The Parenti Marriage: The Reluctant Surrender. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ needed someone else’s input and advice, she decided, making up her mind. Through the plate glass that fronted all the mezzanine offices she was delighted to spot Moira, putting on her suit jacket and preparing to leave. It had been a warm day for mid-April, with the sun streaming in through the windows, and Giselle had removed her own jacket to work more easily. She looked hesitantly at it, and then, seeing Moira heading for the door, scooped up the papers from the desk instead and hurried to intercept her.

      ‘From what you’ve told me, I rather think this is something you need to discuss with Saul,’ Moira judged firmly, once Giselle had reached the end of her story.

      ‘I know he isn’t due back until tomorrow, and I expect he’ll have a full diary. Perhaps you…?’ Giselle began, only to have Moira shake her head.

      ‘He’s actually just arrived and he’s in his office,’ she told her. ‘Why don’t you go and have a word with him now?’

      Giselle’s heart sank. This wasn’t what she had expected or wanted to hear.

      Witnessing her hesitation and reluctance, Saul’s PA insisted, ‘I really do think you should, Giselle. This sounds like a potentially serious matter to me, and Saul won’t thank you for delaying informing him about it.’ Moira looked at her watch. ‘I’m sorry—I must run. I’ve promised to take the notes for a committee meeting of our Gardening Club this evening, and I mustn’t be late. But I know Saul’s planning to work late, and I can assure you that he will want to know what you’ve just told me. That’s why you’re here after all.’

      It was too late now to wish that she’d kept quiet and not sought Moira’s advice. Taking a deep breath, Giselle headed towards Saul’s office.

      Like the other offices on the mezzanine floor, Saul’s was fronted by plate glass ‘walls’. It might be larger than the other offices, and it might have a private inner sanctum, but that apart it was no more prestigiously furnished than her own office, Giselle noted, and it was equipped as a practical working office. Apparently for business meetings Saul used the hospitality suite on the top floor of the building.

      Since Saul operated an ‘open door’ working policy, Giselle only knocked briefly on the glass door, which was in any event half open, before stepping into Saul’s office. The brilliance of the late-afternoon sun shone into the room, momentarily blinding her, so that she didn’t realise until her vision cleared that Saul wasn’t there—despite the fact that his laptop was open on his desk and his suit jacket was hanging from the back of his chair. Why was it that only a certain type of very male European man seemed able to wear that particular shade of light tan successfully, whilst looking as though they could have stepped out of an Armani ad? Giselle found herself wondering distractedly. She tried very hard not to picture Saul in just that role—only to be betrayed by her traitorous imagination which suddenly, out of nowhere, managed to create an all too realistic image of Saul standing in for one of the designer’s male underwear models.

      Battling with her own imagination, Giselle almost dropped the papers she was hugging to her when the door connecting Saul’s inner office with the outer one suddenly opened, and Saul himself stepped through it.

      His easy words—‘Moira, if you could manage to rustle up some coffee and a sandwich whilst I have a shower I’ll be eternally grateful to you…’—changed to an abrupt and far less welcoming, ‘Oh, it’s you,’ when he realised that it was Giselle who was standing in his office and not his PA.

      It wasn’t his abrupt manner that was driving hot, self-conscious colour up under her skin, though. Giselle knew that as she struggled to retain her equilibrium under the increased pounding of her heart when she realised that when he had initially come into the room Saul had been starting to unfasten his shirt. The cuffs were already loose, revealing the sinewy dark-hair-covered flesh of one arm as he reached up to push his hand into his hair in a gesture of irritation. His tie was missing and the top buttons of his shirt were unfastened, so that she could see the fine criss-crossing of the beginnings of his body hair. The rush of female awareness that flooded through her almost knocked her off balance with an alien, almost frightening power. She wasn’t used to feeling like this, and the fact that she was doing so affronted and angered her, causing her to clutch the papers even more tightly to her body.

      The crackle they made focused Saul’s attention on her. She was breathing too fast, her lips parted, her hands trembling slightly as she gripped some papers in front of her. Her pose was almost that of an ancient civilisation virgin slave, facing the master who had bought her for his pleasure—and with it her own.

      The direction his thoughts were taking didn’t please Saul one little bit. He’d spent the last ten days engaged in hard negotiation to secure the prime Chinese sites he wanted for his expanding hotel chain—hard negotiation and also what had seemed at the time easy refusal of sexual favours from the socialites his hosts had introduced him to. Perhaps his body hadn’t been as on-message with that refusal as he had believed, he decided grimly as he attempted to banish the images his mind was now busy conjuring up—images of a green-eyed, blonde-haired beauty wearing next to nothing, offering him the welcome and the pleasure battle-scarred warriors like his own ancestors had expected to receive as a matter of course. He, on the other hand, whilst returning triumphant from his own battle, couldn’t get so much as a drink and a sandwich, and was being confronted by the abrasive secondee he had no wish to have in his life.

      Giselle’s voice cut across his thoughts. ‘I can come back tomorrow if you’re too busy to see me now.’

      ‘I’m leaving for New York tomorrow. If it’s urgent enough for you to come and see me now, then you’d better tell me whatever it is that’s brought you here. Sit down,’ he commanded, before speaking into the intercom. ‘Charlie, would you mind getting me a double espresso and a sandwich from across the road? Put it on my tab. I’ll be in my office.’

      Charlie was the doorman, as Giselle knew.

      ‘Right,’ he said to Giselle when he had finished. ‘What’s the problem?’

      ‘I’m a bit concerned about a costing on one of the new plans,’ Giselle answered. ‘I’ve got the paperwork here.’

      Saul made an exasperated sound.

      ‘I can’t see it whilst you’re clutching it like that, can I? Bring it here and put it on the desk.’

      A shaft of sunlight penetrating the shadows around his desk gave the cheap white tee shirt she was wearing an opacity that drew Saul’s gaze automatically to her breasts as she dropped the papers on his desk. Her actions dragged the thin fabric against her body, so that her nipples were outlined in erotically sharp relief. His gaze lingered where the shaft of light was probing the cheap fabric, as though it possessed a male need to strip back the covering from her flesh and explore the sensuality beneath.

      She must focus on why she was here and forget about the way her proximity to Saul Parenti was making her feel, Giselle told herself. But how could she when she could almost feel Saul’s critical gaze, underlining Emma’s comments about her?

      The arrival of the doorman with Saul’s coffee and sandwich was a welcome relief, allowing her to straighten the papers and then step back from the desk whilst Saul thanked Charlie, rewarding him with a warm smile and a few words of male banter about the doorman’s favourite football team. So there was a human side to Saul Parenti—even if she was never likely to see much of it. Giselle had no idea why that should bring her such a sense of loss and exclusion. She didn’t want him to be nice to her. Not one little bit.

      ‘So what exactly is the problem?’ Saul demanded, СКАЧАТЬ