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He was cautioning her about the events—that was all! Carly exhaled in shaky relief.
‘Yes—yes, of course,’ she agreed quickly, as she finally made it through the doorway on legs that had developed a very suspicious weakness.
But she was unnervingly aware of him behind her.
‘And one more thing.’
‘Yes?’ she offered politely, automatically turning round to face him.
‘The next time you look at my mouth like that…’ he said softly, with a mocking smile.
‘Like what? I didn’t look at it like anything!’ Carly knew that her face was burning with guilt, but she had to defend herself.
‘Liar. You looked at it, at me, as though you couldn’t wait to feel it against your own. As though there was nothing you wanted more than for me to push you up against that doorframe and take you right here and now. As though you could already feel my hands on your skin, touching you intimately, and you were loving it. As though—’
‘No!’ Carly denied fiercely. And her denial was the truth—she hadn’t got as far as thinking anything so intimate as that!
To her relief she could see Lucy hurrying towards them to introduce herself to him.
It was over an hour since Ricardo had gone, and Carly was still thinking about him. But a woman would surely have to be totally devoid of any kind of hormones to remain unaware of Ricardo as a fully functioning man.
And that was her sole excuse, was it? She pushed back her keyboard and stood up. She was shaking slightly. Her face was burning and her body ached. She felt shocked. Guilty. Horrified, in fact, by the door she had unwittingly opened in her own head, and—even worse—was uncomfortably aware that she was physically aroused. Physically, but of course not emotionally—that was impossible. After all, she had sworn never to fall in love, hadn’t she? Never to fall in love; never to give herself emotionally to anyone; never to risk the emotional security she had given to herself.
She started to pace the small office. Her childhood had taught her all there was to know about the pain that came with being emotionally rejected. She had fought hard to give herself the protective air of calm self-confidence she projected to others, and for the right to claim their respect. The pathetic, needy child she had once been, desperate for approval and love, had been totally banished, and that was the way Carly intended it to stay.
So why was she thinking like this? No one was threatening her self-reliance, after all—least of all Ricardo Salvatore, who probably had the same loathing of emotional bondage as she did herself, if for very different reasons.
CHAPTER THREE
CARLY checked her watch—Lucy had given both Carly and Jules smart Cartier Tank Francaise watches for Christmas in the first year the business had made a profit—and then bent down and grabbed the handle of her case.
The car Ricardo Salvatore was sending to pick her up was due to arrive in exactly two minutes’ time. It was time for her to leave.
She heaved her suitcase off the floor, grimacing a little ruefully as she did so, remembering how Lucy had burst into the office the previous Thursday morning announcing, ‘Oh, my God, Carly—I’ve just realised! There won’t be anything in the Wardrobe that will fit you!’
The ‘Wardrobe’ was a standing joke between them all, and was in actual fact a small room in Lucy’s parents’ London home which housed the glamorous outfits Lucy and Jules, who were very much the same height and build, wore when they were ‘on duty’ at events.
The clothes—all designer models—were second hand, surreptitiously trawled from a variety of sources, and the subject of amused speculation between them.
‘Just look at this!’ Lucy had marvelled after their last expedition, as she held up what looked like a sequin-covered handkerchief with halter neck straps. ‘Who on earth would buy this?’
‘You did,’ Carly had pointed out, laughing.
‘Yes, but I only paid fifty pounds for it—it cost over a thousand brand-new.’
‘It’s very sexy,’ Jules had pronounced.
‘It’s repulsive,’ Carly had criticised. ‘Vulgar and tarty.’
‘Mmm…Well, Nick spotted it.’
But the Wardrobe contained nothing that would fit Carly, and so, that Thursday, Lucy had announced firmly, ‘Come on, Carly. We’ve got to go out on a trawl!’
Carly had tried to protest and resist, but Jules and Lucy had been insistent.
The result of their foray into the second-hand shops and market stalls of Lucy’s favourite haunts—which had emptied the clothes budget Carly had so carefully worked out—had been collected from the dry cleaners this morning and were now packed in Carly’s case, along with her own clothes.
Mentally Carly reviewed them—a white silk trouser suit which Lucy had cooed over, enraptured, pronouncing, ‘Oh, this is so retro—Seventies rock wife! And you’ve got the boobs for it, Carly.’
Maybe she had, but she certainly wouldn’t be wearing the jacket over bare skin and half open! There were also a couple of evening dresses, both of which were potentially so revealing that Carly had already decided she would be wearing a silk jacket over them.
She hadn’t been very keen on the designer swimsuit Lucy had found either. It was cut away in so many places that Carly feared it threatened to reveal more of her than the skimpiest of bikinis, but at least it had matching culotte pants and a jacket.
Her own classic casuals—the simple linen separates she favoured for summer and some up-to-the-minute accessories they had found in the likes of Zara—had all passed Lucy’s inspection and been declared perfect for the events she would be attending.
Dragging her suitcase behind her, Carly pushed open the door onto the street and stepped out into the late-morning sunshine.
Ricardo watched her from his vantage point in the back seat of the limo, as the driver moved the car out of the parking bay he had found further up the street.
Oh, yes, she was a typical example of her upmarket, ‘no expense spared but someone else pays’ lifestyle, Ricardo decided cynically as he watched
her. Immaculate white tee shirt, perfectly fitting blue jeans, long shiny hair, minimal make-up, sunglasses, discreetly ‘good’ watch, penny loafers. The too-thin girl in designer clutter who was tottering past her on spindly heels, clutching a weird-looking handbag, couldn’t hold a candle to her. Because Carly had class.
What would she be like in bed?
He didn’t intend to let too much time elapse before he found out.
He thought of another society woman from his youth, one whom he had met when he was growing cynical but not yet completely hardened. Initially he had thought her pretty, but she hadn’t looked very pretty at all when he had flatly refused to meet her escalating demands—especially when he’d discovered they included a wedding ring in exchange for the supposed benefit of marrying into a higher social bracket. He’d told her that he preferred an honest whore.
Women like her, like Carly, might not openly demand money in return for sex, but what they were looking for was the richest and highest status man they could find—their bodies in exchange for his name.
It was a trade-off that nauseated him, as did those who participated in it.
He had no illusions about women or sex. He had lived too long and seen too much for that. His wealth could buy him any woman he wanted, and that included Carly. She had made that plain enough already, with the way she had looked at his mouth.
She hadn’t even tried to be subtle about it! She had stared openly and brazenly at him. If they hadn’t been in her office it would have been an open invitation to him to push her tee shirt out of the way and free her breasts to spill into his hands so that he could accept their flaunting invitation.
