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‘I wasn’t going to say that.’
‘Liar!’ Ricardo told her, adding coolly,
‘Besides, there are always several components to sexual desire, surely? For instance there are those which relate to our senses—sight, scent, taste…touch…’
Carly could feel herself beginning to respond to each word that rolled off his tongue.
Yes, the sight of him aroused her, and his scent certainly did, and as for his taste…She pulled in her stomach muscles to try and control the ache spreading through her. And touch…She pulled them in tighter, but it was already too late to halt what she was feeling. And, yes, the sound of his voice as well…
‘And then there are those that relate to personality, status…lifestyle. For instance—’ He broke off as the steward emerged from the crew’s quarters and came towards them.
Carly could feel herself shaking slightly inside—the sensual effect on her body from just listening to him.
‘We’ll be landing in half an hour. Would you like another drink before we do? Or something to eat?’
Carly shook her head, unable to trust herself to speak. Ricardo had dragged from her confidences and admissions she would normally never have made to anyone, and right now emotional reaction was beginning to set in—much the same way as physical reaction would have set in if she had just had a tooth pulled without anaesthetic. She felt slightly sick, more than slightly shaky, and very much in shock.
Perhaps Ricardo was right, and the only way to overcome her physical ache for him was to satisfy it instead of trying to avoid it.
Ricardo watched her, shielding his scrutiny with a pretended concentration on his own papers. Over and over again she broke out of the stereotyped image he wanted to impose on her. No other woman had shown him—given him—shared with him—such an intensity of sexual desire. And no other woman had ever aroused him to such a point of compelling compulsive hunger either.
They were coming in to land, the jet descending through the thin cloud-cover.
Carly packed away her papers and fastened her seatbelt. She had always been the sort of person who took every precaution she could to protect herself. But she had not been able to protect herself from what was happening to her now—and wasn’t it true that a part of her didn’t want to be protected from it?
‘Ah, Rafael, there you are…this is Ms Carlisle.’
The young Mexican gave Carly a grave smile.
‘Carly, please,’ she corrected Ricardo as she shook Rafael’s hand.
‘Rafael and his wife Dolores run my New York apartment. How is Dolores, Rafael?’
‘She is very well, and she said to tell you that she is making a special meal for you tonight. It is Italian. She also said to tell you that the orphanage is very happy and the children think you should be called Saint Salvatore.’
Saint Salvatore? Carly questioned mentally, watching the way Ricardo frowned.
‘You want me to fly the chopper to the apartment block?’ Rafael asked.
Ricardo shook his head.
‘No, I’ll fly it myself.’
Ricardo had a pilot’s licence? Carly tried not to look either awed or impressed as Rafael urged her to climb on board the golf-buggy-type vehicle he had waiting for them.
She’d never flown in a helicopter before, and she acknowledged that she felt slightly daunted at the prospect of doing so. But she had no intention of saying so to Ricardo.
‘I’ll go and fetch the luggage,’ Rafael announced, once he had helped Carly out of the buggy.
‘We’ll use the chopper tomorrow to get to the Hamptons,’ Ricardo said as he guided Carly towards it. ‘It will be much quicker and easier. You will have an excellent overview of New York City if you sit beside me. Technically Rafael should take that seat, since he is my co-pilot, but—’
‘Oh, then he must sit there,’ Carly insisted quickly.
‘You sound apprehensive. Don’t you trust me?’
‘I…’
‘I can assure you, I take a keen interest in my own continued existence!’
Ricardo had been right about the view of New York, Carly acknowledged, and she held her breath instinctively as he flew them between two huge tower blocks.
Via the headphones she was wearing she could hear his running commentary on the city below them—the straight lines of the modern streets, and then the curve in Broadway where the new merged with the old.
‘That’s Wall Street down there,’ Ricardo told her, and she looked, bemused to see how quaintly narrow and small it seemed. He turned the helicopter and announced, ‘We’ll be flying over Central Park soon. My apartment’s way up on the east side.’
The streets on either side of the park were lined with what looked like nineteenth-century buildings, and Carly held her breath as Ricardo headed for one of them, not releasing it until she saw the helicopter landing area marked out on its roof.
‘You don’t leave the helicopter here, do you?’ Carly asked once he had helped her out.
Ricardo shook his head. ‘No. Rafael will fly it back to the airport and then drive back. I dare say he will take Dolores with him, and they will call on their family on the way back.’
He was obviously a fair and well-liked employer, Carly reflected as he guided her towards the building and in through a doorway to a small foyer and lift. Once they were inside Ricardo punched a code into the panel and the doors closed, enclosing them in what—for Carly—was a far too intimate bubble of seclusion. Immediately the thought filled her mind that if he should turn to her now and take her in his arms she would not want to resist him.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Ricardo warned her softly, so easily and immediately reading her thoughts that she could only gape at him. ‘I can’t—not in here. That’s a camera up there,’ he told her, pointing upwards towards the ceiling.
The lift stopped silently and smoothly and the doors opened onto another foyer. It was a large, coolly spacious one this time, with only one door opening off it, its walls painted a flat matt cream to highlight the paintings hanging on them.
‘Lucien Freud?’ Carly questioned, recognising the style immediately.
‘Yes. His work has a raw feel to it that I like.’
The posed nudes were compelling, Carly admitted.
The foyer’s single door opened and Ricardo stood back to allow her to precede him.
He had excellent manners, and they seemed to be a natural part of him rather than something carefully learned. But from the brief description she’d had of his early life she doubted if standing back to allow others to precede him was something he’d learned on the streets of Naples.
A small, dark-haired woman with twinkling eyes was standing in the inner hallway, waiting for them.
‘Ah, Dolores. You got my message about Ms Carlisle?’
‘Yes, and I have prepared a guest suite for her. You had a good journey, I hope, Ms Carlisle?’
‘Yes, indeed—and do please call me Carly.’
‘You go with Dolores; she will show you to your suite,’ Ricardo told Carly, before continuing, ‘What time is dinner planned for, Dolores?’
‘Eight-thirty, if that is okay with you? And Rafael—he said that you will want an early lunch tomorrow, before you fly to the Hamptons?’
‘Yes, that’s right. I’d better warn you that Ms Carlisle may not make it to the dinner table tonight. It may be three in the afternoon here, but for her it’s eight in the evening.’
‘Oh, my goodness! You would perhaps like something to eat now, then?’ Dolores asked Carly.
‘No, I’m fine,’ Carly assured her.
She would have to make contact with the New York agency who were sharing the organisation of the Hamptons event with them, and she had hoped to have time to fit in a bit of sightseeing. She was also planning to ask Dolores if she could recommend somewhere Carly might find clothes that would be within her budget. Jeans might be the universal uniform, acceptable everywhere, but she could hardly turn up at the glitzy e
vents she was overseeing wearing them. And unfortunately Mariella’s cast-offs—designer label or not—were simply not the kind of clothes she would ever feel comfortable wearing.
‘So, you will sleep here, in this guest suite, and you will have a lovely view over the park. Come and see, please.’
Dutifully Carly followed Dolores through the door she had just opened.
The room she walked into was huge, its windows, as Dolores had stated, overlooking the greenery of the park.
‘Here there is a desk, and you can plug in your computer,’ Dolores told her.
Carly nodded her head.
‘And here there is a television.’ She folded back what Carly had assumed was wall panelling to reveal a large flatscreen TV hidden behind it, along with shelves of DVDs and books. ‘See—the TV, it pulls out so you can watch it from your bed,’ Dolores told Carly, proudly displaying this extra function. ‘The dressing room and your bathroom are through here. Mr Salvatore, he have everything ripped out when he moved in here, and it’s all new. Even in our rooms as well.’
