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

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      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 softly.

      Like two condemned prisoners eating a last meal, they both silently spooned the crayfish into their mouths. It was fine food, meant to be savoured and enjoyed, but they both ate it quickly, without tasting it. In fact, Guy only just refrained from shovelling it down as if he were on a ten-minute lunch-break.

      Sabrina wondered why she didn’t feel shy. Or embarrassed. Why being with Guy in an atmosphere so tense with expectation seemed to feel so right. Something she needed more than anything in the world. She put her knife and fork down with a shaky hand and saw that Guy had mirrored her movements.

      ‘Shall I call for the bill?’ he queried.

      She forced herself to try and respond normally, even though she knew what he meant by his question. ‘Don’t you want dessert? Or coffee?’

      His mouth curved. He heard the delicious thunder of the inevitable. ‘I thought we could try somewhere else for coffee.’

      ‘Yes,’ she agreed with nervous excitement, because she knew exactly what he meant—and wouldn’t a well-brought up girl be frightened by that? Or outraged? ‘I guess we could.’

      In a daze she allowed him to drape the wrap around her shoulders, feeling the negligent brush of his fingertips against her bare flesh as he did so, and she felt the breath catch in her throat like dust.

      He took her by the hand and led her outside into the starry night, looking down at her with soft, silver light gleaming from his eyes.

      ‘You’re shivering,’ he observed quietly, tracing a thoughtful fingertip down the slim, pale column of her neck and seeing her tremble even more. ‘Again.’

      ‘Y-yes.’

      He took his jacket off and draped it around her shoulders; the broad cut of it almost swamped her slender frame. ‘Here, take this…’

      ‘You’ll get cold yourself,’ she objected.

      ‘I don’t think there’s any danger of that,’ he said softly, and, sliding his arms around her waist, he bent his head to kiss her.

      Her heart was blazing as her mouth parted to meet the first sweet touch of his lips. She ignored the half-hearted voice of her conscience telling her to stop this, because who could have stopped this?

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