he had taken advantage of her once before, but once had been enough. ‘How about it?’ he asked.

      She thought about the fine wines he had crowding the vast rack in the dining room. Maybe he wanted to go out because he was bored, just sitting here alone with her night after night. And it was just politeness which had made him invite her to go with him.

      ‘You go out if you like,’ she offered. ‘I’ll stay in. You don’t have to have me tagging along with you.’

      ‘You can’t sit in here all on your own,’ he objected.

      She forced a smile. It would do her good. After five evenings she was beginning to enjoy his company a little too much. ‘Go on! You go, Guy—I’ll be fine here. I’ll probably have an early night.’

      Guy felt an infuriating urge to stay home, yet he hadn’t been out a single night this week—and this from the man who was the original party animal. ‘Sure?’ he asked reluctantly.

      ‘Who else is going?’

      ‘Tom is, and a couple of guys who work with him. Oh, and I expect that Trudi and Jenna might turn up.’

      Jenna. Sabrina’s smile didn’t slip. ‘I think I’ll pass, if you don’t mind. Honestly, Guy, I’m tired.’

      Guy rose to his feet, strangely reluctant to move. ‘Maybe we should go out for dinner some time?’

      She felt a little stab of pleasure, until she reminded herself that it wasn’t a date. He was simply making sure that she wasn’t bored.

      ‘Dinner?’ she asked casually.

      ‘Yeah. There are a couple of clients I need to take out—you might as well come with me.’

      ‘Oh. Right,’ she said, her heart sinking despite her intention not to let it. No, it definitely wasn’t a date—he couldn’t have phrased it more unflatteringly if he’d tried. The token female at a client dinner!

      He paused by the door and shot her a quick glance. ‘Any plans for tomorrow?’

      ‘Not really. I’m working. I work every third Saturday.’

      He nodded. ‘Me, too. Well, actually, I work most Saturdays.’

      Sabrina stared at him. ‘Why?’

      He frowned. ‘Why what?’

      ‘Why do you work on Saturdays?’ She gave him a slightly waspish smile. He left at the СКАЧАТЬ