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‘Yes. I imagine they felt I’d be easier to house-train than a puppy and less expensive to keep than a pony,’ Carly told him lightly. ‘Unfortunately, though, it didn’t work out. Fenella, quite naturally, hated having to share her parents and her toys with an unwanted sibling, and demanded that her parents send me back. I think they wanted to, but of course it was too late. I wasn’t allowed to touch anything of Fenella’s, or even to eat in the same room with her at first. But then we were both sent to boarding school. That’s when I met Jules and Lucy. Somehow or other my…my history, and the fact that I wasn’t really Fenella’s sister, became public knowledge.’
‘You mean she told everyone?’ Ricardo asked bluntly.
‘She was a year older than me, so she’d already made her own circle of friends at the school before I went there. She was a very popular girl—she could be charming when she wanted to be—and I very quickly became ostracised.’
‘You were bullied, you mean?’
‘I was different and I didn’t fit in,’ Carly continued without answering him. ‘But luckily for me, Jules and Lucy came to my rescue and gave me their friendship. Without that and them…’ The shadows in her eyes caused Ricardo to experience a sudden fierce surge of protectiveness towards her, and anger towards those who had so obviously tormented her.
‘What happened to Fenella?’
Carly shook her head. It disturbed her to realise how much she had told him about herself.
She wasn’t going to tell him any more, Ricardo recognised, as he watched her turn away from him to focus on her laptop.
Carly frowned as she tried to study the figures on the company’s bank statements on her screen. Answering Ricardo’s questions had brought back so many painful memories.
She had truly believed when she had been adopted that she was going to be loved by her new parents and sister, and she had given them her own love unstintingly. It had confused her at first when she had been rebuffed, but then she had seen her adoptive mother hugging Fenella, fussing over her, and she had begun to realise that there was a huge difference between the way Fenella was given her parents’ love and approval, and the way she was refused it.
She had tried to make herself as like Fenella as possible, mirroring the other girl’s behaviour as closely as she could, assuming that this would gain her adoptive parents’ approval. Instead it had simply made Fenella hate her even more. Now, as an adult, she could not entirely blame them. Fenella had been their child, after all. But her experience with her adoptive parents had taught her the danger of giving her love to anyone.
The figures in front of her blurred, and she had to blink fiercely in order to be able to concentrate on them.
Suddenly, when she saw them properly, she frowned, firmly putting her own problems to one side as she stared in shocked anxiety at the unfamiliarly large cheques that had gone through the account, almost completely emptying it of cash.
It was unthinkable that this should have happened. She prided herself on keeping a mental running total of what was going in and out of the account, and according to her own mental reckoning they should have been several hundred thousand pounds in credit. In fact, they needed to be several hundred thousand pounds in credit to meet the bills their suppliers would be presenting at the end of the month, and to leave sufficient working capital to carry them until they received payment from other clients.
So what were these cheques for? She couldn’t remember signing them. A cold trickle of anxiety mixed with instinct iced down her spine. Her heart started to beat uncomfortably heavily. She needed to see those cheques.
Carly had quickly become totally engrossed in her work. Too quickly, Ricardo thought. Did she use it to block out emotional issues she found it difficult to handle? She had not said so, but he imagined that she must have suffered severe emotional trauma during her childhood.
That he should even have such a concern, never mind actively feel protective of her because of it, was such alien emotional territory to him that it took several seconds to recognise his own danger. Once he had done so he reminded himself firmly that that had been then and this was now, and now he wanted her in his bed.
Carly ordered photocopies of the cheques. Until they came she wouldn’t be able to do anything else.
‘Carly!’
She acknowledged Ricardo with a wary look.
‘I hope you ached as much for me last night as I did for you.’
She could feel her face starting to burn.
‘I’d really rather not talk about it. I’ve already said that I don’t want to…to go there.’
Her voice was calm, but he could see that her hand was trembling.
He gave a small shrug.
‘Why not? Why should we deny ourselves something it’s obvious we both want? Sexually there’s a chemistry between us that maybe neither of us would have wanted, given free choice, but I don’t see any point in trying to pretend that it doesn’t exist. And, given that it does exist, perhaps it would be better for both of us if we enjoyed it instead of trying to ignore or reject it. That way at least we could get our sexual hunger for one another out of our systems.’
Our sexual hunger. Three simple words. But they had the power to change her life for ever. Had Adam felt what she was feeling now when Eve had handed him the apple and announced, ‘Here, take a bite?’ Had he thought then, just as she was thinking now, of all that he would be denying himself if he refused? If she had sex with Ricardo it wouldn’t change the world, but it would change her. Was she brave enough to accept that? Or would she rather spend the rest of her life wishing and wondering?
‘I don’t want to have an affair with you,’ she answered him. An affair would involve falling in love, putting herself in a situation where ultimately she would be rejected in favour of someone else. Every emotional experience she’d ever had had taught her that. In her foster homes, with her adoptive parents, and then at school. Even with her closest friends, Lucy and Jules, she was aware that they shared an extra special bond of birth and upbringing which excluded her.
‘But you do want to have sex with me,’ Ricardo guessed.
Her face was burning, but she managed to hold his gaze.
‘I…I think so.’
The look he gave her was pure male power.
‘Are you asking me to make the decision for you?’
‘What would be the point? I’m sure a man with your experience could find someone else who wouldn’t need to have a decision made for them.’
‘I’m sure I could,’ Ricardo agreed dryly. ‘However, they would not be you, and it is you I want. But, since we’re on the subject of relationships, how many relationships have there been for you?’
He had caught her unprepared, slipping the question under her guard.
‘Er?
??I don’t…I can’t really remember,’ she told him untruthfully. ‘And besides, it isn’t really any of your business, is it?’
‘It would be if we slept together,’ Ricardo told her.
How could she tell him the truth?
How could she say that he was different—special—that she had never felt the way she did about him with anyone else, and that that alone was enough to make her feel threatened and afraid? And if she couldn’t tell him that, then how could she tell him that she had never done with anyone else what she so much wanted to do with him?
‘What time do you think we will arrive at the Hamptons?’ she asked instead.
The look he gave her made her feel as though he had set a match to her will-power and it was curling up into nothing inside her.
‘We’ll be there in plenty of time. We’ll stay over in my New York apartment tonight and fly out tomorrow.’
‘Wouldn’t it make more sense to go straight there?’
‘Not really. You’re looking and sounding very agitated, Carly. Why?’
‘No reason. I mean, I’m not. Why should I be?’
‘Perhaps you don’t feel you can trust yourself to be alone with me?’ Ricardo suggested softly.
Carly had had enough.
‘It isn’t a matter of that! I just don’t think we should put ourselves in a position where—’
‘Where what? Where you might be tempted to offer yourself to me and I might accept? Is that what you mean?’
‘No! At least…’ That was exactly what she had meant, she admitted to herself. Only in her mental scenario it had been Ricardo offering himself to her, not the other way around.
Something about the way he had phrased his statement touched a raw nerve. ‘I don’t like what you’re implying,’ she told him frankly. ‘I appreciate that lots of women probably come on to you because…’
‘Because I’m very rich?’ he suggested smoothly, picking up her dropped sentence.
His voice might sound smooth, but beneath it he was angry, Carly recognised. He might not feel concerned about her sensitivities, but he obviously did not like her treading on his own!
