The Unlikely Mistress

‘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.

CHAPTER TWO

DESPITE telling herself that she was being crazy and unrealistic, Sabrina couldn’t help the decided spring to her step next morning as she set off to return Guy’s money, nor the flush of anticipation which made her cheeks glow. And why had she dressed up for him in an ice-blue sundress which very nearly matched her eyes and peep-toed sandals which made her legs look longer than they really were?

Surely she didn’t imagine for a moment that he would take one look at her and decide that she was the woman of his dreams?

She put the stack of lire in an envelope. He probably wouldn’t even be there, she reasoned. She would just have to leave the money for him at Reception.

The buildings soared up all around her and the water—which was everywhere—seemed to glimmer and glitter with some unspoken promise. As her steps drew her closer to Guy’s hotel, she felt the slow prickle of nerves.

She told herself that even if he was there he would probably just take the money with that cool, enigmatic smile and thank her. Then say goodbye, his faintly quizzical expression mocking her if she was foolish enough to linger hopefully over their farewells.

Drawing a deep breath, she walked into the foyer, surprised that the man behind the desk with the movie-star looks should raise his eyebrows in recognition the moment he saw her. He quickly picked up the telephone and started speaking into it.

By the time she had reached the desk he had finished his call and was glancing down at a notepad in front of him. He smiled at her.

‘Ah, Signorina Cooper,’ he purred.

She raised her eyebrows. ‘You know my name?’

The smile widened. ‘But of course! Signor Masters asked me to telephone him the moment you arrived.’

Well, that was something. At least he hadn’t imagined that she’d just disappeared into the sunset with his money.

She quickly took the envelope from her handbag. ‘Can I just leave this here for him?’ she said breathlessly. ‘I won’t stay. I’m—’

‘Not planning on running away from me, are you, Miss Cooper?’ came a deep voice from just behind her, and Sabrina turned round to find herself caught in the hard, grey crossfire of his eyes. And she was lost. Utterly lost.

‘Hello, Guy,’ she said weakly.

‘Hello, Sabrina,’ he mocked, his gaze running over her with pleasure, thinking that she had dressed up for him, and the rapid beat of his heart told him exactly what that meant.

‘I brought your money back.’ She held the envelope out.

‘So I see.’

‘I can’t thank you enough for coming to my rescue. I don’t know how I would have managed otherwise.’ She swallowed down the constricting lump which was affecting her ability to breathe. ‘Anyway, I’d better go—’

But he cut her words short with the restraining touch of his fingertips on her bare arm—a feather-light and innocent enough touch, but one which made sensation skate erotic little whispers all over its surface. He felt suddenly breathless. Reckless.

His eyes darkened. ‘Why go anywhere?’ he questioned softly. It’s a beautiful day. We’re both on our own. Why don’t we go sightseeing together?’

‘Together?’

He paused for a dangerous beat, giving her the unthinkable opportunity of saying no. ‘Unless you’d rather be on your own?’

Well, that was why she had come to Venice, wasn’t it? To get away and escape. To throw off the shackles of anxious eyes which followed her every move.

But Sabrina didn’t want to get away. Not from Guy. She tried to keep her voice casual. ‘Not especially.’

Guy almost laughed aloud at her lukewarm response. He wondered if she did this all the time—sent out these conflicting messages so that while that flushed look of anticipation and the bright sparkle of her eyes were like a sweet invitation to possess her, the somewhat indifferent responses to his questions were a slammed door in the face. Perplexing. And he hadn’t been perplexed by a woman in a long time.

‘So is that a yes or a no?’

It was an I’m-not-sure-whether-I’m-doing-the-right-thing, Sabrina thought, but she smiled anyway. ‘It’s a yes,’ she said.

He watched the way she flicked her hair back over her shoulder. The movement made her breasts dance beneath the thin cotton dress, and Guy felt the primitive urge to take her somewhere and impale her and make her his. He hardened his mouth, appalled at himself.

‘Why don’t you tell me what you’ve seen already?’ he suggested unevenly. ‘And where you’d like to eat lunch?’

Sabrina noticed the sudden tension around his mouth, the way his eyes had darkened into a hungry glitter, and while she knew that she ought to be intimidated by the sheer potency of his masculinity she had never felt less intimidated in her life.

‘I’ve seen the Basilica di San Marco,’ she said. ‘Of course! And the Golden House and the Doges Palace. But that’s all. Lunch—I wouldn’t have a clue about.’ Her budget was tight and she’d been skipping lunch. But that had been no hardship.

Guy noticed the shadowed hollows beneath the high sweep of her cheekbones and wondered if she had been eating properly. ‘Then let’s go and find the rest of Venice,’ he suggested softly.

But it took an effort for Sabrina to concentrate on her surroundings as they walked out into the sunshine. Yesterday the city had seemed like the most magical place on the planet, while today it was difficult to think about anything other than the man at her side.

At least she had some idea of what she was supposed to be looking at. She’d spent the preceding weeks reading every book about Venice that she could lay her hands on—it had been a good kind of displacement therapy—but Guy could more than match her.

‘Did you know that the humorist Robert Benchley sent a telegram when he arrived in Venice?’ Guy murmured. ‘Saying, “Streets full of water. Please advise.”’

Sabrina thought that his grey eyes looked soft, soft as the cream silk shirt he wore. ‘No, I didn’t know that. But Truman Capote said that Venice was like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.’

‘Oh, did he?’ He liked the quickness of her mind, the way her thoughts matched his own. Liked the fact that she’d researched the place so thoroughly. He felt his heart begin to pick up its beat as he stared down at her, at the strawberry-blonde hair which gleamed like bright gold in the midday sun and the slim, pale column of her neck. There was a fragility about her which was rare in a modern woman, he thought, and wondered what it would be like to take her in his arms. Take her to his bed. Whether she would bend or break…

He realised that they had spent the best part of two hours together and she hadn’t asked him a single question about his life back in England. And he noticed that she’d been quietly evasive on the subject of her own life.

But why not? he thought with a sudden sense of liberation. Wasn’t anonymity a kind of freedom in itself? Didn’t he live the kind of life where people judged him before they had even met him, depending on what they’d heard about him?

The bell of San Marco rang out twice, and Guy looked at his watch. ‘We’d better try and find a table for lunch while there’s still time.’

Sabrina stared up into dark grey eyes and felt her skin prickle in heated reaction. ‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Is that why you’re so thin?’ he demanded. ‘Because you skip lunch?’

‘Thanks very much!’

‘Oh, I’m not complaining,’ he murmured, as his eyes drifted over her. ‘Your cheekbones are quite exquisitely pronounced and your legs are just the right side of slender. I suppose you have to work at it, the same as every other woman.’

Sabrina let her gaze fall from his face, staring instead at the pink-tipped toes which peeped through her strappy sandals, remembering how she’d forced herself to paint them, telling herself that out of such small, unimportant rituals some kind of normal life would be resumed.

‘Sabrina,’ he said softly. ‘What’s the matter? It was supposed to be a compliment. Have I insulted you? Embarrassed you?’

She looked up again. Now would be the perfect time to tell him that the weight had simply fallen away after Michael’s death. But tell him that and she would be back playing the unwanted role of the bereaved fiancée. Was it selfish of her to want to play a different part? To want to feel the sun warm and alive on her cheeks and see the unmistakable glint of appreciation in the eyes of the man who stood looking down at her? To feel alive again, instead of half-dead herself?

She shook herself out of her reverie and forced a smile which, to her suprise, felt as if it wanted to stay on her mouth. ‘By telling me I’m thin? Come on, Guy—did you ever hear of a woman who was offended by that?’

Her smile was like the sun nudging out from behind a cloud, he thought. ‘I guess not.’ Come to think of it, he didn’t have much appetite himself, and certainly not for conventional fare.

Instead, he found himself wondering how her lips would taste and what the scent of her breath would be like against his. He shook his head to dispel the sensual imagery. ‘Why don’t we have coffee and a pastry at one of these cafés in the square?’ he suggested steadily. ‘It’s warm enough to sit outside in the sunshine.’

They found a vacant table and ordered pastries with their coffee, the lightest and most beautiful cakes imaginable, and Guy thought that they tasted like sawdust in his mouth. And saw that Sabrina had taken exactly two mouthfuls herself.

‘It must be the heat.’ She shrugged in response to the mocking question in his eyes.

‘So it must.’ He echoed the lie, knowing that their lack of hunger had nothing to do with the temperature.

He marched her through the city like a professional tour guide, as if determined that he should show her everything. Sabrina wondered what had provoked this sudden, relentless pace, but she was too bewitched by him to care.

They stood side by side on the Bridge of Sighs and stared into the dark waters beneath.

‘Look down there,’ said Sabrina suddenly. ‘And think of the thousands of tourists who have stood here like this and been affected by this amazing city.’

His heart missed a beat as enchantment washed over him. ‘You mean the way it’s affecting us now?’

‘Yes.’ She told herself it wasn’t that remarkable for him to have echoed her thoughts, but still her voice trembled. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

He wanted her, he thought. And she wanted him. ‘Are you going to have dinner with me tonight, Sabrina?’ he asked suddenly.

She didn’t even stop to think about it, or bother to wonder whether she’d made it too easy for him. ‘You know I am.’

He nodded, the thrill of anticipation making his heart pick up speed. ‘Tell me where you’re staying and I’ll pick you up at eight.’

‘You don’t have to do that.’

Her reluctance sharpened an appetite already keenly honed. ‘Oh, but I insist,’ he contradicted softly.

But pride made her match his determination. He must be some kind of hot-shot to be staying at that hotel. She didn’t want him seeing her humble little pensione, emphasising how great the differences between them. Just now they were as close to equal as they would ever be and she wanted to hold onto that. ‘I’ll meet you in the square. Honestly, Guy, I’m an independent woman, you know!’

‘Well, sometimes a man doesn’t want an independent woman,’ he ground out. He couldn’t believe he’d just said that, but he had. Or that he’d caught her by the arm to feel the soft tremble of flesh where his fingers burnt so delectably against her bare skin. ‘Are you always this damned stubborn?’

Something in the heated frustration of his question made Sabrina’s blood sing with a glorious inevitability, and she had the sense of being led towards something which defied all logic. It was liberation at its most intense and powerful, and she was no longer heartbroken, bereaved Sabrina. For one enchanted moment she stood poised on the brink of something magical.

She smiled. ‘Only if I need to be.’

There was a long and dangerous pause. ‘But I’m used to getting my own way,’ he told her steadily.

‘I know you are. It shows.’

She looked down at his tanned fingers which still lay against her white skin, and he let his hand fall, perplexed by his own actions. He was a man whose reputation hinged on being in control—so why was he acting as if he were auditioning for the leading role in a Western movie?

‘Was I being unbearably high-handed?’ he asked her, missing the satin feel of her skin beneath his fingertips.

She took one last look at him as she stepped into the water-taxi which had slid to a halt beside them. Not unbearably anything, she thought. You wouldn’t know how to be. ‘Only a little.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ll see you tonight at eight.’

And Guy was left staring at the back of her bright blonde head, his heart thundering with a mixture of admiration and frustration.

CHAPTER THREE

SABRINA was twenty minutes late. Guy had never had a woman keep him waiting in his life and he couldn’t decide whether to be irritated or intrigued. He glanced down at his watch for the umpteenth time and actually began to wonder whether he’d been stood up.

But then he saw her crossing the square, wearing some slinky little silver-grey dress with a filmy silver stole around her pale shoulders, her legs looking deliciously long in spindly, high-heeled shoes.

Sabrina spotted his tall, brooding figure straight away, as if he had been programmed to dominate her whole horizon. He was wearing a pale grey unstructured suit which did nothing to disguise the hard, muscular body beneath. And, outwardly at least, he looked completely relaxed, but as she grew closer she could see a coiled kind of tension, which gave him the dark, irresistible shimmer of danger. He looked completely relaxed, but there was no mistaking the watchful quality which made his grey eyes gleam with subdued promise.

She had very nearly not come tonight, lifting the telephone to ring Guy’s hotel more than once, telling herself that this was fast turning into something she hadn’t planned. Something she wasn’t sure if she could handle.

Or stop.

But something had prevented her cancelling—something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Maybe it was the memory of that first, glorious sight of him. Leaving behind the knowledge that if she were never to see him again, then the world would never seem quite the same place.

His smile widened as she approached, but he made no move towards her. Let her come to me, he thought. He wanted to watch the way she moved—her hips unconsciously thrusting forward, the fluid sway of her bottom. He imagined those hips crushed beneath the hard contours of his own, and swallowed. Come to me, baby, he thought silently. Come.

‘Hello,’ Sabrina said breathlessly, but something in the darkening of his eyes seemed to have robbed her of the ability to suck air into her lungs.

‘Hello.’ So. No blurted little excuses for being late. No shrugged or coy reasons. Her carelessness sharpened his desire for her even more intensely and he felt his senses clamour into life. ‘Where would you like to eat?’

There was a new, dangerous quality about Guy tonight, Sabrina thought. A danger which should have frightened her, but instead filled her with a sense of almost unendurable excitement. And inevitability. ‘You know the city far better than I do,’ she said huskily. ‘You choose.’

‘OK,’ he said easily, and for a moment felt the penitent shimmer of guilt. As if he hadn’t just spent an hour under the hammering power of the shower, deciding exactly where he wanted to take her. He had opened his mouth to the torrent of water which had beaten down on him, his body growing hard with frustration as he remembered that Sabrina had stood naked beneath these same icy jets.

Except that he doubted whether she had needed an ice-cold shower to ward off a desire which was stronger than any desire he could remember.

The restaurant was close by and its menu was famous. It was private and discreet but not in the least bit stuffy; he wondered whether she would comment on its proximity to his hotel, but she didn’t.

And it wasn’t until they were seated in the darkened alcove he had expressly requested that he relaxed enough to expel a long, relieved breath. She was here, he thought exultantly. Sabrina was here. Her hair was all caught back in a smooth pleat at the back of her head and he wanted to reach out and tumble it all the way down her back.