The Unlikely Mistress
Autore
Sharon Kendrick
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CHAPTER ONE
SABRINA looked, and then looked again, her heart beating out a guilty beat while she tried to tell herself that her eyes were playing tricks on her. Because he couldn’t possibly be for real.
He was standing close to the water, close enough for her to be able to see the carved symmetry of his features. Chiselled cheekbones and a proud, patrician nose. The mouth was luscious—both hard and sensual—a mouth which looked as though it had kissed a lot of women in its time.
Only the eyes stopped the face from being too beautiful—they were too icily cold for perfection. Even from this distance, they seemed to glitter with a vital kind of energy and a black, irresistible kind of danger…
Oh, Lord, thought Sabrina in despair. What am I thinking of? She was not the kind of woman to be transfixed by complete strangers—especially not when she was alone and vulnerable in a foreign country. And while Venice was the most beautiful place on earth—she was there on her own.
On her own. Something she was still having to come to term with. Once again, guilt stabbed at her with piercing accuracy.
But still she watched him…
By the edge of the water, Guy felt his body tense with a sense of the unexpected, aware of the unmistakable sensation of being watched. He narrowed hard slate-grey eyes as they scanned the horizon, and his gaze was suddenly arrested by the sight of the woman who drifted in the gondola towards him. Madonna, he thought suddenly. Madonna.
The pale March sun caught a sheen of bright red-gold hair, drifting like a banner around her shoulders. He could see long, slender limbs and skin so pale it looked almost translucent. She’s English, he thought suddenly as their eyes clashed across the glittering water. And for one mad, reckless moment he thought about…what? Following her? Buying her a cup of coffee? His mouth hardened into a brief, cynical smile.
It was reckless to want to pick up a total stranger and he, more than most people, knew the folly of being reckless. Hadn’t his whole life been spent making amends for his father’s one careless act of desperation? The knock-on effect of impulsive behaviour was something to guard against. Resolutely he turned away from her distractions.
Sabrina felt something approaching pain. Look at me, she urged him silently, but her gondolier chose that moment to give an expert twist of his wrist to glide the craft into shore and he was lost to her eyes.
She pushed her guidebook back into her handbag and stood up, allowing the gondolier to steady her elbow, nodding her head vigorously, as if she understood every word of his murmured Italian. But she had paid him before the journey and didn’t have a clue what he could be saying to her.
And then there was a shout behind her, a deep, alarming shout, and instinctively she knew that the voice belonged to the man with the dark hair. She automatically turned in response, just in time to feel a great whooshing spray of icy cold water as it splashed over her.
It jetted towards her eyes and the shock made her handbag slip from her fingers. She was aware of her gondolier shouting something furiously, and when she opened her eyes again she could see the zigzag of foam left in the wake of a small speedboat.
And the man with the dark hair.
He was standing on the shore right next to her, holding his hand out, and despite the look of icy anger on his face some instinct made her take it, losing herself immediately in the warmth of his firm grasp.
‘Why the hell can’t people control the machines they’re supposed to be in charge of?’ he said, in a voice as coolly beautiful as his face. He gave a brief, hard stare at the retreating spray of the boat, then narrowed his eyes as he looked down at the shivering woman whose fingernails were gripping painfully into the palm of his hand. Her face was so white that it looked almost translucent, and he felt a strange kick to his heart. ‘You are English?’
Up close, he was even more devastating. Breathtakingly so. Awareness shimmered over her skin like fingertips. ‘Y-y-yes, I am,’ she replied, from between chattering teeth. ‘How c-c-could you tell?’
He carried on holding her hand until he was certain that she was grounded. ‘Because pale women with freckles and strawberry-blonde hair look quintessentially English, that’s why,’ he answered slowly as he allowed his eyes to drift irresistibly over her. ‘And you’re soaking.’
Sabrina looked down at herself, and saw that he wasn’t exaggerating. She was wet right through—her T-shirt stained with dirty lagoon water, the pinpoint thrust of her nipples emphasising her plummeting body temperature as much as the chattering of her teeth.
‘Not to mention freezing.’ He swallowed as he followed the direction of her eyes, tempted to make a flippant joke about wet T-shirt competitions, then deciding against it. Not his scene to make remarks like that to a complete stranger.
Sabrina suddenly realised what was missing. ‘Oh, my goodness—I’ve dropped my handbag!’ she wailed.
‘Where?’
‘In the w-water. And it’s got my purse in it!’
He went to peer over the edge of the lagoon, but the dark waters had claimed it.
‘Don’t!’ Sabrina called, terrified that he would just disappear again, exit from her life for ever.
He turned round with a look of mystification. ‘Don’t what?’
‘D-don’t t-t-try and retrieve it!’
‘You think I’m about to dive into the canal to hunt around for your handbag?’ He smiled again. ‘Princess, I’m not that much of a hero!’ But the smile died on his lips as he saw that the edges of her mouth were turning a very pale blue. ‘You know,’ he observed slowly, unable to look away from the ice-blue dazzle of her eyes, ‘you’re really going to have to get out of those wet clothes before you catch pneumonia!’
The intimacy of his remark drove every sane response clean out of her mind. Sabrina opened her mouth, then chattered it shut again.
Guy frowned. He couldn’t believe he’d said that. Crass, or what? ‘Where are you staying?’
‘M-m-miles away.’ Naturally. Rooms this close to St Mark’s Square tended to be beyond the reach of anyone other than your average millionaire.
Guy’s mouth hardened as he read the unconscious appeal in her eyes. Pity she hadn’t mentioned that before the gondola had sped away. If the driver hadn’t been flirting with her quite so outrageously, then he might have been able to warn her about the speedboat in time. And the least he could have done to recompense would have been to give her a free ride back to her hotel.
Which left it up to him.
He had achieved what he had set out to do in Venice—had purchased a superb Italian old master for one of his more demanding clients. The price he had bartered had been better than expected and his client would be pleased.
He had planned a quiet day. Playing knight in shining armour hadn’t been top of his agenda. But responsibility was etched deep into Guy’s personality. He looked down into her heart-shaped face, and felt his heart kick-start again. She really was very beautiful…‘You can’t possibly travel home in that state, but you can clean up at my hotel if you like—it’s just around the corner.’
‘Your hotel?’ Sabrina swallowed, guiltily remembering the way she had been unable to tear her eyes away from him on the lagoon. She’d been certain that he hadn’t seen her—but what if he had? And what if he’d then imagined that she was the kind of woman who allowed herself to be picked up in the most casual manner possible and taken back for a so-called siesta? ‘I don’t even know you—and I’m not in the habit of going back to strange men’s hotel rooms!’
Guy’s eyes glittered with unconcealed irritation. He was offering to do her a favour—did she really think that he was after something else? Desperate enough to make a pass at someone he didn’t even know?
He supposed that he could have shrugged and said fine and walked away, but something about her defensive stance struck at his conscience. He forced his mouth into a smile. ‘Then how about I introduce myself so I’m no longer a stranger?’ He held his hand out. ‘Guy Masters,’ he said softly.
Something in the way he said it struck at Sabrina’s heart like a hammer blow, as though she had been waiting all her life to hear just that name spoken aloud. She felt his hand still warming her frozen fingers, his grey eyes sending their icy light across her face, and tiptoes of some unknown emotion began to tingle their way up her spine. ‘S-Sabrina Cooper,’ she stumbled.
‘Well, you’ll be quite safe with me, Sabrina Cooper,’ he assured her gravely. ‘The alternative, of course, is that you travel halfway across Venice looking like that. It’s up to you—I’m only offering to help. Take it or leave it.’
His grey eyes didn’t stray from her face, which only seemed to reinforce where he wasn’t looking. And he didn’t really want to spell it out. That wet T-shirt did spectacularly draw the eye. Even if the sopping fabric was stretched over a pair of breasts which could in no way be described as voluptuous. On the contrary, he thought, they were small and neat and deliciously cuppable. She wouldn’t be safe travelling back on her own, looking as beautifully sexy as she did right now.
Sabrina hesitated. Surely a man who looked like Guy Masters would have no need of ulterior motives. ‘Why are you being so…?’
‘Chivalrous?’ he prompted, a cool fire dancing in his eyes. It amused him that she hadn’t seen fit to leap at his offer. That didn’t happen a lot, not these days. He shrugged. ‘Because you’re English, and so am I, and I have an over-developed sense of responsibility which just won’t seem to go away. You’re cold and wet and you’ve lost your purse. So what else can I do? Rip the clothes from my back in order to cover you up?’
She eyed the taut torso with alarm as her imagination gave her a disturbingly realistic picture of how he would look if he did remove that snowy-white T-shirt. What on earth was the matter with her? She had come to Venice in an attempt to make some sense of the tragedy which had transformed her life. And making sense of things did not involve feeling overwhelmingly attracted to men who had a dangerous air of inaccessibility about them.
‘Er, no.’ She swallowed. ‘That won’t be necessary. I’ll take up your offer of the bathroom. It’s very…sweet of you. Thank you.’ But ‘sweet’ did not seem an appropriate word to use about Guy Masters—he was far too elementally masculine for that.
‘Come this way,’ he said, and they began to walk through the narrow, dark streets of Venice with the slicking sounds of water all around them.
Sabrina felt the weight of heavy, wet denim chafing uncomfortably against her thighs. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to get my clothes dry.’
‘Don’t worry. The hotel will think of something.’ Hotels like the Palazzo Regina always did, he thought wryly. Catering for each and every whim of their pampered guests, however bizarre. In life, Guy had realised a long, long time ago, you got what you paid for. And the more you paid, the more impressed the world seemed to be.
Sabrina was aware of the curious looks being cast in their direction, and couldn’t decide whether that was because she looked half-drowned or because he looked so beautiful. She felt overpoweringly aware of him as he moved with a kind of restrained power by her side, every pore seeming to exude a vital kind of energy. It was as though that magnificent body had imprinted itself indelibly on every single one of her senses and she could feel the incessant pumping of her heart and the rapid little rush of her breathing as they walked.
‘How much money was in your purse?’ he asked.
‘Only a bit. I’ve left most of it in my hotel safe, along with my tickets.’
‘That’s something, I guess. Imagine if you’d come out with your airline tickets.’
‘Imagine,’ she said faintly.
Something in the way she’d said it made him smile. ‘We’re here,’ he announced, stopping in front of a large, impressive façade overlooking the waterfront itself.
Sabrina screwed her face up in disbelief. ‘Here?’ He was gorgeous, yes, but in his jeans and T-shirt he had seemed just like her—just another tourist. This couldn’t be right, surely? His hotel couldn’t be this central—not unless he was staying in some sort of museum or palace. Which was exactly what it looked like. ‘You’re staying here?’
Guy heard the incredulity in her voice and sizzled her a glance of mocking query. ‘You think I don’t know the way back to my own hotel?’
Sabrina compared it to the tiny, dark pensione she was staying in. ‘It looks more like a palace than a hotel!’
‘Mmm. I believe it was.’ He glanced down and saw that the walk had removed that ghastly blue tinge from her lips, and smiled. ‘A very long time ago.’
‘How long?’
‘Fourteenth century, would you believe?’
‘Good heavens,’ said Sabrina lightly, and the question came out before she had time to think about it. ‘How on earth can you afford to stay in a place like this?’
Years of self-preservation against women with dollar signs in their eyes made Guy reply, without missing a beat, ‘I’m lucky,’ he said coolly. ‘The company pays for it. Come on. You’ve started shivering again.’
As soon as they walked into a lavishly ornate foyer, she heard the faint buzz of comment. One of the men working at the reception desk, who looked handsome enough to be a movie star, fixed Guy Masters with an unctuous smile.
‘Sir? I trust you have had an enjoyable morning.’
‘Eventful,’ Guy murmured. ‘I’ll just have my key, please, Luigi.’
‘Certainly, sir, I’ll have someone—’
‘No, please, don’t bother. I’ll see myself up.’
In the mirror-lined lift, Sabrina saw how wet she really was.
The water of the lagoon was obviously much dirtier than its colour suggested, because there were tiny spots of mud spattering her T-shirt. And unfortunately there were two damp circles ringing her breasts, drawing attention to the outline of her bra which was embarrassingly visible. And so, too, were her nipples, tight and hot and aching. Turned on by a man she had only just met…
Appalled by her dark and unwanted thoughts, she quickly crossed her arms and clamped them over her bust. ‘That man at Reception gave me a very funny look.’
Guy felt a pulse flicker as he stared at her reflection in the mirror, noting the protective body language and working out for himself the reason for it. ‘Well, you must admit you do look pretty spectacular,’ he murmured. Like some glorious nymph who had just emerged from the water.
‘Mmmm,’ she agreed. ‘Spectacularly drowned.’
He narrowed his eyes. Her voice was unusually soft. As soft as her lips. The lift pinged to a halt. ‘Here’s my suite.’
Suite?
Sabrina thought of her own small pensione, where she could never find anyone on duty. Like last night, for example, when the water coming from the tap had been nothing more than a dark, brackish trickle. With the aid of her phrasebook, she had been forced to laboriously construct a note to the manager, requesting that he do something about the hot water. What if she’d gone back today, dripping from head to toe in filthy lagoon water, to discover that nothing had been resolved?
Thank heavens for the chivalrous Guy Masters, she told herself—but she felt a mixture of nerves and excitement as he unlocked the door to his suite.
He pushed open the door to let her inside and Sabrina had to stifle a small cry of astonishment as she walked into a high-ceilinged sitting room. Because, yes, of course, she’d known that places such as these existed, but it was something so outside her own experience that it was like stepping into a parallel world.
The room was full of furniture which even an idiot could tell was very old. Antique, in fact. And priceless too, she imagined.
Sabrina looked around her. The light was muted because all the shutters were closed, but that made the contents of the room stand out even more.
Silken rugs in jewel-bright colours were scattered on the marble floors, on which stood spindly-legged chairs and tables. There was a faded sofa of crimson and gold and a couple of chairs which matched, all strewn with cushions of the same rich colours. She slowly turned to see an oil painting of a long-dead doge, set against the timeless Venetian backdrop, one of many paintings hung on the crimson walls.
‘Oh, but it’s beautiful,’ she breathed. ‘So beautiful.’
Guy watched her slow appraisal, her uninhibited pleasure making her look curiously elegant, despite the damp and dirty clothes.
‘Isn’t it?’ he said softly, but he wasn’t even looking at the painting.
And the lack of light was far too intimate, he decided suddenly, striding over to the window to push open the shutters, so the reflected light from the Grand Canal gleamed and glittered back into the room at them.
A view like that was worth a king’s ransom, thought Sabrina, suddenly feeling as out of place as some scruffy urchin who had come seeking shelter from the storm.
It brought her quickly to her senses. She wasn’t here to enjoy the view. Or to make small-talk. She had better just clean up and be on her way.
She cleared her throat. ‘Could you show me—?’
He turned around, noting the sudden pinkness in her cheeks, the two high spots of colour making her look like some flaxen-plaited doll. ‘Sure. The bathroom’s that door over there.’ He pointed. ‘Take as long as you like. Oh, and throw your wet clothes out and I’ll send them down and have them laundered.’
‘Thank you.’
Sabrina was glad to lock the bathroom door behind her and peel off the freezing clothes from her shivering flesh. They smelt so dank!
The jeans were first, and then the T-shirt, and she dropped the sodden garments onto the marble floor. But her bra and panties were damp with canal water, too. Should she risk…?
Risk what? she asked herself impatiently. She couldn’t keep sodden underwear on, and this pair of sensible cotton briefs was hardly likely to have him trying to beat the door down!
Sheltering behind the screen of the door, she picked the bundle up.
‘Guy?’
‘Leave them outside,’ came a muffled sort of voice, and she did as he asked, quickly slamming the door shut and sliding the lock home before stepping into the shower, with its industrial-sized head.
Outside, Guy gingerly picked up the deposited items as if he were handling a poisonous snake.
Had it really been necessary for her to take everything off? he wondered uncomfortably, while asking himself why some women chose to wear knickers which looked as if they were armour-plated.
He knew almost nothing about Sabrina Cooper, and would never see her again after today, but what he did know was that she certainly hadn’t come to Venice with seduction in mind.
Not unless she was intending to appeal to the type of man who got turned on by the frumpy gym-mistress look!
Biting back a smile, he wandered over to the telephone and picked up the receiver.
‘Pronto!’ he drawled for courtesy’s sake, and then immediately switched to English, in which most of the staff were fluent. His Italian was passable—but in a case concerning a strange woman’s underwear he needed no misunderstandings! ‘How long will it take to get some clothes laundered?’
There was a short pause. ‘Certainly within a couple of hours, sir.’
Guy frowned. That long? And just what were they supposed to do while Sabrina’s jeans and T-shirt and bra and panties whizzed around in the washing machine? His time was precious, and his leisure time especially so. There were a million things he would rather be doing than being forced to sit and chat to someone with whom he had nothing in common other than that they both hailed from the same country.
Damn!
‘Let’s try for half that time, shall we?’ he suggested softly. ‘And can you have some coffee brought up at the same time?’
Bearing a tray of coffee, the valet came and collected the damp garments and Guy heard the sound of the shower being turned off. He walked over to the bathroom door.
‘I’m afraid your clothes won’t be back for an hour,’ he called.
‘An hour?’ Sabrina’s heart plummeted as she stood behind the locked door. What was she supposed to do in the meantime? Stay wrapped in a towel inside this steamy bathroom?
He heard the annoyance in her voice and felt like telling her that the idea pleased him even less than it did her. But he hadn’t been forced to bring her back here, had he? No, he’d made that decision all on his own—so he could hardly complain about it now.
‘Why don’t you use that towelling robe hanging up on the back of the door?’ he suggested evenly. ‘And there’s some coffee out here when you’re ready.’
Squinting at herself in the cloudy mirror, Sabrina shrugged on a towelling gown which was as luxuriously thick and fluffy as she would expect in a place like this. She slipped it over her bare, freckled shoulders, and as she did so she became aware of the faint trace of male scent which clung to it.
Guy had been wearing this robe before her, she realised as an unwelcome burst of sexual hunger grew into life inside her. Guy’s body had been as naked beneath this as her own now was. She felt the sudden picking up of her heart as the evocative muskiness invaded her nostrils, and she wondered if she might be going slightly mad.
How could a complete stranger—however attractive he undoubtedly was—manage to have such an incapacitating and powerful effect on her? Making her feel like some puppet jerked and manipulated by invisible strings. Was this what the death of her fiancé had turned her into—some kind of predator?
Guy glanced up as she walked in and his grey eyes narrowed, a pulse hammering at his temple. Maybe the robe hadn’t been such a good idea after all, he conceded. Because wasn’t there something awfully erotic about a woman wearing an oversized masculine garment like that? On him it reached to just below his knees—but on this woman’s pale and slender frame it almost skimmed her ankles.
‘How about some coffee?’ he queried steadily.
‘C-coffee would be lovely,’ she stumbled, suddenly feeling acutely shy. She perched on the edge of a sofa on the opposite side of the room, telling herself that she had absolutely nothing to worry about. The circumstances might be bizarre, but for some reason she trusted this man. Men of Guy Masters’s calibre wouldn’t make a clumsy pass at a stranger, despite that brief, hungry darkening of his eyes.
He poured them both coffee and thought that conversation might be safer than silence. ‘First time in Venice?’
‘First time abroad,’ she admitted.
‘You’re kidding!’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not. I’ve never been out of England before.’ Michael hadn’t earned very much, and neither had she—and saving up to buy a house had seemed more important than trips abroad. Though a man like Guy Masters would probably not understand that.
‘And you came here on your own?’
‘That’s right.’
He looked at her curiously. ‘Pretty daring thing to do,’ he observed, ‘first time in a foreign country on your own?’
Sabrina stared down at the fingers which were laced around her coffee-cup. ‘I’ve never done anything remotely daring before…’
‘What, never?’ he teased softly.
Sabrina didn’t smile back. Hadn’t she decided that life was too short to play safe all the time? ‘So I thought I’d give it a try,’ she said solemnly, and shifted her bottom back a little further on the seat.
Guy sipped his coffee and wished that she would sit still, not keep shifting around on the sofa as if she had ants in her pants. And then he remembered.
She wasn’t wearing any.
Dear God. A shaft of desire shot through him, which was as unexpected as it was inappropriate, and he took a huge mouthful of coffee—almost glad when it scalded his lips. He risked a surreptitious glance at his watch. Only forty-five minutes to go. Less if he was lucky. Much more of this and he would be unable to move.
‘So why Venice?’ he queried, a slight edge of desperation to his voice.
‘Oh, it’s one of the world’s most beautiful cities, and I—I had to…to…’
Something in the quality of her hesitation made him stir with interest. ‘Had to what?’
She had been about to say ‘get away’, but that particular statement always provoked the questions to ask why, and once that question had been asked then the whole sad story would come out. A story she was weary of telling. Weary of living through. She had come to Italy to escape from death and its clutches.
‘I had to see St Mark’s Square.’ She smiled brightly. ‘It was something of a life’s ambition. So was riding in a gondola.’
‘But not taking a bath in the Grand Canal?’
She actually laughed. ‘No. Not that. I hadn’t bargained on that!’
He thought how the laugh lit up her face. Like sunshine glowing from within. ‘And how long are you staying?’
‘Only a couple more days. How about you?’
He felt a pulse begin to beat insistently at his temple. Suddenly Venice was getting more attractive by the minute—rather uncomfortably attractive, actually. ‘Me, too,’ he said huskily, and risked another glance at his watch.
The room seemed much too small. Much too intimate. Again Sabrina shifted self-consciously on the sofa.
‘How old are you?’ he demanded suddenly, as she crossed one pale, slender thigh over the other.
Old enough to recognise that maybe Guy Masters wasn’t completely indifferent to her after all. The quiet, metallic gleam in the cool grey eyes told her that. But that wasn’t the kind of answer he was seeking.
‘I’m twenty-seven,’ she told him.
‘You look younger.’
‘So people say.’ She lifted her eyebrows. ‘And you?’
‘Thirty-two.’
‘You look older.’
Their eyes connected as something primitive shuddered in the air around them.
‘I know I do,’ he murmured.
His words caressed her and Sabrina stared at him, unable to stop her eyes from committing every exquisite feature to memory. I will never forget you, she thought with an aching sense of sadness. Ever.
They sat in silence for a while as they drank their coffee. Eventually, there was a rap on the door and the valet delivered an exquisitely laundered set of underwear, jeans and T-shirt. Guy handed them over to her. ‘There you go,’ he said gravely.
She took them, blushingly aware that his fingertips had actually been touching the pressed cotton of her bra and panties. ‘I’d better go and get changed.’
And if he’d thought that she’d looked exquisite before, that was nothing to the transformation which had taken place when she emerged, shimmering, from the bathroom. Guy didn’t know what the laundry had managed to do with her clothes, but they now looked as if they were brand-new, and her hair had dried to a glorious strawberry-blonde sheen which spilled over her shoulders.
‘You’d better take this,’ he said as he dug deep into the pocket of his trousers and withdrew a wad of money, seeing her eyes widen in an alarmed question as he gave it to her.
‘What’s this?’ she demanded.
‘Didn’t you drop your purse into the water?’ he queried softly. ‘And don’t you need to get home?’
‘I can’t take your money,’ she protested.
‘Then don’t. Think of it as a loan. Pay me back tomorrow if you like.’
Sabrina slid the notes thoughtfully into the back pocket of her jeans. ‘OK. I will. Thanks.’
He went down with her in the lift to the foyer, telling himself that he would never see her again.
And wondering why that thought should make him ache so much, and so badly.
