Champagne Summer: At the Argentinean Billionaire's Bidding / Powerful Italian, Penniless Housekeeper

Her fingers curled into a fist and she let it fall to her side, the nails digging painfully into her palm. She could have sunk down onto the thick, wine-red carpet and wept. Instead she steeled herself to turn back and face him.

‘Of course,’ she said, unable to keep the edge of bitterness from her voice. ‘How could I forget?’

He came slowly towards her, his head slightly to one side, an expression of quiet triumph on his face. ‘I really don’t know, since you seemed pretty keen to get it back earlier,’ he said quietly. ‘Obviously it can’t be that important, after all. To you, anyway.’

Tamsin swallowed. He had come to a halt right in front of her, and it was hard to marshal the thoughts swirling in her head when it suddenly seemed to be filled with him. She closed her eyes, trying to squeeze him out, but the darkness only made her more aware of his closeness, the warm, dry scent of his skin. She opened them again, looking deliberately away from him, beyond him, anywhere but at him.

‘It is important, I’m afraid. I need it back.’

‘You need it?’ he said softly. ‘If you’re the designer, you must have lots of them. Surely you can spare that one?’

‘It’s not that simple. I …’

The mirror above the fireplace reflected the broad sweep of his shoulders, the silk of his hair, dark against the collar of his white shirt. She stared at the image, mesmerised by its powerful beauty as the words dried up in her mouth.

‘No. I thought not,’ he cut in, a harsh edge of bitterness undercutting the softness of his tone, like a knife blade wrapped in velvet. ‘It’s not about the shirt, is it? It’s about the principle—just as it always was. It’s about your father not wanting the English rose on an Argentine chest, isn’t it?’

Argentine chest. Alejandro’s chest.

‘No,’ she whispered.

Gently, caressingly, he reached out and slid his warm hand along her jaw, cupping her face, stroking his thumb over her cheek. A violent shudder of reluctant desire rippled through her. She felt herself melt against him for a second before his fingers closed around her chin, forcing her head back so she was looking straight into his hypnotic eyes.

‘I hope you’re a better designer than you are a liar.’

‘I’m not lying,’ she hissed, jerking her head free. Her hand automatically went to the place where his had just been, rubbing the skin as if he had burned her. ‘This has nothing to do with my father. There was a—a problem with the production of the shirts. I only found out yesterday when I suddenly thought to test one, and found out the red dye on the roses wasn’t colourfast. I had to contact the manufacturers and get them to open up the factory and start from scratch on a new batch of shirts, but there was only time to make one for each player. That’s why I need yours back, otherwise on the photo-shoot at Twickenham tomorrow Ben Saunders will be half-naked, as well as hungover,’ she finished savagely, feeling her blood pressure soar as he gave a short, cruel laugh. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘I thought you were supposed to be good: “I had to compete for this commission and I got it entirely on merit”,’ he mocked. ‘So who exactly were you competing against, Tamsin? Primary school children?’

‘Oh, I can compete with the best, make no mistake about that,’ she said with quiet ferocity, which melted seamlessly into biting sarcasm as she added, ‘Now, it’s been just fabulous to see you again, Alejandro, but I really ought to be getting back to the party. So if you could just give me back the shirt?’

She was walking towards the door as she spoke, but suddenly he was in front of her, blocking her path. Looking up, Tamsin saw with a shudder that all trace of amusement had vanished from his face. His eyes were as cold and hard as Spanish gold.

‘Sorry. The spoiled-diva routine won’t work with me.’

Misery and resentment flared up inside her, and for a moment she could do nothing but look at him. ‘What do you want me to do? Beg?’

Kicking the door shut, he took a step towards her and she shrank backwards, pressing herself against the billiard table. ‘It’s quite a nice idea,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But I think not, on this occasion.’ He leaned forward, as if he were about to touch her. She flinched away with a low hiss of animosity, but he was only reaching for something behind her.

‘So, you reckon you can compete with the best, do you?’ he said softly. ‘Let’s see if you were telling the truth about that, at least.’

He handed her the billiard cue he had picked up from the table. Hesitantly, Tamsin took it, looking up at him in mute uncertainty.

‘I don’t understand. What are you saying?’

‘You want your shirt back? You have to win it.’

CHAPTER FOUR

FOR just the briefest second he saw panic flare in her eyes, and felt an answering surge of grim satisfaction.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she snapped, looking at the cue as if it was a loaded gun. ‘Play now? With you?’ She gave a harsh, scornful laugh. ‘Forget it.’

Chips of ice crystallised in Alejandro’s heart. He was offering her a chance to prove herself. She couldn’t hope to win, of course; he was far too skilled a player for that. But he would have given her credit—and the shirt back—just for trying.

And giving Tamsin Calthorpe credit for anything went very much against the grain.

‘Afraid of losing?’ he said scathingly. ‘I don’t blame you. I don’t suppose you’re used to it, and, believe me, I won’t make allowances for who you are—or who your father is.’

Brimstone sparked in the depths of her green eyes. ‘It’s not the thought of losing that bothers me,’ she hissed. ‘It’s the prospect of spending the next hour in your company.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he said, his voice a languid drawl. ‘It won’t take that long for me to thrash you.’

He was only inches away from her. Close enough to hear her little shivering gasp, close enough to see the instant darkening of her eyes as his words hit her and the flashing anger was swallowed by spreading pools of desire at their centre.

‘Thrash me?’ She gave a hoarse laugh. ‘I don’t think so.’

His eyebrows rose. ‘You’re walking away?’

‘Oh no,’ she breathed. Reaching out, she curled her fingers around the cue he held and for a moment came so close to him that he could feel the warm whisper of her breath on his neck. ‘I’m not going anywhere. Not until I have my shirt back.’

Languidly she turned and walked away from him to the other end of the table. Alejandro frowned, feeling his chest, and his trousers tighten as he watched the sinuous movement of her bare back. He hadn’t expected this.

‘So, what are we playing?’ she said, whipping round to face him again. ‘Bar-room pool?’

The low light from the billiard lamp fell onto her short platinum-blonde hair, making her look like a rebellious angel. She was looking at him steadily, insolently, her head lowered slightly and her slanting green eyes unblinking.

‘If that’s what you want.’

She shrugged. ‘I’m easy. I just thought it might be what you’re used to.’

For a fleeting second Alejandro felt almost lightheaded with hatred at her casual, calculated viciousness. To her, he was still the boy from nowhere, the imposter in the charmed circle of privileged English youth that made up the team, and her social circle.

‘I can play anything, anywhere, Lady Calthorpe. Would you prefer English billiards perhaps?’

His voiced dripped with contempt and his eyes raked over her, cold and assessing. Holding the cue upright in front of her, Tamsin clung to it tightly, glad of its support. English billiards? How the hell did you play that?

‘No. Bar-room pool is fine with me,’ she said, trying to make it sound of little consequence to her, but secretly hoping that all those smoky afternoons spent playing pool in the student bar at college were about to pay off.

She was in danger of getting seriously out of her depth here.

With the lamplight casting hollows beneath his razor-sharp cheekbones and the bruising on his lip, he looked like some kind of avenging warrior, primed for battle. Her hands were damp as she watched him move easily around the table. I can play anything, anywhere, he’d said, and she knew with a sick, churning mixture of fear and excitement that he was right. He would be just as at home playing pool in the back-street bars of Buenos Aires as playing billiards in an upmarket gentlemen’s club in Mayfair. He exuded an effortless confidence that transcended all boundaries and singled him out as a natural winner.

Which was unfortunate, considering her reputation kind of rested on getting this shirt back.

‘You first.’

Placing her right hand firmly on the table, Tamsin hoped he couldn’t see how much it was shaking.

‘You’re left-handed?’

‘In some things.’

She took the shot, mis-hitting wildly so that the balls scattered crazily over the table.

‘You’re sure this is one of those things?’ Behind her his was voice cold and mocking. ‘Maybe you might be better with your right hand.’

She turned, colour seeping into her cheeks as a slow pulse of anger beat in her veins. ‘Thanks for the tip, but can we assume that if I want your help I’ll ask for it?’

‘I thought I’d already made it clear that, even if you did, you wouldn’t get it,’ he said smoothly, moving around the table and potting balls with a swift, lethal efficiency that made Tamsin’s heart plummet. ‘Although maybe I could make it a little fairer.’ He smiled lazily across the table, moving his cue to the other hand. ‘Since you’re playing left-handed, I will too. Number ten. To you.’

Tamsin opened her mouth to make some stinging retort, but found her throat was dry and no words came. Helplessly her gaze fixed itself on the strong, tanned hand Alejandro placed on the table, splaying his lean, long fingers.

The room was very quiet and very still. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece, below which the fire had sunk to an amber glow. His narrow, focused stare was exactly level with her knicker line, and it was intense enough to feel like he could see right through the flimsy grey chiffon.

The thought sent a gush of arousal crashing through her.

The sudden sharp crack of the balls colliding made her jump, and she watched, mesmerized, as the yellow ball rolled gently across the green baize towards the pocket beside her thigh. A shiver rippled through her as she suddenly, unaccountably, found herself thinking not of the movement of the ball across the table, but of Alejandro’s fingers over her skin …

Guiltily she wrenched her head up as the ball came to a halt. Alejandro was watching her, the expression on his dark, bruised face unreadable.

‘There,’ he said with exaggerated courtesy. ‘Your turn.’

Tamsin blinked. He’d missed the shot. That was good news, but somehow the knowledge that he’d only missed because he’d taken it with his left hand took any sense of triumph she might have felt and turned it right on its head.

‘I don’t need favours, Alejandro, and I don’t need special treatment,’ she snapped, walking briskly towards him to take the shot. ‘In fact, let’s be honest, I don’t need any of this. Wouldn’t it be better for both of us if you just did the decent thing for once in your life and gave the shirt back to me now? Or are you on some kind of personal mission to make my life as unpleasant and difficult as possible?’

‘You want to concede defeat?’

There was a sinister, watchful stillness about him, and his tone was carefully neutral, but she heard the challenge in his words.

She smiled slowly, sweetly. Adrenalin was pulsing through her like pure alcohol, dilating her blood vessels, making her heart beat faster. She felt high, but at the same time perfectly lucid and oddly calm as she turned her body towards his, mirroring his position, leaning with one hip propped against the edge of the table. ‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you?’ she said softly. ‘Which is exactly why it’s the last thing I’d ever do.’

He didn’t smile back. His swollen upper lip accentuated the beauty of his face while making him look twice as dangerous. Standing there, with the lamplight making the hair that fell over his face blue-black, he was every inch the Spanish conquistador.

‘You’re sure about that?’ he said quietly, almost apologetically. ‘You have to know that you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning this?’

He held her in his gaze. It was like drowning slowly in warm syrup … delicious … but no less terrifying for it. She blinked. Drowning was drowning, after all.

‘Let’s see, shall we?’ she said in a low voice, and moved round so that she was facing the table again. She was acutely, painfully aware of him beside her, towering over her as she bent to take her shot, looking down on her bare back with that hard, golden gaze that seemed to warm her skin like evening sun.

She had to get a grip. Concentrate.

There was no hurry. She flexed her shoulders slightly, steadying herself. Above her she heard a low rasping sound as Alejandro dragged a hand across his stubble-roughened jaw. She clamped her own mouth shut against the whimper of excitement that rose up in her at the sound, and took the shot.

With a series of satisfying staccato clicks, the balls ricocheted around the table, the orange she’d lined up cannoning neatly into the top pocket. She threw him a quick glance from under her lashes as she moved around to the other side of the table.

‘I hope you’re keeping score.’

Alejandro gave a low, ironic laugh. ‘Don’t worry about that. And you still have a long way to go before the shirt is yours. Don’t get complacent.’

The look she gave him was full of fire and loathing. Alejandro watched with interest as she bent forward over the table to take the next shot, his eyes automatically travelling to the shadowed hollow between her breasts. Being so relentlessly spoiled for a lifetime had obviously given her a completely unrealistic grasp of her own limitations, he mused, forcing himself to shift his gaze upwards to her face. In the glow of the lamp above, the green baize of the table intensified the colour of her eyes to a vivid emerald. He watched them flicker, dart, measuring the distance as a tiny frown of concentration appeared between them.

She hesitated, completely focused, the tip of her pink tongue appearing between her plump lips. She moved, and with one swift flick of her wrist the ball dropped into the pocket. As it fell, Alejandro realised he’d been holding his breath. His whole body felt tense.

Well, that was one word for it. And some parts felt more ‘tense’ than others.

Damn her. As she straightened up he saw the same look of self-satisfied triumph on her face as he’d seen earlier in the hallway with her father when she’d got her own way. She was playing him, he thought acidly. She was perfectly aware of how sexy she looked, leaning over that table with her dress falling forward, and her green eyes right on a level with his crotch. She was manipulating him as ruthlessly as she had that night at Harcourt Manor all those years ago, but with twice as much finesse.

‘This isn’t complacency, Mr D’Arienzo,’ she said huskily. ‘This is confidence.’

Lust gripped him, making him feel dizzy. Leaning against the wall, tipping his head back, he watched through narrowed eyes as she undulated around the table, taking shot after shot. In the quiet room, everything seemed distorted, exaggerated, so that he was almost painfully aware of the soft sigh of her breathing, the whisper of chiffon against her velvet skin.

She straightened up. ‘How many times do I have to tell you I don’t want special treatment?’ she said coldly. ‘I missed. It’s your turn.’

Scowling, he levered himself upright and walked stiffly around the table. His mind had been so occupied with other things he’d almost forgotten about the game, and he was surprised to see how few balls remained now. She was more skilled than he’d thought. As he leaned over the table he was aware of her picking up the small cube of chalk and rubbing it across the tip of her cue. He looked up. She was holding the cue in both hands in front of her, like a pornographic prop, and as he watched she put it by her mouth and blew softly, getting rid of the excess chalk.

It was deliberate torment.

‘I have to congratulate you. You’re quite a player.’

He spoke with lethal calm, but the careless savagery of his shot gave some hint of the choking rage inside him. The few remaining balls ricocheted violently from cushion to cushion and then stilled.

‘Thank you.’

Alejandro took a step backwards, out of the pool of light, and leaned against the wood-panelled wall. Tensing his jaw, he looked away as she stood with her back to him to take her turn. ‘It wasn’t a comment on your sporting ability.’

Inexorably he found his head moving round to look at her again. In the lamplight from above her bare skin gleamed, as smooth and flawless as thick cream. The bones of her spine showed through, making him want to run his fingers down them to where they disappeared beneath the grey satin band of her dress. She shifted her position slightly, pressing her hips against the table and adjusting her weight in the high heels.

‘No?’ Her voice was cool and detached as she parted her legs to gain better balance and stretched forward over the table. He’d thought her legs were bare, but now he could see that he’d been wrong. She was wearing stockings of the sheerest silk. Stockings with wide, lace tops which were visible as she bent forward.

Alejandro felt his breath stop and his muscles tighten, as if he’d just been tackled and brought down. Hard.

She turned back to him and her eyes were very dark. ‘What was it, then, Alejandro?’

‘I was referring more to your match technique,’ he said with quiet brutality. ‘Though the theory behind it is fatally flawed. If you think that after last time there’s even the smallest chance that I’d be interested—’

‘You bastard!’

He caught her by the wrist as she raised her hand to hit him and wrenched her arm back to her side. Her breathing was very rapid, and he could feel the rise and fall of her chest against his own. ‘Oh no,’ she breathed, her voice trembling slightly. ‘I wouldn’t think that after last time there’s any chance of that, Alejandro. Your lack of interest then was sufficiently spectacular to leave me in no doubt about that. But don’t worry,’ she went on, her emerald eyes glittering with feverish defiance, ‘I’m sure that to most people all that hugging and kissing on the pitch when you score a try just looks like the camaraderie of the game.’

His grip tightened on her wrist, and he saw her wince. ‘Be careful, Tamsin.’

She laughed, a low, breathy, mocking laugh. ‘Why? Because you don’t want—’

She didn’t get any further. In one decisive movement Alejandro had closed the small gap that separated them and brought his mouth down on hers, so that the rest of her stupid, childish taunting was lost in the wildfire of his brutal kiss.

It was like falling off a cliff and finding she could fly. The ground beneath her feet melted away. Gravity ceased to exist. There was nothing but darkness and fire, and the roar of blood in her head. His fingers dug into her shoulders, pulling her against the hardness of his body. Of his arousal.

His rigid, obvious arousal.

Oh, God …

She wasn’t aware of dropping the billiard cue, but she must have done, because suddenly her hands were sliding across the rock-hard contours of his shoulders, moving up the column of his neck to tangle into his hair. The taste of him, the scent of him, filled her—dry and masculine, earthy and clean. His mouth ground down on hers, violent, desperate, brilliant, searing his brand on her forever.

The billiard table pressed hard into her bottom and instinctively, with a hitch of her hips, she raised herself up so that she was sitting up on it, parting her thighs and pulling him into her. The bittersweet taste of blood was on her lips, metallic and warm, and his fingers bruised her skin. She didn’t care.

If he stopped now she knew she would scream.

She wriggled back on the table, grabbing the open collar of his evening shirt, pulling him with her. Suddenly she was aware of the sound of their breathing, harsh and laboured. Her whole body vibrated with want, arching towards him, opening like some exotic, fleshy flower, oozing nectar. Reality was irrelevant. The past was meaningless and the future incomprehensible. All that mattered was now, and this—the glorious incarnation of every one of her guilty, luscious teenage fantasies.

She was in the arms of Alejandro D’Arienzo, and his mouth was crushing hers, his hands holding her, sliding downwards, his thumbs caressing the underside of her breasts.

Alejandro lifted his head and looked at her. His eyes were as dark as vintage cognac, glinting dully in the low light, and his mouth was full and crimson where the ferocity of their kiss had opened up the cut in his lip.

He moved his thumbs upwards, brushing them over the hardened tips of her swollen, tingling breasts. She stiffened, her head falling backwards. Instinctively, helplessly, she felt her legs wrap around his body, tightening and drawing him into her, wriggling against him as the straining peak of his arousal pushed against the damp silk of her pants.

Her mouth opened in silent bliss, her eyes were wide, dazed, and her breathing shallow as, frozen on the brink of some terrifying, tempting abyss, she stared up into his bruised face.

His bruised, cold, totally emotionless face.

Before she could move or speak he had let her go, stepping sharply away from the table where she was sprawled backwards, turning so she could no longer see his face.

‘I think we’ve proved that your cheap shots were wide of the mark, sweetheart,’ he said mockingly. ‘It’s not that I’m not interested in women, per se. It’s just that spoiled little girls who use sex as a bargaining tool don’t really do it for me. Sorry.’

Points of light danced in front of Tamsin’s eyes and for a desperate, horror-struck moment she thought she might faint. Or be sick.

She closed her eyes, fighting the feeling, focusing all of her fading energy on holding onto that small scrap of tattered dignity which would enable her to hold up her head and look him in the eye as she told him exactly what she thought about men who treated women like laboratory rats to be experimented on.

But when she opened her eyes again he was gone.

CHAPTER FIVE

TAMSIN gave a low moan of despair as she looked at her reflection in the big, cruelly lit mirror.

The lighting in the ladies’ loo at Twickenham might be designed for functionality rather than flattery, but there was no doubt that the face that looked back at her was a mess. Mortuary-pale, with matching white lips, the only hint of colour came from the bluish shadows beneath her bloodshot eyes. It wasn’t a good look.

Right at that moment she would rather face a firing squad—than photographers and journalists from the sports desk of every major national and special-interest publication in the country, but she didn’t have much choice. Her father, along with members of the England management, was waiting for her, and he would expect her presentation to be seamless.

With a shaking hand she dabbed some lipstick onto her pale, numb lips and pressed them together, remembering with a slice of sudden breathtaking pain how they’d swelled and burned beneath Alejandro’s kiss last night as the blood from his torn mouth had crimsoned them.

No.

She couldn’t go there now, not when she had to get out there and look like a poised professional instead of the creature from the crypt. It was absolutely not the time to revisit the ground she had worn bare throughout the long hours of the night as she had asked herself the same question over and over again.