London's Eligible Bachelors: The Unlikely Mistress. Sharon Kendrick

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      ‘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 would you like to go?’ she questioned.

      ‘You live here.’ He shrugged. ‘How the hell should I know?’

      ‘I meant do you just want coffee—or a drink?’

      He remembered that night in Venice and the lack of interest with which he’d greeted the wine. Yet tonight he could have willingly sunk a bucketful of liquor. ‘A drink,’ he said abruptly.

      Me, too, she thought as she led the way across a cobbled courtyard to one of the city’s oldest pubs.

      Inside, a log fire blazed at each end of the bar and the warmth hit her like a blanket.

      ‘Go and find a seat,’ he instructed tersely. ‘What do you want to drink?’

      ‘B-brandy.’ She shivered violently, despite the heat of the room.

      She found a table far away from the others. She suspected that their conversation wouldn’t be for general consumption. Then she slipped her coat off and sat there waiting for him, her knees glued primly together—like a girl who had just been to deportment lessons.

      He brought two large brandies over to the table and sat down opposite her, aware of the way that she shrank back when their knees brushed.

      ‘Oh? So shy, Sabrina? Don’t like me touching you?’ He held his glass up in a mocking toast. ‘Isn’t that a little like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted? You weren’t so shy in my bed, were you, my beauty?’

      She gulped down some brandy, the liquid burning welcome fire down her throat, and her cheeks flushed with indignant heat. ‘Did you bring me here just so you could insult me?’ she demanded. ‘Is that what you’d like, Guy?’

      He shook his dark head and sipped his own drink more sparingly, surveying her over the rim of his glass with eyes which gave nothing away. ‘Not at all.’ But he bit back the unexpectedly explicit comment about what he would like.

      She put the glass down, feeling slightly dizzy with the impact of the burning liquor on an empty stomach. ‘What, then?’

      He dipped his hand deep into his trouser pocket, aware that her eyes instinctively followed the movement. Aware, too, that she certainly wasn’t immune to him either. He watched with fascination as her eyes darkened and he could sense that she was resisting the desire to run her tongue over her lips.

      ‘Recognise this?’ he asked casually, as he withdrew the thin gold chain with the pretty little ring and dropped it on the polished surface of the table in front of her.

      Sabrina’s heart pounded with guilt and shame. ‘Don’t insult me even more by asking me questions like that!’ she said bitterly. ‘Of course I recognise it! It’s mine—you know it’s mine! I left it in your bedroom!’

      It lay like an omen before them.

      ‘Then why hide it from me?’

      She opened her mouth to deny it, but could not. He knew. He was an intelligent man. She was cornered, and she reacted in the same way that all trapped creatures reacted. She attacked. ‘You lied to me, too!’ she accused.

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